2 Kings 22:20 - Exposition

Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace. There is a seeming contradiction between these words and the fact of Josiah's violent death in battle against Pharaoh-Nechoh ( 2 Kings 23:29 ). But the contradiction is not a real one. Huldah was commissioned to assure Josiah that, though the destruction of his kingdom and the desolation of Judaea and Jerusalem, threatened in the Law, were at hand, yet they would not come in his day. He would not see the evil time. Before it came he would be "gathered to his fathers" i.e; in Jerusalem, as his predecessors had been ( 2 Kings 23:30 ), and not hurried off into captivity, to die in a foreign land, or given "the burial of an ass, drawn and east forth before the gates of Jerusalem" ( Jeremiah 22:19 ). The promise given him was fulfilled. He died in battle; but he was buried in peace ( 2 Chronicles 35:24 , 2 Chronicles 35:25 ); and the fated enemy who was to destroy Jerusalem, and carry the Jewish nation into captivity, did not make any attack upon the land until three years later, when he was departed to his rest, and the throne was occupied by Jehoiakim (see 2 Kings 24:1 ). And thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place ; e.g. the three sieges of Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of the temple and city by Nebuzaradan ( 2 Kings 25:9 , 2 Kings 25:10 ), the deportation of the bulk of the inhabitants ( 2 Kings 25:11 ), and the calamities which happened to the remnant left ( 2 Kings 25:22-26 ). Josiah did not witness any of this. He was "taken away from the evil to come." And they brought the king word again ; i.e. Hilkiah, Shaphan, and their companions ( 2 Kings 22:14 ) reported to Josiah the message which Huldah had sent by them.