2 Chronicles 34

The reign of the good Josiah, as recorded in this chapter and the following, agrees in the main with 2 Kings 22:1 to 2 Kings 23:30, but as in a number of other cases, one writer largely supplements the other. The present narrative is chronologically more exact than that of Kings, for by omitting any mention of Josiah’s earlier reforms, the writer of Kings connects all his work of reformation with the discovery of the book of the law in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, and so falls into the inaccuracy of seeming to place all Josiah’s reforms after the discovery of the law.

2 Chronicles 34:1-2 correspond with 2 Kings 22:1-2, where see notes. 2 Chronicles 34:3-7 describe Josiah’s early piety, and the reforms which took place in the twelfth year of his reign, when he was twenty years old. The remark in 2 Chronicles 34:3, that in the twelfth year of his reign he began to purge idolatry from Judah and Jerusalem, sufficiently indicates, in connexion with what is elsewhere written, that all his reforms were not completed in these earlier years of his reign. Among the things he mentions here may be some things that occurred later, just as in 2 Kings 23:4-14 there are mentioned events that occurred before the discovery of the book of the law.