(20) Thy grave.--So some MSS. and the old versions. But the ordinary Hebrew text, thy graves, may be right, as referring to the burial-place formed by Manasseh, which would contain a number of chambers and niches (2Kings 21:18). In peace.--These words are limited by those which follow: "thine eyes shall not see all the evil," &c. Josiah was slain in battle, as the next chapter relates (2Kings 23:29); but he was spared the greater calamity of witnessing the ruin of his people. Verse 20. - 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, 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, 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 (ver. 14) reported to Josiah the message which Huldah had sent by them. and thou shall be gathered into thy grave in peace; in a time of public peace and tranquillity; for though he was slain in battle with the king of Egypt, yet it was what he was personally concerned in, and it was not a public war between the two kingdoms, and his body was carried off by his servants, and was peaceably interred in the sepulchre of his ancestors, 2 Kings 23:29, as well as he died in spiritual peace, and entered into eternal peace, which is the end of the perfect and upright man, as he was, Psalm 37:37 but this chiefly regards his not living to be distressed with the calamities of his nation and people, as follows: and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place: he being removed first, though it came upon it in the days of his sons: and they brought the king word again; of what Huldah the prophetess had said unto them. |