2 Kings 23:1-20

Sally Brown

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey

SOMETIMESTHE MORE FAMILIAR A TEXT becomes, the less preachable it seems to be. Such may be the case with 2 Kgs 23:1–20, the story of King Josiah’s reform of the nation’s religious life after the discovery of a scroll (presumably a portion of Deuteronomy) during temple renovations. On first reading, it can appear to be a straightforward story of God-given law rediscovered and a nation’s God-given identity and mission reclaimed. But readers who delve into the world behind the text to consider its socioeconomic backdrop, or those who reflecton this story’s complex interface with today’s church or political scene, may begin to find the narrative suspiciously smooth. Is there a preachable word to be found here?

As Richard Nelson points out, 1 and 2 Kings are historiography, not history in the modern Western sense (1 and 2 Kings). Postexilic Deuteronomistic writers sought to tell a story of the nation’s past that could make sense of its present, usually reflecting a reading of past events and of Torah that supported royal interests.2 Kings 17:7–41 signals the turn toward the final days of the realm of Judah, after the fall of Israel. Despite raised hopes in the reigns of both Hezekiah and Josiah (each of whom is said to be unique among Judah’s kings, unmatched by any who preceded or followed him [compare 2 Kgs 18:5 and 23:25]),a sense of foreboding about the tale’s conclusion pulses like a drumbeat throughout these final chapters.

Recent interpretations of the Josiah narrative range widely. Traditional approaches take at face value Josiah’s personal remorse and repentance (22:11–13) as well as his leading the nation back to its originating values according to all that is written in the text discovered in the temple renovations, including a formal re-covenanting ceremony, utter demolishment of all idolatrous or unauthorized places of worship, and the renewal of Passover (vv.21–23). But other interpreters caution us not to leap too easily across the historical and cultural distance that separates the text’s world from our own. Issues bristle within, behind, and in front of this text.

Within the passage, one cannot help noticing that we are not told in ch.22 precisely which scroll “of the law” is recovered or what it says. Wise preachers will be alert to the temptation to “fill in the blank” with assumptions concerning the precepts and values involved or what their implication may be for readers today. Yet the story has functioned all too often as a pretext for sermons exhorting individuals, churches, or even the nation as a whole to “go back to the Bible,” thereby providing supposedly biblical legitimation for every sort of moral crusade.

Others dig behind the text with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Sociocritical scholar Shigeyuki Nakanose suggests that decentralized forms of tribal religion and economics did not serve the interests of the emerging wealthy urban class of Josiah’s day. In this light, Josiah’s consolidation of religious, political, and material capital in the royal city appears anything but innocent (Josiah’s Passover: Sociology and the Liberating Bible). Nakanose concludes that Josiah’s reform was a politically and economically motivated strategy for consolidating wealth in the hands of the ruling elite.

Nakanose’s reading of 2 Kgs 23 certainly dims the lustre and hopefulness of Josiah’s spiritual, liturgical, and cultural reform; and, at the end of the day, one may not find compelling his claim that Josiah’s reform was nothing but a royal oppression of the proletariat by means of religion. Nonetheless, the point is well-taken that our motivations for repentance can be complex. Those of us who read the detailed account of Josiah’s violent purge of non-regulation worship sites and leaders against the backdrop of depth psychology can-not help but take mental note that our personal or corporate regrets can unleash astonishing brutality. Repudiating the shadow in one self or in one’s own group can mean projecting it outward onto others and then turning on this projected shadowself with murderous fury. Not only that, but as this account truthfully admits, our repentances may come too late to avert the consequences of years of unbridled self-interest and greed. In the end, Judah falls as did Israel before her to her powerful eastern neighbor—although, true to Huldah’s prophecy, Josiah himself does not live to see it.

A “hermeneutics of suspicion” can and must yield its insights. Yet there is value, as well, in bracketing the “world behind the text” and letting the narrative as it stands have its say. In its received, canonical form, the story projects into the world in front of the text possibilities for individuals and nations. It is possible to repent, to come to one’s moral and spiritual senses, even after long stretches of spiritual and moral meagerness. Preachers working from this angle should tread carefully through several hermeneutical issues, including the shifting development and function of Torah at different stages of Israel’s history, the difference between Israel’s relationship to Torah and contemporary Christianity’s relationship to its canon, and the interrelationship between religious identity and national identity in con-temporary society as a whole.

2 Kings 23 can also be the point of departure for a sermon that reflects on the power and limits of leadership. Power, political or otherwise, is always fraught with ambiguity. Throughout 1 and 2 Kings, suggests Walter Brueggemann, the “formal” legitimation of rule via bloodlines is contrasted with a far more radical understanding of legitimate governance. Legitimacy in Israel is derived from heartfelt accountability to God through covenant grounded in Torah (Deut 17:14–20).Over and over in the sad account of leadership failure in Israel and then Judah, formal legitimacy crumbles in the face of the relentless exposé of spiritual illegitimacy (Knox Preaching Guides: 2 Kings).The choice is always between stooping to play the power game by the local rules, including idolatry, unholy alliances, and the abuse of power, or trusting the power of the liberator God. We are reminded of John the Baptist, who denounces those (of us) who claim Abraham as their father but fail to bear appropriate fruits (Matt 3:8–9).

Along somewhat different lines, one might preach a sermon that tests the possibilities for recovering a sense of national identity grounded not in fearful or prideful competition with world neighbors, but in a sense of humble openness to God’s redemptive agenda. One can also imagine a sermon that tests critically the close relationship this story suggests between the shape of our liturgical and material lives. In the end, the narrator of Josiah’s reform tells a realistic tale .Ultimately, defeated Judah, like its northern neighbor Israel, is carried into captivity. In the lives of nations, corporations, or individuals, the long-term effects of spiritual and moral disease may finally take their toll, precipitating a disintegration that even the best intended eleventh-hour correctives cannot avert. No matter what reading we give 2 Kgs 23, it serves to remind us that the future does not belong to the machinations of human power brokers, but to God. Power is a form of godly service; and power that is not humbly attentive to the Creator’s ways will gradually disintegrate the common good. This is a message for Josiah’s time and for every time, including—and maybe especially—our own.

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