Commentaria in II Paralipomenon
Chapter 35. Synopsis of the chapter
Josias celebrates the solemn Phase; the same, going to meet Pharao, is slain in battle, to the greatest grief of all, but especially of Jeremias.
1. And Josias made in Jerusalem a Phase to the Lord, which was killed on the fourteenth day of the first month: 2. and he appointed the priests in their offices, and exhorted them to minister in the house of the Lord. 3. And he spoke to the Levites, by whose instruction all Israel was sanctified to the Lord: Put the ark in the sanctuary of the temple, which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built; for you shall no more carry it: but now minister to the Lord your God, and to his people Israel. 4. And prepare yourselves by your houses and kindreds, in the divisions of each one, as David king of Israel commanded, and Solomon his son described. 5. And minister in the sanctuary by the families and companies of the Levites, 6. and being sanctified, kill the Phase: and prepare your brethren, that they may be able to do according to the words which the Lord spoke by the hand of Moses. 7. Moreover Josias gave to all the people that were found there at the solemnity of the Phase, lambs and kids of the flocks and of the rest of the cattle thirty thousand, and three thousand oxen: these were of the king’s whole substance. 8. His princes also offered of their own accord what they had vowed, both to the people, and to the priests and Levites. And Helcias, and Zacharias, and Jahiel, the rulers of the house of the Lord, gave to the priests to make the Phase, of small cattle together two thousand six hundred, and three hundred oxen. 9. And Chonenias, and Semeias, and Nathanael his brethren, and Hasabias, and Jehiel, and Jozabad, the chief of the Levites, gave to the other Levites to celebrate the Phase five thousand small cattle, and five hundred oxen. 10. So the ministry was prepared, and the priests stood in their office: the Levites also in their companies, according to the king’s commandment. 11. And the Phase was killed: and the priests sprinkled the blood with their hand, and the Levites stripped the skins of the holocausts, 12. and they separated them, to give them by houses and families to each, and to offer them to the Lord, as it is written in the book of Moses: and of the oxen they did in like manner, 13. and they roasted the Phase upon the fire, according to what is written in the law; but the peace offerings they boiled in caldrons, and kettles, and pots, and speedily distributed to all the people: 14. and for themselves and the priests they prepared afterwards; for in the oblation of the holocausts and fat the priests were occupied till night: wherefore the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of Aaron last. 15. And the singers the sons of Asaph stood in their order, according to the commandment of David, and Asaph, and Heman, and Idithun, the king’s prophets; and the porters watched at every gate, so that they departed not a moment from their ministry: for which cause their brethren the Levites prepared meats for them. 16. So all the service of the Lord was duly performed on that day, that they made the Phase, and offered holocausts upon the altar of the Lord, according to the commandment of king Josias. 17. And the children of Israel that were found there kept the Phase at that time, and the solemnity of the unleavened bread seven days. 18. There was no Phase like to this in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet: neither did any of all the kings of Israel keep such a Phase as Josias kept, to the priests, and Levites, and all Juda, and Israel that were found there, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 19. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josias this Phase was celebrated. 20. After Josias had repaired the temple, Nechao king of Egypt came up to fight in Charcamis by Euphrates: and Josias went out to meet him. 21. But he sent messengers to him, saying: What have I to do with thee, thou king of Juda? I come not against thee this day, but I fight against another house, against which God hath commanded me to go in haste: forbear to do against God, who is with me, lest he kill thee. 22. Josias would not return, but prepared war against him, and hearkened not to the words of Nechao from the mouth of God: but went to fight in the field of Mageddo. 23. And there he was wounded by the archers, and said to his servants: Carry me out of the battle, for I am sore wounded. 24. And they removed him out of the chariot into another chariot, which followed him after the king’s manner, and they carried him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in the mausoleum of his fathers: and all Juda and Jerusalem mourned for him: 25. Jeremias especially, whose lamentations for Josias all the singing men and singing women repeat unto this day, and it was made as a law in Israel: behold it is said to be written in the Lamentations. 26. Now the rest of the acts of Josias and of his mercies, which are commanded by the law of the Lord, 27. his works also first and last, are written in the book of the kings of Juda and Israel.
Verse 3. Put the ark in the sanctuary of the temple,—The Hebrews, according to St. Jerome, relate that the ark was removed from the Holy of Holies in the time of Manasses or Amon, that it might not stand in the temple together with their idols. Wherefore it was carried to the house of Sellum, who was the uncle of Jeremias and husband of the prophetess Olda, chapter XXXIV, verse 22; but now, the idols having been removed by Josias, the ark was restored to the temple and its place. Which done, Josias says to the Levites: “You shall no more carry it,” that is, the ark shall no more be carried out of the temple; wherefore henceforth you “minister to the Lord” before the ark, and at the same time “to his people Israel,” that you may instruct and direct the people in the law and worship of God.
To make the Phase, etc., three hundred oxen.—Hence it is clear that “Phase” signifies not only the Paschal Lamb, but also oxen, and the other victims which at the Passover were offered to God.
Verse 11. And the priests sprinkled the blood with their hand,—on the altar of holocausts, as was prescribed by law. For all the blood was due to God, and therefore was poured out on the altar or beside the altar. For the altar represented God. And the Levites stripped the skins of the holocausts, —that the priests might then lay the flesh, cut in pieces, on the altar, and burn it for God with fire put under.
Verse 12. And they separated them (as the Hebrews have it) the holocausts already mentioned; that those might be wholly “offered to the Lord,” and wholly burnt. They “separated,” I say, the holocausts from the other victims, that they might “give” them (that is, distribute them) “through the houses and families of each”; that each might offer them to God as peace victims, and then from the same prepare a sacred banquet, and celebrate feasts. It is clear from what was said in verse 7 and following.
Verse 15. Asaph and Heman and Idithun, the king’s prophets,—that is, David’s Singers. For Singers are called Prophets, who sang to God praises and Psalms. So the Hebrews according to St. Jerome. Yet some of them were true prophets, as Asaph, who by the inspiration of God composed and dictated many Psalms.
Verse 21. Against another house I fight,—namely against the king of the Assyrians (a), as is clear from 4 Kings XXIII, 29. Abulensis in 4 Kings chapter XXI, questions XLI and XLII, holds that “another house,” or another family, and another king, against whom Pharao says he is going, was Adadremmon king of Syria, a confederate of Josias, and that therefore Josias forbade Pharao passage through Judea, to consult for his own and his friend’s kingdom. This Abulensis drew from Herodotus, book II near the end, who says that the king of Egypt named Necus son of Psammitichus fought with the Syrians, and won the victory in Magdalus: where the names seem corrupted, so that Necus is put for Nechao, Syrians for Assyrians, Magdalus for Mageddo. But this opinion is improbable: both because no one mentions this Adadremmon king of Syria; and because Pharao was marching against the Assyrians dwelling by the Euphrates, not against the Syrians dwelling by Libanus.
Others hold that Pharao marched properly against the king of the Assyrians: but neither can this be said; for Asarhaddon son of Sennacherib, after the defeat of his father received from the Angel in Judea, reigned only ten years, and with him and in him as the last king the kingdom of the Assyrians ceased about the 25th year of Ezechias king of Juda, which preceded this 31st and last year of Josias by ninety years. Wherefore Asarhaddon and the kingdom of the Assyrians failing (whence after Asarhaddon in Scripture no kings of the Assyrians are named, but only of the Babylonians), there arose the kingdom of the Chaldeans through Merodach, to whom succeeded Ben-Merodach, to him Nabopolassar, who by another name was called Nabuchodonosor the elder, who ruled the Assyrians as well as the Babylonians; whence he is now called king of the Assyrians, now of Babylon. And this is he against whom Pharao Nechao fought when he slew Josias, and seems to have overcome him. Whence his son Nabuchodonosor the younger, surnamed the Great, who subdued Judea, Asia, and many other lands, and made himself Monarch, to avenge this defeat of his father invaded Egypt, fought with Nechao, and slew him, and occupied Egypt, as Jeremias had foretold, chapter XLVI, and Ezechiel, chapter XXIX. See what I said there. So Salianus and others. More on this
(a) Charcamis, of which verse 20 treats, and which some interpreters have falsely supposed to be a certain king, was a city in Assyria, which seems to be that city of Mesopotamia called Kirkesion, in Evagrius, book V, chapter IX, which is surrounded by the rivers Euphrates and Abora, and made by them as it were an island. See Isaias, X, 9. But since the Assyrians gained Babylon by force of arms, Charcamis belonged to the Babylonian kingdom, and the kings of Babylon were called indiscriminately sometimes kings of Assyria, sometimes of Babylon, as holding both empires in themselves.
To which God commanded me to go in haste,—by an oracle of Jeremias not written but delivered by the living voice, which Jeremias himself signified to Pharao by a messenger, as the Hebrews relate according to St. Jerome. Whence also St. Justin, question LXXXIX to the Orthodox, teaches that Josias was slain for this reason, that he by no means obeyed the warnings of Jeremias not to oppose Pharao.
Verse 24. And he died,—not in Jerusalem, as Josephus will have it, but was slain in Mageddo; whence they carried him dead to Jerusalem, to bury him in the sepulchre of the kings.
Verse 25. A custom obtained among the Israelites so fixed and certain that it seemed to be like a law; namely that singers, men and women, when on some mournful occasion they wish to sing a funeral or sad song or dirge, take up and sing the lamentation of Jeremias for the death of Josias, which if you desire to know: “Behold it is written in the Lamentations” of Jeremias: for Jeremias in the Threni toward the end seems to lament the death of Josias, as the Chaldee, Josephus, the Hebrews according to St. Jerome, Lyranus, Abulensis, and Hugo hold; though, as I said there, it is truer that the Threni of Jeremias for the death of Josias were different from his Threni which are extant in Holy Scripture: wherefore the Threni for the death of Josias have perished through the injury of time.