2 Chronicles 35:22 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
2 Chronicles 35:22
Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.
to revolve · verb, hiphil perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
face
פָנָ֜יוfa.Nav
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
disguised
הִתְחַפֵּ֔שׂhit.cha.Pes
H2664
to seek · verb, hithpael perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
fight
לְהִלָּחֵֽםle.hi.la.chem-
H3898
to feed on · preposition + verb, niphal infinitive construct
hearkened
שָׁמַ֛עsha.Ma'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
words
דִּבְרֵ֥יdiv.Rei
H1697
a word · noun, common masculine plural construct
Necho
נְכ֖וֹne.Kho
H5224
Neko · proper noun, a man's name
mouth
מִפִּ֣יmi.Pi
H6310
the mouth (as the means of blowing) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
God
אֱלֹהִ֑ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
came
וַיָּבֹ֕אvai.ya.Vo'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
fight
לְהִלָּחֵ֖םle.hi.la.Chem
H3898
to feed on · preposition + verb, niphal infinitive construct
valley
בְּבִקְעַ֥תbe.vik.'At
H1237
properly · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
Megiddo
מְגִדּֽוֹme.gi.Do
H4023
Megiddon or Megiddo · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Judges 5:19 The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money.
2 Chronicles 18:29 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, I will disguise myself, and will go to the battle; but put thou on thy robes. So the king of I…
1 Kings 22:30 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, I will disguise myself, and enter into the battle; but put thou on thy robes. And the king of…
2 Chronicles 35:21 But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the h…
Joshua 9:14 And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD.
1 Kings 14:2 And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself, that thou be not known to be the wife of Jeroboam; and get thee to…
1 Kings 22:34 And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness: wherefore he said unto the driver…
2 Kings 9:27 But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also i…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 2 Chronicles 35:20–end
It was thirteen years from Josiah's famous passover to his death. During this time, we may hope, thing went well in his kingdom, that he prospered, and religion flourished; yet we are not entertained with the pleasing account of those years, but they are passed over in silence, because the people, for all this, were not turned from the love of their sins nor God from the fierceness of his anger. The next news therefore we hear of Josiah is that he is cut off in the midst of his days and usefulness, before he is full forty years old. We had this sad story, Kg2 23:29, Kg2 23:30. Here it is somewhat more largely related. That appears here, more than did there, which reflects such blame on Josia…
But he sent ambassadors . . . What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah?--Not wishing to spend time, or strength in vain, Necho informed the king of Judah that he had no intention of molesting the Jews; that his expedition was directed solely against his old Assyrian enemy; and that he had undertaken it by an express commission from God. Commentators are not agreed whether it was really a divine commission given him through Jeremiah, or whether he merely used the name of God as an authority that Josiah would not refuse to obey. As he could not know the truth of Necho's declaration, Josiah did not sin in opposing him; or, if he sinned at all, it was a sin of ignorance. The engagement to…
God commanded me to make haste - The Targum gives a curious turn to this and the following verse: "My idol commanded me to make haste; refrain therefore from me and my idol which is with me, that he betray thee not. When he heard him mention his idol, he would not go back; and he hearkened not unto the words of Necho, which he spake concerning his idol." Here is the rabbinical excuse for the conduct of Josiah.
John Gill
The Church Fathers
Finally, Josiah is killed by Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, because he would not listen to the words of the Lord from the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, or, as it is written in the Paralipomenon: "Josiah would not return but prepared to fight against him and did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God." And it is stated, "And he died and was buried in the monument of his ancestors. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him, particularly Jeremiah, whose lamentations for Josiah all the singing men and singing women repeat to this day. And it became like a law in Israel: 'Behold, it is found written in the Lamentations.' "
It is true that in the holy Scriptures many are called righteous, as Zachariah and Elizabeth, Job, Jehosaphat, Josiah, and many others who are mentioned in the sacred writings. Of this fact I shall, if God gives me grace, give a full explanation in the work that I have promised; in this letter it must suffice to say that they are called righteous, not because they are faultless but because their faults are eclipsed by their virtues. In fact Zachariah is punished with dumbness, Job is condemned out of his own mouth, and Jehoshaphat and Josiah who are beyond a doubt described as righteous are narrated to have done things displeasing to the Lord. The first aligned himself with the ungodly Ahab and brought on himself the rebuke of Micaiah; and the second, though forbidden by the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, went against Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, and was killed by him.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Esdraelon — The Greek form of the Hebrew “Jezreel,” the name of the great plain (called by the natives Merj Ibn Amer; i.e., “the meadow of the son of Amer”) which stretches across Central Palestine from the…
Hadad-rimmon — (composed of the names of two Syrian idols), the name of a place in the valley of Megiddo. It is alluded to by the prophet Zechariah (12:11) in a proverbial expression derived from the lamentation…
Josiah — Healed by Jehovah, or Jehovah will support. The son of Amon, and his successor on the throne of Judah (2 Kings 22:1; 2 Chr. 34:1). His history is contained in 2 Kings 22, 23. He stands foremost among…
Megiddo — Place of troops, originally one of the royal cities of the Canaanites (Josh. 12:21), belonged to the tribe of Manasseh (Judg. 1:27), but does not seem to have been fully occupied by the Israelites…
Necho II — An Egyptian king, the son and successor of Psammetichus (B.C. 610-594), the contemporary of Josiah, king of Judah. For some reason he proclaimed war against the king of Assyria. He led forth a…
Pentateuch — The five-fold volume, consisting of the first five books of the Old Testament. This word does not occur in Scripture, nor is it certainly known when the roll was thus divided into five portions…
Pharaoh — The official title borne by the Egyptian kings down to the time when that country was conquered by the Greeks. (See EGYPT.) The name is a compound, as some think, of the words Ra, the “sun” or…
Vale, Valley — It is hardly necessary to state that these words signify a hollow sweep of ground between two more or less parallel ridges of high land. The structure of the greater part of the holy land does not…
Valley — (1.) Heb. bik’ah, a “cleft” of the mountains (Deut. 8:7; 11:11; Ps. 104:8; Isa. 41:18); also a low plain bounded by mountains, as the plain of Lebanon at the foot of Hermon around the sources of the…
on 2 Chronicles 35:22
Nevertheless, Josiah would not turn his face from him,.... Or withdraw his forces, and go back:
but disguised himself that he might fight with him; without being personally known, and aimed at, see 1 Kings 22:30.
and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God: not believing that what he said came from the Lord, though it might; and his infirmity was, that he did not inquire of the Lord about it:
and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo; which was in the tribe of Manasseh, thought to be the Magdolum of Herodotus, where he says Necho fought the battle (z); See Gill on 2 Kings 23:29.
(z) Gale in Herodot. ut supra. (Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 159. & Galei not. in ib.)
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Chronicles 35:20–end
The end of Josiah's reign; his death in battle against Pharaoh Necho. Cf. Kg2 23:25-30. - The catastrophe in which the pious king found his death is in 2 Kings introduced by the remark, that although Josiah returned unto the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his strength, and walked altogether according to the law, so that there was no king before him, and none arose after him, who was like him, yet the Lord did not turn away from the fierceness of His great wrath against Judah, and resolved to remove Judah also out of His sight, because of the sins of Manasseh. This didactic connecting of the tragical end of the pious king with the task of his reign, which he followed out so…
The narrative jumps from Josiah’s eighteenth year (622 BC) to the year of his death (609 BC). The decline of the Assyrian Empire brought Egypt and Babylon, two great powers that had long been subject to Assyria, into conflict with each other. King Neco of Egypt, who had allied with Assyria to resist Babylonian expansion, asked Josiah to allow free passage of his army. Josiah’s interception might have been the result of a coalition with Babylon, or it might have been his own attempt to establish independence from Egypt. Josiah’s death was caused by his disobedience to a divine oracle delivered by a Gentile king.
Rashi on 2 Chronicles 35:22
and he did not hearken to the words of Neco from the mouth of God who said to him from the mouth of God, for so said Isaiah, (19:2): “And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians.” This is what the Kallir composed: “He withheld his troops from marching to Aram Naharaim, in order that no single sword should pass through Ephraim; and he did not hearken to the prophet to turn back, for it was decreed that Egyptian be set against Egyptian.”
Josiah · .Killed in battle with Pharaoh-necho — .Killed in battle with Pharaoh-necho
Necho · King of Egypt — King of Egypt
Pharaoh · 8. Pharaoh-necho .His invasion of Assyria, Josiah’s — 8. Pharaoh-necho .His invasion of Assyria, Josiah’s
Rashness · .Josiah, in fighting against Pharaoh-necho — .Josiah, in fighting against Pharaoh-necho
Self-Will And Stubbornness · Exemplified: Josiah — Exemplified: Josiah
Valleys · Mentioned in scripture: Megiddo — Mentioned in scripture: Megiddo
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
