In Second Kings, chapter twenty-two, verse one, Josiah was the last of the righteous kings of Judah. At the early age of sixteen, he began earnestly to seek the Lord, as in Second Chronicles thirty-four, verse three, and four years later, he began to purge Judah of false worship in verses three to four of the same chapter. As the temple was in repair, Hilkiah found the Law book written by Moses in verse fifteen. The discovery brought a renewed commitment to God’s Word and a measure of spiritual reform accomplished throughout the land. The prophets Jeremiah and Habakkuk aided Josiah in his attempt to bring the people back to God for the spiritual condition of the people of Josiah’s time.
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign. He must have been born when his father was no more than sixteen, and Amen must have married when he was only fifteen.
Josiah reigned for thirty-one years in Jerusalem. Being young, he had not received any poor quality impressions from the example of his father and grandfather but soon saw their errors, and God gave him grace to take warning from them. Although Josiah was born to a wicked father, he neither had a good education nor a positive example around him. Still, many about him advised him to tread in the steps of his father. However, few gave him any good counsel, yet the grace of God makes him an eminent saint, cuts him off from the wild olive, grafts him into the good olive, and renders him fruitful to the glory of God and the profit of myriads. He walked in a good way and turned not aside, as some of his predecessors had done who began well, to the right hand or the left. There are errors on both hands, but God kept him in the right way: he fell not either into superstition or profaneness.