Josiah, The Boy King Chapter 3, Part 2

Josiah, The Boy King  Chapter 3, Part 2

“Mommy?”

            “Yes, Josiah?”

            “Will Jehovah-God do that for anyone?”

            “Do what?”

            “Give them a new heart like He did for Grandpa?  Do you have to wait until you are real old?  Until you’ve done lots of things wrong like grandpa did?”

            “No, Josiah.  You don’t have to wait until you are real old.  God is willing to listen to your prayer right now and give you a heart that is as white as snow.”

            ‘Oh, Mommy.  I’d like that.  I get so mad at Benjamin sometimes.  And I lie to Zephorah and even to you sometimes, Mommy.  I need a clean heart, Mommy.  I really do.”

            So right there at his mother’s knee, little Josiah bowed his head and asked God to create in him a clean heart.

            The next couple of years were exciting one for young Josiah.  His grandfather Manasseh remained true to Jehovah-God.  The fires no longer burned in the valley of Molech.  In fact, Manasseh sent his soldiers into the temple to remove all the idols and strange gods.  They hauled them down to the garbage dump and broke them up into small pieces.  The king understood that those idols had done nothing for him.  They couldn’t even keep them- selves from being destroyed.

            Josiah and his friend Benjamin liked to sneak out the back path from the palace, out through the briar patch and down near the brook Kidron to play in the garbage dump.  They would find the broken hands and feet and heads and bodies of the false idols and put them back together in funny ways.  They would put the head on the bottom and the feet sticking right up into the air.  Or they would put the hands of the idol where the feet should have been.  Some of the idols had terribly ugly faces, but the boys knew they couldn’t hurt them.  They were just faces carved in wood and stone.

            Another favorite playground for the boys was at the wall.  The city of Jerusalem had always had a wall around it.  But now King Manasseh was building another wall outside the first wall.  It met the old wall just east of the palace by the spring of Gihon where the servants went to bring water up for use in the palace every day.  From there men were working on the wall all the way past the temple area.  The new construction circled around the hill called Ophel and all the way up to where the fish gate stood in the old wall.  Over the years so many people had moved to Jerusalem that there wasn’t enough room for all of them to live inside the old wall.  They had settled on the hills around the city but that meant there was no protection for them when enemies came.  Manasseh had decided to build the new wall in order to make the city twice as big as it had been before.

            The reason Josiah and Benjamin liked the wall was because of the dirt.  In order to make the wall level, the workmen had to dig into the side of the hills and create flat surfaces before laying the first of the big foundation stones.  That meant that all along the building site there were huge piles of loose dirt, just perfect for the boys to make their own walls and roads and building projects.  They would set up their own city and build a wall all around it out of dirt.  Then one of them would pretend to be the captain of the host of Babylon, or maybe the Egyptian Pharoah and they would have a war.  They knew a lot more about Babylon than they did about Egypt, so it was more fun to be the Babylonian captain.  Besides, what they did know about Egypt wasn’t good at all.  The Egyptians had always been enemies of Israel, even before the Babylonians had come.  Whoever pretended to be the Egyptians knew that he was always going to lose.

            One day as Josiah and Benjamin were coming back from the wall they decided to go through the briar patch and into the palace from the back gate.  It was shorter that way and they were so dirty that a few thorns wouldn’t matter very much.  They thought that maybe they could sneak in and change clothes before their mothers saw all the dirt.

            They were just about up to the gate in the wall when they heard someone coming.

            “Quick, Benjamin.  Let’s get behind those bushes.”

            As swiftly as little foxes the boys hid in the briar patch and watched to see who was using what they thought was their gate in the back of the palace.  They had never seen anyone else use it.  From where they were lying they could only see the men’s legs.  There were four legs.  One man wore the short robe that most of the men in Israel wore, but the other man had on the long robe of a priest or a prophet.  Josiah twisted around and slid forward to get a better look.  Suddenly he saw their faces and gasped so loud that he was sure they men had heard him.  It was his father, Prince Amon.  And with him, in the long robe, was Bar-Abel. 

            Behind him, Benjamin started to squirm around, but Josiah quieted him with a quick movement of his hand.  Both boys held completely still until the men were gone down the path toward Kidron.

            “Who was it?”  Benjamin whispered when the men were out of sight.  “Do you think they saw us?”
            “No way,” Josiah whispered back.  But I think we should follow them.  I wonder what my father is doing with the wicked priest, Bar-Abel.”

            “Follow them?  Are you out of your mind?  We’re lucky we didn’t get caught sneaking into the palace and now you want to follow them?  I’m going to my room and to clean up before my mother sees me this way.”

            “All right,” Josiah shrugged.  “Have it your way.  But you’ll be missing out on a great adventure.  I don’t have time to argue with you.  I have to get going.”

            Jumping to his feet Josiah set off down the path in the direction the two men had gone.  He could tell by the footsteps behind him that Benjamin was hot on his trail.  He was never one to miss out on great adventures.

            As they came out of the briar patch and looked down the path in the direction the men had headed, they could see them turning up toward the city wall once again.  And then they were gone.  They just disappeared into thin air.
            “Where did they go?” Benjamin gasped.  “Maybe Bar-Abel is a great magician like he says.  Maybe they are invisible and are just waiting for us to catch up so they can capture us.”

            Josiah shivered a little when he remembered the stories his mother had told him about Bar-Abel, but he wasn’t about to let Benjamin know he was scared.

            “Come on.  Bar-Abel worships those broken-down stones we’ve been playing with down in the garbage dump.  He doesn’t worship the true God.  We don’t have to be afraid of him.”

            Before Benjamin could argue, Josiah set off lickety-split down the path to where the men had disappeared.  As soon as they came over the last little hill before the spring of Gihon, Josiah realized what had happened.

            “Hezekiah’s tunnel,” he panted, trying to catch his breath.  “They went into Hezekiah’s tunnel.”

            Benjamin bent over double from running to catch up and started again to suggest that it was time to turn back, but Josiah had already waded into the pool and stepped into the mouth of the tunnel his great-grandfather Hezekiah had build to carry water from the spring of Gihon into the city to the pool of Siloam.

            “Come on,” he beckoned to the hesitating Benjamin.  “Adventure, remember?”

            It was dark in the tunnel and the water was deeper than Josiah had expected.  Sometimes they were wading in water that was over their waists.  And it was cold, even though it had been a hot day outside.  Pretty soon the light of at the end of the tunnel where they had entered disappeared and Benjamin started whimpering.  Josiah was scared too.  He could just imagine what would happen if they ran into his father and Bar-Abel in the dark.  But he was the king’s grandson and he couldn’t cry.  So instead he grabbed the front of Benjamin’s robe and pulled him along in the dark.

            “Don’t quit now, we’re almost through.  See, there’s a light up ahead.”  Josiah wasn’t sure he could actually see a light, but as the boys walked a few more steps what he hoped to see really appeared.  As they stepped out into the sunlight by the pool of Siloam Benjamin gave a little whoop.  “Wow!  That was exciting.  Let’s do it again sometime.”

            “No time for that right now,” said Josiah.  “We’ve got to find father and Bar-Abel.”

            The two boys climbed up the stairs around the pool and looked around.  There were several people on the street, but no one in a long, priestly robe.  They boys didn’t want to ask anyone if they had seen the two men.  They had just about decided they would have to give up and go back to the palace when they saw one of Prince Amon’s friends coming down the street.  Benjamin recognized him and started to call out to him but Josiah pulled him back into the corner of the building where they couldn’t be seen.

            “Shh!  Let’s see where he goes.”

            The man, whose name was Ismachiah didn’t really seem to be going anywhere.  He just wandered slowly down the street.  They he suddenly stopped, looked around as if to see if anyone was watching, and darted down some stairs, disappearing through a basement door.  The two boys watched for a short time to see if he would come back out.  Then without saying a word, they climbed over a wall and crept around to the back of the house into which Ismachiah had disappeared.  In the back of the house was a low window, almost level with the ground.  The two boys dropped to their stomachs and inched closer.

            At first it was too dark inside to see what was going on.  But then someone lit a candle and the boys had to stifle a gasp.  The room was full of idols.  Along the walls, stacked two and three deep were all the idols which had once sat on every street corner in the city.  Apparently when Manasseh had ordered the idols destroyed they had instead ended up in this dingy basement.  The boys strained to hear what was being said in the room, but the men were talking much too softly to be heard through the window.

            They had no trouble seeing, though.  As they watched, Bar-Abel raised his hands toward heaven and a strange look came into his eyes, like he was going into a trance.  At the same time Ismachiah and Prince Amon fell down on their knees before one of the largest idols in the room.  Josiah recognized the ugly face and a chill shivered his spine.  His father was a worshipper of Molech.

            Suddenly Josiah had seen enough.  Pulling Benjamin’s sleeve he inched back along the ground, jumped the wall and tore off up the street toward the palace, as fast as his little legs could carry him.  Up the steps and through the double doors he ran, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Mother!  Mother!”

            It seemed as if everyone in the palace was going somewhere.  People crowded the hallways and scurried in and out of every door looking like the ants he and Benjamin would stir up by pushing sticks into their hill homes.  Finally he spotted Jedidah and ran toward her with his news.  But she had a message for him first.

            “Oh, Josiah, have you already heard?  Your Grandfather, King Manasseh has died.  Your father, Prince Amon will be the new king.”