Josiah, The Boy King Chapter 10 Part 2

Josiah, The Boy King  Chapter 10  Part 2

            The men went directly from the college to the palace and were immediately ushered into the throne room. The king listened intently as they shared with him the message of the prophetess.  When they were done he called for one of his scribes.

            “Write this down, Lamech and have your assistants make many copies.  Send this proclamation to every city and village in the land.  I want everyone, man and woman, boy and girl, farmer and merchant, rich and poor to hear what I have to say.”

            Quickly Lamech unrolled a blank scroll and dipped his quill pen in an inkhorn which was slung over his shoulder.  He knew the king didn’t like to repeat himself, so he had to get the message right the first time it was spoken.

            “Josiah, king of Judah and servant of the most high God Jehovah.  To all the tribes in all the lands of Judah and Israel.  Be it known unto you this day the command of the king.  On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month there will be an assembly in front of the temple which is in Jerusalem.  Your king will himself share with you the words of Jehovah God contained in holy scrolls lost for over one hundred years.  Everyone must come, by command of the throne and the power it represents.  The word of God must be heard by all the people.  The king has spoken.”

            When the message from the king arrived in the villages throughout Judah and Israel it produced a great deal of excitement, but none more than in the city of Jerusalem itself.  None of the people, even the very oldest, could ever remember hearing the words of God Himself.  They all knew that He had spoken to Moses and David and other great men like that.  But that had been hundreds of years before.  Could it really be possible that God could speak to them?  Could it really be possible that He had put His words into a book?  And if so, what would He say?

            Some of the people who still had idols of Baal hidden in their basements went out to their gardens in the middle of the night and buried them.  They were afraid God might tell the king about their idols, after all, wasn’t God supposed to know everything?

            Jekameamshobab had been buying images of Baal secretly ever since his other idols had been confiscated by Josiah’s soldiers and destroyed.  He had them hidden in a secret room under his house, but now he decided that they weren’t safe and would have to be moved.  He wasn’t about to take any chances with this book Josiah was about to read.  He had heard about the visit to Huldah and he figured that if God could tell her everything about men she had never met, He could also tell the king where all the idols in Jerusalem were hidden.

            But Jekameamshobab knew he couldn’t move all those statues by himself in a single night.  He needed help.  And it had to be someone he could trust.  Almost everyone was worshipping Jehovah now.  At least, they were pretending to even though the merchant suspected that many of there were no more sincere than he had been when he put his money in the box at the temple.  But even so, he couldn’t trust just anyone.  A lost of people would help him if he paid them, but then turn around and tell the king where the images were hidden.  He could think of only one person he could really trust—Buz.

            It had been several years since Buz had been hired by King Amon to tutor the young Josiah.  But his loyalty to Baal was still the same.  Buz had a son by the name of Huz who could be counted on to help also.  So it was that as soon as the sun went down one dark night in Jerusalem a large wagon pulled up in front of the merchant’s house on the Tyropean Way.  Two very large men climbed down from the front seat.  (Huz weighed even more than his father did.)  They knocked on the door.

            “Shh!” whispered a voice from within.  “We must do this quietly or all is lost.”

            Tiptoeing isn’t easy for two 300 pound men, but Huz and Buz followed Jekameamshobab as quietly as possible down a long hallway and then down some stairs to a cellar.  There the merchant set his lamp in a holder on the wall and pushed on a narrow set of shelves full of clay pots.  The shelves turned easily, revealing a larger room completely full of beautiful statues of Baal.  The light from the candle gleamed off the gold and sparkled from the jeweled eyes.

            “Be careful now,” whispered the merchant.  “We need to take them up and place them in the wagon before daybreak tomorrow.  Then we will cover them with straw and be out of town before anyone can see us.”

            Buz nodded agreement and stepped to the door made by the moving shelves, but it was too small.  He couldn’t get through.

            “What’s the matter.  Let’s get going.”

            “I think I’m stuck.”

            Huz and Jekameamshobab could see right away that if they shoved him on into the room he would never get out, so they grabbed an arm and began to pull.

            “Hey, take it easy.”  It took several huge jerks, but finally Buz was out of the door.

            “Here, let me try,” offered Huz stepping around his father.

            “No way,” said the merchant.  “We’ve wasted enough time already.  I’ll hand the images out to you and you carry them out to the wagon.”

            The entire project took much longer than the merchant had planned because Huz and Buz couldn’t pass each other on the stairs and they couldn’t meet in the hallway or in any doorway.  They finally figured out that if they each took a statue and stayed together all the way up and all the way back that was the only way they could keep from running into each other.  There were still a number of Baal images left in the room when the night began to disappear.

            “All right fellows, that will have to do.  Let’s get that wagon covered and get out of here.”

            “It’s a good thing,” huffed Buz.  “I’m not sure there’s room for another thing in that wagon anyway.”

            Jekameamshobab, who had been down in the basement handing out statues all night, didn’t understand what he was talking about until he came out of the house.  Instead of laying the images down and stacking them like firewood, Huz and Buz had stood them up in the wagon.  Then when they ran out of room to stand them up, they had turned them upside down and stuck the heads of the idols down between the shoulders of the first layer.  So here were all these feet sticking straight up into the air.

            “Straw will never work,” he muttered.  “We’ll have to cover them with a cloth.”

            So back into his shop he went.  But the only cloth he had big enough to cover the wagon was a piece of very expensive bright, blue silk.  Complaining to himself all the while, he brought it out, threw it over the back of the wagon and watched Huz and Buz tie it down.  Then Buz began to climb up onto the driver’s seat.

            “Wait, stop!” Yelled Jekameamshobab.  “It’s top heavy.  You’re going to turn the whole thing over.”

            Sure enough, as Buz climbed up one side of the wagon the load shifted and looked like it was indeed going to slide off the wagon and into the street.

            “I’ve got it, Dad,” said Huz.  “Let’s both climb up at the same time.  One.  Two.  Three.”

            On the count of three Huz and Buz puffed their way up on to the seat of the wagon from either side, and they were on their way.  The sun was just coming up over the Mount of Olives as they passed through the gates of city and headed out through the valley of Molech toward Hebron.  Jekameamshobab had a shop there as well where he figured his precious idols would be safe from the soldiers of the king.

            The valley of Molech had at one time been the site of the greatest of all Baal worship.  In that valley had stood the huge image with the burning fire where kings and others had offered their children in sacrifice to the false god Baal.  When Josiah had become king he had not only destroyed the great image, but had turned the entire area into a garbage dump.  A big fire was kept burning in the valley at all times.  People from the city would drive out on the road with their garbage and throw it over into the valley to be burned up.  There was always plenty of garbage to keep the fire burning.

            The road from Jerusalem to Hebron ran right along the edge of the valley of Molech.  Huz and Buz with their blue-silk covered cargo headed out on the room followed by the merchant on horseback, watching over his cargo like an anxious mother hen.  They were moving very slowly because every time they hit a bump the top of the load would shift from one side to the other.  As they came alongside the great garbage dump, who should they meet but several of Josiah’s soldiers who had been out on a night patrol, guarding the road against robbers.  The solders were tired and anxious to get back to town, and they probably would have passed by the merchant and his wagon without giving it a second glance.  But just as they met, the wagon hit another bump and shifted yet again.  As it did, one of the feet of an idol caught on the silk and ripped it.  Suddenly a hole appeared with a pair of golden feet sticking up through the blue silk.

            “Halt,” shouted one of the soldiers.  “What have we here?”

            Buz, who hadn’t realized what was happening, started to rein the horses.  Jekameamshobab, who had seen the entire episode from behind, spurred his horse up past the wagon and tried to get the horses to run.  Huz, who had also seen the feet sticking up through the silk, turned around in the seat and leaning as far over as he could, grabbed the silk where it had torn and tried to hide the golden feet.  But that unbalanced the wagon and it began to tip and roll right toward the fire burning in the valley.

            “Jump,” yelled Buz.  “Jump!  We’re going to crash.”