Josiah, The Boy King Chapter 4, Part 1

Josiah, The Boy King  Chapter 4, Part 1

Manasseh was dead!

            For fifty-five years he had been the king in Jerusalem.  There was hardly anyone alive who could remember a time when anyone else had been king.  A few of the very old grandmas and grandpas could remember Hezekiah.  But for Josiah and his friends Manasseh was the only king they had ever known.

            In all the excitement of the next several weeks, Josiah and Benjamin forgot all about the idols they had seen in the basement the day Manasseh died.  Josiah’s mother Jedidah was now the queen and that meant she had to spend most of her time sitting on the throne next to King Amon and greeting all the dignitaries who came for Manasseh’s funeral and stayed for Amon’s coronation.  Josiah didn’t see much of his mother any more, or of Benjamin’s either.

            The next morning after Manasseh died, the servant had come to the nursery and packed up all Josiah’s belongings and moved him to another part of the palace.  Now he had a room all to himself, a huge room with a big bed that he could almost get lost in at night.  They told him this had been Amon’s room and now that Amon was the king he was the next in line to be king, so it would be his room.  It was a nice enough room, but it was sure lonely being over in the part of the palace where there weren’t any other children.

            The servants also told him that it was time for his formal schooling to begin.  As soon as the coronation was over, King Amon would appoint him a tutor and every day that tutor would come to teach him to read and write Hebrew.  He would teach him sums and calculations, and languages like Chaldee and Egyptian.  Josiah didn’t know exactly what a tutor was, but it all sounded pretty scary.

            But that was to happen after the coronation—and the coronation was after the funeral.

            Usually when a person died they took them out the next day, wrapped them in long strips of cloth and buried them in a cave.  But that wasn’t good enough for a king.  For one thing, you had to have time to send word to all the neighboring countries so they could send an emissary to the funeral.  If you went ahead and buried the king before one of the neighboring kings arrived, then that king might be offended and you would have a war on your hands, as well as a funeral.  But King Manasseh could not be embalmed.  That was a process the Egyptians used, but not the Israelites.  King Manasseh had to be buried right away—so they actually planned two funerals.

            The next day after King Manasseh died the servants took him on a stretcher called a bier, out of the palace and into a garden where his ancestor King Uzziah had prepared a tomb.  A great cave had been cut back into the rock wall with room for many people to be buried.  Several of the bodies of other kings and queens were already in the cave.  Very carefully the servants rolled back the stone that covered the mouth of the tomb, and carrying the bier inside laid King Manasseh in the tomb of his fathers.  Josiah and Jedidah and Amon and a few others watched from the other side of the garden.

            Then began the preparations for the formal ceremony of death.  This time another bier was prepared on a stretcher that could be carried by four men.  A large box was built, decorated with gold and silver trappings.  Over the empty box was thrown a bright, purple cloth with a single gold star in the center.  As far as the people and the foreign dignitaries were concerned, that box contained the body of King Manasseh.

            On the morning of the day of the funeral, Josiah awoke to one of the strangest noises he had ever heard.  Outside his window rose a sound like the far-off call of many owls.  It increased rapidly until a shrill wavering penetrated the room and seemed to set everything to rattling.  Then it died away in a wild, plaintive moan, only to start up again.   He tried to get away from it by covering his ears with his hands and his head with the blanket.  But it went on and on, louder and louder.

            “What is it?” Josiah asked the servant who came in every morning to help him get dressed.

            “That noise?  It’s the professional mourners.  Don’t they do a good job, though?  King Amon has hired every mourner in Jerusalem to work today.”

            Josiah looked out the window.  On the street in front of the palace stood hundreds of women, all dressed in black robes, and all letting out that terrible screeching that sounded like a thousand cats stuck at the bottom of a well.  Again he clapped his hands over his ears and shouted at the servant.

            “Why do they have to make so much noise?”

            “To let everyone know how sad they are, of course.  They will cry all the way to the grave and then after King Amon pays them they will have a great party.  This is the first time since King Hezekiah died fifty-five years ago that all of the mourners have performed for the same funeral.  And most of them weren’t old enough to take part in that one. It is a great day for them.”

            Josiah stared out the window.  Somehow it just didn’t seem right to have people pretending to be sorry his grandfather had died when actually they were happy for the chance to work.   He didn’t think the prophet Isaiah would have liked it at all.  But then, Isaiah wasn’t around to say anything about it, either.

            When it came time for the funeral procession, everyone gathered in the big square in front of the Fish Gate on the northern side of the city.  King Amon walked first, a piece of sackcloth around his shoulders to show that he was in mourning.  But his kingly robes were clearly visible to everyone underneath the sackcloth.  He was far more concerned that the people of the city and the foreign dignitaries notice his beautiful robes than he was about showing any sorrow for his father.  He was happy the old codger had finally died.  Amon had waited twenty-two years to become king and he thought that was long enough for anyone to wait.

            Next came the bier carried by four priests from the temple.  Amon had considered using Bar-Abel and three of his friends, but he knew that would make a lot of people mad since they knew King Manasseh had turned back to the worship of Jehovah-God after his captivity in Babylon.  He had decided there was time enough to make changes after the coronation, and Bar-Abel had agreed.

            After the bier came the professional mourners, wailing and carrying on, especially when they thought they were being watched by someone in the crowd who might be hiring mourners for another funeral in the near future.  Then came Josiah and his mother and the rest of the king’s relatives.  They walked all the way through the city and up to the temple where Hilkiah the high priest offered a sacrifice and prayed.  Then they walked again, down off Mt. Zion and into the palace.  There the mourners were dismissed and the rest of the guests walked through the garden where the empty box joined the body which had already been buried in the royal tomb.  The funeral was over.

            With that duty completed, Amon put into full swing the elaborate plans for his coronation.

            It was at the coronation that Amon’s true feelings would become obvious to everyone.  Hilkiah, the high priest was not even invited to attend the ceremony.  Instead Bar-Abel was chosen to place the crown on King Amon’s head.  When his father’s advisors asked about it, Amon replied that many of the neighboring kings were worshippers of Molech and Baal and he didn’t want to offend them by making them attend a service presided over by the priests of Jehovah.  But that was only an excuse.  Josiah remembered what he and Benjamin had seen in the basement and he knew exactly what his father was doing.  He wasn’t surprised at all when the idols they had seen in the dingy basement reappeared on the street corners in Jerusalem as the decorations were being erected for the coronation.

            Josiah wasn’t invited to the coronation either, but he hadn’t expected to go.  Most of the coronation festivities were held at a great feast which the servants told him would go on day and night for a week.  He had never been allowed into the banquet room for a meal with the adults so he didn’t expect it to start now.  Instead the servants told him they would bring a tray of food to his room and he would eat there.  He did get to taste some of the roast duck and smoked fish and grapes and pomegranates from the feast, but that was all.