Josiah, The Boy King Chapter 5 Part 2

Josiah, The Boy King  Chapter 5, Part 2

            The next several weeks were a whirlwind of meetings and ceremonies for Josiah.  First there was the funeral of his father, King Amon.  On the advice of Priest Hilkiah none of the neighboring kings were invited.  He wasn’t sure it was wise to let them know that an eight-year-old boy was king of Judah.  At least not yet.

            So just the immediate royal family witnessed the burial of King Amon in the garden of Uzziah next to Hezekiah, Manasseh and all the other kings.

            Then came preparations for the coronation.  It too would be just for the people of Judah without any outside dignitaries invited.  Josiah wanted it to be very simple, just a crowning ceremony at the temple and then a banquet at the palace.  He still wasn’t very used to this business of being king.

            There were so many people who came to the palace to see him those first few weeks that his head was spinning every night by the time he went to bed.  Everyone wanted to tell him about their own favorite project which they hoped the royal treasury would fund.  There was the wall around the city of Jerusalem which his grandfather had started.  There was the watercourse and fortress in the Negev and countless others.

            To Josiah’s amazement Bar-Abel even showed up one day and requested an audience with him.  But Josiah refused.  He didn’t want anything to do with the man who had led his father and grandfather into so much trouble with their worship of false gods.

            Josiah listened to all of his visitors because that was what he knew a king should do.  But before he made a decision he always talked to Hilkiah and Shaphan’s father.  Those were the men he trusted the most.

            But there was a special project on Josiah’s mind now that he was king.  He wanted to find out what had happened to his mother.  Even is she was dead—he had to know.  So he questioned the servants.  He talked to the maids who had waited on the women in the other quarter of the palace.  All they could tell him was that soon after Amon had become king he had married a new wife and Jedidah had disappeared.  No one had seen her for almost two years. 

            Josiah knew that his grandfather was dead.  Jedidah had told him how King Manasseh captured him at the time of Isaiah’s murder and how she had never seen him again.  He was afraid that he would never see his mother again either.  But he kept hoping that maybe somehow she was still alive.

            In some ways being king was no different than the way things had been before.  Josiah still had to go to school.  He still had to practice his sums and calculations and he had to study the Chaldee and Egyptian languages as well as Hebrew.  But now he was able to choose his own tutor, and it certainly wasn’t Buz.  Instead, Josiah chose Shaphan’s father, who taught a group of young boys in the temple courtyard every day.  His name was Azaliah and when he told the stories about the history of Judah they didn’t sound anything like the stories Buz told.  According to Buz it was Baal who delivered them from the land of Egypt, but Azaliah told them the truth.

            Shaphan and Josiah’s favorite stories were about King David.  He was their hero because he had done so many wonderful things when he was just a boy about their age.  He had killed a bear and a lion with his bare hands—and that was awesome.  Josiah had never even seen a bear or a lion, much less wrestled with them.

            Azaliah had such a terrific imagination.  He like to pretend he was right there when a story was taking place—so he would pretend he was one of the people in the story and then he would tell the story just as if he were really seeing it.  The boys felt like they were right there in the middle of the story too.  When he told about Moses and the burning bush one of the boys in the class started to sniff the air.

            “I can smell it,” he said in a whisper.  “It’s so real, I can smell it.”

            Then they all had a good laugh because what he smelled was not Moses’ burning bush at all but the smoke from the sacrifice the priest were offering on the altar.  But that was just how each of the boys felt when Azaliah told a story—as if they could actually smell it.

            Since Josiah went to the temple every day for class he soon became familiar with the building his father had tried to close up permanently.  It was beautiful, just like Shaphan had told him.  But there were many things that were in disrepair.  For most of the fifty-five years of Manasseh’s reign he had worshipped Baal instead of Jehovah.  Toward the end of his reign, after his captivity he had removed the false idols from the temple, but had done little else except to repair the altar so the sacrifices could be restored.

            With the exception of the little room where Azariah taught school and another room where Hilkiah lived, the rooms of the temple were in bad shape.  Some of them were stacked full of firewood.  Others seemed to be junk rooms and many of them were missing doors and windows.  Toward the back of the temple it was even worse.  There some of the walls had actually crumbled and were lying in ruins.  Wall-hangings which had once been beautiful hung in tatters.  The parts of the temple which had been overlaid in gold were not bare stone because wicked men had stolen the gold for their own purposes.

            It made Josiah sad to see the condition of the temple.  But there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it.  Crops had been so sparse in Judah for the last ten years that everyone was poor.  Josiah was the king, but he certainly wasn’t rich.  Amon had wasted all of the money Manasseh had left behind in just two years of being king.  Josiah was saddened by the sight of the temple, but he just didn’t know what to do.

            One day as he and Shaphan were walking back from the temple to the palace they saw someone running toward them.  At first they couldn’t tell exactly who it was, and Josiah was a little bit afraid.  He still hadn’t forgotten the night men killed his father.  But when the figure got closer both boys recognized him at once.

            “Benjamin.  It’s my old friend Benjamin.”

            “Josiah.  I hear you are the king now.  Oh, it’s good to see you.”

            Benjamin threw his arms around Josiah’s neck and caught him off balance.  The two of them fell in a heap in the ground and started laughing and shouting at each other as they got into a wrestling match.  Josiah had grown in the last few months, but he was no match for Benjamin and quickly found himself pinned to the ground.  Suddenly Benjamin realized he was sitting on top of the king and quickly jumped to his feet.

            “I’m sorry.  I guess I forgot…”

            Josiah laughed.  “Don’t apologize.  I’m still your friend even if I am the king.  Now tell me where you’ve been.”

            “Well, when Amon became king he told all of the servants that if they believed in Jehovah God they would have to leave the palace.  He didn’t want anyone around him unless they worshipped Baal.”

            “That’s for sure,” said Josiah.  “You should have heard my tutor Buz tell about how Baal sent fire down for Elijah when the prophets of God couldn’t get any answers to their prayers.”

            “That’s crazy,” said  Benjamin.

            “I know.  I was ready to go Buzzy until Shaphan showed up to help with my lessons.”

            “Anyway, my parents had to leave so we went back to  Boscath and worked on my uncle’s farm.”

            “Boscath?  Isn’t that where my mother was from?” 

            “Sure.  Your uncle’s farm is right next to mine.  We had only been there a couple of weeks when your mother showed up to live with her brother.  I guess King Amon made her leave the palace as well even though she was the queen.”

            “My mother showed up?  Then she is living in Boscath?”     “Sure.  Didn’t you know?”

            “Of course not.  Do you think I would have left her there?  Why didn’t you tell me?”       

            “I just did.”

            And just like that the two friends were back on the ground, rolling around in a wrestling match—shouting and laughing.  But Josiah was laughing through his tear.  Jedidah was still alive.  He was going to see his mother again.