Josiah, The Boy King Chapter 8 Part 2

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOSIAH- Part Eight

            Josiah, The Boy King  Chapter 8,  Part 2

            One of the highlights of King Josiah’s day came toward evening when he and his friends would go hunting.  They were sitting on the hills above Bethlehem after a successful hunt in the Judean hills when Shaphan happened to mention Jekameamshobab and his trumpeters as well as the conversation with the high priest.

            The others were just as upset with the rich merchant as Shaphan had been.  But it was when the young scribe mentioned his conversation with Hilkiah that Josiah really got excited.

            “That must have been the most wonderful thing in all the world to have a message from God Himself.  I have often dreamed of such a book.  If there were only some way to know if I am doing the things in my kingdom which God wants me to do.  If only there were a way to know if what I’m doing pleases God.  That would be possible if there were a book from God.”

            “Hilkiah says there was such a book.” Shaphan said.  “But it is lost.  No one has seen it since the days when his father was just a little boy.”

            “That would have been during the reign of my grandfather Manasseh.  Do you suppose someone like Bar-Abel stole it and burned it or something?”

            Benjamin groaned.  “That would be just like him.  But whatever happened to it, it’s gone now.  We’ll just have to be satisfied with what Hilkiah remembered and was able to teach us.”

            But Josiah wasn’t listening.  He was dreaming about what he would do if he had a book from God.

            “I would read it.

            Every morning and every evening and again at every noon.

            I would memorize it.

            Hide its words away in my heart so that I could think about them even when I didn’t have His words with me.

            Hide them away so I could obey them immediately without taking time to go back and check to see if I was right.

            I would obey it.

            Immediately would I obey, as soon as I read about what God wanted me to do.

            Completely would I obey it, without questioning God in any way, just as my soldiers obeyed unquestioningly on the battlefield.

            Consistently would I obey it, every day of my life.

            It would be my constant companion in the throne room as I order my kingdom.

            It would be my final judge in the decisions I render at court.

            It would be my rejoicing and my song as I enter the temple to worship God.

            It would be the book I would teach to my sons, the book I would read to my daughters, the book I would recommend to my closest friends.

            If I had such a book it would never get lost—not during the days of my kingdom.

            Josiah had been talking softly as if to himself, but now he turned to his friends as they sat on the other side of the campfire.

            “How could my grandfather have done such a thing?  To have lost the book from God.  Why a book like that would be more valuable than a hundred horses and chariots.  A book like that would be the most valuable possession in all my kingdom.”

            Not long after the box had been placed in the temple gate, the king decided it was time for the work to begin.  He appointed Benjamin as his personal representative to see that the work was done right.  Benjamin appointed four other men to help him—Jahath, Obadiah, Zechariah and Meshullam.

            The first job that had to be done was to go through the entire building and replace the rotting floor boards and roof timbers.  There were holed in the ceilings of some of the rooms and the rain water had nearly destroyed many of the floors.  It had been seventy-five years since anything except the largest rooms at the temple had been used.  Things were really in a mess.

            Not only had the rain water seeped in, but many of the kings who had been wicked had sent their servants in to steal the gold and silver with which Solomon had covered almost everything when he had the temple built.  The only gold left was on the great altar in the holy place and on the candlesticks and the table of showbread which the priests used during their sacrifices.  That wouldn’t have been there either except that Hilkiah hid it away every day after using it.  It was really sad to walk through the temple and imagine how beautiful it must have been at one time.  It looked so terrible after all those years of neglect.  At the same time it was exciting to see the men with their saws and  hammers and woodworking tools starting to replace the rotting timbers and the roofs which were about to collapse.

            Those were exciting days.  Almost every day the workmen would bring something to Benjamin they had found under a floor or in a pile of junk tossed into a corner.  One day they found a small bag with coins which had been minted during the reign of King Hezekiah.  He was Josiah’s great-great-grandfather.  Benjamin took the bag over to show it to Josiah.

            “Just think of that,” he told the king.  “Over one hundred years ago your great-great-grandfather had these coins made.  They’re older than anyone who is alive today.”

            Josiah was excited too, but for a different reason.  “Benjamin, tell the men to keep their eyes open while they work.  If they can find coins from Hezekiah’s reign, maybe they will also find God’s book.  Oh, how I would love to have a copy of the holy book God gave to our fathers.”

            Benjamin promised the king and headed back to where they work was going on in the temple.  But he didn’t have much hope of finding any scrolls in the rubble of the temple.  The few parchments they had found were bills of sale for sheep and doves, left there by merchants who had sold the animals to people who needed them for sacrifice.  And they had been so faded and crumpled and torn that a person could hardly decipher the words which were printed on them.

            A fire had swept through one large area of temple rooms and there was no way a book could have survived the fire.  Coins and goblets and clay pots—perhaps.  Benjamin’s collection of such durable items from the temple continued to grow daily.

            Most of the work in the temple was being done by the Levites.  They were the tribe that was supposed to take care of the temple, but there hadn’t been any way to pay them curing the years when the temple was in such a sad state of disrepair.  Now they came back to work, excited that their beloved temple was once again going to be a beautiful place to worship God.  It soon became apparent, however, that some of them weren’t very good at swinging hammers and cutting wood.  The carpenters were complaining that the boards were too short or too long. And the stones they had ordered of a certain size didn’t fit the holes they were supposed to fill.

            Benjamin called his overseers together to ask them what should be done.

“The men are all willing to work,” said Jahath, “but some of them have never done this type of work before.”

            “What have they done?” asked Benjamin.  “What did their fathers do when they used to work in the temple?”

            “Well, some of them would keep things repaired.  But most of them helped tend the sheep for the sacrifices or sang in the choir, or played instruments.”

            “Are these men musicians?  Do they still know how to play instruments?”

            “Oh, yes,” said Meshullam.  “Some of the most talented musicians in the entire country are right here among the Levites.”

            “Fine,” said Benjamin.  “Tell them to bring their instruments tomorrow.  While the rest of the men are working, they can play for them and make the temple an even more pleasant place to work.”

            After the work on the temple actually began, the money in the box grew even faster.  People would come to see what was being done and would drop an offering in the box, because they could see that it would actually be used for the restoration of the temple.  Before, some of them thought it might be just a trick by the king to get more money for himself.  More than one king had done that kind of thing to them.

            Josiah walked over almost every day to see the progress on the temple.  While there, he would stand on the balcony with Hilkiah and Shaphan and Benjamin and listen to the report on how things were going.  Then they would kneel while Hilkiah prayed and asked God to bless the work.  Josiah was convinced it was the prayers which kept the work progressing so smoothly.

            One day when he had been over to the temple and had just returned to the palace a messenger appeared at the door of the throne room.  The keeper of the door announced his coming.

            “Jeroshabel of Libnah with a message for the king.”

            King Josiah sat up a little straighter and searched the face of the man who walked quickly across the throne room toward him.  Libnah was Hamutal’s home town.  It had been six years since she had fled from Bar-Abel’s underground altar to the safety of her childhood home.  Not once in those six years had Josiah heard from her, not even once had a messenger come.  And now—Jeroshabel of Libnah.  Could it be a message from Hamutal?

            Jeroshabel was a young man, even younger than the king, but he carried himself with a confidence that was not daunted at all by being in the throne room for the first time.  Just in front of the throne he dropped to one knee, but kept his head erect as he pulled a scroll from under his robe and held it out to the guard who stood on the right hand of the king.

            “Thank you, Jeroshabel,” the king responded.  “I know you have traveled far to deliver to me this message.  Please allow me to provide for your needs until such time as you must return.  A room, a change of clothes, and provender for your horse.  These are all yours, and if you please you shall sit at the king’s table tonight.”

            It was the same message he gave to every messenger who came from outside Jerusalem.  Often there were a dozen such men sitting at his table on any given evening.  But somehow this was different.  Just possibly, this man had brought a message from Hamutal, his beloved.  Oh, he would never tell Zebudah that.  She was a wonderful girl and a good wife, but she would never take the place of Hamutal in his heart.  He could never tell Hilkiah either, because the old priest was convinced Hamutal was still worshipping Baal, and nothing would ever convince him of anything else.  Besides, he hadn’t approved of Hamutal in the first place.

            A message from Hamutal.  How Josiah longed to take the scroll from the guard and open it to see if it really was from her.  But a king didn’t read his messages in public.  He couldn’t risk the people in the court interpreting his facial expressions wrongly as he perused the various messages sent to him.  Instead he had to wait until all those who desired an audience with the king were gone, and then he could retire to his private chambers to read all of the messages.  It would just not be proper to read while all those people were waiting to see him.

            How the rest of the afternoon dragged for Josiah.  A juggler from the court of the king of Cush, a beautiful stallion which arrived as a gift from the king of Lud, and a messenger from the Pharoah of Egypt—none of those were enough to draw him away from his desire to read the message from Hamutal.

            Late in the afternoon the last visitor departed and the guards gathered up all the scrolls to transport them to his private chambers.  Josiah reached for the scroll from Libnah, knowing exactly which one it was, but the guard already had them in his arms.  Rather than make a scene in front of his servants, the king postponed his desire another moment until he could be completely alone.

            The guard had already left the throne room and Josiah was about to follow when the huge double doors at the far end of the room were flung open and Shaphan came running in, totally unannounced by the astounded door keeper.

            “Josiah, hurry.  Come quick.  They’ve found it.  They’ve found the holy book in the house of the Lord.”