Josiah’s Passover
1Josiah held a Passover to Yahweh in Jerusalem, and on the fourteenth day of the first month they slaughtered the Passover offering. 2He assigned the priests to their duties and gave them heart for the service of the house of Yahweh. 3And he said to the Levites, who instructed all Israel and were consecrated to Yahweh, “Place the holy ark in the house that Solomon son of David, king of Israel, built. It is no longer a burden on your shoulders. Now serve Yahweh your God and his people Israel. 4Get yourselves ready by your ancestral houses, according to your divisions, following the directions of David king of Israel and the writing of his son Solomon. 5Take your stand in the sanctuary, grouped by the ancestral houses of your kinsmen, the lay people, with a portion of a Levite ancestral house for each. 6Slaughter the Passover offering, consecrate yourselves and make ready for your kinsmen, so that everything is done as Yahweh commanded through Moses.” 7Josiah contributed to the lay people flocks of lambs and young goats, all for the Passover offerings, thirty thousand in number for everyone present, and three thousand head of cattle; these came from the king’s own property. 8His officials made a freewill contribution to the people, to the priests and to the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah and Jehiel, the chief officers of the house of God, gave the priests two thousand six hundred Passover offerings and three hundred head of cattle. 9Kananiah too, with Shemaiah and Nethanel his brothers, and Hashabiah, Jeiel and Jozabad, the chiefs of the Levites, contributed to the Levites five thousand Passover offerings and five hundred head of cattle. 10So the service was set in order: the priests took their posts and the Levites their divisions, as the king had commanded. 11They slaughtered the Passover offering; the priests dashed the blood they were handed, while the Levites did the skinning. 12They set aside the burnt offerings to distribute them among the family groupings of the lay people, so that these might present them to Yahweh as it is written in the book of Moses; and they did the same with the cattle. 13They roasted the Passover offering in the fire as the ordinance requires, and they boiled the holy offerings in pots, cauldrons and pans and hurried them out to all the lay people. 14Only afterward did they provide for themselves and for the priests, since Aaron’s sons, the priests, were busy with the burnt offerings and the fat portions until night; so the Levites provided both for themselves and for the priests, Aaron’s sons. 15The singers, the sons of Asaph, were at their stations as David, Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun the king’s seer had directed, and the gatekeepers were at each gate. None of them had to leave their duties, because their kinsmen the Levites made ready for them. 16So the whole service of Yahweh was set in order that day, to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings on the altar of Yahweh, as King Josiah had commanded. 17At that time the Israelites who had come observed the Passover, and for seven days the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 18No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet; not one of the kings of Israel ever kept a Passover such as Josiah kept, together with the priests, the Levites, all Judah, the Israelites who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 19It was in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign that this Passover was celebrated.
The Death of Josiah and the Last Kings
20When all this was done and Josiah had set the temple in order, Necho king of Egypt came up to give battle at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out against him. 21Necho sent messengers to him with this word: “What is there between you and me, king of Judah? I am not coming against you today, but against the house I am at war with, and God has told me to hurry. Leave off opposing God, who is with me, or he will destroy you.” 22Josiah, however, would not turn away from him; he disguised himself in order to fight him, and he refused to listen to what Necho said at God’s command. He came to give battle in the valley of Megiddo. 23The archers hit King Josiah, and the king said to his servants, “Take me out of here, for I am badly wounded.” 24His servants lifted him out of the chariot, transferred him to the second chariot he had, and took him to Jerusalem. There he died and was laid in the tombs of his ancestors, while all Judah and Jerusalem grieved for Josiah. 25Jeremiah composed a lament for Josiah, and to this day all the singers, men and women, speak of Josiah in their laments. They made this a custom in Israel, and the laments are written in the Laments. 26The rest of Josiah’s acts and his deeds of devotion, done in keeping with what is written in the law of Yahweh, 27everything he did from beginning to end, stands written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
