Week 16 2 Kings
There’s a nice bible-reader’s story near the end of the book.
It’s about Josiah – one of Judah’s best kings and a bit like David. When he was a young king he started to renovate the temple. During that clean-up a priest found the Book of the Law. [It’s pretty hard to imagine how it got lost in the first place since it was supposed to be the foundational text of the Jewish religion.]
Anyway a scribe read the book to the king and: when (Josiah) heard what was written in the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes in despair – which meant he was upset fearful distraught anxious disconcerted and like that. It was obvious that contemporary religious practices didn’t line up with the Book and Josiah concluded: the Lord’s anger is burning against us because our ancestors have not obeyed the words in this scroll.
So he adopted the Book of the Law as his new Procedures Manual. He did two things: a) he got rid of religious practices not prescribed in the book, and b) he reinstituted things that were in it. Josiah’s religious revamp was summed up this way: he did this in obedience to all the laws written in the scrolls that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Lord’s temple.
Josiah reminded me that the Book is best used as an Assessment Evaluation & Operations Guide.
Otherwise it’s basically just a lost book.
Note: quotes from 2 Kings 22: 11, 13 & 23:24 (NLT)