2 Chronicles35:20–24

i. After all this: the hinge the Chronicler builds on purpose — 35:20

The verse opens on a formula, אַחֲרֵי כָל־זֹאת, and Ellicott hears its function exactly: it matches “after these matters, and this faithfulness” at 2 Chronicles 32:1, and it exists, he says, to call attention to the difference between the event and what might naturally have been expected. Poole and Benson, in nearly identical words, describe the disappointment from inside: when Josiah and his people hoped that God was reconciled and the foundation of a lasting happiness laid, their hopes were quickly blasted. JFB pushes the theology one step further and insists the failure was not in the promise: the interruption proceeded not from any unfaithfulness in the divine promise but from the state into which the national apostasy had brought Judah.

⚙ The Hebrew stages this with one verb. הֵכִין is the Hiphil of kûwn, to cause to stand firm. Josiah has just made the house stand, and the next clause has Necho going up and Josiah going out. Notice also which noun the Chronicler leaves bare: not “the temple” but simply הַבַּיִת, the house. That bare word is about to be thrown back at him, because Necho's answer will turn on another bayith entirely.

On what Necho was doing there, the brief's sources diverge and it is worth saying so. Ellicott holds the target was Assyria, since Nineveh had not yet fallen, and identifies Carchemish with modern Jirbâs on the western bank of the middle Euphrates; Cambridge dates the campaign to about 608 BC, ties it to Nabopolassar and the destruction of Nineveh, and notes that Nebuchadnezzar's victory at Carchemish about 605 BC finally shut Egypt out. JFB adds the political motive on Josiah's side, that from Manasseh's time Judah had been a vassal of Assyria and Josiah moved “as a faithful vassal.” Geneva reads him differently, as a king who feared for his own kingdom and “did not consult the Lord.” Pulpit admits the whole question is left in obscurity.

ii. The word from the wrong mouth — 35:21-22

Necho's message begins with a formula of disengagement. Ellicott gives it literally, “what to me and to thee?”, with the Septuagint's Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί and the echoes at Mark 5:7 and Luke 8:28; K&D adds Judges 11:12 and 2 Samuel 16:10. It is a phrase for pushing someone out of a quarrel that is not theirs. Then comes the claim that changes everything: וֵאלֹהִים אָמַר, and God has said.

The commentators split cleanly, and the split is honest on both sides. Benson lists the options and prefers, with Kimchi, that the true God spoke, perhaps in a dream as to Abimelech or by Jeremiah. Poole stacks the objections first (would a pagan heed the true God? would a prophet not have told Josiah?) and then concedes the dream. Barnes takes a different road entirely, that ancient inscriptions show Egyptian kings acknowledging a single supreme god and considering their actions inspired by him, so Necho “merely expressed himself as Egyptian kings were in the habit of doing.” K&D grounds the caution in grammar, and this is the sharpest observation available: God is here “neither called יהוה nor האלהים, but merely אלהים, and so it is only the Godhead in general which is spoken of.” JFB records the stalemate plainly: commentators are not agreed.

⚙ Then v. 22 breaks the stalemate, and it does so in the narrator's own voice rather than Necho's. Josiah, says the Chronicler, did not hearken to the words of Neco מִפִּי אֱלֹהִים, from the mouth of God. Pulpit will not let this be softened: unless the words mean what they patently mean, it is tenfold strange they are in Chronicles at all. Ellicott agrees the warning was really divine “as the event proved,” while admitting in the same breath that 1 Esdras attributes it to Jeremiah and no such oracle survives. Barnes finds the safest category: prophetic in effect, like the “prophecy” of Caiaphas at John 11:51, without inspiration or supernatural revelation to the speaker.

Against the warning Josiah sets a disguise, הִתְחַפֵּשׂ, and the word is fought over. Ellicott, Cambridge, Gill and Geneva read a change of clothing, as with Ahab at 2 Chronicles 18:29; Barnes reports that most modern critics prefer “equipped himself,” and Pulpit thinks “fully armed himself” more probable; the Septuagint's ἐκραταιώθη, “strengthened himself,” Cambridge calls an inferior reading. K&D alone reads it morally, as disfiguring oneself, undertaking what contradicts one's own character, and Ellicott calls that “wholly unlikely.” ⚙ We record the disagreement rather than settling it, and note only what the narrative does with whichever sense: the disguise changes nothing.

iii. Anonymous arrows, a spare chariot, a mourning that does not stop — 35:23-24

The Hebrew of v. 23 doubles its root: וַיֹּרוּ הַיֹּרִים, the shooters shot. No Egyptian is named, no duel narrated, and Necho never reappears. Ellicott, Cambridge and Gill all set it beside the archer of 2 Chronicles 18:33 whose random arrow found the disguised Ahab; Ellicott adds Saul at 1 Chronicles 10:3. Gill notes the practical reason the disguise failed: Josiah still looked like a commander and so was aimed at and pressed hard.

⚙ Then comes the unit's quietest piece of craft. Josiah's last recorded command is הַעֲבִירוּנִי, a causative imperative: make me pass over. The next verse opens with the same Hiphil root in the consecutive imperfect, וַיַּעֲבִירֻהוּ, and they made him pass over. K&D notices the linkage and explains v. 23 by v. 24. And his self-description is a Hofal, הָחֳלֵיתִי, I have been made sick, which is the exact grammatical inverse of the Hiphil הֵכִין that opened the unit. The king who caused the house to stand ends the unit in the passive of every verb: brought, died, buried, mourned over.

Barnes gives the reason the grief was unprecedented: no king of Judah had, to that time, fallen in battle or left his land at the mercy of a foreign conqueror. Geneva records what the grief became, a proverb still cited at Zechariah 12:11. Cambridge and Benson between them explain the second chariot, a travelling vehicle rather than the standing-room war car. Gill alone refuses the flattering generality and observes that those inclined to idolatry were probably secretly glad and dissembled with the rest. Henry, reading the whole passage at once, holds both verdicts together without collapsing either: Scripture does not condemn Josiah's conduct in opposing Pharaoh, yet he seems to deserve blame for not inquiring of the Lord after he was warned, and the death was a rebuke to him and a judgment on the people.