But he sent messengers to Josiah saying, ‘What have I to do with you, O king of Judah? I haven’t come to attack you! There is another I intend to attack. God commanded me to get up north quickly. So don’t meddle with God! After all, he might destroy you!
 

You clowns have been watching for Necho, right?

I believe that Necho attempted to avoid battle with Josiah, and did, in fact, tell Josiah that he wasn’t there to fight with him. But I doubt that he told Josiah that it was Josiah’s God who told him to go north and help prop-up a Rump Assyrian State in the first place, or that Josiah’s God would punish him if he got in the way.

I should make full disclosure, as it were. This is not the first time that this has happened in the Bible. There is another example of this that provides a somewhat strange scenario, with elements of comedy. I noted that many commentators, making commentator-comments on the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, would identify the Prophesied Child to be Hezekiah. I also noted that in the Deuteronomic history, Hezekiah holds the top spot as far as righteous kings go. He was very close to the prophet Isaiah and clearly relied on him. And along with Josiah, Hezekiah is credited with attempting to end the Syncretistic Cultic Religion being practiced on the bamoth…the worship of Yahweh along with other gods, on hill tops. Older versions of the English Bible translate bamoth as…high places. Isaiah said this…

And it shall come to pass in that day that Yahweh will whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

That is a very cool verse.

O my people who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike you with a rod and lift up his staff against you, in the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while and wrath will cease, as will My anger in the destruction I have decreed. And Yahweh will stir up a scourge from him…and just as Yahweh smote Midian, so will He will do again, in the same manner as Egypt.

 Isaiah also said…

I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his boastful looks.

And I have noted that Judah was caught in the middle between the two superpowers of Assyria and Egypt. But the mighty Hezekiah ended up in a precarious position. He allied himself with the king of Egypt against Assyria. I’ve noted elsewhere that Hezekiah’s great-grandfather Azariah (Uzziah) led a coalition that sought to keep the Assyrians out of his neck-of-the-woods. This failed, and his father Jotham, and Jotham’s son Ahaz, accepted Assyria as their overlord and refused to rebel against the Assyrian king. Hezekiah chose to turn to Egypt, and then renounced his oath of fealty to the Assyrian king. This resulted in a full-scale invasion of Judah. However, the Assyrian king wasn’t present for this campaign. He was busy attacking Lachish, a city southeast of Jerusalem. The king in question was…

And so a brutal heathen king claims that Yahweh told him to attack Jerusalem. But God’s promise to deal with the Assyrians did come to pass. The Babylonian region had been the scene of continual rebellion…Assyrian moves and Babylonian counter-moves. The Bit Kaldu, known in the Bible by the name…Chaldeans, the Swamp People, aided by local Babylonians, had completely de-stabilized the country. The Assyrians would re-conquer the area, only to have the area rebel yet again as soon as the Assyrians had left. Assyria’s ancient foe, the Elamites, were also involved in stirring up rebellion. Marduk-apla-iddina II…

…the little guy on the right, and the chief trouble-maker in Babylonia at the time, fostered an alliance with Hezekiah…

At that time Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent king Hezekiah a letter and a gift…

The name is corrupted, but the guy in question is certainly Marduk-apla-iddina II, often called Merodach-Baladan. According to Isaiah 39:1ff, he also sent envoys to Jerusalem, and Hezekiah showed them around the city, including the royal treasury. Isaiah became rather angry…

Behold! The days are coming when all that is in your house, and all the wealth that your fathers have accumulated will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left. And he will take away your sons, and they shall be turned into eunuchs at the court of the Babylonian king!

Ouch!

I wonder if Hezekiah’s castrated sons will be as pretty as the Galli, the priests of Cybele! Now I have written about these self-castrated priests of the Anatolian Great Mother goddess. I will be discussing a Roman writer named Lucian and his connection with a writer named Celsus. Lucian’s writings were popular then and are still popular now. He describes the process of becoming a gallus, and I warn you, this part, although I think that Lucian is being macabre and ridiculing the Galli, is…

Thus sayeth Lucian…

While others play the flute and they get into a trance, the young priest gets naked, screams and runs to the middle of the circle of priests, where he grabs a sword and castrates himself immediately. Then he runs through town, holding his manly parts. Then he throws them through a random window and out of that house he shall receive his clothing and jewelry.

Can you imagine sitting in your house and since it is summer, and you’re two millennia away from air conditioners, you have your window open, and then…well, you get the disturbing picture. But is that a bad thing? Yes! But not for the reason you might think. If you were lucky to be the owner of the window that the gallus threw his manly parts through…you have to give the guy…or, now…gal, clothing and jewelry! Be sure to give the former owner of the manly parts your wife’s clothes. And! If you give the new gallus your wife’s ripped dress…Huldah’s husband could mend it.

But since you brought up the galli and the Great Mother goddess, I will indulge in a brief digression. And all I am doing is pointing out something interesting, drawing no inherent connection. But the Virgin Mary, who is worthy of all veneration, often wears a crown…

And that is quite appropriate, seeing how she is the Mother of Mercy, Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. I, for my part, prefer Mary looking a bit less regal…

But in some manifestations of Mary, she wears a distinctively over-sized crown…

As is readily apparent, the crown is not only excessively large…it also sits on the very top of her head, and, obviously, it would be impossible to wear the crown as designed. The crown would have to sit down further down toward the forehead…

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, wearing a crown designed to stay on her head in the not so unusual event that she actually had to turn her head…such as looking at her speech to the House of Commons, and then looking up at those present. Unless that’s the lunch menu. True, she’ll have to move her head carefully, but she can do so without the crown falling off. So…

With the images of Mary, the crown simply wouldn’t be able to say on her head at all. Now for an image of Cybele, also called Agdistis…

…on the far right…wearing an excessively over-large crown that couldn’t possible stay on her head. And she was the Great Mother Goddess. Here is an image of Cybele in her manifestation as Taratha, also called Atargatis, a goddess worshipped by the Nabataeans…

And:

Tradition states that men in Edessa, Syria would castrate themselves for Taratha, indicating that she was a manifestation of Cybele/Agdistis. I hope that the people in Edessa knew to keep their windows closed!

But, returning to Isaiah’s declaration that Hezekiah’s descendants would be carted off to be castrated by the king of Babylon, Hezekiah makes a mind-blowingly selfish and self-centered statement. I will repeat Isaiah’s dreadful pronouncement…

Behold! The days are coming when all that is in your house, and all the wealth that your fathers have accumulated will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left. And he will take away your sons, and they shall be turned into eunuchs at the court of the Babylonian king!

And now for Hezekiah’s response!

Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah…The word of Yahweh which you have spoken is good!

Good? Good? Could anyone possibly have predicted this response? No…not good…dreadful! I would drop to my knees and beg for God’s forgiveness…I beseech thee, O Yahweh, please don’t bring such a fate on my descendants because of me! Pour out your judgement on me instead! My royal descendants will be turned into Galli-like servants of the Babylonian king…cool! How can it possibly be good?

At least there will be peace and truth in my days!

 So much for the righteous king Hezekiah. Hey…princes of Judah! Please don’t throw them through someone’s window…ok? And remember! It is God himself that will shave your head, beard…and legs! And it should be remembered that when Josiah got upset because of the horrible things that would befall Judah as stated in the mysterious Book of the Law, Huldah was clever enough to declare that it wouldn’t happen during Josiah’s reign. And what about Sennacherib? The army that had laid siege suffered a terrible event…but not a military one. And the king? He became so frustrated with the situation in Babylonia that he did something that no Assyrian king would ever even think of doing…destroying the city of Babylon, a holy city in the eyes of the Assyrians. Why so angry? He had taken the step previously of installing his son, the crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi as king of Babylon. Sennacherib then attacked Elam, who in turn, attacked Babylonia, and managed to capture the Crown Prince of Assyria. Sennacherib then made the mistake of promoting Esarhaddon, his youngest son, to be his successor, enraging his older brothers. And then they murdered their father. Sennachrib was in a temple, and they managed to push over a…

…colossal Lamassu statue, crushing Sennacherib to death. And that would require super-human strength. So I suppose that one of the king’s sons must have been extraordinarily strong…

Esarhaddon, huh, dad? We’ll see about that!

Returning to Necho’s claim…
 

Nevertheless, Josiah wouldn’t turn aside. Instead, he disguised himself so that he could fight against Egypt. And so he didn’t obey the words that Necho spoke, even though they came from God.

 
So Josiah was inclined to face the Egyptians in battle to prove that he wasn’t a wimp, but he proved himself to be a bigger wimp by going into battle dressed in a disguise! A real king would take the field at the head of his army, give Necho the finger, and call for a full frontal assault against the Egyptian army. In the name of Yahweh, charge! But no. The Chronicler would have us believe that Josiah ran around the battlefield wearing a costume…

 
Hah! Necho will never know it’s me!

 
Well, Necho apparently figured it out!

Pharaoh’s sure that’s him!

 What happened?

And the archers shot King Josiah; and the king said to his servants…take me away, I’ve been shot!

And Isaiah said this…

In the same day Yahweh will shave them with a hired razor, with those from beyond the Euphrates, with the king of Assyria…the head and the hair of the legs, and He will also remove the beard.

Oh. Still…so much for being disguised! So, Huldah was wrong…Josiah didn’t go to his grave in peace! He was shot while wearing a disguise! Actually, what the Chronicler has done is to recognize the problem that Huldah’s prophecy has caused. She said that Josiah would go to his grave in peace. And he didn’t. I would suggest that Huldah wasn’t a genuine source of prophecy…Josiah’s men chose her because she was the wife of another royal official, and therefore would tell Josiah what he wanted to hear. Yes! And Josiah dying at the hands of Necho proves it! Not for the Chronicler. God gave a subsequent prophetic word, but this time, strangely enough, it was delivered by an Egyptian king. And! That Egyptian king warned Josiah that God would destroy him if he got in the way. But! Josiah rejected a heathen king as the source of a prophetic message, yet believed him enough to put on a disguise! So, had Josiah obeyed the word of God spoken by Necho II, then Huldah’s prophecy would have come true, and Josiah wouldn’t have been killed in battle disguised…like a coward. But, one could always say, if one were Huldah…

Look! It says right here…I said that Josiah would die in peace. I said nothing about Disguised Josiah dying in peace.

What? I put on a disguise and everything!

That’s clever, but Necho II didn’t receive a prophetic word from Josiah’s God, and Josiah didn’t wear a costume on the battlefield. Huldah was wrong on that point…it’s just that simple. And the Chronicler puts a strange twist on the issue of just who was the right prophetic source, he was to have spoken with…

Jeremiah also lamented for Josiah.

Awesome! It’s too bad that Josiah’s Enigmatic Men didn’t go talk to Jeremiah in the first place!

Wait! Huldah? Who’s Huldah?

And although the land of Judah was not destroyed during his reign…so she was right about that, Josiah’s mistake nonetheless had ramifications…

And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and made him king in his father’s place.

What’s wrong with that?

Pharaoh Necho put Jehoahaz in prison at Riblah in the land of Hamath so that he couldn’t reign over Judah. And he imposed on the land a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. Necho then placed Josiah’s son Jehoiakim on the throne, and carted Jehoahaz back to Egypt where he died. Then Jehoiakim paid Necho the tribute that Necho had demanded.

 
What? It’s not my fault that Josiah didn’t know I was prophet! But while I’m here…pay me my money!

I suppose that’s true, although…

But Jeremiah! It says right here in the Book of the Prophet Necho II…thus saith God, “Get out of the way!”