Amid so much turmoil, the law of Moses was lost. But the next king, Josiah, knew enough to look to the true God and remove idol worship.
In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and the metal images. (2 Chronicles 34:2-3)
As workers were “repairing and restoring” the temple, “Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the LORD given through Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:10, 14). So began the spiritual restoration, guided by the Scriptures themselves.
The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it. (2 Chronicles 34:31-32)
“THE WORDS OF THE COVENANT THAT WERE WRITTEN IN THIS BOOK”
Josiah was the last of Judah’s good kings. After his death—just as the book of Zephaniah had prophesied—foreign nations overwhelmed Judah. Its final kings were Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. They were captured and died in exile. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, slaughtered masses of Judeans, enslaved the survivors, and carried nearly all away to other lands. In 586 B.C., he destroyed Jerusalem and burned down its glorious temple (2 Chronicles 36).