King of Judah?  I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war; for God commanded me to make haste.  Forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.”  But nothing could induce Josiah to give up his warlike enterprise.  He had the piety of Saint Louis, and also his patriotic and chivalric heroism.  He marched his forces to the plain of Esdraelon, the great battle field where Rameses II. had triumphed over the Hittites centuries before.  The battle was fought at Megiddo.  Although Josiah took the precaution to disguise himself, he was mortally wounded by the Egyptian archers, and was driven back in his splendid chariot toward Jerusalem, which he did not live to reach.

The lamentations for this brave and pious monarch remind us of the universal grief of the Hebrew nation on the death of Samuel.  He was buried in a tomb which he had prepared for himself, amid universal mourning.  A funeral oration was composed by Jeremiah, or rather an elegy, afterward sung by the nation on the anniversary of the battle.  Nor did the nation ever forget a king so virtuous in his life and so zealous for the Law.  Long after the return from captivity the singers of Israel sang his praises, and popular veneration for him increased with the lapse of time; for in virtues and piety, and uninterrupted zeal for Jehovah, Josiah never had an equal among the kings of Judah.

The services of this good king were long remembered.  To him may be traced the unyielding devotion of the Jews, after the Captivity, for the rites and forms and ceremonies which are found in the books of the Law.  The legalisms of the Scribes may be traced to him.  He reigned but twelve years after his great reformation,—­not long enough to root out the heathenism which had prevailed unchecked for nearly seventy years.  With him perished the hopes of the kingdom.

After his death the decline was rapid.  A great reaction set in, and faction was accompanied with violence.  The heathen party triumphed over the orthodox party.  The passions which had been suppressed since the death of Manasseh burst out with all the frenzy and savage hatred which have ever marked the Jews in their religious contentions, and these were unrestrained by the four kings who succeeded Josiah.  The people were devoured by religious animosities, and split up into hostile factions.  Had the nation been united, it is possible that later it might have successfully resisted the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.  Jeremiah gave vent to his despairing sentiments, and held out no hope.  When Elijah had appealed to the people to choose between Jehovah and Baal, he was successful, because they were then undecided and wavering in their belief, and it required only an evidence of superior power to bring them back to their allegiance.  But when Jeremiah appeared, idolatry was the popular religion.  It had become so firmly established by a succession of wicked kings, added to the universal degeneracy, that even Josiah could work but a temporary reform.