Friday, September 2, 2016

II Chronicles 35: Laments For A Good King

When King Josiah died, the nation mourned and lamented for him.  "All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.  Jeremiah also uttered a lament for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women have spoken of Josiah in their laments to this day. They made these a custom in Israel; they are recorded in the Laments" (vs. 24 and 25).  

What is a lament?  It is an expression, often musical or lyrical, of great sorrow and sadness.  It is a way that people - both ancient and modern - give voice to their grief as they process the pain we experience in life.  Lamenting can be a spiritually healthy way to share our distress over living in a lost, broken world.

Laments here in II Chronicles 35 are mentioned in connection with the prophet Jeremiah in what must have been his younger days.  He would continue to be linked with laments as he literally wrote the book on Lamentations when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians.

Laments are not just ancient history.  I think of the mourning that a country goes through when its leader dies, or in our national grieving after a terrorist attack or a school shooting.  Josiah was the first and last good king for quite awhile, so the people of Judah certainly had something to lament in his untimely passing.  They would, in fact, be doing a lot of lamenting for many of the years to come. 

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