2 Chronicles 34 Bible study: While he was yet young

"Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem" (34:1). "He did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, and walked in the ways of David his father, and didn’t turn away to the right hand or to the left" (34:2). Then 2 Chronicles gives two years that 2 Kings doesn't: "For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images" (34:3) (tap young, seek, purge). Seek is darash, the verb 2 Chronicles keeps coming back to: "if you seek him, he will be found by you" (15:2). Josiah's seeking comes first in the chapter. The book of the law isn't found until "the eighteenth year of his reign" (34:8), in the repair of the house (34:14).

2 Chronicles 34:27→leads toLuke 8:15

When the king heard the words of the book, the LORD's word to him through Huldah was, "because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words… I also have heard you" (34:27). Then he made a covenant "to keep his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book" (34:31). Jesus, explaining his parable of the sower, said, "Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with perseverance" (Luke 8:15). Jesus doesn't name Josiah or cite 2 Chronicles 34, so setting his words beside it is a reading, resting on a shared subject, the heart of one who hears the word, not on a shared word (Luke is written in Greek, so no link between the two chapters' words is claimed). Some read the two together: Josiah heard the words of the book with a tender heart (34:27) and bound himself to do them with all his heart (34:31), the kind of hearing Jesus describes. Others read Jesus' words in their own setting, where "The seed is the word of God" (Luke 8:11) and those in the good ground go on to "produce fruit with perseverance" (Luke 8:15), and note that the LORD's promise to Josiah was about what his eyes would not see (34:28), not about fruit; they read 34:27 without looking from one to the other.

דָּרַשׁdarashsay da-RASH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "resort to, seek", and among its uses, "seek deity in prayer and worship". Strong's: "to seek or ask". Josiah "began to seek after the God of David his father" (34:3). The chapter has the verb three times. When the book is found, the king says, "Go inquire of the LORD for me" (34:21), and Huldah calls him "the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD" (34:26); inquire is the same verb. 2 Chronicles comes back to it again and again (the Hebrew of the book has it 30 times), as when Azariah told Asa, "if you seek him, he will be found by you" (15:2).