2 Kings 22 Bible study: Your heart was tender

"Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem" (22:1). The book's verdict on him comes at once: "He did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and didn’t turn away to the right hand or to the left" (22:2) (tap turn away). Those last words are the law's own. Moses told Israel, "You shall not turn away to the right hand or to the left" (Deuteronomy 5:32). The law for a king said "he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book" (Deuteronomy 17:18), "read from it all the days of his life" (Deuteronomy 17:19), "that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left" (Deuteronomy 17:20). And the LORD told Joshua, "Don’t turn from it to the right hand or to the left" (Joshua 1:7). In Hebrew 22:2, Deuteronomy 5:32, Deuteronomy 17:20 and Joshua 1:7 all have the same verb, sur, with the words for right and left. Josiah is said to walk that way before the chapter has said a word about a book.

2 Kings 22:19→leads toMatthew 5:4

When Josiah heard the words of the book, "he tore his clothes" (22:11), and the LORD's word to him was, "you humbled yourself before the LORD… and have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you" (22:19). Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). Jesus doesn't name Josiah or cite 2 Kings 22, so setting his words beside it is a reading, resting on a shared subject, how God answers one who mourns before him, not on a shared word (Matthew is written in Greek, so no link between the two chapters' words is claimed). Some read the two together: Josiah wept before the LORD at the words of the book (22:19), and the LORD's answer was "I also have heard you" (22:19), the kind of mourning Jesus calls blessed. Others read Jesus' words in their own setting, among the sayings that open his teaching on the mountain (Matthew 5:1-3), where he doesn't say what the mourning is for, and note that the LORD's answer to Josiah was "Your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place" (22:20), not that the evil was turned away; they read 22:19 without looking from one to the other.

רָכַךְrakakhsay ra-KAKH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "be tender, weak, soft". Strong's: "to soften". "Because your heart was tender" (22:19). The Hebrew Bible has the verb eight times, and this is its only use in Kings. The law had used it of a heart, as a thing not to let happen before battle: "Don’t let your heart faint!" (Deuteronomy 20:3). Here the LORD names Josiah's tender heart first in his answer to him. 2 Chronicles tells the same word to Josiah: "because your heart was tender" (2 Chronicles 34:27).