2 Chronicles 34 · a question people ask
The LORD said Josiah would be "gathered to your grave in peace" (34:28). Yet the next chapter tells that the archers shot at him, and he died. How do the two fit?
Both are in the text, and 2 Chronicles doesn't set them side by side. Huldah's word: "Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes won’t see all the evil that I will bring on this place and on its inhabitants" (34:28). The next chapter: Josiah went out against Neco king of Egypt (35:20), and "didn’t listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo" (35:22). "The archers shot at King Josiah" (35:23), and his servants "brought him to Jerusalem; and he died, and was buried in the tombs of his fathers" (35:24). 2 Kings tells the word (2 Kings 22:20) and his death (2 Kings 23:29-30), and its honest question sets out these same two readings. Christians read the two in two main ways, each resting on verses. Both agree on what the text says: he was buried in the tombs of his fathers (35:24), and God's house was burned (36:19) later in the book, after Zedekiah began to reign (36:11), not in his days.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
"In peace" means before the evil came
Those who read it this way take "in peace" with the words the LORD sets beside it: "Your eyes won’t see all the evil that I will bring on this place and on its inhabitants" (34:28). He "was buried in the tombs of his fathers" (35:24), and "They burned God’s house" (36:19) later, after Zedekiah began to reign (36:11). They hear the promise beside the LORD's word to Abram, "you will go to your fathers in peace" (Genesis 15:15), and beside his word about Ahab, who also humbled himself: "I will not bring the evil in his days" (1 Kings 21:29).
2 Chronicles 34:28 · 2 Chronicles 35:24 · 2 Chronicles 36:19 · 2 Chronicles 36:11 · Genesis 15:15 · 1 Kings 21:29
A promise shaped by what came after
Those who read it this way start from how he died, as the next chapter tells it: when Neco said, "Beware that it is God who is with me, that he not destroy you" (35:21), "Josiah would not turn his face from him" (35:22) and "didn’t listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo" (35:22). They read the promise of peace as the LORD's word to a king who had humbled himself, and his death in battle as coming from a later choice, as the LORD says through Jeremiah that a good he has spoken of can be withdrawn: "if they do that which is evil in my sight, that they don’t obey my voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would benefit them" (Jeremiah 18:10).
2 Chronicles 35:21-23 · Jeremiah 18:9-10
The verses
““Behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes won’t see all the evil that I will bring on this place and on its inhabitants.”’” They brought back this message to the king.”
“Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.”
“They burned God’s house, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all of its valuable vessels.”
“‘Therefore behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.’”’” So they brought this message back to the king.”