2 Kings 22 · a question people ask
The LORD said Josiah would be "gathered to your grave in peace" (22:20). Yet he was killed at Megiddo. How do the two fit?
Both are in the text, and 2 Kings doesn't set them side by side. Huldah's word: "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" (22:20). The next chapter: "Pharaoh Necoh killed him at Megiddo when he saw him" (23:29), and "His servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb" (23:30). Christians read the two in two main ways, each resting on verses. Both agree on what the text says: he was buried in his own tomb (23:30), and the LORD's house was burned (25:9) after his death, 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 will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place" (22:20). His servants "buried him in his own tomb" (23:30), and the LORD's house was burned later, in 25:9. 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 Kings 22:20 · 2 Kings 23:30 · 2 Kings 25:9 · 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, told again in 2 Chronicles: when Neco said, "Beware that it is God who is with me, that he not destroy you" (2 Chronicles 35:21), "Josiah would not turn his face from him" (2 Chronicles 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" (2 Chronicles 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death in battle as coming from a later choice, as the LORD says through Jeremiah that a good he has spoken of can be withdrawn: "if they do that which is evil in my sight, that they don’t obey my voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would benefit them" (Jeremiah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 Kings 23:29 · 2 Chronicles 35:21-22 · Jeremiah 18:9-10
The verses
“‘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.”
“In his days Pharaoh Necoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and King Josiah went against him, but Pharaoh Necoh killed him at Megiddo when he saw him. His servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb. The people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s place.”
“He burned the LORD’s house, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He burned every great house with fire.”