Sons of Josiah: Judgment and the Last Kings of Judah
Short answer: The sons of Josiah were Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim (born Eliakim), Zedekiah (born Mattaniah), and according to 1 Chronicles 3:15 also Johanan, probably the firstborn who died before ruling. After Josiah died from wounds at Megiddo, the people made Jehoahaz king, but Pharaoh Neco deposed him after three months and took him to Egypt. Neco placed Eliakim on the throne and renamed him Jehoiakim, and he ruled eleven years as a vassal, first to Egypt and then to Babylon. Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim's son, reigned only three months before being carried to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar then made his uncle Mattaniah king under the name Zedekiah. Zedekiah rebelled and saw Jerusalem destroyed. So the sons of Josiah span the last four decades of Judah's life as a kingdom, ending in the Babylonian exile.
The Death of Josiah and the People's Choice
Second Kings 23:29-30 tells how Josiah went out to meet Pharaoh Neco of Egypt at Megiddo and was killed there. The verse records that his servants carried him dead in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. Judah had lost the best king since Hezekiah. Josiah had torn down high places, smashed idols, reinstituted the Passover, and read the book of the law to the people. It looked as though reform had secured the nation's future. But the reform had never reached every heart, and the throne now passed to a son who had watched his father's program without embracing his father's God.
The text is blunt about the way the succession happened. It was the people of the land who took Jehoahaz, anointed him, and made him king in his father's place. The throne did not pass by a clear divine oracle through a prophet here; it passed by popular acclamation and anointing. This is the same phrase used earlier in 2 Kings 11:12 when the people crowned Joash. The people of the land had a recognized role in Judah's politics, and after a national tragedy they moved quickly to fill the empty throne. Their choice would prove disastrously short-lived.
What did Jehoahaz inherit? He inherited a kingdom still formally free but already squeezed between Egypt and the rising power of Babylon. He inherited a religious situation in which Josiah's reforms had removed the visible apparatus of idolatry but not the underlying loyalty of many Judaeans to the gods of the surrounding nations. He also inherited, it seems, a personal character nothing like his father's. Second Kings 23:32 states plainly that he did what was evil in Yahweh's sight, following the pattern of his ancestors. The son of the great reformer chose the path of Manasseh and Amon, not the path of Josiah.
That contrast is one of the most sobering features of the whole account. A father's faithfulness does not automatically pass to his children. Josiah could tear down the high places, but he could not tear down the idolatry in his own son's heart. Parents today read this story and should feel both warned and steadied. It warns against assuming that a strong spiritual environment guarantees a strong next generation. It steadies those who have done what they could and still watch a child choose differently. Judah's history is honest about this, and so should we be.
Jehoahaz: Three Months and a Chain in Egypt
Jehoahaz reigned only three months in Jerusalem. Pharaoh Neco, fresh from his victory at Megiddo, was not willing to let Judah choose its own king without his approval. Neco deposed Jehoahaz, imposed a heavy tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold on the land, and took the young king to Egypt, where he died. Egypt was the very power Josiah had gone out to oppose, and now Egypt decided who sat on David's throne. The independence of Judah was gone in substance even before Babylon finished the job.
Jeremiah was commanded to speak directly to this moment. In Jeremiah 22:10 the prophet says, "Don't weep for the dead. Don't bemoan him; but weep bitterly for him who goes away, for he will return no more, and not see his native country." The dead man is Josiah, already buried in peace. The one who goes away is Jehoahaz, carried off to Egypt. The people were still mourning Josiah, but Jeremiah redirected their grief. The living exile was the greater tragedy. Josiah had died in honor and was buried with his fathers; his son would die in a foreign land and never see Judah again.
This is the first clear sign that the exile is beginning in stages. The kingdom is not yet destroyed, but its king has been deported. Deuteronomy had warned that a disobedient king would be taken back to Egypt in ships, and here the warning takes flesh. Jehoahaz's fate is a preview of what will happen under Babylon on a much larger scale. God had spoken centuries earlier through Moses, and now the words were landing on a specific family, a specific throne, and a specific young man whose three-month reign is remembered mainly for how quickly it ended.
There is a pastoral lesson here about the difference between godly sorrow and misplaced grief. The people wept at the wrong grave. They mourned the death that had already been accepted by God and overlooked the exile that was still unfolding. Jeremiah's words call us to weep over the things God weeps over, not simply over the losses that touch us most visibly. A nation can memorialize a good king while ignoring the living consequences of its own disobedience. The exile of Jehoahaz was a warning, and it was largely ignored.
Jehoiakim: The Pharaoh's Puppet and His Own Man
Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim, another son of Josiah, king in place of his brother, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Renaming a vassal king was a way of asserting authority over him; the overlord gave the name. Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. He taxed the land to pay Egypt and ruled as a client king. Second Kings 23:37 records that he did what was evil in Yahweh's sight, just as his brother had done. The pattern did not improve with the change of name.
Jeremiah 22 gives a fuller portrait of Jehoiakim. The prophet condemns him for building his house with unrighteousness and his upper rooms with injustice, using his neighbor's labor without wages. He contrasts Jehoiakim with his father Josiah, who judged the cause of the poor and needy and it was well with him. Then the prophet delivers a specific judgment: Jehoiakim will be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem. The man who built cedar palaces would not receive the honor of a proper grave. A king who lived for his own house would lose even the memory of a resting place.
Second Kings 24:1-7 records the great reversal of Jehoiakim's reign. In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. Egypt was crushed at Carchemish, Babylon became the dominant power, and Judah's allegiances shifted accordingly. When Jehoiakim rebelled, Yahweh sent against him bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites, and the text says this came at Yahweh's command to remove Judah from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh. The fall was not random political bad luck; it was covenant judgment, exactly as the prophets had said.
Jehoiakim's reign shows how a vassal king could be both weak and defiant at the same time. He had no power to stand against Babylon and no humility to submit to God. He cut up and burned Jeremiah's scroll, as Jeremiah 36 records, and he hunted down prophets like Uriah. He lived as though the throne were secure and the word of God were optional. The result was that his house was dismantled piece by piece while he was still living in it. There is a warning here for anyone who mistakes position for security and treats God's word as a document to be managed rather than obeyed.
Uriah: A Prophet Who Paid the Price
Jeremiah 26:20-23 introduces a figure many readers have never noticed. Uriah the son of Shemaiah from Kiriath Jearim prophesied in Yahweh's name against the city and the land with the same message Jeremiah preached. King Jehoiakim and his officials sought to kill him. Uriah fled to Egypt in fear, but Jehoiakim sent men to Egypt, brought him back, and had him executed, with his body cast into the burial place of the common people. This is one of the clearest pictures in the Old Testament of the cost of faithful prophecy under a hostile king.
The detail is important because it shows that Jeremiah was not the only voice, and not the only target. The word of God was not scarce in those years; it was unwelcome. Uriah's fate reveals what Jehoiakim really wanted. He was not ignorant of the message; he was determined to silence it. Hunting a prophet across borders and killing him is the act of a man who knows the truth and hates it. The contrast with Josiah, who humbled himself when he heard the law, could not be sharper. The father trembled at God's word; the son murdered those who spoke it.
This also matters for how we read the book of Jeremiah as a whole. Jeremiah was spared, but Uriah was not. Faithfulness does not guarantee safety in this life, and the difference between the two prophets was not that one was more faithful than the other. God's providence protected one and allowed the other to be killed. Christians who are tempted to measure God's approval by outcomes should sit with this. The faithful prophet who died in Egypt was just as faithful as the prophet who lived to old age in Jerusalem.
Uriah's death also shows how quickly Judah descended after Josiah. Within a few years of the great reform, the king of Judah was executing prophets and casting their bodies into common graves. This is the real state of the nation, and it explains why the exile came so swiftly after Josiah's death. The reforms had cleared the land of idols, but the hearts of the leadership were as hard as ever. When the restraint of a good king was removed, the underlying rebellion emerged almost immediately. That is a pattern worth remembering whenever a nation or a church enjoys a season of external faithfulness.
Jehoiachin: Three Months and a Lifetime in Babylon
Second Kings 24 continues the story. Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, became king at eighteen and reigned three months in Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city, and Jehoiachin surrendered, going out to the king of Babylon with his mother, his servants, his officials, and his officers. The Babylonians carried away the treasures of the temple and the palace and took ten thousand captives, including all the craftsmen and smiths. Only the poorest people of the land were left. This is the deportation that took Daniel and his companions, and it is the beginning of the seventy years of exile Jeremiah had announced.
Jehoiachin is also called Jeconiah or Coniah in the prophets. Jeremiah pronounced a curse on him in Jeremiah 22:30, saying that none of his descendants would prosper, ruling again in Judah. That curse raised a question for later generations, because the Messiah was to come from David's line. The New Testament genealogies answer it by tracing Jesus through Jehoiachin's line and showing that the messianic claim did not depend on Jehoiachin sitting on the throne. The throne was lost, but the promise to David was not. God's covenant with David survived the failure of David's descendants.
For thirty-seven years Jehoiachin remained a prisoner in Babylon, until Evil-Merodach king of Babylon released him and gave him a seat of honor above the other captive kings. That final note in 2 Kings 25 is easy to miss, but it is the last word of the book and it is a word of hope. A son of David, still alive, still shown kindness, kept the line open. The book that ends with the temple burned and the people scattered also ends with a Davidic king lifted up out of prison. Judgment had fallen, but God had not finished with the house of David.
Jehoiachin's long imprisonment is a picture of what the exile meant for the royal family. He was a king without a kingdom, honored but not restored. His sons were born in captivity. The promises to David now ran underground, through a line of exiles and eventually through a carpenter in Nazareth. The sons of Josiah had between them a few decades of diminishing power, and then the throne of Judah was empty. The story teaches us not to put our confidence in institutions, dynasties, or buildings, but in the God who keeps his promises even when the visible structures collapse.
Zedekiah: The Last King of Judah
After taking Jehoiachin to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, king over what remained, and changed his name to Zedekiah. He was twenty-one years old and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. Second Kings 24:19 records that he did what was evil in Yahweh's sight, just like Jehoiakim. He was the last son of Josiah to sit on Judah's throne, and his reign ended with the destruction of the temple and the city. The reform of Josiah was finished, and so was the kingdom.
Zedekiah's story is a study in indecision and fear. He repeatedly asked Jeremiah to pray for him and to tell him the word of Yahweh, but he never obeyed it. He was afraid of his officials, afraid of the people, afraid of the Babylonians. He rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar in the end, and the result was a siege so severe that the city's inhabitants resorted to unspeakable things. When the walls broke, Zedekiah fled by night, was captured near Jericho, watched his sons executed before his eyes, and then was blinded and taken in chains to Babylon. His sons were the last generation of Josiah's line to hold any claim to the throne.
Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kings 25 both record these events in detail. The temple was burned, the walls were broken down, and the people who remained were deported or fled to Egypt. Zedekiah's fate is one of the most graphic judgments in Scripture, and it is made more painful by the fact that he had every opportunity to hear the word of God and to submit. He knew what the prophet said. He had the scrolls and the messages and the counsel. What he lacked was the will to obey, and that lack cost him his sight, his sons, and his kingdom.
So the four sons of Josiah take us from the high point of Josiah's reform to the smoking ruins of Jerusalem in less than forty years. Jehoahaz died in Egypt. Jehoiakim died in disgrace and was buried without honor. Jehoiachin died in Babylon after decades of captivity. Zedekiah died blind in a Babylonian prison. The line that began with David and passed through Josiah ended in chains. Yet God's promise to David did not end there, and the gospel announces that a son of David now reigns forever, not by political power but by his death and resurrection.
Biblical fidelity check
The text establishes several things plainly. It establishes that the sons of Josiah ruled in sequence and that each of them, from Jehoahaz to Zedekiah, did evil in Yahweh's sight. It establishes that the exile was not a random geopolitical accident but the covenant judgment God had announced through Moses and the prophets. It establishes that the reform under Josiah did not produce a faithful next generation. It also establishes that God's word continued to be spoken through Jeremiah and others, and that the kings who rejected that word suffered the consequences.
The text does not establish that Josiah was personally to blame for his sons' choices. A common misreading treats the sons of Josiah as proof that Josiah's reforms failed because of something Josiah did wrong. That is not what the text says. The text names the sins of the sons, not the failure of the father. Another common misreading treats the exile as purely political, as though Babylon were simply stronger and Judah simply unlucky. Second Kings 24:3 explicitly says the attacks came at Yahweh's command to remove Judah because of the sins of Manasseh. The judgment was moral and covenantal, not accidental. Faithful Christians differ on how directly to apply the sons of Josiah to contemporary politics, but the text itself is clear about the spiritual cause of the fall.
Other passages that speak to 2 Kings 23:30-37
The larger history of David's line helps make sense of these final kings. 1 Chronicles 1: Adam to Edom's Chiefs sets the genealogical framework for Israel's story. 1 Chronicles 10: Saul's Death and the Kingdom Given to David shows how the throne first came to David. 1 Chronicles 11: David Anointed King and His Mighty Men records David's anointing at Hebron. And 1 Chronicles 12: David's Mighty Men and the United Kingdom describes the kingdom at its height. Reading these alongside the sons of Josiah shows the full arc from David's rise to the exile of his descendants.
Frequently asked questions
Who were the sons of Josiah who ruled Judah?
Four sons of Josiah are named in connection with the throne. Jehoahaz ruled three months before Pharaoh Neco took him to Egypt. Jehoiakim, born Eliakim, ruled eleven years as a vassal to Egypt and then Babylon. Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim's son, ruled three months before being deported to Babylon. Zedekiah, born Mattaniah, ruled eleven years and was the last king of Judah before the temple was destroyed. First Chronicles 3:15 also names Johanan, likely the firstborn, who apparently died before taking the throne.
Why did the sons of Josiah not continue his reforms?
Scripture does not explain their motives directly, but it consistently records that each of them did what was evil in Yahweh's sight. Josiah's reforms removed the visible structures of idolatry, but they did not change the hearts of the nation's leaders. The sons chose the path of Manasseh rather than the path of their father. Jeremiah and Zephaniah both ministered during this period and show that the people's loyalty was divided even under Josiah. A godly parent can create a faithful environment, but each person must still choose to follow Yahweh.
Was the exile a punishment or simply a political defeat?
The Bible presents the exile as covenant judgment, not mere political defeat. Second Kings 24:3 says the attacks came at Yahweh's command to remove Judah from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh. Leviticus and Deuteronomy had warned that persistent disobedience would result in being scattered among the nations. The prophets interpreted the fall of Jerusalem as God's righteous response to Judah's idolatry and injustice. Babylon was stronger militarily, but the text insists that Babylon was an instrument in God's hand, not an accident of history.
