As soon as Ahaz
has closed his eyes, Hezekiah, in the first month of his first
year, again restores the Mosaic cultus; and as soon as Josiah
reaches years of discretion he makes good the sins of his fathers.
Being at his accession still too young, the eighth year of his
reign is, as a tribute to propriety, selected instead of the
eighth year of his life, and the great reformation assigned
to that period which in point of fact he undertook at a much
later date (xxxiv. 3-7 = 2Kings xxiii. 4-20> Thus the movement
happily becomes separated from its historical occasion, and
in character the innovation appears rather as a simple recovery
of the spring after the pressure on it has been removed. The mist
disappears before the sun of the Law, which appears in its old
strength; its light passes through no phases, but shines from
the beginning with uniform brightness. What Josiah did had also
been done before him already by Asa, then by Jehoshaphat, then
by Hezekiah; the reforms are not steps in a progressive development,
but have all the same unchanging contents. Such is the influence
upon historical vision of that transcendental Mosaism raised far
above all growth and process of becoming, which can be traced even
in the Book of Kings, but is so much more palpable in the Book
of Chronicles.
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