Catholic Commentary
Closing Regnal Summary of Josiah
26Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and his good deeds, according to that which is written in Yahweh’s law,27and his acts, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
2 Chronicles 35:26–27 summarizes King Josiah's reign by emphasizing his deeds of piety and covenant loyalty according to God's law, noting that his complete acts are recorded in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. The Chronicler's emphasis on Josiah's embodiment of divine covenant love throughout his life, measured against the discovered Book of the Law, frames his legacy as faithfulness to God's standards rather than merely the circumstances of his death.
Josiah's life becomes the measure of his faithfulness not by how it ended, but by whether every act—first to last—aligned with God's law.
2 Chronicles 35:26 — "The rest of the acts of Josiah and his good deeds, according to that which is written in Yahweh's law"
The Chronicler's closing formula for Josiah differs strikingly from the standard Deuteronomistic epilogue found in 2 Kings 23:28, which reads simply "the rest of the acts of Josiah." Here, the Chronicler adds the phrase "and his good deeds" (wa-ḥasadāyw, sometimes rendered "his acts of piety" or "his kindnesses"), a term rich with covenant connotation. The Hebrew ḥesed — loyalty, steadfast love, covenant fidelity — is ordinarily attributed to God. That it is here applied to Josiah is a remarkable theological claim: Josiah's deeds were not merely politically commendable but were expressions of the very covenant love that defines Israel's relationship with Yahweh.
Crucially, his deeds are said to be "according to that which is written in Yahweh's law." This is not boilerplate. The Chronicler has spent the entire Josiah narrative (chapters 34–35) demonstrating, episode by episode, how Josiah measured every action — the Temple repair, the Passover celebration, the covenant renewal — against the discovered Book of the Law (2 Chr 34:14–21). By returning to this standard in the epilogue, the Chronicler frames Josiah's whole reign as a lived hermeneutic: his life was an embodied interpretation of Torah. This anticipates the New Testament understanding of the believer as a "living letter" (2 Cor 3:2–3), and patristically, it resonates with Origen's claim that the righteous man himself becomes Scripture.
2 Chronicles 35:27 — "His acts, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah"
The phrase "first and last" (hāri'šōnîm wĕhā'aḥarōnîm) is a merism encompassing the totality of Josiah's reign — nothing is omitted, nothing is hidden. This is the Chronicler's characteristic formula (cf. 1 Chr 29:29; 2 Chr 9:29; 12:15; 16:11), pointing readers to source documents that no longer exist but whose invocation lends the narrative both historical gravitas and a sense of incompleteness: the full story exceeds any single telling.
The reference to "the book of the kings of Israel and Judah" is significant in a post-exilic context. Josiah, king of Judah, is here linked to "Israel and Judah" — a unified formulation that reflects the Chronicler's consistent theological vision of an undivided people of God. Even in the final, tragic chapter of Josiah's life (his death at Megiddo, vv. 20–25), his legacy belongs to all twelve tribes, not merely the remnant kingdom of Judah.
The epilogue's brevity, especially compared to the elaborate account of Josiah's Passover in vv. 1–19, creates a deliberate effect of restraint. The Chronicler does not dwell on Josiah's mysterious and troubling death at Megiddo — nor on the lament of Jeremiah (v. 25). Instead, he allows the deeds themselves, measured against divine law, to stand as the final word. This is an implicit theology of judgment: a life is ultimately assessed not by its ending but by its faithfulness throughout.
From a Catholic perspective, these two verses crystallize a theology of memoria — the Church's understanding that the deeds of the righteous are not lost but held within a living memory that transcends human record-keeping.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures" (CCC 107). The Chronicler's act of pointing beyond his own text to Yahweh's law as the interpretive standard for a human life is itself a model of what Catholic exegesis calls the sensus plenior: the deeper meaning inscribed by God in history. Josiah's deeds "according to Yahweh's law" are thus both historically factual and theologically normative.
St. John Chrysostom, commenting on similar regnal summaries, observed that the sacred writers commend rulers not for military conquest but for their ordering of life toward God. This is precisely what the Chronicler does: Josiah's ḥesed is his defining characteristic, not his military campaigns.
The phrase "first and last" carries a profound typological resonance in Catholic tradition. The Book of Revelation applies this title to Christ Himself: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last" (Rev 1:17; 22:13). When the Chronicler uses this merism for Josiah, he unknowingly anticipates the One who will fulfill and surpass all royal memory — the King whose deeds are written not in a lost annals but in the eternal Book of Life (Rev 20:12). Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§ 41), spoke of how the Old Testament's "incomplete" narratives reach their completion only in Christ. Josiah's story, preserved yet pointing beyond itself, is precisely such an incomplete narrative — holy, faithful, and typologically fulfilled in Jesus.
The double archive in these verses — the law of God and the book of kings — poses a penetrating question to the contemporary Catholic: by which standard is your life being recorded? Modern culture keeps its own exhaustive annals: social media timelines, professional résumés, reputation metrics. These are the world's "book of kings." But the Chronicler insists that the more consequential record is the one measured against God's law — not as a legal ledger of merit, but as a measure of ḥesed, covenant faithfulness.
Practically, these verses invite the practice of a daily examen in the tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola: reviewing the "first and last" of each day not for self-congratulation or despair, but with the honest question Josiah's life implicitly asks — were my acts today "according to that which is written in Yahweh's law"? The Chronicler's Josiah found the law, read it publicly, and then lived it. Catholics today have the fullness of that law in Christ. The invitation is not to perfectionism but to integration: allowing Scripture, the Eucharist, and the Sacraments to become the living standard against which our acts — first and last — are consciously measured.
Commentary