Strengthen your faith in God's word

Kings says that Pharaohnechoh “slew him at Megiddo,” and “his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre” (2 Kings 23:29–30). Chronicles says the archers shot him, and his servants “put him in the second chariot that he had; and they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers” (2 Chronicles 35:23–24).

Josiah was shot at Megiddo and said, “Have me away; for I am sore wounded” (2 Chronicles 35:23). Kings, which tells the end briefly, says Pharaoh “slew him” there, as one says of a mortal wound. The Hebrew word Kings uses for “dead” is used of a man still living whose death is sure: God said to Abimelech, “Behold, thou art but a dead man” (Genesis 20:3), where the word is the same. Chronicles tells the journey: they moved him to his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem, and he died. Gill takes it that he died of his wound on the way; Haley, that he was carried off the field dying and died on the way to Jerusalem. Either way, Kings counts him slain from the moment he was struck, and Chronicles, which doesn’t say where on the road he died, doesn’t deny it.

His own sepulchre was one of the sepulchres of his fathers. The kings of Judah made their own tombs among their fathers’ in the city of David, as Asa was buried “in his own sepulchres, which he had made for himself in the city of David” (2 Chronicles 16:14).