2 Kings 22:1-7
"22 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. 2 And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lordand walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
3 In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying,4 “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people. 5 And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of the Lord, repairing the house6 (that is, to the carpenters, and to the builders, and to the masons), and let them use it for buying timber and quarried stone to repair the house. 7 But no accounting shall be asked from them for the money that is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly.”"
Josiah was the last good king before the final calamity of the Captivity overtook Judah. One might tend to think that the occurrence of good and bad kings was apparently haphazard and fortuitous, but this is not so. A careful examination of the chart of prophetic activity will show that Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and particularly Jeremiah, exercised their ministries in Josiah's time, and without doubt conditioned his reign. Scarcely any other period had such a concentration of attention from God as this, and it may signify the urgent and tender concern He felt for His people as He saw the inevitable doom approaching. The fact that Josiah's reformation was the most thorough and noteworthy of all indicates that their ministry was not in vain. It is this that we must understand to be behind the simple but eloquent phrase in 7 - 'they dealt faithfully.' Nothing could commend more effectively the moral power and integrity of the prophets' word than this, that at the very heart of the nation's life, even after the ravages of so many evil years under Amon and Manasseh, there should be men who were utterly trustworthy and who scorned to stoop to base and unworthy things. Ah, we may sometimes think that a ministry is making little headway as to spectacular results, but if it is creating in the midst of national declension, the possibility of standards of probity and integrity in character and conduct, who shall estimate its worth and significance in the purposes of God? That this - in 7 - should be its fruit is the ultimate vindication of any work for Him.