2 Kings 23:31-37
"31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 32 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. 33 And Pharaoh Neco put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and laid on the land a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. 34 And Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away, and he came to Egypt and died there. 35 And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the money according to the command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, from everyone according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Neco.
36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. 37 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done."
It did not take long, as we see from these verses, for the work of reformation to be undone. After Josiah's untimely death, first one son, and then another, succeeded him, and straightway turned back to the evil ways that had brought ruin and disaster on the nation. Jeremiah the prophet, whose ministry was exercised during these last few reigns in Judah, must have deeply lamented the passing of Josiah, and seen in it the removal of the last stay against divine judgment. Almost any page of his prophecy suffices to reflect the sense of swiftly oncoming disaster. It is important that we should be able to clothe this skeleton-like outline of the history of the time in 2 Kings with the substantial material he provides in his writings. The significant thing that this shows is that at no time in the long downward trend were the people without the word of the Lord, and that it was in the face of His solemn warnings through the prophets, and in spite of them, that they went to their doom. The warnings were given, but unheeded, and the responsibility was entirely their own.