Josiah יאשיהו המלך
the last righteous king of Judah, a reformer
Yoshiyahu was born in 3277 and became king at eight, after his father's murder. By eighteen he had turned the country round: he tore down altars, cut the sacred trees, defiled the Tofet in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, destroyed cults standing since Solomon's day, and went as far as Beit-El to smash Yarovam's altar.
During repairs to the Temple the High Priest Chilkiyahu found a Torah scroll. When the curses of Deuteronomy were read to him the king tore his garments. The prophetess Chuldah answered that the verdict on the land stood, but the disaster would not come in his lifetime. Yoshiyahu gathered the people into a covenant and kept a Passover unlike any since the days of the judges.
Knowing what was coming, he ordered the Ark, the jar of manna and Aharon's staff hidden; the Talmud holds they lie beneath the Temple Mount.
In 3316 Pharaoh Necho marched through the country against Assyria. Yoshiyahu met him at Megiddo and was mortally wounded. Yirmeyahu composed a lament for him. Judah lasted only twenty-two more years.