Thoughts on 2 Kings 23
There are numerous Biblical occasions when civil leaders urged a national reading of God’s Word. For example, under righteous King Josiah of Israel:
The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah, and with him all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord (2 Kings 23:2).
Ezra also assembled the nation to read the Word of God (Nehemiah 8:1-3), and Moses likewise instructed the people to gather together and read God’s Word so that they might know it, obey it, and teach it to the rising generation, for by so doing, they would remain blessed as a nation (Deuteronomy 31:11-13).
America’s national leaders continued to follow this pattern. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed:
I suggest a nationwide reading of the Holy Scriptures during the period from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas. . . . Go to . . . the Scriptures for a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure of true greatness as this nation has achieved.1
(Today, National Bible Week is still officially commemorated one week of the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But sadly few citizens know of its existence, and sadder still even fewer observe it.)
Why would President Roosevelt publicly call the nation to a time of Scripture reading? Because of its proven beneficial influence:
In the formative days of the Republic, the directing influence the Bible exercised upon the fathers of the Nation is conspicuously evident. . . . We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a Nation without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic.2
On the same basis, President Ronald Reagan declared a national “Year of the Bible,” explaining:
Of the many influences that have shaped the United States of America into a distinctive Nation and people, none may be said to be more fundamental and enduring than the Bible. . . . The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers’ abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual – rights which they found implicit in the Bible’s teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned . . . the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. . . . There could be no more fitting moment than now to reflect . . . upon the wisdom revealed to us in the [Bible].3
President Teddy Roosevelt similarly affirmed:
[T]he teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally—impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals—all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has by his life-work added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud—of which our people are proud – almost every such man has based his lifework largely upon the teachings of the Bible. . . . Among the very greatest men, a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand. . . . So I plead not merely for training of the mind but for . . . the moral and spiritual training that have always been found in and that have ever accompanied the study of this Book—this Book, which in almost every civilized tongue can be described as “The Book.”4
Teddy wanted everyone to know the Bible, and a reason that he had been so thoroughly impressed by President Abraham Lincoln was his personal mastery of the Bible. As he explained:
Lincoln—sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century laid down his life for the people whom living he had served as well—built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely – mastered it as later he mastered only one or two other books (notably Shakespeare) —mastered it so that he became almost “a man of one Book,” who knew that Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein.5
Indeed, it is extremely difficult to find any of Lincoln’s major speeches not laced throughout with Scriptures, so it is therefore not surprising that in speaking of the Bible, Lincoln declared:
It is the best gift God has given to men. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong. 6
President Zachary Taylor also stressed how important it was that every citizen, especially young citizens, know the Bible:
The Bible is the best of books and I wish it were in the hands of everyone. It is indispensable to the safety and permanence of our institutions; a free government cannot exist without religion and morals, and there cannot be morals without religion, nor religion without the Bible. Especially should the Bible be placed in the hands of the young. It is the best schoolbook in the world. . . . I would that all of our people were brought up under the influence of that Holy Book.7
President Harry Truman, speaking at a conference of law enforcement officials assembled from across the nation, reminded them:
The fundamental basis of this Nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.8
President Andrew Jackson likewise declared of the Bible that “it is the rock on which our Republic rests.”9
And President Grant, on the 100th anniversary of American Independence exhorted, “Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your heats, and practice them in your lives. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look for our guide in the future.”10
There are many other examples demonstrating that America’s leaders understood the importance of God’s Word to the nation and publicly urged the reading and knowledge of it, just as ancient leaders such as Moses, Ezra, and Josiah had done. It is important that every citizen personally study, learn, and live by God’s Word, teaching it to their children and also electing at the local, county, state, and federal level leaders who know and honor the principles of “The Book.”
Endnotes
1 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Proclamation 2629—Thanksgiving Day, 1944,” November 1, 1944, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/210843.
2 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Statement on the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Printing of the English Bible,” October 6, 1935, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209257.
3 Ronald Reagan, “Proclamation 5018—Year of the Bible, 1983,” February 3rd, 1983, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/262128.
4 Theodore Roosevelt, “On Reading the Bible: Delivered before the Members of the Bible Society,” 1901, Modern Eloquence, ed. Thomas B. Reed (Philadelphia: John D. Morris and Company, 1903), XV:1770-1776.
5 Roosevelt, “On Reading the Bible: Delivered before the Members of the Bible Society,” 1901, Modern Eloquence, ed. Reed (1903), XV:1770-1776.
6 Abraham Lincoln, “Reply to Committee of Colored People of Baltimore Who Presented Him with a Bible,” Complete Works Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, John Nicolay and John Hay, editors (New York: The Century Co., 1894), 2:574.
7 “The President and the Bible,” New York Semi-Weekly Tribune (Wednesday, May 9, 1849), IV:100:1.
8 Harry S. Truman, “Address Before the Attorney General’s Conference on Law Enforcement Problems,” February 15, 1950, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230655.
9 Ronald Reagan, “Proclamation 5018—Year of the Bible, 1983,” February 3rd, 1983, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/262128; see the same quote in a proclamation from President George H. W. Bush, “International Year of Bible Reading,” February 22, 1990, Code of Federal Regulations (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1991), 21.
10 Ulysses Grant, “Message of President Grant to the Children and Youth of the U.S.” card in WallBuilders Museum collection.
