According to an unnamed "man of God" (sometimes identified as Iddo) had prophesied to King Jeroboam of the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), approximately three hundred years earlier, that "a son named Josiah will be born to the house of David" and that he would destroy the altar at Bethel. And the only exception to this destruction was for the grave of an unnamed prophet he found in Bethel (), who had foretold that these religious sites Jeroboam erected would one day be destroyed (see ). Josiah ordered the double grave of the "man of God" and of the Bethel prophet to be left alone as these prophecies had come true.