The Age of Accountability

Just what age biblically would be the age of accountability? Numbers 4 provides one with the age brackets for all those who entered the service to do the work in the sanctuary of meeting (Numbers 4:3,23,30, 35,39, and 47). “From thirty years old and above, even to fifty years old”. Is is also reported that one had to be at least thirty years of age, if they were a Jew, to read The Song of Solomon so in effect became the very first PG-30 rating found in the word of God.

However my glance at the age of accountability comes somewhere else in the Bible, that being 2 Chronicles 34. The subject in mind King Josiah Here are the four stages which encompass biblical accountability in my opinion, of course.

1. “Josiah was eight years old when he became king and he reigned 31 years” 34:1. This was hardly the age of accountability for the king was just a young boy. “Cake and ice cream for everyone” would have been his continual order of the day.

2. “In the eighth year of his reign, WHEN HE WAS STILL YOUNG, he BEGAN to seek the God of his father David” 34:3. Let’s do the math! 8 +8=16 years old. The adolesent years full of storm and fury. The word of God even cites a 16 year old as “still young”. It was at this age that he “began” to seek the Lord. These were his initial footsteps in the faith. It could well be assumed that this was the age of accountability but I think not.

3. In the 12th year he began to purge Judah of the high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images” 34:3. At 16 he began to know the Lord but at 20 years old he began to obey God and this is what I believe is the true age of accountability. He was too young to know about what true conversion was at eight and two feisty to obey God at sixteen until he began to sow the wildness out of him. Here at twenty he began to obey God. “Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and COUNT THE COST, whether he has enough to finish it. Whoever does not bear his cross and come AFTER ME cannot be My disciple” Luke 14:27-28. I believe Josiah had counted the cost of obedience at twenty and began to follow After God.

4. “In the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the temple” 34:8. At 20 he began to obey God but it took him until he was 26 years old to cleanse the land of all the abominations that had been piled in it. 26-20= 6 years! It took 6 years to accomplish that cleansing. That would consist of one and a half terms of an United States President. Manasseh had built a kingdom of abominable pollution that took six full years for Josiah to rid the land of and you can count those numbers for yourself.

2o years old is such a beautiful number to be the age of accountability when reason begins to get a foothold on a young man. I would be interested in your thoughts on my conclusions. Why is obedience tethered to that age of accountability? Well, Romans begins and ends with “Obedience to the faith” Romans 1:5 and 16:26. Without obedience as the measure, how can one be accountable for the things they do?