2 Kings 23

2 KINGS CHAPTER 23

Josiah Renews the Covenant

• • • The king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up to the house of Yahweh accompanied by all the people of Judah, all the residents of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets- all the people from the youngest to the oldest. As they listened, he read aloud all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh. Then the king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of Yahweh, to follow Yahweh and to obey His commandments, His statutes, and His decrees with all of his heart and soul by carrying out the terms of the covenant that were written in this book. All the people agreed to the covenant.

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible writes, “In the spirit of the instructions of Deuteronomy (Deut 31:10-13) and like Joshua before him (Josh 8:34-35), Josiah summoned…all the people to hear the reading of the entire Book of the Covenant…Covenant renewal was observed at several critical points in the history of God’s people (see 11:12, 17; Josh 24:1-27; 1 Kgs 8:1-53).”

• • • • ESV Study Bible notes, “Since Josiah is a pious king, Huldah’s oracle about the future does not deflect him from the path of religious reform; reformation in the light of the Book of the Covenant is still the right thing to do…”

• • • • Guzik says, “Josiah heard the promise of both eventual judgment and the immediate delay of judgment. He did not respond with indifference or simple contentment that he would not see the judgment in his day. He wanted to get the kingdom right with God, and he knew that he could not do it all by himself – he needed all the elders of Judah to join in broken repentance with him. The king did this himself. He was so concerned that the nation would hear the word of God that he read it to them himself. King Josiah stood before the people and publicly declared his commitment to obey the word of God to the very best of his ability (with all his heart and all his soul).

• • • • On the response of the people, Guzik continues, “They did this in response to the example and leadership of King Josiah. We do not read of any command for the people to do this; they did it spontaneously as they followed the king’s example and leadership. This kind of mass response and commitment to the LORD cannot be commanded, but that does not mean that there is no part for man to play. It was clearly the work of God among the people, but God worked through the example and leadership of King Josiah. The fact that this happened among all the people means that this was a special work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us that there are times when the Holy Spirit comes upon people as a group, which is a different work than the individual filling of the Spirit. There are times when the Holy Spirit seems to work on a group, and we should pray for such moving of the Holy Spirit today.”

Josiah’s Reforms

• • • The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank, and the doorkeepers to bring out of Yahweh’s house all of the articles made for Baal, Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside of Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and took their ashes to Bethel. He did away with the priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifices on the high places in the cities of Judah and those around Jerusalem- those who had offered sacrifices to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and all the host of heaven. He removed the Asherah pole from Yahweh’s house, took it outside Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley, and burned it. He ground it into powder and threw the powder in the public graveyard. He also tore down the houses of the male cult prostitutes in Yahweh’s house, where the women did weaving for Asherah.

• • • • Guzik writes, “This shows us how deep idolatry was in Judah. There were idols dedicated to Baal, to Asherah, and to all the host of heaven in the very temple itself. From this account, it seems that Josiah began the cleansing reforms at the center and worked outwards…Josiah’s reforms did not only remove sinful things, but also the sinful people that promoted and permitted these sinful things. The idols that filled the temple did not get there or stay there on their own – there were idolatrous priests who were responsible for these sinful practices. Any thorough reformation can not only deal with sinful things; it must also deal with sinful people. If sinful people are not dealt with, they will quickly bring back the sinful things that were righteously removed…Supposedly sacred prostitution was an integral part of the worship of many of these pagan idols. The temple had become a brothel and King Josiah corrected this disgraceful perversion.”

• • • • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says, “[The] Kidron Valley lay to the east of the Old City of David, separating it from the Mount of Olives. It ran from north to south to join first the Tyropoeon Valley at the southern end of the city and then, father on, the Hinnom Valley. The stream that ran through the valley, then, progressed southeast and emptied into the Dead Sea. Associated with idolatry since the time of Solomon (1 Kgs 11:7), the Kidron Valley became during Josiah’s reformation a convenient place to destroy cult objects, thus not only removing them from Jerusalem but also desecrating the valley itself as a religious site.” On Bethel, “Jeroboam I had focused his new cult on Bethel and Dan (1 Kgs 12-13…), and this cult lived on in the activities of the new settlers of the land of Israel (cf 2 Kgs 17:24-41)…Josiah is here envisaged as seeking to reform worship both in Judah and in territory that had belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel (cf 2 Chron 34:3-7), which he now implicitly claims back as his own…”

• • • • On the priests Josiah did away with Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers explains, “The kěmārîm, or black-robed priests (Hosea 10:5, of the priests of the calf-worship at Beth-el). Only occurring besides in Zephaniah 1:4. Here, as in the passage of Hosea, the word denotes the unlawful priests of Jehovah, as contrasted with those of the Baal, mentioned in the next place. Whether the term really means black-robed, as Kimchi explains, is questionable. Priests used to wear white throughout the ancient world, except on certain special occasions. Gesenius derives it from a root meaning black, but explains, one clad in black, i.e., a mourner, an ascetic, and so a priest. Perhaps the true derivation is from another root, meaning to weave: weaver of spells or charms; as magic was an invariable concomitant of false worship. (Comp. 2Kings 17:17; 2Kings 21:6.) It is a regular word for priest in Syriac (chûmrâ; Psalm 110:4; and the Ep. to the Heb., passim.)”

• • • • On the male cult prostitutes, the same source notes, “The cabins of the Kedēshim . . . in the house. The Kedēshim were males, perhaps eunuchs, who prostituted themselves like women in honour of the Asherah. (See 1Kings 14:24; 1Kings 15:12; Hosea 4:14.) The passage shows that the last infamy of Canaanite nature-worship had been established in the very sanctuary of Jehovah. The revolt of Judah could go no farther.”

• • • • What exactly the women were weaving for Asherah is debated. NET Bible’s text notes say, “Perhaps tent-shrines made from cloth are in view (see BDB 109 s.v…). M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 286) understand this as referring to clothes made for images of the goddess.”

• • • Then Josiah brought to Jerusalem all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices from Geba all the way to Beersheba. He tore down the high place of the goat idols situated at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, on the left side of the city gate. Now the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened bread among their fellow priests. The king defiled Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so that no one could sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molech. He did away with the statues of horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun god. They had been placed at the entrance of Yahweh’s house in the precincts near the chamber of a eunuch named Nathan-Melek. He burned up the chariots dedicated to the sun god. The king tore down the altars the kings of Judah had set up on the roof of Ahaz’s upper room, as well as the altars Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of Yahweh’s house. He crushed them and threw their dust into the Kidron Valley. The king also defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Destruction, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Astarte the detestable Sidonian goddess, Chemosh the detestable Moabite god, and Milcom the detestable Ammonite god. He smashed the sacred pillars to pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and filled those shrines with human bones.

• • • • In verse 8, I have gone with the NET Bible’s rendering of “high place of the goat idols” rather than “the high places of the gates.” NET’s text critical notes explain their decision, “The Hebrew text reads ‘the high places of the gates,’ which is problematic in that the rest of the verse speaks of a specific gate. The translation assumes an emendation to …(bamot hashʿarim), ‘the high place of the goats’ (that is, goat idols). Worship of such images is referred to in Lev 17:7 and 2 Chr 11:15. For a discussion of the textual issue, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 286-87.”

• • • • On Josiah’s bringing priests from the high places of the cities of Judah ESV Study Bible writes, “These were local places of worship in various cities…One example is probably an Israelite temple found at the site of Arad. It was built in the tenth century BC, and has many similarities to the Solomonic Jerusalem temple: e.g., a sacrificial altar in the courtyard of the Arad complex measured exactly the same as the temple altar described in Ex. 27:1. The Arad complex was not a legitimate Israelite shrine and was therefore abolished in the seventh century BC, through the reforms of either Josiah or Hezekiah.”

• • • • On the Valley of Ben Hinnom and Topheth, the same source continues, “It is here associated with the worship of Molech…and Topheth is the site where this worship was practiced. Sacred sites of this kind, containing urns and holding ashes and bone remains of children and animals, have been found at Carthage and other Phoenician colonies of the Western Mediterranean. ‘Hinnom Valley’ is the short form of the name, which was transliterated into Greek as ‘Gehenna’ (see…Matt 23:15).”

• • • • On the horses, NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible explains, “The practice of dedicating horses to the sun appears to have been distinctively Assyrian (by way of the Hurrian peoples of Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia and Syria in the second half of the second millennium BC), but is also known in Ugarit. The sun-god was thought to ride across the sky in a chariot drawn by horses. These horses may be dedicated to a foreign solar deity, or perhaps to a syncretistic version of Yahweh as a sun-god.”

• • • • On the Mount of Destruction, the HCSB adds, “The ‘Mount of Destruction’ is from the Hebrew har hammishchit, and was the deliberate change of the actual name of the place, har hammishchah, the ‘Mount of Anointing’ (probably the Mount of Olives). The idolatry that occurred there was so detestable, they changed the last syllable to reflect the ultimate fate of those who worshiped other gods there.”

• • • • On the reference to human bones, the same source adds, “It is possible that these were added to the refuse so that no one would disturb it, because of the taboo of coming into contact with dead bodies.”

• • • He also tore down the altar in Bethel at the high place made by Nebat’s son Jeroboam who caused Israel to sin. He burned the high place, ground it to powder, including the Asherah pole. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it in accordance with the word of Yahweh which was announced by a man of God while Jeroboam stood by the altar during a festival. Then the king turned and saw the grave of the man of God who had foretold this. He asked, “What is this monument I see?” The men from the city replied, “It marks the grave of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things that you have done to the altar at Bethel.” The king said, “Leave him alone. Don’t let anyone disturb his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed, as well as the bones of the Israelite prophet buried beside him.

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible says, “Jeroboam had built the altar at Bethel to encourage Israelites to worship at centers closer to home rather than going to Jerusalem (1 Kgs 12:26-31). Josiah’s desecration of the site followed the stipulations of the law (Deut 7:5; 12:3) and fulfilled the earlier prophesy of the man of God who had denounced the altar (1 Kgs 13:1-3).”

• • • • NET Bible’s text critical notes explain that the Masoretic text likely accidentally leaves out some text in v. 16, “The MT is much shorter than this. It reads, “according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.” The LXX has a much longer text at this point. It reads: ‘[which was proclaimed by the man of God] while Jeroboam stood by the altar at a celebration. Then he turned and saw the grave of the man of God [who proclaimed these words].’ The extra material attested in the LXX was probably accidentally omitted in the Hebrew tradition when a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the phrase ‘man of God’ (which appears right before the extra material) and the second occurrence of the phrase (which appears at the end of the extra material).”

• • • • The same source explains their rendering of the text at the end of v. 18, which I have followed, “Heb ‘and they left undisturbed his bones, the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.’ If the phrase “the bones of the prophet” were appositional to ‘his bones,’ one would expect the sentence to end ‘from Judah’ (see v. 17). Apparently the ‘prophet’ referred to in the second half of the verse is the old prophet from Bethel who buried the man of God from Judah in his own tomb and instructed his sons to bury his bones there as well (1 Kgs 13:30-31). One expects the text to read ‘from Bethel,’ but ‘Samaria’ (which was not even built at the time of the incident recorded in 1 Kgs 13) is probably an anachronistic reference to the northern kingdom in general. See the note at 1 Kgs 13:32 and the discussion in M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 290.”

• • • Josiah also removed all of the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria. The kings of Israel had built them and provoked Yahweh to anger. Josiah did the same things to them that he had done to the high place at Bethel. He sacrificed all the priests of the high places on the altars located there, and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible remarks, “Josiah’s religious purge extended throughout the former northern kingdom (see also 2 Chr 34:6-7). Josiah’s freedom to carry out such reforms testifies to his strength and Assyria’s growing weakness…”

Josiah Restores the Passover

• • • The king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to Yahweh your God as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” He commanded this because no such Passover had been kept from the time of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. But in the 18^th year of King Josiah’s reign, this Passover was observed to Yahweh in Jerusalem.

• • • • “A Passover like this had not been observed since the days of the judges who judged Israel (see Josh 5:10-12 for the last mention of Passover in the narrative; also Deut 16:1-8 for the stipulations, esp v. 6). In celebrating this festival Josiah outstrips not only Hezekiah in faithfulness to God, but even David.” (ESV Study Bible)

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible writes, “Hezekiah had observed the Passover with modifications (2 Chr 30:1-4, 13, 23-27). Josiah’s Passover was done in accordance with the strict standards of the law (2 Chr 35:1-19). The eighteenth year was the same year in which the Book of the Law was found (2 Kgs 22:3, 8).”

• • • • Guzik remarks, “The Passover remembered the central act of redemption in the Old Testament: God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt in the days of Moses. Their neglect of the Passover proved that they had neglected to remember the LORD’s work of redemption for them. It was as if a group of modern Christians had completely forgotten communion or the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which remembers Jesus’ work of redemption for us.”

Josiah’s Further Zeal

• • • Josiah also got rid of the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, magicians, the household gods, idols, and all the other detestable things seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. He did this in order to carry out the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh. Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king who turned to Yahweh like him- with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all of the Law of Moses.

“King Josiah / Yoshiyahu cleansing the land of idols. king of Judah c. (641-609 BCE) who made major reforms. 2 Kings 23 :24… Illustration by William Hole 1846 – 1917”

• • • • In verse 24, I have again sided with the NET Bible rendering “ritual pits used to conjure up spirits…” For a full explanation please see notes for 2 Kgs 21:6.

• • • • ESV Archaeology Study Bible writes, “The household gods were images of deities that were either life-sized (1 Sam 19:13-16) or figurine-sized (Gen 31:19-25). They could be used in divination in general (Ezek 21:21; Zech 10:2), and perhaps necromancy in particular. Some extrabiblical texts suggest that this worship was linked to worship of dead ancestors, who were believed to speak via the figurines.”

• • • Nevertheless, Yahweh did not turn away from the heat of His fierce anger which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him. And Yahweh said, “I will remove Judah from My presence just as I removed Israel. I will reject Jerusalem, the city that I chose, and the house of which I said, ‘My Name will be there.’”

• • • • Guzik says, “God did not turn from His wrath because despite Josiah’s personal godliness, and his righteous example and leadership, the people of Judah still provoked Him, loving the sins introduced during the wicked days of Manasseh, Josiah’s grandfather.”

• • • • ESV Study Bible adds, “The righteousness of this one king could not change the overall situation…God must purge his people of deeply rooted unfaithfulness, and only exile would accomplish this.”

Josiah’s Death in Battle

• • • The rest of the events of Josiah’s reign along with all of his accomplishments are recorded in the book, “Annals of the Kings of Judah.” During his reign, Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, and Pharaoh Necho killed him at Megiddo as soon as he saw him. His servants transported his dead body in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his own tomb. The people of the land took Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, anointed him, and made him king in his father’s place.

• • • • ESV Archaeology Study Bible provides context, “After the death of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal around 627 BC, Egypt gradually emerged as the major power in Syria-Palestine and ally of Assyria in its struggle with Babylon, sending troops northward, at least from 616 onward, to join the Assyrians in battle. The battle mentioned here took place in 609 BC as Pharaoh Neco II (610-595) marched north for what was apparently the last joint Assyrian-Egyptian engagement with the Babylonians (and their allies, the Medes). Megiddo controlled the main international highway running from Egypt to Damascus as it entered the Jezreel Valley. Josiah’s decision to confront the Egyptian army there implies he had captured Megiddo from either the Egyptians or the Assyrians before the battle and was perhaps hoping to benefit from being seen to take the Babylonians’ side. However, Josiah did not survive the battle. The Babylonian Chronicle recounts the expeditions of Pharaoh Neco II of Egypt to aid the Assyrians: ‘Seventeenth year (609 BC): In the month of Du’uzu, Ashur-uballit, king of Assyria, (and) a large [army of] Egypt…crossed the river (Euphrates) and [marched on] to conquer Harran,’ although they were unsuccessful in taking the city (ANET, 305). Nevertheless, Josiah’s attempt to prevent Egypt’s reinforcements from reaching the Assyrian army cost him his life.”

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible adds, “In 609 BC, Pharaoh Neco was en route to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria in fighting the Babylonians at Haran, when Josiah met him at Megiddo. After the death of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 626 BC, Assyrian cities began falling to Nabopolassar (626-605 BC), king of the rising neo-Babylonian power. Nabopolassar captured Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, in 612 BC. The Assyrian forces fled to Haran, where the Babylonians defeated them in 609 BC. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (605-562 BC) later defeated the remaining Assyrians at Carchemish in 605 BC, the same year in which he first invaded Judah (see 24:1).”

Exile of the Kings of Judah (23:31-24:17)

Judah’s King Jehoahaz

• • • Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king and he reigned for 3 months in Jerusalem. His mother was Jeremiah’s daughter, Hamutal, and she was from Libnah. He did what was evil in Yahweh’s eyes just as his ancestors had done. Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. He also demanded that Judah pay 7,500 pounds of silver and 75 pounds of gold as tribute. Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt and he died there. Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the required amount of silver and gold, but to meet Pharaoh’s demands Jehoiakim taxed the land. He collected an assessed amount from each man among the people of the land in order to pay Pharaoh Necho.

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible notes, “Jehoahaz was named Shallum at birth (see…1 Chr 3:15); his throne name Jehoahaz has been discovered among seals from the 600s BC. He was twenty-three years old, but is brother Jehoiakim was twenty-five (2 Kgs 23:36). There is no indication as to why the younger brother was made king. The three months of Jehoahaz’s reign (in 609 BC) might coincide with the period in which Pharaoh Neco was attempting to aid the Assyrians (23:29). The entrenched wickedness and apostasy of the times surfaced even in Josiah’s own sons (23:32, 37; 24:9, 19). The Lord’s intention to judge Judah (23:26-27) was justified and would soon be fulfilled.”

• • • • As Guzik points out, Jehoahaz was apparently the youngest of 3 brothers. He cites Knapp, “The regular succession to the throne of Judah ceased with the lamented Josiah. Jehoahaz was not the eldest son of the late king. Johanan and Jehoiakim were both older than he (1 Chronicles 3:15). He was made king by popular choice: it was the preference of the multitude, not the appointment of God.”

• • • • ESV Archaeology Study Bible says, “Riblah was located on the eastern bank of the Orontes River and served as Neco’s temporary headquarters.”

Judah’s King Jehoiakim

• • • Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king and he reigned for 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Pedaiah’s daughter, Zebidah, and she was from Rumah. He did what was evil in Yahweh’s eyes just as his ancestors had done.

• • • • NLT Illustrated Study Bible writes, “Jehoiakim, Jehoahaz’s older brother (cp 23:31), reigned eleven years (609-598 BC). The record in the book of Jeremiah characterizes Jehoiakim as a total apostate (see Jer 22:13-23; 25:1-14; 26:20-23; 36:1-32).”

• • • • Guzik says, “Jehoiakim was nothing more than a puppet king presiding over a vassal kingdom under the Egyptians. He imposed heavy taxes on the people and paid the money to the Egyptians, as required.”

Image via NLT Illustrated Study Bible p. 728

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