Commentary - 2 Kings 23:4-14

Bird's-eye view

What we have in this portion of 2 Kings is a description of a reformation that is nothing less than a full-scale spiritual blitzkrieg. After the book of the Law is discovered and read, King Josiah does not respond with a committee meeting or a five-year plan for incremental change. He responds with immediate, uncompromising, and thoroughgoing action. This is not a cosmetic touch-up; it is a radical purge of generations of accumulated idolatrous filth. From the very temple of Yahweh to the high places established by Solomon centuries before, Josiah moves with righteous violence to cleanse the land. The principle is clear: true repentance is not simply a feeling of sorrow. True repentance takes up a crowbar and goes to work on the idols. This passage details the systematic destruction of every vestige of pagan worship, demonstrating that faithfulness to God requires a holy intolerance of all that stands against Him. It is a physical, liturgical, and national housecleaning of the highest order.

The reform is comprehensive. It deals with the idolatrous furniture, the idolatrous personnel, the idolatrous locations, and the idolatrous practices. Josiah understands that syncretism is the mortal enemy of true worship. You cannot simply place a Baal altar next to Yahweh's altar and call it diversity. You must tear down the one to honor the other. The actions are intentionally desecrating, using fire, dust, and human bones to render these places of false worship utterly unclean and unusable. This is a king leading his people in a covenant renewal that has teeth, proving that he understands the holiness of God and the treasonous nature of idolatry.

Outline

Context In 2 Kings

This chapter is the glorious, albeit temporary, climax of the story of the kings of Judah. The nation had been on a downward spiral for generations, particularly under the grotesquely wicked reigns of Manasseh and Amon. Manasseh had filled Jerusalem with idols and innocent blood, undoing all the good his father Hezekiah had done. The situation was spiritually catastrophic. Into this darkness steps the young king Josiah. His story begins in chapter 22 with the discovery of "the Book of the Law," most likely Deuteronomy, during temple repairs. When the law is read to him, Josiah tears his clothes in genuine repentance and terror, realizing the extent of Judah's covenant unfaithfulness and the wrath they deserved. The prophetess Huldah confirms that judgment is indeed coming, but because of Josiah's tender heart, it will not come in his day. Chapter 23 is Josiah's faithful response. It is not a desperate attempt to avert judgment, but rather a wholehearted return to obedience simply because it is the right thing to do. This reformation is the fruit of hearing and submitting to the Word of God.

Key Issues

Taking a Crowbar to the High Places

When a man discovers that his house has a severe termite infestation, he does not simply paint over the damaged wood. He calls the exterminator, he rips out the rotten beams, and he makes war on the pests until they are gone. Anything less is foolishness. This is the mindset of Josiah in this chapter. Having heard the Word of God, he sees with terrible clarity that the covenant house of Judah is infested to the rafters with the worship of false gods. His response is not a quiet, private piety. It is a loud, public, and violent war against every manifestation of that idolatry. He understands that you cannot be at peace with God while you are at peace with God's enemies. The reformation described here is a pattern for all true repentance, whether personal or corporate. It must be thorough, it must be based on the Word, and it must not spare the idols we have grown fond of.

Verse by Verse Commentary

4 Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.

The reformation begins where it must: in the house of God. The temple had become a museum of pagan paraphernalia. Vessels dedicated to Baal, the Canaanite storm god; to Asherah, his consort; and to the host of heaven, the astral deities of Assyria, were all cluttering up the holy place. Josiah commands the priests to haul it all out. The cleansing is total. He then burns it all outside the city, a sign of utter rejection. And in a stroke of righteous genius, he has the ashes carried to Bethel. Bethel was the ground zero of the northern kingdom's apostasy, where Jeroboam set up his golden calf centuries before. By depositing the ashes of Judah's idolatry there, Josiah is essentially saying, "This filth belongs with that filth. It is all part of the same rebellion, and we are repudiating the whole sorry history of it."

5 And he did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed and who burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the surrounding area of Jerusalem, as well as those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven.

After dealing with the hardware, he deals with the personnel. A compromised priesthood is a cancer in the nation. These were not legitimate Levites, but idolatrous priests appointed by Josiah's wicked predecessors. They were the state-sanctioned agents of apostasy. Josiah deposes them, cutting off the institutional support for paganism. Notice again the laundry list of false gods. This was not a singular cult; it was a free-for-all of syncretism. They had collected idols the way some people collect stamps, and it was all an abomination to the God who demands exclusive worship.

6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh outside Jerusalem to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and ground it to dust, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people.

The Asherah was likely a wooden pole or stylized tree, a central artifact of the Canaanite fertility cult. The shocking thing is its location: from the house of Yahweh. This was not in some dark corner of the land; it was in the very center of Israel's worship. Josiah subjects it to the ultimate contempt. He burns it, grinds the remains into fine powder so it can never be reassembled, and then scatters the dust over a public graveyard. The symbolism is potent: this idol, which promised life and fertility, is consigned to the place of death and corruption. It is declared to be unclean, dead, and worthless.

7 He also tore down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which were in the house of Yahweh, where the women were weaving hangings for the Asherah.

Here we see the inevitable connection between idolatry and sexual deviancy. The worship of these fertility gods and goddesses was not an abstract, philosophical affair. It involved ritual prostitution. And again, the location is staggering: these brothels were part of the temple complex. The house of God had become a house of perversion. Josiah tears them down. This was an entire cottage industry of sin, with women weaving textiles for the idol while the ritual sodomy was taking place nearby. True worship promotes sexual purity within the covenant of marriage; false worship always leads to sexual chaos.

8-9 Then he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he tore down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the ruler of the city, which were on one’s left at the city gate. Nevertheless the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.

Josiah's reform extends throughout the whole land, "from Geba to Beersheba," a phrase indicating the northern and southern borders of Judah. He centralizes worship in Jerusalem as Deuteronomy commands. The priests who had served at these illegitimate high places, even if they were serving Yahweh in a syncretistic way, are brought to Jerusalem. Their places of service are defiled and torn down. Verse 9 gives us a fascinating detail. These priests are judged; they are disqualified from serving at the main altar. Their compromise has consequences. But they are not cast out entirely. They are still provided for, eating "unleavened bread among their brothers." This is a picture of disciplined restoration. They are removed from office but not from the covenant community.

10 He also defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech.

If the cult prostitution was sickening, this is the absolute nadir of human depravity. Topheth was a site in the Valley of Hinnom (from which we get the word Gehenna, or hell) where Israelites were sacrificing their own children to the Ammonite god Molech. This is the darkest outworking of idolatry. When you abandon the true God, you do not become enlightened and free; you become enslaved to demons and capable of the most horrific evils. Josiah defiles this place, making it ritually unclean, to ensure that this abomination can never happen there again. This is a direct confrontation with the most demonic practices in the land.

11-12 And he did away with the horses which the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance of the house of Yahweh... and the altars which were on the roof... and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, the king tore down...

The pagan influence was everywhere. Previous kings had set up sacred horses and chariots dedicated to the sun, a practice borrowed from Mesopotamian religion, right at the entrance to the temple. Altars were built on the palace roof and throughout the temple courts by wicked kings like Ahaz and Manasseh. Josiah is relentless. He gets rid of the horses, burns the chariots, and smashes the altars. He is erasing the liturgical legacy of his apostate fathers, crushing their altars and throwing the dust into the Kidron brook, the city's sewer. He is flushing generations of idolatry out of the holy city.

13-14 And the high places which were before Jerusalem... which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the detestable idol of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the sons of Ammon, the king defiled. And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with human bones.

This is perhaps the most stunning part of the reform. Josiah does not just clean up the recent messes of Manasseh and Ahaz. He goes all the way back to the compromises of Solomon. Solomon, in his later years, built high places for the gods of his foreign wives right outside Jerusalem. For over three hundred years, these monuments to Solomon's foolishness had stood, a constant source of spiritual infection. No other reforming king, not even Hezekiah, had dared to touch them. But Josiah does. He defiles them in the most potent way possible, by scattering human bones on them. For a Jew, contact with a dead body was the source of major ritual uncleanness. Josiah is declaring these ancient high places to be spiritually dead and contaminating. He is finishing a job that should have been done centuries ago.

Application

The account of Josiah's reformation is a bracing tonic for the modern church, which is often timid, compromising, and allergic to confrontation. We learn here that true repentance, sparked by the Word of God, is active and thorough. It is not enough to feel bad about our sin; we must take a hammer to our idols.

What are the idols in our own lives, in our own churches? They may not be Asherah poles or altars to Molech, but they are just as real. They are the idols of comfort, wealth, sexual license, political power, and personal autonomy. We have allowed the worship of these gods to creep into the very house of God. We have compromised with the spirit of the age, setting up its altars in our hearts and in our congregations. We need a Josiah-like courage to identify these idols, tear them down, and grind them to dust.

This passage also teaches us that reformation is costly and comprehensive. It deals with things, with people, and with history. We must be willing to get rid of sinful habits (the vessels), distance ourselves from false teachers (the priests), and renounce the sinful legacies we have inherited (the high places of Solomon). Ultimately, Josiah's work was a shadow of the work of the greater Josiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus cleansed the temple with a whip, and He cleanses the temple of our hearts with His blood. He is the one who truly tears down every stronghold and every high place that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Our repentance is simply our participation in the victory He has already won.