Commentary - 2 Chronicles 34:1-7

Bird's-eye view

This passage records the beginning of one of the great revivals in the history of God's people, spearheaded by a king who was just a boy. After the catastrophic apostasy of his father Amon and his grandfather Manasseh, Josiah stands as a stark and glorious contrast. The central lesson here is that true reformation is not a matter of political negotiation or cultural accommodation; it is a top-down, Spirit-led, Word-driven, violent affair. It begins with a personal seeking of the true God, and it flows outward into a ruthless and thorough purging of all idolatry and false worship. Josiah's actions are a textbook example of the regulative principle of worship in action. He doesn't just add a Yahweh-service to the existing religious smorgasbord; he demolishes the entire false apparatus because God has not commanded it. This is a story of covenant renewal, where a young king, by God's grace, takes His covenant obligations seriously and acts on them with unflinching courage, not only in his own territory but throughout all the land of Israel.

The progression is key: at sixteen, he seeks God personally. At twenty, he acts publicly. The personal piety precedes the public purge. This is not the work of a committee or a focus group. It is the decisive action of a leader who understands that you cannot serve God and Baal. The high places must come down, the idols must be ground to powder, and the false priests must be dealt with decisively. This is a bonfire of the vanities, and it sets the stage for the rediscovery of God's law and the full-orbed reformation that would follow.

Outline

Context In 2 Chronicles

The book of Chronicles is written after the exile, and it has a particular focus on the temple, right worship, and the Davidic line. The author is reminding the returned exiles of their identity as the people of God and showing them the patterns of faithfulness and apostasy. The reign of Josiah comes on the heels of two of the worst kings in Judah's history. His grandfather, Manasseh, was a monster of idolatry who filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, though he repented late in life (2 Chron 33:12-13). His father, Amon, however, doubled down on the wickedness without the repentance (2 Chron 33:22-23). The nation was spiritually toxic. So when Josiah appears, it is like a sudden burst of sunlight in a very dark room. His reign represents the last great hope for national repentance before the final judgment of the Babylonian exile. The Chronicler holds him up as a premier example of what a king should be: a man who fears God, honors His law, and leads his people in true worship.

Key Issues

The Boy King's Bonfire

We live in a culture that has a very low view of youth. We have created an entire social category called "teenager" to warehouse our young people in a state of protracted adolescence, expecting very little from them other than angst and consumerism. And then we get to Josiah. He is made king at eight, and by the time he is sixteen, he is actively seeking the God of his father David. This is not a nominal, cultural Christianity. This is a personal quest for the living God. And by the time he is twenty, he is turning the entire nation upside down. God does not have a minimum age requirement for faithfulness. He delights in raising up Davids and Josiahs to shame the gray-headed Sauls and Amons of the world. Josiah's story is a potent rebuke to our low expectations and a glorious testimony to the power of God's grace in a young man's heart.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.

The bare facts are stated first. An eight-year-old on the throne. This is, on its face, a recipe for disaster. A boy king is usually a pawn in the hands of corrupt court officials. But God had other plans. His long reign of thirty-one years indicates a period of stability, a stability that was desperately needed after the wickedness and turmoil of the previous reigns. God in His sovereignty places this child on the throne, not as a sign of judgment, but as the instrument of a great and gracious reformation.

2 And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside to the right or to the left.

This is the highest praise the Chronicler can give a king. The standard is not his immediate predecessors, which would be a very low bar indeed. The standard is David. To "walk in the ways of his father David" means he was a true covenant king, a man after God's own heart. And notice the totality of his obedience: he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. This is the language of Deuteronomy (Deut 5:32, 17:20). It means he was committed to the whole counsel of God, not picking and choosing the parts he liked. He was not a pragmatist trying to find a middle way between Yahweh and the culture. He was a man of the Book, straight down the line.

3 Now in the eighth year of his reign while he was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, the graven images, and the molten images.

Here we see the timeline of God's work in his life. At sixteen years old ("the eighth year of his reign"), something happens. He begins to seek God. This is personal. This is the root of everything that follows. True reformation is never just a political program; it starts with a heart being turned toward God. Then, four years later, at age twenty, the private faith goes public in a big way. He begins to cleanse the land. The seeking leads to the purging. He declares war on idolatry in all its forms: the high places (unauthorized centers of worship), the Asherim (wooden poles representing a Canaanite goddess), and the graven and molten images. He doesn't just issue a memo; he starts a war.

4 And they tore down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and the incense altars that were high above them he cut in pieces; also the Asherim, the graven images, and the molten images he broke in pieces and ground to powder and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

This verse gives us the gritty details of the purge, and it is glorious. This is not a polite, ecumenical dialogue. This is iconoclasm. He is personally present, supervising the work. The altars are torn down. The incense altars are hacked to pieces. The idols are not just removed; they are smashed, pulverized, ground into dust. And then, in an act of supreme contempt, he has the idol-dust scattered on the graves of the idolaters. This is the equivalent of rubbing a dog's nose in its own mess. It is a public declaration that this false worship leads to death and defilement, and its memory will be treated with utter disgrace.

5 Then he burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

If scattering the idol-dust was an act of contempt, this is an act of ultimate desecration. The altar is the place of atonement and communion. By burning the bones of the false priests on their own altars, Josiah renders those places permanently and irredeemably unclean. He is fulfilling a prophecy made some 300 years earlier by a man of God to Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:2). This is not petty vandalism. This is the execution of a divine sentence. He is not just getting rid of bad worship; he is salting the earth where it grew so that it can never come back.

6 And in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon, even as far as Naphtali, in their surrounding ruins,

Josiah's reformation was not limited by political boundaries. The northern kingdom of Israel had been wiped out by the Assyrians over a century before. Its territory was a patchwork of ruins and foreign settlers. But Josiah, as the rightful king in the line of David, still saw it as part of God's covenant land. He understood that his responsibility was to the whole covenant, not just to the southern kingdom of Judah. His zeal for God's purity could not be contained by the map of current geopolitics.

7 he also tore down the altars and beat the Asherim and the graven images into powder, and cut in pieces all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

He does in the north exactly what he did in the south. He applies the same standard of radical purification everywhere. He smashes, grinds, and cuts down everything that offends the holiness of God. This was a massive undertaking, a campaign that took him through the length and breadth of the promised land. And having completed this first great work of cleansing, he returns to the capital, Jerusalem. The stage is now set for the next phase of reformation: the repair of the temple and the rediscovery of the Law of God.

Application

The story of Josiah is a trumpet blast against the timid, compromised, and man-pleasing spirit that so often characterizes the modern church. We are taught to be nice, to build bridges, to find common ground. Josiah was taught by God to be faithful, to tear down idols, and to stand on holy ground. Reformation begins when an individual, like Josiah at sixteen, decides to earnestly seek the God of the Bible, not the god of popular opinion. It begins with a personal encounter with the living Christ.

But it cannot end there. That personal faith must move out into the world and begin to tear things down. The church today is filled with high places, Asherah poles, and graven images. They may not be made of stone and wood, but they are just as real. We have the idols of seeker-sensitive worship, of therapeutic preaching, of political correctness, of sentimentalism that passes for love. We have built altars to entertainment, to relevance, and to our own comfort. Josiah teaches us that the proper response to such idolatry is not to debate it, but to destroy it. We must grind to powder every practice and doctrine in our churches that is not founded squarely on the Word of God. This requires courage. It requires leaders who do not turn to the right or to the left. It requires a generation that, like Josiah, is more concerned with what is "right in the sight of Yahweh" than with what is acceptable in the sight of the world. May God grant us such boy kings.