Biblion Bible Commentary
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Josiah Tears It All Down
2 Kings 23:1-25
1 The king sent, and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. · WEB
The most thorough reform in Israel's history — the temple purged, Topheth defiled, Bethel's altar broken by the king a prophet named three centuries early.
He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in Yahweh's house 2 Kings 23:2.
The reform begins with a public reading to everyone — priests, prophets, and all the people, small and great — and then a covenant made standing by the pillar, and all the people agreed to the covenant 2 Kings 23:3. Josiah does not impose the reform first and explain later; the nation hears the document and commits to it before a single altar comes down.
He burned them outside of Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel 2 Kings 23:4.
What follows is the most detailed demolition in Scripture, and the detail is the point — every item in the catalogue is something an earlier chapter installed. The vessels for Baal and the host of heaven 2 Kings 21:5, the Asherah image from the temple 2 Kings 21:7, the altars Ahaz built on the roof and Manasseh in the courts 2 Kings 23:12, the high places Solomon himself raised for Ashtoreth, Chemosh and Milcom four hundred years earlier 2 Kings 23:13 1 Kings 11:7. Josiah works backward through the whole history the book has been narrating.
He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech 2 Kings 23:10.
The child-sacrifice site in the Hinnom valley is put permanently out of use. The valley's name passes into later Hebrew as Gehenna, the standing image for final destruction Matthew 5:22 — a rubbish-ground whose reputation begins here.
Moreover the altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he broke down 2 Kings 23:15.
He crosses the old border into Assyrian-held territory and destroys the calf shrine that founded the northern kingdom's religion. And the narrator stops to identify what is happening: bones burned on that altar to defile it, according to Yahweh's word which the man of God proclaimed 2 Kings 23:16.
Three hundred years earlier an unnamed prophet from Judah had stood at that altar and named this king — a son will be born to David's house, Josiah by name 1 Kings 13:2 — and been killed on the road home for eating a meal he had been told not to eat. Josiah asks about the monument he sees, is told whose it is, and orders the grave left alone 2 Kings 23:17–18. The bones of the man who delivered the oracle are the only ones in the cemetery not used to defile the altar, and they are spared by the king he predicted.
Surely there was not kept such a Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel 2 Kings 23:22.
The Passover that follows is the largest since before the monarchy — the feast that commemorates the exodus, kept properly, in the eighteenth year, by a nation that has just heard the covenant read aloud.
There was no king like him before him, who turned to Yahweh with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; and there was none like him who arose after him 2 Kings 23:25.
The commendation quotes the great commandment Deuteronomy 6:5 and applies it to a man, which the book does for nobody else. Hezekiah was praised for trust; Josiah is praised for turning, with everything he had, and the verdict is bounded on both sides — none before, none after.
It is the highest thing this history says about anyone. The next verse begins with notwithstanding.
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