2Ki 23:7 | KingComments | STEP | In the cleansing is described in detail. Josiah started and continued to get rid of everything that was not good. And what a lot that was! There was an abundance of wickedness in Judah and Jerusalem, that is, in the area where one should be most familiar with God. Josiah had reigned for 18 years now and had set a good example to the people. Yet the depth and extent of the dunghill of the idolatry was enormous. Josiah was not discouraged by the enormous amount of uncleanness to be cleared up. Every idol was to the LORD’s gross dishonor and had to be eradicated. The work was going slowly. A lot of cleansing was required to be done thoroughly. Thorough cleansing is often difficult. A revival is not possible without cleansing. Cleansing is not just about the visible things. Visible things arise from the inner being. Above all, it is about an inner cleansing, a cleansing of the heart. We need a renewal of our thinking. Cleansing our thinking means above all that we examine how we think. Our children go to school and their thinking is shaped by the thinking of the world. The world determines how they see everything. Parents are also influenced, especially by mass media. It is through this channel that the opinion of the world is forced upon them. We can only keep ourselves clean of it if we do not take it in. If we sometimes take things to us from the world, let us then make up our mind not to take up things that defile us. Daniel is an example of this ( ). This is only possible if we have a heart in which the Word of God dwells richly (cf. ). The first task Josiah gave was to discard everything that had been brought into the temple relating to Baal ( ). First of all, we must consider what things of the world are permitted in the temple of today, that is, the church and our body, our thinking. Josiah gave this order to “Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers”. Cleansing is primarily a priestly activity. If uncleanness has entered our lives, it is above all at the expense of our service to God. He will no longer receive from our hearts and lives what He is entitled to and desires. Josiah orders the objects sacrificed to the idols to be burnt. This event was in Jerusalem, the city of God. The remains of these objects were brought to Bethel, a place in the Northern Kingdom. This meant that he brought the ashes to an unclean place. The three idols mentioned here, Baal, Asherah and all the host of heaven, were seen as a picture of prosperity. That makes today’s application easy. After all, we live in a time of idolization of prosperity. We can sometimes check ourselves to see if we really only give God the honor in all things, or if we are committed to get as much of the cake of prosperity as possible. He also deposed the idolaters “whom the kings of Judah had appointed” ( ). The kings of Judah undoubtedly mean Manasseh and Amon. The idol priests sacrificed on the high places in Judah and around Jerusalem. They would have thought in their folly to sacrifice incense to the LORD. There were also exclusively idol priests, who brought incense to the Baal and other idols. Josiah also removed them. The next action concerned the Asherah ( ), which Manasseh had placed in the house of the LORD ( ). Here Josiah did a very thorough job. First he burnt it and then ground [it] to dust. The place of action was the brook Kidron. Then he threw the dust on the graves, an unclean place. By throwing the dust over the graves he also expressed his contempt for this god. Perhaps when we think of “the graves of the common people” we have to think of a kind of mass grave, where people are buried together because they could not afford their own grave. The horrific defilement knew no bounds. In there was talk of dwellings made in the house of the LORD for prostituting men. The most disgusting sexual acts were performed in God’s house. The women also played their role in this horrific scene. They wove hangings for Asherah, the goddess of lust. Instead of denouncing these atrocities, they have, as it were, covered up these horrific practices with their hangings. Then Josiah commands all the priests in his entire area, from Geba in the north of Benjamin to Beersheba in the south of Judah, to come to him ( ). These priests are taken away from their defiled environment. He defiled the high places where those priests had brought incense. The high places of the gates were broken down. A precise specification of the location of these high places is given: “At the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which [were] on one’s left at the city gate.” The priests called to Jerusalem by Josiah could offer there on the altar of the LORD ( ). However, they were allowed to eat unleavened bread with their brothers. They were in a situation similar to that of priests who, due to a physical defect, cannot participate in the service, but are allowed to eat from the holy place ( ). Sometimes it is the case that someone who comes to conversion cannot do a certain service because of the life he has led. For example, a person who has two women, as occurs in certain countries, cannot be an elder after his conversion ( ). He was always working. His work in was the extermination of yet another unparalleled horror: the sacrifice of parents’ own children to Molech, the god of fire (cf. ). This happened in Topheth, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, which because of these practices was called “the valley of Slaughter” by the LORD ( ). How terrible this place was, is clear from the fact that the name Hinnom is derived from the name ‘Gehenna’, which is ‘hell’. Josiah defiled this place so that no one could offer his son or daughter through the fire anymore as a sacrifice for Molech. In this verse there is a strong call to parents to think about the purpose of raising their children and protecting them from evil. The horses mentioned in were dedicated to the sun by “the kings of Judah” – Manasseh and Amon. According to their idolatrous thoughts, these horses with their chariots were to draw the sun along the sky. The horses were standing “at the entrance of the house of the LORD”. Thus they defied and insulted the LORD in a gross way. We do not know who “Nathan-melech, the official” was. But the LORD knew him well. Was he a driver of the chariots of the sun? To see the number of altars that Josiah cleansed, Jerusalem must have been full of idol altars. On every corner and every spot there was an altar. In some altars are mentioned specifically. Josiah broke down “the altars which [were] on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz”. These altars were also made by “the kings of Judah”. The insults to the LORD by Manasseh had no end. He had done his utmost to transform the house of the LORD in all respects into an idol temple. Josiah took away all the idols, turned them into dust and threw the dust into the brook Kidron. It is shocking amid this purification work, in which we encounter names like Ahaz and Manasseh, to suddenly come across the name of Solomon as someone who was also connected to the cult of idols ( ). We know from 1 Kings 11 that Solomon had been led away from the LORD by his many wives and the gods that these women had brought along. We even read that he built high places for those gods ( ). All these idols are meaningfully referred to here as “abomination” by which the contrast between the idols of Solomon and God’s judgment of them is strongly emphasized. In we read that Josiah cut down the sacred pillars that functioned as objects of worship. King Hezekiah had done this before ( ). The fact that two generations later this was done again by Josiah shows how persistent this idolatry was. Josiah filled the vacant space with human bones. He probably did so in order to defile this area and thereby make people afraid to fall back into this idolatry again.

‏ 2 Kings 23:7

The Cleansing

In 2Kgs 23:4-20 the cleansing is described in detail. Josiah started and continued to get rid of everything that was not good. And what a lot that was! There was an abundance of wickedness in Judah and Jerusalem, that is, in the area where one should be most familiar with God. Josiah had reigned for 18 years now and had set a good example to the people. Yet the depth and extent of the dunghill of the idolatry was enormous.

Josiah was not discouraged by the enormous amount of uncleanness to be cleared up. Every idol was to the LORD’s gross dishonor and had to be eradicated. The work was going slowly. A lot of cleansing was required to be done thoroughly. Thorough cleansing is often difficult. A revival is not possible without cleansing. Cleansing is not just about the visible things. Visible things arise from the inner being. Above all, it is about an inner cleansing, a cleansing of the heart.

We need a renewal of our thinking. Cleansing our thinking means above all that we examine how we think. Our children go to school and their thinking is shaped by the thinking of the world. The world determines how they see everything. Parents are also influenced, especially by mass media. It is through this channel that the opinion of the world is forced upon them. We can only keep ourselves clean of it if we do not take it in. If we sometimes take things to us from the world, let us then make up our mind not to take up things that defile us. Daniel is an example of this (Dan 1:8-16). This is only possible if we have a heart in which the Word of God dwells richly (cf. Col 3:16a).

The first task Josiah gave was to discard everything that had been brought into the temple relating to Baal (2Kgs 23:4). First of all, we must consider what things of the world are permitted in the temple of today, that is, the church and our body, our thinking. Josiah gave this order to “Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers”. Cleansing is primarily a priestly activity. If uncleanness has entered our lives, it is above all at the expense of our service to God. He will no longer receive from our hearts and lives what He is entitled to and desires.

Josiah orders the objects sacrificed to the idols to be burnt. This event was in Jerusalem, the city of God. The remains of these objects were brought to Bethel, a place in the Northern Kingdom. This meant that he brought the ashes to an unclean place.

The three idols mentioned here, Baal, Asherah and all the host of heaven, were seen as a picture of prosperity. That makes today’s application easy. After all, we live in a time of idolization of prosperity. We can sometimes check ourselves to see if we really only give God the honor in all things, or if we are committed to get as much of the cake of prosperity as possible.

He also deposed the idolaters “whom the kings of Judah had appointed” (2Kgs 23:5). The kings of Judah undoubtedly mean Manasseh and Amon. The idol priests sacrificed on the high places in Judah and around Jerusalem. They would have thought in their folly to sacrifice incense to the LORD. There were also exclusively idol priests, who brought incense to the Baal and other idols. Josiah also removed them.

The next action concerned the Asherah (2Kgs 23:6), which Manasseh had placed in the house of the LORD (2Kgs 21:7). Here Josiah did a very thorough job. First he burnt it and then ground [it] to dust. The place of action was the brook Kidron. Then he threw the dust on the graves, an unclean place. By throwing the dust over the graves he also expressed his contempt for this god. Perhaps when we think of “the graves of the common people” we have to think of a kind of mass grave, where people are buried together because they could not afford their own grave.

The horrific defilement knew no bounds. In 2Kgs 23:7 there was talk of dwellings made in the house of the LORD for prostituting men. The most disgusting sexual acts were performed in God’s house. The women also played their role in this horrific scene. They wove hangings for Asherah, the goddess of lust. Instead of denouncing these atrocities, they have, as it were, covered up these horrific practices with their hangings.

Then Josiah commands all the priests in his entire area, from Geba in the north of Benjamin to Beersheba in the south of Judah, to come to him (2Kgs 23:8). These priests are taken away from their defiled environment. He defiled the high places where those priests had brought incense. The high places of the gates were broken down. A precise specification of the location of these high places is given: “At the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which [were] on one’s left at the city gate.”

The priests called to Jerusalem by Josiah could offer there on the altar of the LORD (2Kgs 23:9). However, they were allowed to eat unleavened bread with their brothers. They were in a situation similar to that of priests who, due to a physical defect, cannot participate in the service, but are allowed to eat from the holy place (Lev 21:17 ; 22-23). Sometimes it is the case that someone who comes to conversion cannot do a certain service because of the life he has led. For example, a person who has two women, as occurs in certain countries, cannot be an elder after his conversion (1Tim 3:2).

He was always working. His work in 2Kgs 23:10 was the extermination of yet another unparalleled horror: the sacrifice of parents’ own children to Molech, the god of fire (cf. Jer 32:35). This happened in Topheth, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, which because of these practices was called “the valley of Slaughter” by the LORD (Jer 19:6). How terrible this place was, is clear from the fact that the name Hinnom is derived from the name ‘Gehenna’, which is ‘hell’.

Josiah defiled this place so that no one could offer his son or daughter through the fire anymore as a sacrifice for Molech. In this verse there is a strong call to parents to think about the purpose of raising their children and protecting them from evil.

The horses mentioned in 2Kgs 23:11 were dedicated to the sun by “the kings of Judah” – Manasseh and Amon. According to their idolatrous thoughts, these horses with their chariots were to draw the sun along the sky. The horses were standing “at the entrance of the house of the LORD”. Thus they defied and insulted the LORD in a gross way. We do not know who “Nathan-melech, the official” was. But the LORD knew him well. Was he a driver of the chariots of the sun?

To see the number of altars that Josiah cleansed, Jerusalem must have been full of idol altars. On every corner and every spot there was an altar. In 2Kgs 23:12 some altars are mentioned specifically. Josiah broke down “the altars which [were] on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz”. These altars were also made by “the kings of Judah”. The insults to the LORD by Manasseh had no end. He had done his utmost to transform the house of the LORD in all respects into an idol temple. Josiah took away all the idols, turned them into dust and threw the dust into the brook Kidron.

It is shocking amid this purification work, in which we encounter names like Ahaz and Manasseh, to suddenly come across the name of Solomon as someone who was also connected to the cult of idols (2Kgs 23:13). We know from 1 Kings 11 that Solomon had been led away from the LORD by his many wives and the gods that these women had brought along. We even read that he built high places for those gods (1Kgs 11:7-8). All these idols are meaningfully referred to here as “abomination” by which the contrast between the idols of Solomon and God’s judgment of them is strongly emphasized.

In 2Kgs 23:14 we read that Josiah cut down the sacred pillars that functioned as objects of worship. King Hezekiah had done this before (2Kgs 18:4). The fact that two generations later this was done again by Josiah shows how persistent this idolatry was. Josiah filled the vacant space with human bones. He probably did so in order to defile this area and thereby make people afraid to fall back into this idolatry again.