2 Kings Chapter 23

At a Glance

  • In this decisive chapter, King Josiah stands as a turning point in Judah’s history.
  • From there, the king directs immediate, practical purification: plundering the temple of its idols—Baal, the grove, and “the host of heaven”—and removing equipment and vessels dedicated to false gods.
  • In sum, 2 Kings 23 presents Josiah’s nationwide bid to return Judah to exclusive allegiance to Yahweh.
  • Historical & Literary Context.
  • In terms of narrative structure, the chapter serves as a dramatic apex of Josiah’s reign, a public theater of covenant renewal that reorients the national story around the temple and the law.

Chapter Overview

In this decisive chapter, King Josiah stands as a turning point in Judah’s history. After a long arc of woe marked by idolatry, injustice, and religious corruption, Josiah’s reign brings a radical, concentrated program of reform enacted through public covenant-making, sacred cleansing, and institutional purification. The chapter unfolds in a single climactic sequence: a national gathering at the temple, where the king summons all Judah and Jerusalem—the elders, priests, prophets, and people—and reads aloud the long-lost Book of the Covenant. The moment is both ritual and reform, a public recommitment to the Lord’s law and a deliberate repudiation of competing powers. Josiah, standing by a pillar (a traditional sign of covenant fidelity), makes a covenant with Yahweh "with all their heart and with all their soul," and the people respond in kind by standing to the covenant.

From there, the king directs immediate, practical purification: plundering the temple of its idols—Baal, the grove, and “the host of heaven”—and removing equipment and vessels dedicated to false gods. He demolishes high places, desecrates idolatrous shrines from Geba to Beersheba, and even targets the priests who had led Judah into apostasy. The temple precinct becomes the epicenter of reform as the groves are burned, the idols are smashed, and pagan rites are uprooted. The ritual destruction is not mere symbolism; it is a deliberate attempt to realign the center of worship and social order around the law and the true temple worship. The chapter also includes the dismantling of sodomite houses near the temple, underscoring a broader moral reform.

In sum, 2 Kings 23 presents Josiah’s nationwide bid to return Judah to exclusive allegiance to Yahweh. It is a dramatic, almost prophetic act of recovery—recovering the religion of Israel from centuries of compromise. Yet the chapter also foreshadows the limits of such reform, as the book will later recount the spiritual and political fragility of this revival. Still, the immediate effect is a restored covenantal faith and a clear repudiation of idolatry in both cult and city.

Historical & Literary Context

2 Kings was likely composed in the late 7th or early 6th century BCE, synthesizing royal annals, prophetic oracles, and religious history to narrate the rise and fall of kingdoms in the Judahite realm. This chapter belongs within the Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy–2 Kings), a literary framework that shapes Israel’s fortunes around fidelity to the covenant and fidelity to the Lord’s commands. The genre here blends royal history with theological interpretation: kingship is judged not only by political outcomes but by faithfulness to the covenant. The focal event—Josiah’s reform—fits the book’s overarching pattern: faithful reform yields temporary stabilizing influence, while deeper structural flaws (such as continued disobedience among the people or failure to address systemic injustice) can still bring judgment.

In terms of narrative structure, the chapter serves as a dramatic apex of Josiah’s reign, a public theater of covenant renewal that reorients the national story around the temple and the law. It is followed by a sobering sequence that acknowledges the eventual downfall of Judah, suggesting that reform, while powerful, must be sustained by subsequent generations’ hearts. Theologically, the chapter reinforces the Deuteronomistic emphasis on single-minded devotion to Yahweh and the danger of mixing worship.

Key Themes

- Covenant fidelity and public renewal: The national gathering to read the Book of the Covenant dramatizes a renewed commitment to the Lord, highlighting faithfulness as collective, not merely personal, obedience.

- Purification and reform: The sweeping dismantling of idols, high places, and associated cultic centers shows that true reform involves both reforming worship and cleansing the social and physical spaces in which idolatry thrived.

- Centrality of the temple and the law: The book found in the temple becomes the hinge of national identity; location (the temple) and text (the covenant) are re-centered as the core of faithful life.

- Consequences of persistent idolatries: While reform is decisive in the moment, the larger narrative warns that without deep-seated devotion across generations, the cycles of apostasy can recur.

- Moral and spiritual leadership: Josiah embodies a leadership that dares to act decisively against entrenched religious practices, modeling courageous reform rooted in a deep commitment to Yahweh.

Modern Application

- The chapter invites contemporary readers to consider how communities can recover a shared sense of moral and spiritual center. Reforms in worship, ethics, and communal life require courageous leadership and broad participation—refusing to compartmentalize faith as private when it impacts public life.

- It highlights the power of returning to Scripture as a corrective for misdirected worship. Modern readers can reflect on how readily life can drift into “authorized” routines that neglect the heart of faith, and how rediscovering scripture can recalibrate priorities.

- It also presents a caution about the fragility of reform: even as Josiah cleanses the temple, his reforms do not address deeper heart-change in every individual, foreshadowing how social reforms need ongoing spiritual renewal to endure.

- The broader lesson: true renewal necessitates repentance that transforms both beliefs and behaviors—personal devotion, communal justice, and corporate worship aligned with truth.

Cross-References: 2 Kings 22 (Book of the Covenant found); 2 Kings 24–25 (decline and exile); Deuteronomy 12 (centralized worship); 2 Chronicles 34–35 (parallel account of Josiah’s reforms); Jeremiah 7 (temple sermon warnings).

Recommended Personas: Moses (for leadership and covenant renewal), Elijah (for prophetic zeal against idolatry), Josiah (as the primary figure here), Jesus (for reform within temple and house-cleansing motifs in a deeper spiritual sense), Paul (for Paul’s emphasis on obedience of faith as communal life).

Chapter Text

1

And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

2

And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD.

3

And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

4

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.

5

And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

6

And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

7

And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

8

And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city.

9

Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

10

And 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.

11

And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

12

And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and brake them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.

13

And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

14

And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.

15

Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.

16

And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.

17

Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.

18

And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.

19

And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.

20

And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men’s bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

21

And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the passover unto the LORD your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant.

22

Surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah;

23

But in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the LORD in Jerusalem.

24

Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.

25

And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.

26

Notwithstanding the LORD turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.

27

And the LORD said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

28

Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

29

In his days Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and king Josiah went against him; and he slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

30

And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s stead.

31

Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

32

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.

33

And Pharaohnechoh put him in bands at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and put the land to a tribute of an hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold.

34

And Pharaohnechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the room of Josiah his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim, and took Jehoahaz away: and he came to Egypt, and died there.

35

And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he taxed the land to give the money according to the commandment of Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of every one according to his taxation, to give it unto Pharaohnechoh.

36

Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

37

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.

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