2 Kings23chapter 23

2 Kings 23:4

“The priests of the second order - These were probably such as supplied the place of the high priest when he was prevented: from fulfilling the functions of his office. So the Chaldee understood the place - the sagan of the high priests. But the words may refer to those of the second course or order established by David: though it does not appear that those orders were now in use, yet the distinction was continued even to the time of our Lord.”

2 Kings 23:5

“The idolatrous priests - הכמרים hakkemarim. Who these were is not well known. The Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, call them the priests simply, which the kings of Judah had ordained. Probably they were an order made by the idolatrous kings of Judah, and called kemarim, from כמר camar, which signifies to be scorched, shriveled together, made dark, or black, because their business was constantly to attend sacrificial fires, and probably they were black garments; hence the Jews in derision call Christian ministers kemarim, because of their black clothes and garments.”

2 Kings 23:6

“He brought out the grove - He brought out the idol Asherah. See at the end of 2Ki 21:26 (note). Upon the graves of the children of the people - I believe this; means the burial-place of the common people.”

2 Kings 23:7

“The houses of the sodomites - We have already often met with these קדשים kedeshim or consecrated persons. The word implies all kinds of prostitutes, as well as abusers of themselves with mankind. Wove hangings for the grove - For Asherah; curtains or tent coverings for the places where the rites of the impure goddess were performed. See at the end of 2Ki 21:26 (note).”

2 Kings 23:8

“The gate of Joshua - The place where he, as governor of the city, heard and decided causes. Near this we find there were public altars, where sometimes the true God, at other times false gods, were honored.”

2 Kings 23:9

“The priests of the high places came not up - As these priests had offered sacrifices on the high places, though it was to the true God, yet they were not thought proper to be employed immediately about the temple; but as they were acknowledged to belong to the priesthood, they had a right to their support; therefore a portion of the tithes, offerings, and unleavened bread, shew-bread, etc., was appointed to them for their support. Thus they were treated as priests who had some infirmity which rendered it improper for them to minister at the altar.”

2 Kings 23:10

“He defiled Topheth - St. Jerome says that Topheth was a fine and pleasant place, well watered with fountains, and adorned with gardens. The valley of the son of Hinnom, or Gehenna, was in one part; here it appears the sacred rites of Molech were performed, and to this all the filth of the city was carried, and perpetual fires were kept up in order to consume it. Hence it has been considered a type of hell; and in this sense it is used in the New Testament.”

2 Kings 23:11

“And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun,.... Consecrated to it; these were not images of horses, as some have thought, but real living ones; and the kings that gave them for the service of the sun, and for sacrifice to it, very probably were Manasseh and Amon: that horses were sacred to the sun with many Heathen nations, as the Massagetae, a people in Scythia, and the Persians, and Babylonians, and Ethiopians, is affirmed by various writers (c): and from them the Jews received this notion.”

2 Kings 23:12

“On the top of the upper chamber - Altars built on the flat roof of the house. Such altars were erected to the sun, moon, stars, etc.”

2 Kings 23:13

“Mount of corruption - This, says Jarchi, following the Chaldee, was the mount of Olives, for this is the mount המשחה hammishchah, of unction; but because of the idolatrous purposes for which it was used, the Scripture changed the appellation to the mount המשחית hammashchith, of corruption. Ashtoreth the abomination, etc. - See on 1Ki 11:7 (note).”

2 Kings 23:14

“And he brake in pieces the images,.... Of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom, in the above high places; which as these high places had been rebuilt by Manasseh or Amon, so new images of these deities were placed there: and cut down the groves; in which they were set: and filled their places with the bones of men; of idolatrous priests and worshippers, buried in parts adjacent; these he dug up and scattered in the high places and groves to defile them, bones of the dead being by law unclean, Num 19:15.”

2 Kings 23:15

“Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made. For the worship of the calf there: both that altar, and the high place, he brake down; according to an ancient prophecy of the man of God, 1Ki 13:3 and of Amos in later times, Amo 9:1. and burnt the high place, and stamped it small to powder; that there might be no remains of it: and burnt the grove; either the grove of trees on it, or the idol that was in it.”

2 Kings 23:16

“And as Josiah turned himself - This verse is much more complete in the Septuagint, and in the Hexaplar Syriac version at Paris. I shall give the whole, making a distinction where, in those versions, any thing is added: “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 burnt them upon the altar, and polluted it: according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed [when Jeroboam stood by the altar at the feast.”

2 Kings 23:17

“What title is that - There was either a stone, an image, or an inscription here: the old prophet no doubt took care to have the place made sufficiently remarkable.”

2 Kings 23:18

“And he said, let him alone, let no man move his bones,.... Not take them out of the grave, as they had done the rest: so they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria; the old prophet, whereby his end was answered in being buried with him, 1Ki 13:31.”

2 Kings 23:19

“That were in the cities of Samaria - Israel had now no king; and Josiah, of the blood royal of Judah, had certainly a direct right to the kingdom; he had, at this time, an especial commission from God, to reform every abuse through the whole land - all that ground that was given by the Lord as an inheritance to the twelve sons of Jacob. Therefore he had every right to carry his plans of reformation into the Samaritan states.”

2 Kings 23:20

“And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there,....”

2 Kings 23:21

“And the king commanded all the people,.... Not at Jerusalem only, but throughout the whole kingdom: saying: keep the passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant; which had been lately found and read, and they had agreed to observe, and in which this ordinance was strictly enjoined, and was a commemoration of their deliverance out of Egypt, and a direction of their faith to the Messiah, the antitype of the passover.”

2 Kings 23:22

“Surely there was not holden such a passover - Not one on purer principles, more heartily joined in by the people present, more literally consecrated, or more religiously observed. The words do not apply to the number present, but to the manner and spirit. See the particulars and mode of celebrating this passover in 2 Chronicles 35:1-18 (note).”

2 Kings 23:23

“But in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the Lord in Jerusalem. This shows that Josiah must begin the reformation very early that year, since he did all that is before recorded in this and the preceding chapter by the fourteenth of Nisan, the day on which the passover was kept, which month answers to part of our March and part of April, see 2Ki 22:3 and was the same year the repairs of the temple were finished.”

2 Kings 23:24

“Perform - Rather, establish. Josiah saw that it was necessary, not only to put down open idolatry, but also to root out the secret practices of a similar character which were sometimes combined with the worship of Yahweh, notwithstanding that the Law forbade them (marginal references), and which probably formed, with many, practically almost the whole of their religion.”

2 Kings 23:25

“And like unto him was there no king before him,.... The same is said of Hezekiah, 2Ki 18:5, Hezekiah might excel him in some things, as Josiah might excel Hezekiah in others: that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might; with such sincerity, heartiness, zeal, and constancy: according to all the law of Moses; having respect to every commandment, especially relative to worship, with the greatest precision and exactness: neither after him arose there any like him; for all to the captivity were wicked princes.”

2 Kings 23:26

“That is certainly true, which God spoke by the prophet ( Jer. xviii. 7, 8 ), that if a nation, doomed to destruction, turn from the evil of sin, God will repent of the evil of punishment; and therefore we must conclude that Josiah's people, though they submitted to Josiah's power, did not heartily imbibe Josiah's principles.”

2 Kings 23:27

“It added to the guilt of Judah that she had had the warning of her sister Israel’s example, and had failed to profit by it.”

2 Kings 23:28

“Josiah lived for 13 years after the celebration of his great Passover. Of this period we know absolutely nothing, except that in the course of it he seems to have submitted himself to Nabopolassar; who, after the fall of Nineveh, was accepted as the legitimate successor of the Assyrian monarchs by all the nations of the western coast. Josiah, after perhaps a little hesitation (see Jer 2:18, Jer 2:36), followed the example of his neighbors, and frankly accepted the position of an Assyro-Babylonian tributary.”

2 Kings 23:29

“Pharaoh-Nechoh - This king is well known to us both from profane historians, and from the Egyptian monuments. He succeeded his father Psammetichus (Psamatik) in the year 610 B.C., and was king of Egypt for 16 years. He was an enlightened and enterprising monarch. The great expedition here mentioned was an attempt to detach from the newly-formed Babylonian empire the important tract of country extending from Egypt to the Euphrates at Carchemish.”

2 Kings 23:30

“Dead from Megiddo - The word מת meth should here be considered as a participle, dying, for it is certain he was not dead: he was mortally wounded at Megiddo, was carried in a dying state to Jerusalem, and there he died and was buried. See 2Ch 35:24. Herodotus, lib. i., c. 17, 18, 25, and lib. ii. 159, appears to refer to the same war which is here mentioned. He says that Nechoh, in the sixth year of his reign, went to attack the king of Assyria at Magdolum, gained a complete victory, and took Cadytis.”

2 Kings 23:31

“Jehoahaz was twenty three years old when he began to reign,.... Who seems to be the same with Shallum, Jer 22:11. and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; a short reign, being deposed by the king of Egypt, as after related: and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah; a city in the tribe of Judah, Jos 10:29.”

2 Kings 23:32

“And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,.... Committed idolatry: according to all that his fathers had done; his grand father and great grandfather, Amon and Manasseh; so soon after Josiah's death was the revolt to idolatry.”

2 Kings 23:33

“Pharaoh-Nechoh, after bringing Phoenicia and Syria under his rule, and penetrating as far as Carchemish, returned to Southern Syria, and learned what had occurred at Jerusalem in his absence. He sent orders to Jehoahaz to attend the court which he was holding at Riblah, and Jehoahaz fell into the trap Eze 19:4. Riblah still retains its name. It is situated on the Orontes, in the Coele-Syrian valley, near the point where the valley opens into a wide and fertile plain. Neco seems to have been the first to perceive its importance.”

2 Kings 23:34

“Turned his name to Jehoiakim - These names are precisely the same in signification: Eliakim is God shall arise; Jehoiakim, Jehovah shall arise; or, the resurrection of God; the resurrection of Jehovah. That is, God’s rising again to show his power, justice, etc. The change of the name was to show Nechoh’s supremacy, and that Jehoiakim was only his vassal or viceroy.”

2 Kings 23:35

“Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold - Nechoh had placed him there as viceroy, simply to raise and collect his taxes. Every one according to his taxation - That is, each was assessed in proportion to his property: that was the principle avowed: but there is reason to fear that this bad king was not governed by it.”

2 Kings 23:36

“Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign,.... And therefore must be two years older than his brother Jehoahaz, who was deposed: and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and therefore must die at the age of thirty and six: and his mother's name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah; which Josephus (l) calls Abuma; but he speaks of a village in Galilee called Ruma (m); but whether the same with this is not certain. (l) Antiqu. l. 10. c. 5. sect. 2. (m) De Bello Jud l. 3. c. 6. sect. 21.”

2 Kings 23:37

“He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord - He was a most unprincipled and oppressive tyrant. Jeremiah gives us his character at large, Jer 22:13-19, to which the reader will do well to refer. Jeremiah was at that time in the land, and was an eyewitness of the abominations of this cruel king.”