23:1 The king summoned all the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem.
King Josiah called a general assembly of leaders across Judah. His father Manasseh led Judah into its greatest idolatry, but Josiah was going to lead Judah into its greatest reform movement in its history.
23:2 The king went up to the Lord’s temple, accompanied by all the people of Judah, all the residents of Jerusalem, the priests, and the prophets. All the people were there, from the youngest to the oldest. He read aloud all the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been discovered in the Lord’s temple.
King Josiah read the Mosaic Law to all of the people, including the prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah.
23:3 The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant before the Lord, agreeing to follow the Lord and to obey his commandments, laws, and rules with all his heart and being, by carrying out the terms of this covenant recorded on this scroll. All the people agreed to keep the covenant.
King Josiah and the people agreed to keep the Mosaic Covenant.
23:4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the high-ranking priests, and the guards to bring out of the Lord’s temple all the items that were used in the worship of Baal, Asherah, and all the stars of the sky. The king burned them outside of Jerusalem in the terraces of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.
Baal, Asherah, and the gods of the sun, moon, and stars were actually being worshiped inside of the Jewish Temple. King Josiah removed these items from the temple and burned them. He spread their ashes among the graves of the Kidron Valley.
Bethel was one of the four Israelite cities in which Jeroboam established false religious temples. At this time, Bethel was an Assyrian city. However, after the Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 soldiers in one night, the Assyrian Empire was beginning to decline. The Assyrian hold of the city was weak. The ashes were carried to Bethel and mixed over Jeroboam’s original idolatry site as an act of desecration.
23:5 He eliminated the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifices on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the area right around Jerusalem. (They offered sacrifices to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and all the stars in the sky.)
King Josiah eliminated the pagan priests who were offering sacrifices on the high places. Many of these priests were worshiping Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and the stars. According to the Mosaic Law, this was a capital offense, so they were to be executed as religious criminals.
23:6 He removed the Asherah pole from the Lord’s temple and took it outside Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley, where he burned it. He smashed it to dust and then threw the dust in the public graveyard.
Asherah was the consort of Baal. The Asherah poles were carved with various lewd figures where the male and female prostitutes would encourage their “worshipers” to act in the same way. These poles were installed in the house of the Lord, with all her immoral ceremonies carried out there. This was blasphemy against God.
King Josiah took down the Asherah poles and took them to the Kidron Valley. Many of the graves of idol worshipers were buried in this valley. King Josiah burned the Asherah poles, smashed them to dust, and desecrated the graves of the idol worshipers.
23:7 He tore down the quarters of the male cultic prostitutes in the Lord’s temple, where women were weaving shrines for Asherah.
The male cultic prostitutes were temple sodomites.The cultic prostitutes were temple prostitutes. The Hebrew word for quarters is בָּתֵּ֣י, (bati), meaning a tent or house. These tents were torn down and the sodomites and female prostitutes were most likely executed.
Even if a government, the medical community, an educational institution, or even a church states that homosexuality is natural, then many say that the community should consent to it. It is God, not human institutions, who decides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Under the Mosaic Law, homosexuality was a capital offense. Even if a man has a Ph.D. and states that homosexuality is acceptable, then his little mind is still inferior to the mind of God. God has not changed. Homosexuality was a capital offense in the Old Testament. Paul condemned the act in the New Testament. The sodomite was not allowed to live within a community, because he was a great danger to the community. He was to be stoned to death.
23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. He tore down the high place of the goat idols situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate.
"Geba to Beer Sheba" were two cities on the opposite borders of Judah. King Josiah eliminated the idol worship centers from one end of Judah to the other.
23:9 (Now the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened cakes among their fellow priests.)
The Levitical priests who were working at the temple did not allow the false priests to eat the unleavened bread.
23:10 The king ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech.
Topheth means “drums.” These drums were beaten when human infants were sacrificed to Molech in order to drown out the sound of the crying babies. The pagan view of sacrifice was to offer an innocent person to the gods so that these gods would be more willing to answer the prayers of the people.
The Valley of Hinnom was a place where children had been forced to pass through the fire in the outstretched arms of the god Molech. King Josiah removed this place of child sacrifice and turned it into a burning city trash dump. The fire continually burned, so it reminded people of an eternal Lake of Fire. The valley’s name became gehenna, meaning “hell.”
23:11 He removed from the entrance to the Lord’s temple the statues of horses that the kings of Judah had placed there in honor of the sun god. (They were kept near the room of Nathan Melech the eunuch, which was situated among the courtyards.) He burned up the chariots devoted to the sun god.
The sun god was worshiped at the temple gates. The Romans called this god “Apollo.” Recently, a religious shrine with horse figurines has been found in Jerusalem
23:12 The king tore down the altars the kings of Judah had set up on the roof of Ahaz’s upper room, as well as the altars Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He crushed them up and threw the dust in the Kidron Valley.
Pagan altars were built on the flat roofs of houses so people could worship the “host of heaven” by burning incense.
23:13 The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, that King Solomon of Israel had built for the detestable Sidonian goddess Astarte, the detestable Moabite god Chemosh, and the horrible Ammonite god Milcom.
Astarte was the fertility goddess from the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. Chemosh was the Moabite god whom Ruth offered human sacrifices. The Ammonite god was Molech, who was another god who desired infant sacrifice. These altars existed for over 300 years before Josiah finally destroyed them. The placing of human ashes defiled them, making these sites unclean and unsuitable as places of worship.
23:14 He smashed the sacred pillars to bits, cut down the Asherah pole, and filled those shrines with human bones.
The ashes of the human bones also defiled the Asherah pole worship centers. Josiah was leading a great revival before the Babylonian captivity. Judah was given a last chance to turn back to God.
23:15 He also tore down the altar in Bethel at the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who encouraged Israel to sin. He burned all the combustible items at that high place and crushed them to dust; including the Asherah pole.
King Jeroboam built this idol after the division of the United Kingdom. This religious system led Israel away from the Lord. An unknown prophet predicted to Jeroboam that the altar and its priests would eventually be destroyed by a man named Josiah. King Josiah came around 300 years later and fulfilled this prophecy by tearing it down, burning it, and desecrating it so that it could never be used again.
23:16 When Josiah turned around, he saw the tombs there on the hill. So he ordered the bones from the tombs to be brought; he burned them on the altar and defiled it. This fulfilled the Lord’s announcement made by the prophet while Jeroboam stood by the altar during a festival. King Josiah turned and saw the grave of the prophet who had foretold this.
King Josiah saw some tombs nearby. These were probably the bones of idolatrous priests. The bones were dug up and burned on the altar at Bethel to defile it. This action fulfilled a prophecy which was given to Jeroboam about the altar approximately 350 years earlier.
23:17 He asked, “What is this grave marker I see?” The men from the city replied, “It’s the grave of the prophet who came from Judah and foretold these very things you have done to the altar of Bethel.”
The unnamed prophet who predicted this event was buried nearby.
23:18 The king said, “Leave it alone! No one must touch his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed, as well as the bones of the Israelite prophet buried beside him.
The bones of the Jewish prophets were protected.
23:19 Josiah also removed all the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria. The kings of Israel had made them and angered the Lord. He did to them what he had done to the high place in Bethel.
After the nation of Israel went into the Assyrian Captivity, the Assyrians renamed this territory “Samaria” after its capital city.
23:20 He sacrificed all the priests of the high places on the altars located there, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
Under the Mosaic Law, false worship was a capital offense. All of the non-Levitical priests were executed. Their bones were burned to desecrate the pagan altars.
23:21 The king ordered all the people, “Observe the Passover of the Lord your God, as prescribed in this scroll of the covenant.”
Now that the Torah had been found and read to the elders, King Josiah ordered that the Passover was to be celebrated as to the details of the Mosaic Law.
23:22 He issued this edict because a Passover like this had not been observed since the days of the judges; it was neglected for the entire period of the kings of Israel and Judah.
The Passover had been ordained by God to become an everlasting ordinance as a memorial to the Exodus, but it had not been observed correctly for over 500 years.
23:23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign, such a Passover of the Lord was observed in Jerusalem.
The Passover pointed to Christ. All of Josiah’s reforms took place in the same year.
23:24 Josiah also got rid of the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple.
Judah and Israel were the only nations to receive God’s written word, but they rejected it. They had left the true worship of Jehovah and were instead dabbling in the occult. If left alone, every human being will enter into the occult, unless God opens their eyes and brings divine revelation about Christ.
23:25 No king before or after repented before the Lord as he did, with his whole heart, soul, and being in accordance with the whole law of Moses.
King Josiah led the biggest reform in the history of Judah and Israel, yet four years after his death, Judah was worshiping these same idols.
23:26 Yet the Lord’s great anger against Judah did not subside; he was still infuriated by all the things Manasseh had done.
Manasseh filled Judah’s cup of iniquity, so even Josiah’s reforms could not save Judah from captivity. There is a limit to sin. When the cup of wrath is full, divine judgment always follows.
23:27 The Lord announced, “I will also spurn Judah, just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose—both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, “I will live there.”
Just as Israel went into captivity for her sin, so will Judah.
23:28 The rest of the events of Josiah’s reign and all his accomplishments are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah.
"The Annals of the Kings of Judah" was an uninspired secular history book which has been lost to this day.
23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.
Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt was an ally of Assyria against the growing power of Babylon. Josiah had been prophetically warned not to interfere in the Egyptian advance. He ignored this warning and died in the battle.
Megiddo was a well-fortified stronghold overlooking the Jezreel Valley about 65 miles from Jerusalem. This large valley will one day become the battle field of Armageddon.
America is very much like Judah. America needs revival. They are currently giving out the wrong message to the world. The message to be given out is not democracy, but the Word of God. At one time, America was sending out missionaries and they were blessed. Now, they are sending out propaganda and they are being cursed. America has left the Word of God and become an immoral nation. God will not bless this kind of nation.
23:30 His servants transported his dead body from Megiddo in a chariot and brought it to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his tomb. The people of the land took Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, poured olive oil on his head, and made him king in his father’s place.
Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, became the next King of Judah.
23:31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.
Jehoahaz was an evil king, so his mother did not do a very good job of raising him.
23:32 He did evil in the sight of the Lord as his ancestors had done.
Israel had no good kings out of nineteen. Judah only had eight good kings out of twenty. Judah lasted 120 years longer than Israel, mostly because of the influence of the eight good kings.
23:33 Pharaoh Necho imprisoned him in Riblah in the land of Hamath and prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem. He imposed on the land a special tax of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
Pharaoh Necho imprisoned King Jehoahaz in the military garrison of Riblah. Judah became a vassal state to Egypt. They were taxed 750 pounds of silver and 7.5 pounds of gold per year. Jehoahaz would only last three months as king. He would die as a prisoner in Egypt.
23:34 Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died.
Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt placed Jehoahaz’s older brother on the throne of Judah as a puppet king. Necho changed his name from Eliakim, meaning “God has established” to Jehoiakim, meaning “Jehovah has established.” Ruling kings often renamed their vassal rulers, showing that the ruling monarch has ownership over the vassal king.
Notice that Eliakim was the older brother, but evidently, the people of Judah did not want him. Pharaoh must have figured that he would be easier to control, so they made him a puppet king of Judah.
23:35 Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the required amount of silver and gold, but to meet Pharaoh’s demands Jehoiakim had to tax the land. He collected an assessed amount from each man among the people of the land in order to pay Pharaoh Necho.
Jehoiakim was forced to overtax his people to pay tribute to Pharaoh, although he still had enough money to build him a luxurious new palace.
23:36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah, from Rumah.
Zebidah raised an evil son, meaning that she was not a very righteous mother.
23:37 He did evil in the sight of the Lord as his ancestors had done.
Jehoiakim was just as evil as his ancestors, even though he was from the line of Judah and a part of the messianic seed line.