CHAPTER 23

(624 B.C.)

THE LAW READ TO THE PEOPLE

¹And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. (Josiah instituted one of the greatest spiritual reforms ever known to Judah; still, according to Jeremiah, even at the time that Josiah was destroying idolatry, the nation was secretly planning its restoration, which was quickly effected after Josiahs death. But, still, Josiah did all that he could to bring the people back to the Bible.)

²And 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. (This shows us that the Word of God is for everyone, and not just a privileged few. Regrettably, the Bible in the modern pulpit is basically used as window-dressing. Instead, the latest psychological fad is too often preached as gospel, when, in reality, it is no gospel at all.)

JOSIAHS COVENANT

³And 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 (the terms expressed here include the totality of the Law, all its requirements, without exception).

JOSIAHS REFORMS

⁴And 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 (worship of the Asherah, the male reproductive organ), 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 Beth-el (the ashes carried to Bethel to defile the altar of Jeroboam was predicted in I Ki. 13:2, where even the name of Josiah was mentioned, over 300 years before he was born, and nearly 350 years before the prediction was fulfilled; the Temple of the Lord had been turned into the abomination of idol worship).

⁵And 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 who burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven (these were the black-robed priests instead of the white-robed Priests who belonged to God; they were not the kohen appointed by God, but kemarim appointed by man; each separate idol had its own priest, so there were then many orders of priests in Israel; the word planets referred to the twelve signs of the zodiac).

⁶And he brought out the grove (Asherah) 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 (the idea that such abomination was in the very House of God, where the Lord dwelt between the Mercy Seat and the Cherubim, is unthinkable; this shows how far down Judah had sunk).

⁷And he broke down the houses of the sodomites (homosexuals), who were by the House of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove (so we see here what God thinks of the terrible sin of homosexuality; to be sure, the same-sex marriages, so-called, presently being engaged in certain parts of the United States indicate the nations downward slide, which will ultimately guarantee judgment).

⁸And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests (ungodly priests) had burned incense, from Geba to Beer-sheba, and broke 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 mans left hand at the gate of the city (these high places were throughout the entire kingdom, both North and South; although God Alone was worshipped on most of them, still, the Law commanded that incense and sacrifice be confined to the one Altar at Jerusalem; as well, the modern Child of God has one Altar, which is Calvary; these priests who officiated in these high places were allowed to come to the Temple at Jerusalem and to officiate in some limited manner, but not at the Altar of Jehovah).

⁹Nevertheless 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 (as stated, they were given limited duties, which did not include the Altar of the Lord).

¹⁰And 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 (on this idol, little children were placed and tied to its arms; fire was then built in its bulbous belly, with the arms becoming red-hot; priests of this particular order would then loudly beat the drums, drowning out the screams of the dying child; this is how bad that Judah had become).

¹¹And 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 Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire (Josiah burnt all the material objects that had been desecrated by the idolatries; the persons and animals so desecrated he removed, or deprived of their functions; this was a Persian practice, which had been adopted by Judah).

¹²And 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 broke them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron (as then, the modern Church seemingly has many altars; however, let it be remembered, there is only one Altar which God recognizes, and that is Jesus Christ and Him Crucified [I Cor. 1:23]).

¹³And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of corruption (Mount of Olives), 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.

¹⁴And he broke in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men (all graves were considered to be unclean; therefore, all of this unclean refuse was deposited in graveyards, so to speak).

¹⁵Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, 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 broke down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove (the Asherah; we see from all of this that Jerusalem was then literally filled with idols!).

¹⁶And 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 (I Kings 13:2; the meaning of the last phrase is that Josiah acted as he did, not in order to fulfill the Prophecy, but, that in thus acting, he unconsciously fulfilled it).

¹⁷Then 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 you have done against the altar of Beth-el (this Verse proves that Josiah did not actually know he was fulfilling Prophecy until after it was done).

¹⁸And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the Prophet who came out of Samaria (he would show honor to the man of God [I Ki., Chpt. 13]).

¹⁹And 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 Beth-el (the cleansing process included the northern kingdom of Israel, which was now occupied by the Samaritans).

²⁰And he killed all the priests of the high places who were there upon the altars, and burned mens bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem (the priests of these particular high places were different than those priests of Verses 8-9; the former were priests of idolatry; the latter were priests of God, but functioning in the wrong way).

THE PASSOVER RESTORED

²¹And 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 (Verses 21-23 record the greatest Passover ever conducted at Jerusalem).

²²Surely there was not holden such a Passover from the days of the Judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah (in fact, the Word of God, as is overly obvious, had been sorely neglected);

²³But in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein this Passover was holden to the LORD in Jerusalem.

THE LORDS ANGER AGAINST JUDAH

²⁴Moreover 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 (Laws against such practices as Josiah now put down are found in Ex. 22:18; Lev. 19:31; 20:27; Deut. 18:10-12).

²⁵And like unto him was there no king before him, who 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 (and it is the Holy Spirit Who said this!).

²⁶Notwithstanding 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 (regardless of the great Reformation of Josiah, the Lord did not see fit to turn away all His Wrath, for He knew the change would last only during the days of Josiah, and that Judah would follow the old pattern of most of the previous kings of Israel and Judah, by continuing to sin, and to sin grossly).

²⁷And 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 (if there had been true Repentance on the part of the people of Judah, meaning that the people would turn away from their terrible sins, the Lord most assuredly would have turned away from His Wrath).

²⁸Now 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?

DEATH OF JOSIAH; JEHOAHAZ HIS SUCCESSOR

²⁹In his days (days of Josiah) Pharaoh-nechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and king Josiah went against him; and he killed him (Pharaoh killed Josiah in battle) at Megiddo, when he had seen him (as stated, the Lord allowed Josiah to be killed, not because of any wrongdoing on the part of Josiah, but because of the judgment that must come; it could not be delayed).

³⁰And 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 fathers stead (even though he died in battle, he was buried in peace, because he had Peace with God; regrettably, Jehoahaz would not emulate his father).

JEHOAHAZ REIGNS OVER JUDAH

³¹Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mothers name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

³²And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done (the three-month reign of Jehoahaz is briefly dismissed by the Holy Spirit by simply saying, And he did evil in the sight of the LORD).

DEATH OF JEHOAHAZ; JEHOIAKIM HIS SUCCESSOR

³³And Pharaoh-nechoh 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 (Judah now becomes a vassal of Egypt).

³⁴And Pharaoh-nechoh 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 (Nechoh required him to take a new name, as a mark of subjection).

³⁵And 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 Pharaoh-nechoh (Judah now has to pay heavy tribute to Pharaoh, which was a great hardship on the people).

JEHOIAKIM REIGNS OVER JUDAH

³⁶Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mothers name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

³⁷And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done. (Josephus calls him an unjust man and an evildoer, neither pious in his relations towards God, nor equitable in his dealings with his fellowmen.)