2 Kings 23:4

"And the king commanded Hilkiah the High Priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring forth out of the temple of Jehovah all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel. And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordered 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. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Jehovah, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust thereof upon the graves of the common people. And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were in the house of Jehovah, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah."

"And for all the host of heaven" (2 Kings 23:4). This expression, used again in 2 Kings 23:5, is a reference to the constellations. "The word from which this comes is a Hebrew term used only here in the Bible, and, according to the rabbis, it means the signs of the zodiac and the planets."[3]

"The idolatrous priests" (2 Kings 23:5). "The word for priests in this verse always refers to the priests of a foreign religion (Hosea 10:5; Zephaniah 1:4)."[4] "The word is [~chemarin], the usual Aramaic word for `priest,' which comes from a root meaning, to be black."[5] "It means black-robed and is used in Hosea 10:5; Zephaniah 1:4; and in 2 Kings 23:5."[6] Snaith denied this on the false premise that the white robes of Biblical priests was due to their having, "Followed an ancient custom,"[7] namely, that of the pagan priests. On the contrary, the Law of Moses, not the habit of pagan priests, prescribed the dress of the priests of Jehovah, and it is our conviction that the change was to distinguish God's priests from the idolaters. Furthermore, it would appear that the apostate church of Revelation 17 never made a more shocking error than that of dressing their priests in black!

We have already pointed out that the suppression of the idolatrous priests is not even mentioned in that alleged "Deuteronomic Code," and not even in the whole Book of Deuteronomy.

"And he brought out the Asherah" (2 Kings 23:6). Really out! Not merely out of the temple but out of the city of Jerusalem, where it was totally destroyed and the remains of it cast upon the graves of the common people, which was considered to be its utmost defilement. "This Asherah was the `graven image' of 2 Kings 21:7."[8]

"He brake down the houses of the sodomites" (2 Kings 23:7). The word for "sodomites" here, despite its being masculine, "Includes both men and women of that depraved class,"[9] as indicated by the mention of the women in the same verse. They were the cult prostitutes of paganism which the kings of Judah had brought into the very temple itself. Snaith mentions that, "the hangings" here were "actually curtains or tents,"[10] the usage of which was to provide privacy for the people practicing the gross immoralities accompanying the worship of the Asherah. (See Ezekiel 8:14; 16:16; Amos 5:26; 2:8). It was an especially despicable thing that the clothes of the poor, left as pledges in the temple, were used in exactly the same manner.