2 Kings 23:4 - Exposition

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order. Not the "deputy-high priests," of whom there seems to have been only one at this period of the history ( 2 Kings 25:18 ); nor the "heads of the courses," who were not recognized as a distinct class of priests till much later; but merely the common priests, as distinguished from the high priest. (So Keil, Bahr, and others.) And the keepers of the door ; literally, the keepers of the threshold ; i.e. the Levites, whose duty it was to keep watch and ward at the outer temple gates (see 1 Chronicles 26:13-18 ). Their importance at this time appears again in 2 Kings 25:18 . To bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal. The reformation naturally began with the purging of the temple. So the reformation under Jehoiada ( 2 Kings 11:18 ) and that of Manasseh ( 2 Chronicles 33:15 ). Under "the vessels" ( הַכֵּלִים ) would be included the entire paraphernalia of worship, even the two altars which had been set up in honor of Baal in the outer and the inner courts. And for the grove (see 2 Kings 21:3 ), and for all the host of heaven. The three worships are here united, because there was a close connection between them. Baal was, in one of his aspects, the sun; and Astarte, the goddess of the "grove" wet-ship, was, in one of her aspects, the moon. The cult of "the host of heaven," though, perhaps, derived from a different source, naturally became associated with the cults of the sun and moon. And he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron. The Law required that idols should be burnt with fire ( Deuteronomy 7:25 ), and likewise "groves" ( Deuteronomy 12:3 ). It was enough to "overthrow" altars ( Deuteronomy 12:3 ) and to "break" pillars. But Josiah seems to have thought it best to destroy by fire, i.e. in the completest possible way, all the objects, of whatever kind, which had been connected with the idol-worship (see verses 6, 12, 15, 16). The burning took place in "the fields of Kidron," i.e. in the upper part of the Kidron valley, to the northeast of Jerusalem, in order that not even the smoke should pollute the town. And carried the ashes of them unto Bethel. This was a very unusual precaution, and shows Josiah's extreme scrupulousness. He would not have even the ashes of the wooden objects, or the calcined powder of the metal ones, remain even in the vicinity of the holy city, but transported them to a distance. In selecting Bethel as the place to convey them to, he was no doubt actuated by the circumstance that that village was in some sense the fount and origin of all the religious impurities which had overflowed the land. That which had proceeded from Bethel might well be taken back thither.