It doesn’t take long for the right person to accomplish a whole lot of wrong. Josiah, the young king of Judah, started reading the newly discovered Book of the Law and his soul lurched. The Lord clearly stated you shall have no other gods before me, yet Josiah gazed upon a landscape filled with other gods.

His great-grandfather, Hezekiah, cleared the land of all pagan worship. But the next king, Manasseh, pursued all the gods of the surrounding lands like a kid in a candy store. He worshipped anything and everything, even burning his own son alive to appease the gods. Starting with a blank canvas, Manasseh painted a monstrous legacy.

Josiah, under deep conviction, set out to once again demolish all the evil centers of worship. No small task, this record of his actions give us a feeling for the enormity of Israel’s sin against the Lord:

He removed from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel.

Josiah did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts.

He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.

He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.

Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense.

He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek.

He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.

He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.

The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon. Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.

Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.

Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord’s anger. Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them.

Quite a list. I’m impressed at how vigorously Manasseh thumbed his nose at the Lord. It didn’t take long to lead so many so far astray, profane worship carried out in God’s face. The Lord’s wrath smoldered, and broke out a few years later, but under Josiah the nation enjoyed a brief respite.

Every generation must believe in the Lord afresh, and every generation faces the temptation to follow leaders like Manasseh and worship the gods of this world. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can to help those around us find the Lord and walk with him.

2 Kings 23 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Randy Laybourne