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by Manasseh in the two courts of the Temple, were broken down, their debris "made to
run down from thence,"* and the dust of them cast into the Kidron.
- That is, from where they were standing and broken down. We propose thus to translate
2 Kings 23:12 (A. and R.V.: "beat them down from thence"). The word should be pointed
as Kimchi, and after him Thenius proposes (...) "he made run" - threw down the earthen
debris.
Nor was this all. Outside Jerusalem, on the southern point of the Mount of Olives, there
appear still to have been remains of even more ancient idolatry, which dated from the
time of Solomon. These were now removed, and the places desecrated. And beyond
Judah proper the movement extended throughout the ancient kingdom of Israel, even to
the remotest northern tribal possession of Naphtali (2 Chronicles 34:6). This again
affords indication of an approximation between the Israelitish inhabitants left in what had
been the northern kingdom and Judah. And in the increasing weakness of the Assyrian
empire, alike Josiah and the Israelitish remnant may have contemplated a reunion and
restoration under a king of the house of David. At any rate the rulers of Assyria were not
in a condition to interfere in the affairs of Palestine, nor to check the influence which
Josiah exercised over the northern tribes. On the other hand, we can understand that the
measures against former idolatry should have been all the more rigorously carried out in
the ancient Israelitish kingdom, which had so terribly suffered from the consequences of
former apostasy (comp. 2 Kings 23:20). In Beth-el itself, the original seat of Jeroboam's
spurious worship, not only was the altar destroyed, but the high place - that is, the
sanctuary there - was burned, as also the Asherah, which seems to have taken the place of
the golden call But as they proceeded further publicly to defile the altar in the usual
manner by burning upon it dead men's bones, Josiah espied among the sepulchers close
by - perhaps visible from where he stood* - the monument** of the prophet of old sent
to announce, in the high-day of the consecration of that altar, the desolation which should
lay it waste (comp. 1 Kings 13:1, 2).
- This seems the meaning of 2 Kings 23:16: "And as Josiah turned himself."
** "Monuments:" Genesis 35:20; Jeremiah 31:21; Ezekiel 39:15.
But while they rifled the graves of an idolatrous people, they reverently left untouched
the sepulcher which held the bones of the man of God from Judah, and by their side those
of his host, the prophet of Beth el. And so literally did the judgment announced of old
come to pass, that the bodies of the idol-priests were slain upon the altars at which they
had ministered. And not only in Beth-el, but in the furthest cities of Samaria - as the
chronicler graphically and pathetically puts it (2 Chronicles 34:6), "in their ruins round
about"* - was judgment executed, and even more severely than according to the letter of
the Deuteronomic law (Deuteronomy 17:2- 5); for the representatives of the old idolatry
were not only stoned, but slain "upon the altars."
(^)