2 Kings 23:15-25 - Frederick Brotherton Meyer's Commentary

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Proving His Whole-Heartedness

2 Kings 23:15-25

Josiah carried his drastic reforms even to Samaria, thus fulfilling a prophecy uttered 350 years before. See 1 Kings 13:2-3. The old leaven having now been cleared out, the Passover could be celebrated. We cannot keep the feast of joy and worship till the work of self-purgation has been undertaken. See 1 Corinthians 5:7. In that great feast some of the ten tribes also joined. There was therefore an affirmation of the spiritual unity of the entire nation, though, like the professing Church of today, it was outwardly in fragments. We must never let go of our belief in the Holy Universal Church, however distracted and divided to outward seeming it may be.

Though these reforms were carried through by the king's strong hand, the generality of the nation remained idolatrous and corrupt, and yielded a feigned rather than a felt repentance. See Jeremiah 3:10; Jeremiah 4:3-4; Jeremiah 4:14; Jeremiah 5:1-3, etc. Therefore judgment could not be averted. External reformation is not enough to secure the permanence of national life. We must rend our hearts rather than our garments, Joel 2:13. There is a sorrow that needs not to be repented of, and a sorrow which “worketh death,” 2 Corinthians 7:10.

Related Commentaries of 2 Kings 23:15

2 Kings 23:15-25

15 Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, 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 brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.

16 And 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.

17 Then 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 thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.

18 And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone,f with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.

19 And 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 Bethel.

20 And he slewg all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

21 And 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.

22 Surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah;

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

24 Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images,h 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.

25 And like unto him was there no king before him, that 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.