2 Kings 23:1-37 - Sutcliffe's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Reader Related Verse
Bible Comments

2 Kings 23:29. He slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him; as in 2 Kings 14:8. It would seem from this phrase that the two kings were engaged in single combat. This was an error for which Josiah forfeited his life, and the Israelites their glory. The king neither consulted the Lord, nor his prophets. One sad error put out the light of Israel; for with this king, all that belonged to regal virtue in David's house seemed to expire.

REFLECTIONS. On reading the history of the Israelites in their passage through the wilderness, we are astonished at their unbelief and hardness of heart, amidst such a profusion of miracles and of mercies, and wonder how they could presume to tempt the Lord and to grieve his Holy Spirit in the manner they did, for the space of forty years; yet it seems that these provocations were only a specimen of their general character, and served the purpose of illustrating the great goodness and longsuffering of God towards them. With some few exceptions in the early part of their national history, during the reign of David and Solomon, and some others, we observe the same incorrigible spirit of unbelief and of rebellion against God, with encreasing proofs of the awful depravity and corruption of human nature, down to the latest period of their social existence.

Jehoiakim, the son of good king Josiah, whose untimely death all Judah lamented, was a most profligate and unprincipled tyrant, guilty of every species of oppression towards the people, and of impiety towards God. His odious reign of eleven years had filled the nation with such abhorrence, that the common rites of sepulture were denied him at his death; his carcase was cast out of the city like so much dung, and left apparently to rot above-ground, the greatest indignity that could be offered to human nature. Jeremiah 22:13-19.

The son of this degraded prince was Jehoiachin, sometimes called Jeconiah, and by way of contempt Coniah, Jeremiah 22:24; but in the evangelical genealogy he is called Jechonias. Matthew 1:11. Incapable of moral improvement, this Jehoiachin took no warning whatever from the example of his father, whose memory was shaded with the deepest infamy, but abandoned himself to vice and profligacy. After a short reign of little more than three months, he was dethroned by Nebuchadnezzar, and carried into Babylon, where he died in captivity, an awful monument of divine displeasure. In the former siege of Jerusalem, during the reign of Jehoiakim his father, Nebuchadnezzar carried away upwards of three thousand of the principal people, and the more valuable part of the vessels of the sanctuary. In the present instance the Chaldean monarch made more than ten thousand captives, and carried off what still remained in the temple. Thus the day of Jerusalem's destruction, so long and frequently foretold, was now rapidly approaching, and the time of the Lord's anger was hastening on.

Mattaniah, brother of Jehoiachin, was nominated to the vacant throne by Nebuchadnezzar, being merely his viceroy, the dominion having in effect passed into the hands of the king of Babylon. This Mattaniah, whose name the conqueror changed to Zedekiah, was the last of the kings of Judah; with him the kingdom of the two tribes totally ceased, and all went into captivity. This deputy king exhibited the same inveterate depravity as his predecessors, took no warning from their fearful example, but set at defiance the denunciations of the prophets, and even dared the vengeance of heaven. Having filled up the measure of his iniquity, after a turbulent reign of eight years, and violating his covenant with Nebuchadnezzar, he was hurled from this throne, was summoned into the presence of Nebuchadnezzar at his camp in Riblah, where his eyes were ordered to be put out; and he was then consigned to the dungeons of Babylon. In this third and last siege Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by the Chaldeans, all that remained in the temple was carried away, with numerous of the inhabitants; and thus terminated the awful catastrophe, the particulars of which are enumerated in the following chapter.

Related Commentaries of 2 Kings 23:1

2 Kings 23:1-37

1 And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

2 And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD.

3 And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.

5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained 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.

6 And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangingsa for the grove.

8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

9 Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

11 And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain,b which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

12 And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and brake them downc from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.

13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mountd of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

14 And he brake in pieces the images,e and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.

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.

26 Notwithstanding the LORD turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocationsi that Manasseh had provoked him withal.

27 And the LORD said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

28 Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

29 In his days Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates: and king Josiah went against him; and he slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

30 And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father's stead.

31 Jehoahazj was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

32 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.

33 And Pharaohnechoh put him in bands at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and put the land to a tribute of an hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold.

34 And Pharaohnechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the room of Josiah his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim, and took Jehoahaz away: and he came to Egypt, and died there.

35 And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he taxed the land to give the money according to the commandment of Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of every one according to his taxation, to give it unto Pharaohnechoh.

36 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

37 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.