40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 23:1-14 (Episode 349)

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Josiah gets to work tearing down, smashing, and burning every idolatrous thing in the kingdom. He defiles all the idols that defiled Judah. And puts graveyards in place of pillars to false gods.  Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, you can register for the Here We Still Stand regional event. What if I told you there were only, well, it's the time this releases, there are less than 30 tickets left for that. There's less than 30. That's what I'm telling you.

So if you want to go to that event, you've got to grab that ticket because soon there will be zero tickets for that. That is going to happen. And so there's a link in the show notes. You can click on that, get registered for that two-day event, or you can go over to 1517.org and find that event and register. While you're registering for the event, make sure you sign up for an academy class. Have you taken Chad Bird's Christ in the Old Testament academy class?

If you haven't, why not? It's free. You can go through Christ in the Old Testament with Chad. Or maybe you're like, but I listened to this podcast, Dan. I think I got longer than that academy is worth of Christ in the Old Testament. Well, fair enough. but have you taken the gospel according to luke life of christ with myself and eric sorenson have you taken that you might need to do that maybe you maybe like yeah i'm i don't i don't need more of dan in my life that's the thing uh 40 minutes a week is about all i can handle fair enough but

have you considered christianity america with dr daniel and voris and get some history going or or maybe uh the augsburg confession with scott keith or maybe vocation with michael berg that'd be a good one. You want to get some meaning extracted from your day-to-day life and learn about the doctrine of vocation with Michael Berg. I think you get the point. There's a lot of academies over there that you could sign up for. They're all free. So go and look at the long list of them and see if there's one that you could take. I think that you would find it really edifying. All right, Chad, we are in 2 Kings chapter 23 and we are going to get into Josiah's reform. So we got a little sneak peek at Josiah. Actually, kind of get the best feel for kind of

who Josiah is in that sort of pre-reform thing. So Josiah having the book of the law is discovered, and it's read in his presence, and this has a profound impact on him. And he says, this sounds like we're in deep, deep trouble. It doesn't sound like we've been doing any of this stuff. It sounds like we've been doing all the things that this thing tells us not to do, and none of the things this tells us to do, so I think we've found ourselves in a bad situation. Better go talk to this prophetess and see if she agrees. She totally agrees with Josiah on this. She confirms his worst fears, like, indeed, we're going to have some judgment coming in the near future, but tells him, hey, you know what? God appreciates the heart that you have. He appreciates the

humbleness in which you hear this word, and this wrath and judgment is not going to come in your life, and Josiah's life will be short, but it won't come in that life, and he doesn't then just walk away and say, okay, good, I'm gonna live out my days, and I won't have to endure the wrath of the Lord, but instead we get into this chapter where he is going to start doing some, what John the Baptist would call, making the path straight. yeah make the path straight bring the mountains down burn the asherim yeah he'll kill the false priest i mean yeah he's uh he's gonna take a broom he's gonna do a little sweeping here actually a lot of a lot of sweeping it's gonna be some some i guess more reformation as far as like

the religious reformation that we've seen up to this point i mean we've had some cleanups that have taken place but we have not seen the kind of cleanups they're about to take place here So much so that he's not only going to, as it were, just trash all the idols, but he's going to make sure that even the stuff they were made out of can't be used again. He's going to desecrate. So there's going to be destruction and desolation. He's going to make sure that all these things that have been used before cannot be used again because they're going to be desecrated by, well, mostly by human bones. So we'll get to that in just a minute. But yeah, just kind of to keep in mind, too, if you're just listening and have not actually looked in your Bible or your Bible app to kind of see where we're at, we're close to the end of 2 Kings.

This is chapter 23, and there's only 25 chapters in 2 Kings. So we are very near the end. And just to kind of give you an idea as to how close we are, not just the end of the book, but to the end of this segment of Israel's history. which is going to end with the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity. So when Josiah ends his reign, when he dies, then Israel, Judah has basically two decades left. So that's how close we are. I mean, like, so this isn't like, oh yeah, a couple more, a couple hundred more years, Babylonians could come in and demolish everything, tear down the temple take everybody to uh into exile no this is like right on the cusp of that of that destruction

in fact it will be so there's gonna be four kings four kings after josiah uh three of those are his sons and one of those is a grandson and it will be the final king zedekiah who is the the youngest son of josiah he will be the final king of of the southern kingdom yeah so you might get the idea say, we're at the end here. And that might make you realize that some of these kings aren't kings for a very, very long time. Yeah, these are not long reigns. So I mean, when Josiah hears that the wrath of God is not going to visit Judah in his days, it does come very quickly after his days you do get the feeling that god is waiting for his servant josiah to be done and and then i mean if a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day to the lord i mean i

don't know what two decades is but it's not a very long time no blink of an eye so uh we finished up chapter 22 of second kings with them bringing back word to the king from uh from the prophet to hold us so she's told him what's going to happen that uh wrath will still be coming but that josiah will be gathered to his to his fathers so they bring back that word and the king decides very beginning of second kings 23 that uh in the time that he has he's going to make sure and make the most of it and so he gathers everybody together he he sends probably sends out messengers and they start pulling people into jerusalem all the elders of judah and jerusalem they get together with him and then the king goes up to the temple to the house of the lord and he takes

with him all the men of judah and all the inhabitants of jerusalem and the priests and the prophets and all the people both small and great so you kind of you get the image here that all of jerusalem and this whole surrounding area is is a stir everybody's everybody's talking about what's happening and so there's going to be this mass gathering that takes place at at the temple so they all get together and when they did he opened up this scroll that was found the book of the covenant and he read it he read it in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the lord you i kind of picture you know there's they have some sort of stand perhaps the state that he's on and everybody's crammed in there uh like at a concert

or something like that uh shoulder to shoulder and they're listening as this book is read to them and the impact of that is going to be basically that this book stands as a critique against all the stuff that's around them because it was as we're going to hear in just a minute this house of the lord the temple that they're in is just packed i mean packed with idols of all kinds They got him in the storerooms. They got him in the courts. They got him all over the place. So he reads it. And while this is happening, the king is standing by a pillar. Now, that's a detail that may or may not ring a bell with you. But if you go back to 2 Kings chapter 11, this is right after.

You remember the story of Queen Athaliah, the one who tried to murder all the possible heirs to the throne? And then she took over in the southern kingdom. And for a few years, she was the one who was the reigning monarch. But there was a child king, Jehoash, who was secretly taken away. And when he was just a kid, they brought him out. And then Athaliah, you know, hollers treason, treason when she's put to death. well when all that was going on back in second kings 11 we read that the king that is this child king jehoash was standing by the pillar according to the custom and then when all this was going on

after all this they made a covenant with the lord so evidently this pillar was like the place where the king stood this is like his royal his royal position happened back in second kings 11 is happening now again in second kings chapter 23 so he stands by the pillar and they make a covenant a pact with the lord before the lord to walk after the lord to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul that's the language of the shema from deuteronomy 6 all your heart and all your soul and all your might so to do that and to perform the words of this covenant that were written in the book so that and then just in case you get the idea that this was just you know what the king wanted it says that all the people

join in the covenant with him so this is to be a united front against the idolatry that has polluted the temple and polluted all all of jerusalem so verse four says that to carry this out the king is going to issue some commands it says that he issued a command to first of all the high priest guy named hilkiah we've heard about him earlier uh in connection with the finding of this book of the torah so the king commands hilkiah the high priest and the priest of the second order and the keepers of the thresholds all these people are part of the the temple uh the temple servants that they are to to bring out of the temple all the vessels made for baal and for asherah that you know that that those two

divine lovers that were kind of the popular canaanite deities baal and then his consort asherah so vessels made for them and for all the hosts of heaven so there's kind of this astral worship that was very common in canaanite religion and really all over all over the ancient near east So they've got all these vessels that were made for the god Baal, the goddess Asherah, and then the astral deities. And what are they going to do with them? Well, he said, we're told that he took them outside Jerusalem to the fields of the Kidron. I'm assuming this is just part of the Kidron Valley, which is right there beside Jerusalem. You cross the Kidron Valley, you leave the temple going east, go out the eastern gate,

and then you go down the kidron valley and then you go up the mount of olives so this is on the eastern side of jerusalem eastern side of of the temple and they take them there and they uh they burned them and the reason they one of the reasons they burned them is not just to destroy them but this is this is exactly what moses did with the golden calf back in the day so in exodus 32 30 32 20 we read that moses took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and then he scattered it on the water and made the people of israel drink it and this is exactly by the way so they just heard from the from the book of the law which is presumably deuteronomy and in deuteronomy 12 we read that when the israelites get to the promised land and

they conquer it from the canaanites and perizzites and amorites and everybody else god says you shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their asherim with fire so has i mean josiah is doing nothing more than what moses had already done by way of example and by what deuteronomy said was to be done so he burns them outside jerusalem now there's a little detail that's added here too that we're going to come back to uh but he said we're told that he carried their ashes, the ashes from burning of these deities, to Bethel. And we will come back to that, but keep in mind that Dan, the city of Dan in the north, and the city of Bethel in the south, those are the two places where Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin, set up those two golden calves.

Yeah, yeah. We'll come back to Bethel in a minute. Yeah, I mean, it's not for no reason that you take something outside of jerusalem and burn it right so you don't just like go to wherever it is and then light it up uh there's a there's a symbolic move here where you remove the thing and then destroy it so both of these you have a double symbolism here right where we're not going to destroy it in the city because we want that we want this we want the people to see that this is being removed from our presence, right? So this is no longer welcome here. Yeah, yeah, that is the symbolism. So you take the unclean thing, and you don't, as it were, start a fire in the courts of the temple and burn it there. No, you're going to take it outside the

city. It's being removed from the sacred precincts of the city because it is unclean, and it'll just be taken to the Kidron Valley, and there it's destroyed. There it's burned with fire. And the ashes of this then are going to be used later, but they're going to be taken up to, when they're taken up to Bethel. It seems that part of that, I mean, obviously the symbolism is like, hey, remove the unclean thing from your midst and this kind of thing. There's also, you don't want this heap, you don't want to light something on fire, have this heap of ashes where people might be tempted to this is where the thing was

here the ashes are floating it's almost as though you don't want to destroy it there lest any remnant of it remain so you take the whole thing out and then destroy it because you don't I don't want like I don't want just so much as a little ash floating around the air of

Jerusalem of this thing we got to take it outside and destroy it yeah or somebody pick up some of the ashes and put them in some little receptacle and that in itself becomes uh an idol to them yeah these are the ashes of the the goddess's uh pole or something that used to be precious to me you know people do that yeah this is not far-fetched whatsoever people would would certainly do something along those lines all right so so he's taking care of

all these vessels dedicated to baal asher and the host of heaven takes him out destroys him burns but he also has to deal with uh not just these vessels but also the the priest the people who were making offerings to those and that's what happens in verse 5 he uh deposed is the way that the esv translates this uh the hebrew verb is the same verb from which we get uh shabbat or the sabbath so this is what's called the hyphil form of that verb which uh so to to shabbat is to rest and to a hyphil in hebrew is usually causative so cause to rest in this sense it's to stop or or discontinue so he's basically putting a stop to the work of these priests and so deep depose is a is a good translation of that uh he's he's removing them deposing them the ones that the

kings of judah had ordained to do what to make offerings in the high places at the city of judah and and around jerusalem those who burn incense to baal and then we have mention of the astral uh deities again to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the hosts of heaven by the way i'm sure we talked about this way back in genesis but there's a pretty good argument to be made that when genesis 1 is describing the creation and it gets to uh mentioning the stars it's almost like a uh just an aside god made everything oh yeah he made the stars too and and the reason is because of course in the ancient world the stars were revered they were they were worshiped uh so that's genesis is genesis one's uh kind of very

subtle downplaying of the importance of of the stars because their importance was uplaid in the religions of the ancient near east so he deposes the priests everybody who had been making these offerings burning incense to baal and and the astral deities and he also brought out from the house of the lord the asherah this is probably this asherah pole and took it outside jerusalem took it to the brook kidron the same place we talked about a minute ago that was called the fields of kidron and he burned it there at the brook and not only that but he beat it to dust So not enough to just burn this thing, but give me a sledgehammer. We're going to beat this thing to dust, which again is mimicking what happened with the golden calf.

That same Hebrew phrase is used to describe what Moses did with the golden calf. He reduced it down to dust, and so that's exactly what this very Moses kind of character, Josiah, is doing. Burning it and then beating it to dust, and then get this, as if that's not enough. so we're going to destroy it we're going to burn it we're going to beat it to dust well what else can we do with it well there's one more thing that you can do with it he cast the dust upon the graves of the common people now you know from leviticus and elsewhere too that one of the ways in which a person or a thing or a place is defiled is by its connection with death so death was one of the primary ways in which uh ritual uncleanness was contracted so if i touch a corpse then i

contract i catch as it were it's like a contagion i catch uncleanness so what's happening here in this situation and what we're going to see as the the rest of the chapter unfolds is that death used as a way of desecrating something is becoming important. So they're taking this dust from the ashes and now they're going to put it on the graves of the common people as a way of not just destroying them,

but also providing an uncleanness to this stuff so that it can never, ever be used again for any religious purpose whatsoever. Is there something here too, like you have the people there and uh so josiah can't like have all the uh the worshipers of asher drink the the dust mixed with water because all the other people seem to be on everyone seems to be on board with this says all the people agreed uh you have all these other people in the past that had been engaged in all

this stuff i can't make you drink it uh but i guess i'll just throw the dust of your god all over your grave. Here's your God. Here's your dead God on your dead graves. Yeah, your God can lie in the dirt with you. It seems to be like an insult to the people who worshipped the Asherah pole and engaged in this behavior, that your God ends up in the same place that you are, which is not a very useful God. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I mean, it's a ritual act, but it's also just about as, uh, as in your face and insult, as you can imagine. Yeah. You know what your God, you know, what your God is really good for, uh, just grave dust. That's what your God is good for. It brought death. It is death. It is dead. So we're going to put it, we're going

to lay it to rest in the place of death as well. We're going to sprinkle this stuff on the graves of the common people. So that's what they did. Uh, at least with this part, verse seven, this is like a long list of things that they did uh next how's it what's it going to do with the uh the houses of the male cult prostitutes yes everyone's been asking this question this is the question everyone's mind yeah i get emails every week yes what was good what's going to happen to uh to uh to these houses i like it in the bible when you discover that something exists you're like what what it gives you like and now for these things that were and you're like wait a minute to what like what was happening here yeah and i mean that's weird enough but guess

where they were this is the this is the not the best part but the most amazing part not only did you have houses of male cult prostitutes but guess where they were located you know you put in your gps type in male cult prostitute house it sends you right to the temple yeah because he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes whatever that was i don't know what houses anyway but they were in the house of the lord it's had to be like little uh in my mind i imagine you have the house of the lord so like what i mean the house of lord isn't so big that it's got like other houses in it uh but maybe you have the house of the lord and then these are like little uh these are little rooms there's little rooms right yeah it's like uh back then you know

sometimes you have rooms divided by like curtains and that kind of stuff. So you got like, I mean, what is a male cult prostitute doing? I don't know, but he might, I think I know. And he might, you know, he might have a little cubicle. And it seems like these need to be broken down for sure. Yeah, let's definitely take these out. So they did. They broke them down.

We're not told what they did with these, with the male cult prostitutes. uh but uh i'm guessing judging by what they did to others that they that they were no more and then also so you got these guys they have women who wove hangings for the asherah so some sort of maybe it was uh i don't know vestments or veils or whatever it was these were sacred garments that were dedicated to the goddess the goddess asherah so you got male cult prostitutes You've got these women weaving these hangings. They're going to take care of all this. And they also, verse 8, brought out all the priests out of all the cities of Judah,

and they defiled the high places, these Bamoth that we've heard about over and over, defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, all the way from Geba, or how you want to say it in English, to Beersheba. We're used to hearing about from Dan to Beersheba, So this is a little bit different geographical location. This city is evidently a Levitical city within a portion of the land that Joshua assigned to the tribe of Benjamin. So a little bit closer to home. So from there to Beersheba, high places all over.

He broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city. and then we get real specific you know the ones which are on one's left at the gate of the city it's almost like the author is about you know you know the ones we used to walk by every you know when you went to that gate they were to the left over there those no more it's a reminder too by the way that high places is not necessarily a reference to how high they were literally a high place is just a technical term for a little worship little worship space a little little sanctuary and if these were at the gate it's not like you have a hill there or something like that it just was a ritual location where offerings were made to to deities so these are taken out

all right uh verse nine tells us that the priest of the high places did not come up to the altar of the lord in jerusalem but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers so the way i read that is that they were no longer allowed because of their previous idolatrous activity they were no longer allowed to serve yahweh at the temple in jerusalem but they weren't kicked out of the priesthood they were still allowed to eat unleavened bread among their their fellow priest so i guess some uh some leniency there on the part of the priest so they they serve the high places they're no longer able to do that because they're defiled but they are still allowed to eat at least some of the bread that was connected with the temple service.

This is one thing that's interesting about Josiah. He's smashing all kinds of stuff and burning all kinds of stuff. I mean, he's getting rid of everything. But he's not doing a lot of bloodshed. I mean, in some previous sort of reform kind of stuff, you think about Elijah, him and the prophets of Baal are going to do some work. So a lot of people, a lot of bloodshed going on there. You know, old Joaz, you know everyone's going to die when he comes rolling through.

But Josiah seems like he's got the people on board, and that's sort of enough. And he doesn't need, you know, because this could easily read, and he took all these people out and slaughtered them, and he took these male prostitutes and slaughtered them. And maybe he did. It doesn't say he didn't, but it doesn't say he did. take these priests they went out you got a slot that's not happening it's it seems that he's saying hey we're doing reforms and i'm going to uh if you're willing to be on board with the reforms

then i don't think that a lot of people have to die here and now if there was like this huge resistance that might be different you know but yeah that does seem to be the case uh we're not to it yet but down here in let's see uh verse 20 there is reference to some priests who were uh who were put to death but i think in this whole well i guess we'll see as we work through the narrative but i think that's the only reference to any kind of executions that take place so it is it's it's a different kind of reform uh like you said you know if this was if this was elijah it'd be like bloodshed everywhere he's like hacking the hacking the priest And maybe the difference is, like, sort of the reading of the word of the Lord has this effect on the people, and they rally around that.

And Josiah is willing—if you're willing to repent and to get on board, then he's—then you're going to be okay. uh i mean perhaps these priests that that that he don't do end up uh dead were not willing for that yeah and perhaps this is the difference you know hey which is a yeah it's a very real possibility i mean you it's not like you're gonna have everybody on board with this reform especially when you're i mean you're attacking the uh which was their means of of living and presumably unless They were just hypocritical. They actually believed in this stuff. So, you know, that he didn't receive more resistance is really the shocking part of this story.

Yeah. It does make him a sort of different guy. As far as righteous kings or even prophets go, we don't have the speeches of Josiah. It makes you want to have them because you're like, how did you do this exactly, man? It seems like you really rallied the troops I wish I heard that Rallying speech It must have been a real banger

When you got everyone on board Yeah you want that Book on leadership that Josiah wrote I just do this exactly dude I just pull that off What are some principles that we can incorporate in our own leadership How do you destroy all the Religious symbols

Of a society And have minimal bloodshed How do you do this you you have you have cracked that nut somehow yeah yeah he did he did very successfully so after that uh the mention of them eating unleavened bread we're now we get verse 10 to uh something we've touched on a couple times before and that is kind of the the low point of this idolatry that was taking place or that he defiled a topheth and which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom that no one might burn his son or daughter as an offering to Molech. So there's a

lot, there's a lot packed in that. Uh, so the, uh, the, the place itself, Topheth, uh, that's mentioned here in second Kings. It's also mentioned in, in Jeremiah as this place where you have child sacrifice. It's, it's happening. And the location is important too. I don't remember if talked about this before or not but so the valley of the son of hinom is also referred to as the valley of hinom in in hebrew and so valley is is gay and then you have either been hinom or just gay hinom the so the valley of hinom what why is that important well because gay hinom in hebrew the valley of Hinnom, this valley that belonged to this guy by the name of Hinnom, that is taken directly into Greek. So Ge-Hinnom, the valley of Hinnom, becomes Gehenna in Greek. And then Gehenna,

of course, is translated as hell in the New Testament. So it's kind of a fascinating process that takes place here. So Ge-Hinnom, the valley of Hinnom, was originally just a place. I And it was a place that was right outside Jerusalem. It's a park, by the way, in modern Jerusalem, which is just crazy. I didn't visit the park, but we drove by it. And I looked down there and there's trees and there's benches and there's green grass. And it just looks so peaceful. And you have to remind yourself when you drive by Gehenna, the Valley of Pinoam, you're like, oh, yeah, it might look pretty now.

But the worst ugliness in the world took place there. Yeah, that's pretty informative. I've talked to people about this before it's tempting to think that when maybe you're just reading the New Testament this is where the word hell would appear it wouldn't appear in the Old Testament at all but even in the New Testament

when they're hearing they're not thinking of what you're thinking at all this is a place but not like some place that's you know not like heaven and hell not some place in some other realm or something it's a reference to a place that really horrible

things historically happened um and so it's a reference to a bad place but it's not it's not it doesn't it doesn't when you hear you know jesus said hell or something like that if you read that in the bible uh your average hebrew that's walking around he doesn't hear that the same way you do yeah because there's this whole history behind it uh i mean and granted it does uh undergo a metamorphosis kind of a metaphorical metamorphosis you might say over time but originally it's a place so it's a valley and the reason it came to be associated with this you know the place of punishment is because uh in jeremiah jeremiah talks about this how uh it was a place where you have child sacrifice you have topha that's there and uh jeremiah says uh that the valley will become

a place of bloodshed like a bloodbath is going to take place there uh it's probably you know the end of end of isaiah when he talks about you know the worm shall not die their fire shall not be quenched you're going to go out look on the dead bodies of their of their corpses uh he's probably talking there again about this place right outside jerusalem so uh it's a this valley and you have all this just horrendous things associated with it it's over over time it comes you know a bigger bigger than life we might say bigger than just that that valley itself but i think maybe this is the first time that we have actually come across a reference to it as a real geographical location yeah yeah it's just it's a valley it's a gay it's a it's a valley belonging to first of

all hinom and then to ben hinom then to then to his sons i've often thought you know poor guy at one point in history there was a guy named hinom little did he realize he should not have he should not have bought that valley because it's gonna be a long history behind that place you don't want your name associated with valley of death man that's what it is it is yeah so uh he he defiled it he defiled topheth uh there in uh the valley of the son of a gnome so that nobody could else nobody else could burn their son or daughters an offering to to molek and he so some some people speculate that what's going here and on here with molek is this is a reference to a a pretty popular canaanite deity the root name of which was m m lk uh most hebrew roots most

hebrew roots have three different letters and then what's happened here with the o and the e that's inserted there is the o and the e are also associated with the name of shame we talked about that before in connection with other names so maybe the original name of malak or melek or whatever it might have been you take the vows out of that you insert o and e because that's associated with with shame but whatever's going on here that's the deity to whom the children were were sacrificed and then verse 11 so we go from child sacrifice to the horses and chariots of the sun so he also removed that's our same verb that we saw earlier with deposed so he caused to rest where he put to an end he he shabbat he put to an end the horses that the kings of judah

had dedicated to the sun at the entrance to the house of the lord by the chamber of some guy by the name of nathan mellick which was in the precincts and he also burned the chariots of the sun with fire i think it's removed and stuff language isn't it it's not as though you might be Like, you know, put an end to, like, oh, did he kill them all? Did he kill all these people over here and these priests and these horses and whoever? But we got words for that. Like, I mean, if he went and slaughtered them all, like, I don't think this is what it says. He just ceased the practice and removed the thing.

Yeah, there's other ways this could have been described. So I think the choice of that verb is significant. And maybe, I don't, maybe this is reading too much into it, But because that is the verb for Sabbath or Shabbat, maybe maybe there is a little bit of a wink there that, you know, the land needs the place needs some rest. It needs rest from idolatry. And so he's causing that by removing the priest who serve the high places and removing these various idolatrous objects. So here it's the, the horses and the, and the chariots, uh, horses, we do know as well as chariots and the sun, all those were, were part of the religious system of the ancient Aries.

So another example of how previous Kings Manasseh in particular had basically just went wholesale into idolatry. It was like, oh yeah, you like to worship that? We'll bring it on. You like to worship that? We'll bring it on. he's filling jerusalem full of whatever whatever the popular idols were of of the day and also the altars on the roof of the upper chamber of ahaz which the kings of judah had made and the

altars that manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the lord we pulled these down he broke them in pieces and he cast the dust of them into the brook kidron something like the The Kidron Valley has a whole lot going on in it. You've got a lot of burning. You've got a lot of beaten stuff to find dust. You've got a lot of sprinkling it in the water. It's becoming like the trash heap of idolatry, for sure. And then he defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem

to the south of the Mount of Corruption. So that is significant because we're talking here about the mount of corruption is the mount of olives there's a there's a word play here so it would have been called the mount of mosh ha the mount of destruction would be the mount of mosh heat so just a play on words there so the mount of olives is referred to here as the mount of corruption why because solomon and generations before solomon the king of israel had built for ashtarot the abomination of the sidonians and for commotion the abomination of moab and for milcom the abomination of the ammonites so all over the mount of olives which here again is given the

pejorative name the mount of corruption all of the mount of olives east of jerusalem on the other side of the kidron valley solomon to please his his many wives had built all of these various sanctuaries and altars to these these deities which evidently based upon what we're reading here had just remained yeah the shocking thing is that you've had some other guys you know they're few and far between that weren't really into idolatry but i mean solomon was a while ago at this point yeah yeah we're talking several several hundred years before and this stuff is still there The Mount of Olives, which today, if you walk down the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem, toward where the temple once was, it's covered in graves.

It's a Jewish graveyard. So back in the day, though, it was full of various sanctuaries to these various gods. Well, you're going to see Josiah get that started because he just broke down the pillars and cut down all the stuff. And then he just decides, I'll just fill this with the bones of men. Yeah, I didn't think about that. But yeah, he kind of starts the cemetery, right?

Yeah. This is more not just the destruction, but the desolation. So just in case you missed it, Josiah is really kind of 100% behind this idol destruction, desolation, taking it all out, every, whatever it might be, whether it's altars on the on the palace roof or whether it's uh cult prostitutes or the weavings

for asherah or the priest or the chariots of fire whatever he's going to destroy it all and he's not done so we made it through the first 14 verses of destruction but he's got something he needs to do at bethel and we're going to hear we'll hear more about that next uh the next episode but you know you you might or might not remember that long ago back in the days of jeroboam there was a man of God who said that in the future a king would arise by the name of Josiah, and he would be the one who would bring to an end what Jeroboam had begun. So that's what we're going to hear about in verses 15 and following. Oh man, what a tease. Bethel cliffhanger. We're going to have to just hang there until next week. So Chad, I will see you then. All right, see you then.

We'll see you next time.