Hypocrisy is involved here. The reforms by which the Jews came under the authority of God were made possible by hypocrisy. They reformed, but it was not of the heart. They did what Josiah said, but they really did not do it willingly. They did it because Josiah made them do it. He had to use the authority of the office of king to get these people to make the reforms. It was done with pretense. It was hollow. There was no real heart there.
All those quotes I gave, especially from that book The Religions of the Ancient Near East, showed how rotten the religions were of Baal and Asherah, and yet Judah is worse. I guess we could say that Judah was so bad they made Israel look good, at least by comparison.
