2 Kings 23:2

Josiah Restores True Worship

1 Now ^athe king sent them to gather all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to him.

2 The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah, and with him all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great. And he ^aread in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant ^bwhich had been found in the house of the Lord.

3 Then the king ^astood by a pillar and made a ^bcovenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant.

4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the ^apriests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring ^bout of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.

5 Then he removed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the¹ constellations, and to ^aall the host of heaven.

Commentaries:

Barnes' Notes

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2 Kings 23:2

The prophets - The suggestion to regard this word an error of the pen for "Levites," which occurs in Chronicles (marginal reference), is unnecessary. For though Zephaniah, Urijah, and Jeremiah are all that we can name as belonging to the order at the time, there is no reason to doubt that Judaea contained others whom we cannot name. "Schools of the prophets" were as common in Judah as in Israel.

He read - The present passage is strong evidence that the Jewish kings could read. The solemn reading of the Law - a practice commanded in the Law itself once in seven years Deuteronomy 31:10-13 - had been intermitted, at least for the last 75 years, from the date of the accession of Manasseh.

**Other Barnes' Notes entries containing 2 Kings 23:2:**

Exodus 24:7
2 Chronicles 34:30

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