He smashed the sacred pillars to pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and covered the sites with human bones.
Parallel translations
- WEB He broke in pieces the pillars, cut down the Asherah poles, and filled their places with men’s bones.
- KJV And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
- NKJV And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images, and filled their places with the bones of men.
- NASB He also smashed to pieces the memorial stones and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with human bones.
- NLT He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah poles. Then he desecrated these places by scattering human bones over them.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Josiah breaks the sacred pillars, cuts down the Asherah poles, and fills their sites with human bones. He renders the idolatrous places permanently unclean.
Overview
By filling the shrine sites with bones, Josiah makes them ceremonially defiled and unusable for worship. His comprehensive destruction of pillars and poles fulfills the command to obliterate Canaanite worship objects (Deut. 7:5). This zeal for the exclusive worship of God prefigures the thoroughness with which Christ cleanses His people from every idol.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Deut 7:5Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.
- Exod 23:24You must not bow down to their gods or serve them or follow their practices. Instead, you are to demolish them and smash their sacred stones to pieces.
- 2 Kgs 23:16And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the hillside, and he sent someone to take the bones out of the tombs, and he burned them on the altar to defile it, according to the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who had foretold these things.
- Num 33:52you must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.
- Deut 7:25–26You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the LORD your God.
- 2 Chr 34:3–4In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, Josiah began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved idols, and the cast images.
- Num 19:18Then a man who is ceremonially clean is to take some hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle the tent, all the furnishings, and the people who were there. He is also to sprinkle the one who touched a bone, a grave, or a person who has died or been slain.
- Matt 23:27–28Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.
- Num 19:16Anyone in the open field who touches someone who has been killed by the sword or has died of natural causes, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days.
- Ezek 39:12–16For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them in order to cleanse the land.
- Jer 8:1–2“At that time,” declares the LORD, “the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of the officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves.
- Mic 1:7All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; all her wages will be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols. Since she collected the wages of a prostitute, they will be used again on a prostitute.
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Christ at the center
Amid the long decline toward exile, the promise to David's house refuses to die; the flickering lamp kept burning anticipates the coming King who will not fail or be cut off.
How 2 Kings 23:14 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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