|
2 Kings 23
Book of Kings
2 Kings 23:1 And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of
Judah and of Jerusalem.
-
Josiah causes the book to be read in a solemn
assembly.
-
Josiah = whom God heals
-
2 Kings 22:2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and
walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside
to the right hand or to the left.
-
Josiah did that which was right in the sight of
the Lord, he was the first king to do this
-
Turned not aside = Josiah is the only king of
whom this is said about
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 Beth-el.
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.
-
Idolatrous priests = black-robed = as appointed
by man.
-
Compare to Hosea 10:5 The inhabitants of Samaria
shall fear because of the calves of Bethaven:
for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and
the priests thereof that rejoiced on it, for the
glory thereof, because it is departed from it.
-
Zephaniah 1:4 I will also stretch out
mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the
inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the
remnant of Baal from this place, and the
name of the Chemarims with the priests;
-
Planets = stations: the twelve signs of the
Zodiac.
-
Job 38:32 Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in
his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with
his sons?
-
The Babylonian name for the divisions of the
zodiac. Called in the Assyrian inscriptions "Mauzalti".
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 hangings for the grove.
-
Sodomites = male prostitutes.
-
Suppression directed in Deuteronomy 23:17 There
shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel,
nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
18 Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or
the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord
thy God for any vow: for even both these are
abomination unto the Lord thy God.
-
Hangings = Hebrew houses.
-
Probably veils to cover the "Asherah, as it is
covered in Romish processions to-day.
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 Beer-sheba, 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 Nathan-melech the
chamberlain, 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 down
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 mount 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, and cut down the groves, and filled their
places with the bones of men.
15 Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, 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 Beth-el.
18 And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones
alone, 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 slew 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,
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 provocations
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 Pharaoh-nechoh 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 Jehoahaz 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 Pharaoh-nechoh 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 Pharaoh-nechoh 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 Pharaoh-nechoh.
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.
-
Jehoiakim did that which was evil in the sight
of the Lord
• Exactly 2520 years from the exile
of Benjamin, Iceland became an independent nation.
•
The first tribe to be
conquered by the Assyrians was Manasseh,
in 745 B.C. Exactly 2520 years later America became a nation on July 4, 1776.
(Leviticus. 26: 28-46) God warned Israel that if they persisted in continually
breaking His Laws, not only would curses come upon them.
He would punish them for seven times, (a time being 360 years, seven times would
be 2520 years) and would banish them from the land of Palestine and scatter them
among the heathens (like lost sheep)
• Study the book: Abrahamic Covenant,
(A study outline of the identity of God's people) By E. Raymond Capt
- page 25
|
|
|
|
|