744 matching verse commentaries
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord,.... Not a real grove of trees, but a carved one, as some think; or rather the image of the grove, 2 Kings 21:7 that is, the idol Ashtoreth, or Astarte, which was set up there; so Theodoret says; some interpreters call it Astoreth, the name of Venus, whom they call Astarte: this Josiah...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he brake down the houses of the Sodomites that were by the house of the Lord,.... Near the temple were apartments, in which men, the worshippers of idols, prostituted their bodies to each other; committing that unnatural sin with one another, which has its name from Sodom, and from which those are so called, and which sin they committed in...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah,.... Who were of the sons of Aaron, and had served in the high places there: and defiled the high places where the priests had burnt incense; by casting dead carcasses, or the bones of dead men, or dung, or anything that was unclean, into them, by way of contempt: from Geba to Beersheba;...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Nevertheless, the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord at Jerusalem,.... To sacrifice there, as the Targum; though they were removed from the high places, they were not admitted to officiate at the altar of the Lord, having offered in forbidden places: but they did eat of the unleavened bread with their brethren; the...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he defiled Topheth,.... A place so called, as is generally thought, from the beating of drums or timbrels in it, that the shrieks of the infants sacrificed here to Molech might not be heard by their parents, and they repent of delivering them to him, and take them away. So the Indians in India now, at the burning of wives with their deceased...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun,.... Consecrated to it; these were not images of horses, as some have thought, but real living ones; and the kings that gave them for the service of the sun, and for sacrifice to it, very probably were Manasseh and Amon: that horses were sacred to the sun with many Heathen...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made,.... Which were on the roof of the royal palace; the roofs of houses in Judah being flat, Deuteronomy 21:8 altars might be built upon them; so, in Arabia, altars were built on the tops of houses to offer incense thereon daily to the sun (p); as here...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And the high places that were before Jerusalem,.... Not only that were within the city, and at the gates of it, but what were without it: which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption: the mount of Olives, so called from the idolatry and corrupt worship performed in it, by way of reproach, with a small alteration of the letters of the...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he brake in pieces the images,.... Of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom, in the above high places; which as these high places had been rebuilt by Manasseh or Amon, so new images of these deities were placed there: and cut down the groves; in which they were set: and filled their places with the bones of men; of idolatrous priests and worshippers,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made. For the worship of the calf there: both that altar, and the high place, he brake down; according to an ancient prophecy of the man of God, 1 Kings 13:3 and of Amos in later times, Amos 9:1 and burnt the high place, and...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And as Josiah turned himself,.... From the high place, and the altar at Bethel; for he not only gave orders for the destroying of idolatrous places and idols, but he saw them executed himself: he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount; the graves of idolatrous priests and worshippers, who chose to be buried near those places of...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Then he said, what title is that that I see?.... A high and large monument over a grave, with an inscription on it, more remarkable than any of the rest, which made Josiah take notice of it; and the Jews have a tradition, as Kimchi observes, that on one side of the grave grew nettles and thistles, and on the other side odoriferous herbs; which is...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he said, let him alone, let no man move his bones,.... Not take them out of the grave, as they had done the rest: so they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria; the old prophet, whereby his end was answered in being buried with him, 1 Kings 13:31.
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And all the houses also of the high places,.... The temples of the idols there, and the houses for the priests to dwell in: that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away; particularly in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, unto Naphtali, 2 Chronicles 34:6 the...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there,.... The idolatrous priests who sacrificed to Baal, and other Heathen deities; for as for others that burnt incense in high places, yet to the true God, those he spared, though they were not suffered to officiate at the altar of God: the others he slew upon the altars; where they...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And the king commanded all the people,.... Not at Jerusalem only, but throughout the whole kingdom: saying, keep the passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant; which had been lately found and read, and they had agreed to observe, and in which this ordinance was strictly enjoined, and was a commemoration of...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel,.... As the king commanded; the people obeyed and kept the passover, according to the law of the Lord; the manner of its being kept is not here recorded, but is at large in 2 Chronicles 35:1 where it is observed there had not been such an one from the days...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
But in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the Lord in Jerusalem. This shows that Josiah must begin the reformation very early that year, since he did all that is before recorded in this and the preceding chapter by the fourteenth of Nisan, the day on which the passover was kept, which month answers to part of...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Moreover, the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards,.... Who were not to be allowed among the Israelites, Deuteronomy 18:10 and the images; or teraphim: and the idols, and all the abominations; which were worshipped by the Heathens, and introduced among the Jews, and forbidden by the word of God: that were spied in the land of Judah, and...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And like unto him was there no king before him,.... The same is said of Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18:5, Hezekiah might excel him in some things, as Josiah might excel Hezekiah in others: that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might; with such sincerity, heartiness, zeal, and constancy: according to all the law...