Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Chronicles 34:3
For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.
3 7 (cp. 2Ch 34:33; 2Ki 13:4-20). Josiah destroys the Symbols of Idolatry
3. in the eighth year and in the twelfth ] The two dates given in this verse seem to be “doublettes,” i.e. various readings both of which have been adopted and placed side by side in the text. Moreover it is probable that neither reading is original, for both seem to have been derived by some transcriptional error or other from 2Ki 22:3, where the account of Josiah’s doings begins with the date, in the eighteenth year.
Thus we get:
( a) 2Ki 22:3 (= 2Ch 34:8):
bishmneh esreh “eighteenth” (the original reading).
( b) 2Ch 34:3 a:
bishmneh “eighth” (defective reading; esreh having dropped out).
( c) 2Ch 34:3 b:
bishtym esreh, “twelfth” (attempted correction, perhaps from memory, of the defective reading).
It should also be noticed that the order of the events of Josiah’s reign given in Chron. varies from that given in 2 Kin. Thus we have in 2 Chr.:
(1) Destruction of idolatrous symbols throughout Jerusalem, Judah and Israel; 2Ch 34:3-7.
(2) Repair of the Temple and Finding of the Law; ib. 2Ch 34:8-28.
(3) Renewal of the Covenant with Jehovah; ib. 2Ch 34:29-32.
(4) Great Passover kept; 2Ch 35:1-19.
(5) Death of Josiah; ib. 2Ch 35:20-27.
In 2 Kin. on the other hand (2), (3) precede (1), and there can be little doubt that this order is right.
while he was yet young ] There is no clause corresponding to this in 2 Kin., and the statement rests on the probably faulty reading “eighth.” Yet his early piety is probably a fact, for though in 2 Kin. his reformation is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign, i.e. when he was 25 years of age (hardly “young” for a king), the favourable judgement passed on him (2Ki 12:2) is unqualified by any suggestion that he was tardy in turning to Jehovah.
in the twelfth year he began ] The Chronicler spreads the cleansing of the land over six years, i.e. from the twelfth to the eighteenth; cp. 2Ch 34:8.
to purge ] Josiah’s measures are more fully enumerated and described in 2 Kings 23; notice e.g. the removal of the Asherah from the Temple (2Ch 34:6), the destruction of the houses of the deshim (cp. Deu 23:17-18) which were in the House of the Lord (2Ch 34:7), the deportation of priests from the cities of Judah into Jerusalem (2Ch 34:8-9), and the defiling of Topheth and of Beth-el (2Ch 34:10; 2Ch 34:15-16).
the groves ] R.V. the Asherim; cp. 2Ch 14:3 (note).
carved images ] R.V. graven, images; as 2Ch 33:7; 2Ch 33:22.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
He began to purge Judah – Jeremiahs first prophecies Jer. 23 appear to have been coincident with Josiahs earlier efforts to uproot idolatry, and must have greatly strengthened his hands.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Ch 34:3
For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David.
Seeking after God
I. Why we should seek after God.
1. We are by nature without God.
2. To be without God is certain misery.
3. In God alone we can obtain peace and rest.
II. How we are to seek after God.
1. With respect to God Himself. Josiah sought–not the God of nature; not the God of Providence; but the God of David his father. And why? David was a type of Christ; the covenant made with David a type of the covenant of grace, and the sure mercies of David, symbols of the better blessings of the New Covenant.
2. With respect to ourselves. By repentance, faith, and obedience.
III. When we are to seek after god. (Robert Stevenson.)
Early piety and its advantages
I. Enlightened piety consists in seeking God.
1. Earnestly.
2. Promptly.
3. Perseveringly.
II. Seeking God early will conduce to honour.
1. It keeps alive religious susceptibilities.
2. It saves from snares.
3. It brings eminent usefulness in life.
4. It prepares for happy death. (J. Wolfendale.)
Youth the best time to serve God
Let us think of some reasons why we should seek God in childhood.
1. The first reason is because youth is the best time.
2. Another reason is because youth is the most important time. Satisfy us early with Thy goodness, that we may be glad and rejoice all our days. What seems a slight mistake at the beginning may make a terrible difference at the end.
3. Another reason for seeking God in early life is because it is noblest to do right now, not to wait until we have spent most of our life doing wrong. (Christian Age.)
Well started
I. That any soul should begin early to seek the Lord, is an event that would be thought unimportant by some, but it is chronicled in heaven.
II. Every man must search carefully his own heart, and determine whether the definite desire after God is there or not. The desire is equivalent to spiritual sight. To help to build up righteousness is serving God.
III. Some will say: but i have no such opportunities as josiah. Have you sought them? Is not influence on relatives, friends, comrades, fellow-workers an opportunity? Can you never seize suitable occasions for uttering a Christian sentence or scowling on a social sin?
IV. A further objection is but i have so many difficulties in my way, that i can do nothing useful. Think of those Josiah must have met with.
V. Others say: but i never had any special call to serve God. What if parents, or brothers, or sisters, or friend never mentioned it? Have you never heard it in your heart, and cannot you hear it now? The very passage of time calls you to serve God.
VI. Those who begin life with Christ as Saviour, Guide, Helper, Eternal Friend, and who are honestly trying to serve Him, may be sure that He will rejoice over them, and remember them, even though them names may not be emblazoned on any great world-roll of honour.
VII. Some are conscious that they are not making a good beginning of life. They are drifting onwards and towards dangerous rapids and a deathly abyss. Christ comes to save and to give a fresh start. This is an opportunity which is worth seizing. (F. Hastings.)
Early piety
I. What Josiah turned from.
1. From what is familiarly called the way of the world.
2. From the carnal appetites of youth, which craved to be pampered by their gratification.
3. From all vanities of the imagination.
4. From the exercise of power, before weighing its responsibilities.
5. From false friends and evil counsellors.
6. From the delusions of the gaudy appendages of a worldly Court.
II. What Josiah turned to. He fixed his heart and the faith of his soul upon God, as his–
1. Friend.
2. Father.
3. Guide.
III. He was faithful and pious from his earliest days. (A Gatty, M.A.)
Early piety
I. Nothing is more amiable in itself, or more pleasing to God, than early piety.
II. Youth is a season in which you have the greatest advantages for cultivating the principles of piety, and the greatest need of religion, as a defence from temptation and dangers.
III. By early piety you will prepare tranquility and joy for old age, whilst by an opposite conduct you will fill it with remorse and fears.
IV. Regard to the feelings of all pious persons in the Church universal, a respect to the happiness of your parents, should induce you early to devote yourselves to God.
V. On your conduct in youth, your salvation or perdition almost infallibly depend. (H. Kollock, D. D.)
Early piety
I. We shall briefly notice the striking example of youthful piety here presented to our view.
1. He was a decidedly religious character.
2. His genuine religion commenced at an early period.
3. An exemplary life and conversation abundantly proved the sincerity and ardour of his piety.
4. Josiahs early piety is adduced as the pledge if not the basis of his future eminence in religion.
5. Josiah and his country reaped great advantages from his early devotedness to God.
II. We shall produce arguments urging upon all our young people the exemplification of similar decided piety.
1. A due regard to your personal welfare.
2. The plea of relative usefulness–
(1) In the family.
(2) The social circle.
(3) The Church.
3. Many whom you dearly love feel deeply interested in your spiritual welfare.
(1) Parents.
(2) Ministers.
4. The compassionate Saviour not only claims but kindly encourages youthful piety. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)
Early piety exemplified in Josiah
I. Josiah imitated david.
1. God was Davids teacher.
2. God was Davids comfort.
3. God was Davids delight.
4. God was Davids defence.
II. The manner how he sought after god. He sought God–
1. From a deep conviction that his conduct and the conduct of Israel generally was highly offensive to God, and that they were exposed to imminent peril.
2. In deep self-abasement of soul.
3. By destroying the idols out of the land.
4. By restoring Gods true worship and frequenting it.
5. With all his heart (2Ki 23:25).
III. The period of life when he did it. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Josiah
Josiah was–
I. An early seeker. Our Queen wears a velvet cap under her crown lest it should hurt her head: this eight-year-old king had more need of such a covering. The crown is a heavy burden for young soldiers. Yet there have been younger kings than Josiah. An old Norse king was called Olaf Lapking because he was king while on his mothers lap. Royal boyhood is often poisoned boyhood. The people of Israel around little Josiah were doing worse than the heathen. The sins and sorrows of that time are described in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, whose heart they had broken, Yet Josiah at the age of eight did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and at sixteen began to seek the God of his father David with more earnestness than ever. God calls us to seek Him earlier. In our Latin exercises there was a story about a simpleton sitting one evening at the rivers brink. A traveller coming up wished his company in crossing. No, he replied, I am waiting till the river flows past. The tiny stream of difficulties between you and Christ wont flow past, but will flow on, and broaden and deepen, till it grows like an angry torrent, swollen with winter floods, that threatens to sweep down the old man who would ford it.
II. Josiah was also a hearty hater of evil. He did not hate in others the sins he practised himself, He was not like the Czar of Russia who used to say, I reform my country, and am not able to reform myself. Dr. Arnold used to say, Commend me to boys who love God and hate evil. Love without hate makes a mere milksop, and Christs disciples are to be the salt, and not the sugar of society. We need boys who will hate all evil as young Hannibal hated Rome. The young Christian ought to be the sworn foe of the kingdom of darkness.
III. Josiah was a real hero. A hero is one who, in doing duty, scorns great dangers. He had the spirit of Chrysostom, who replied to the threats of the Empress Eudoxia, I fear nothing but sin. Josiahs love for the Bible would open his soul to all the best influences from the heroic lives of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel and Gideon. Thus was developed in him what Dr. Chalmers calls the expulsive power of a new affection.
IV. Josiah was missed and mourned when he died. There is a night in Spain called the sad night: and so in the history of Judah, the death of Josiah was the sad day. The Rabbis say that the memory of him was like costly incense, and sweet as honey in the mouths of all. (James Wells, M.A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
While he was yet young; in the sixteenth year of his age, when he was entering into the age and state of temptations and youthful lusts, and had the administration of his kingdom wholly in his own hand and power and none to rebuke or restrain him; yet even then he begins to be religious in good earnest.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. in the eighth year of hisreignThis was the sixteenth year of his age, and, as the kingsof Judah were considered minors till they had completed theirthirteenth year, it was three years after he had attained majority.He had very early manifested the piety and excellent dispositions ofhis character. In the twelfth year of his reign, but the twentieth ofhis age, he began to take a lively interest in the purgation of hiskingdom from all the monuments of idolatry which, in his father’sshort reign, had been erected. At a later period, his increasing zealfor securing the purity of divine worship led him to superintend thework of demolition in various parts of his dominion. The course ofthe narrative in this passage is somewhat different from thatfollowed in the Book of Kings. For the historian, having madeallusion to the early manifestation of Josiah’s zeal, goes on with afull detail of all the measures this good king adopted for theextirpation of idolatry; whereas the author of the Book of Kings setsout with the cleansing of the temple, immediately previous to thecelebration of the passover, and embraces that occasion to give ageneral description of Josiah’s policy for freeing the land fromidolatrous pollution. The exact chronological order is not followedeither in Kings or Chronicles. But it is clearly recorded in boththat the abolition of idolatry began in the twelfth and was completedin the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign. Notwithstanding Josiah’sundoubted sincerity and zeal and the people’s apparent compliancewith the king’s orders, he could not extinguish a strongly rootedattachment to idolatries introduced in the early part of Manasseh’sreign. This latent predilection appears unmistakably developed in thesubsequent reigns, and the divine decree for the removal of Judah, aswell as Israel, into captivity was irrevocably passed.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young,…. Being in the sixteenth year of his age; though Kimchi thinks it was the very year he began to reign, which was the eighth of his age; and Jarchi observes, it may be interpreted, “though he was young, he began to seek after the God of David his father”; to pray unto him, to seek after the knowledge of him, and the true manner of worshipping him, what were his will, commands, and ordinances; the Targum is,
“to seek instruction or doctrine of the Lord God of David his father,”
to be taught his ways, such as David his great ancestor walked in, and whom he chose to follow:
and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves and the carved images, and the molten images; which were made in the times of Manasseh; and though removed by him when humbled, were restored in the reign of Amon. Now Josiah purged the land from these, by putting them down, and destroying them; and this he did when he was twenty years of age, having now more authority, being out of his minority, and from under guardians, and one year before Jeremiah began to prophesy, Jer 1:1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Extirpation of idolatry. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a youth, being then only sixteen years old, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year of his reign he commenced to purify Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, Asherim, etc. The cleansing of the land of Judah from the numerous objects of idolatry is summarily described in 2Ch 34:4 and 2Ch 34:5; and thereupon there follows (2Ch 34:6 and 2Ch 34:7) the destruction of the idolatrous altars and images in the land of Israel, – all that it seemed necessary to say on that subject being thus mentioned at once. For that all this was not accomplished in the twelfth year is clear from the , “he commenced to cleanse,” and is moreover attested by 2Ch 34:33. The description of this destruction of the various objects of idolatry is rhetorically expressed, only carved and cast images being mentioned, besides the altars of the high places and the Asherim, without the enumeration of the different kings of idolatry which we find in 2 Kings 23:4-20. – On 2Ch 34:4, cf. 2Ch 31:1. , they pulled down before him, i.e., under his eye, or his oversight, the altars of the Baals (these are the , 2Ch 34:3); and the sun-pillars (cf. 2Ch 14:4) which stood upwards, i.e., above, upon the altars, he caused to be hewn away from them ( ); the Asherim (pillars and trees of Asherah) and the carved and molten images to be broken and ground ( , cf. 2Ch 15:16), and (the dust of them) to be strewn upon the graves (of those) who had sacrificed to them. is connected directly with , so that the actions of those buried in them are poetically attributed to the graves. In 2Ki 23:6 this is said only of the ashes of the Asherah statue which was burnt, while here it is rhetorically generalized.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
THE MIGHT OF A GODLY YOUNG MAN
2Ch 34:3.
DR. A. C. DIXON says somewhere, I saw two portraits in the National Art Gallery in London, under one of which was the title, A Man, under the other, A Woman. They were meant to express the artists ideal of manhood and womanhood, and, as I gazed upon them, I thought: It is better to be a man than a king, a true woman than a queen.
I am to speak to you this evening of Josiah, a king in official station, but more kingly still in character, and so in many respects a model man. In taking the text itself as a basis for what I shall say, I must discuss his character in its representative, rather than its historical features. I want us to learn from Josiah the might of a godly young man. The first thing that impresses me is this:
HE SEEKS GOD AT SIXTEEN
We read, Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.
He was old enough to be conscious of his need of God. One of the customary and fatal mistakes of life is that of leaving the Lord out of mind and heart during the days of youth. Contrary to much Scripture, in spite of plainest illustrations from history, and even against the promptings of the heart itself, youth is often wasted on the world without any thought of sin, or any earnest desire for salvation. Parents are, in some instances, guilty of discouraging godliness on the part of their own children, opposing the counsel of God, as expressed in Ecc 12:1, Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. The Church of Christ has seemed super-suspicious of child-conversion, and many a modern disciple deserves the Saviours rebuke. Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God (Mar 10:14).
But Josiah was still young enough to find easy acceptance. He had not passed beyond the limit of that precious promise, Those that seek Me early shall find Me. Oh, Josiah, I congratulate you on that! I look around me and see men by the scoresome just quitting youth without Christsome attempting to bear the burdens of maturity without being borne up themselves on the arm of Godsome stopping beneath the weight of years without any staff of hope such as supported David and made him sing, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me (Psa 23:4). I see them willing to hear the Lord, but remaining unmoved by it, and I pity the self-imposed inability and thank God afresh that I came to Him while young. It is then or never with ninety-nine out of a hundred. Satans suggestions of better seasons notwithstanding, my young friends, it is now or never for the most of you. I call as witnesses of this truth the many unsaved of this house who, having rejected Christ at sixteen, are nothing moved now to accept Him. They stand like the dying trees of the forest. When the rain falls in gracious revival, starting up all younger trees, it only softens the outside of the dead oak and strikes decay deeper toward its heart. When the sun shines, and the youthful sprouts bud and blossom, it only hastens the dissolution of the barren, old barkless monarch of the forest. It is so in life. The showers of revival start the tender emotions and goodly graces of the young, just as rain starts the sap in springtime. But as all rain of fall and winter fails to evoke answer from the seared leaf and the stilled, closed tissue of wood, so the revival of grace leaves men and women of late summer, autumn and winter ages as cold and indifferent in spirit as if it had never come.
Tis easier work if we begin
To serve the Lord betimes,
But sinners, who grow old in sin
Are hardened in their crimes.
Again, Josiah sought God just in time to have His help when most needed. We hear much of sweet sixteenthe age when buds of girls blossom into early womanhood. It is an age characterized by natural beauty, and rapid growth of natural graces, and mental and emotional activities. But oh, it is an age that Satan specially besets. I sometimes fear that those of us who were helped in the battle of life by the Son of God, forget how fierce it is for those who are trusting in their own strength. I am quite confident that many, for whom advance into maturer years has made self-control an easier thing, have forgotten the burning passions of sixteen summers, the colossal schemes of Satan intended to entrap souls at that period of life. I noticed by an evenings paper that several boats had parted their hawsers in and along the Atlantic shore, and in the late storm gone adrift carrying some several passengers. As the biting cold winds of last evening whistled about this church, I could not forget those unfortunate people who, terror-stricken, faced so cruel a death. But a soul adrift on the rough sea of life, held by no cord of faith to Christ the Eternal Rock, guided by no safe and saving hand, driven by the euroclydon of passion, or threatened by drowning waves of vice, is sadder still. If Gods Word be true, every unsaved soul is daily driving toward death because daily drifting farther from the Divine hand of help, the everlasting harbor of Heaven.
The second thing to be noted in the might of this young man is also an evidence of his wisdom.
HE PUT IN FOUR YEARS MAKING READY TO BE A MAN
In the eighth year of his reign, * * he began to seek after the God of David, and in the twelfth year of his reign, or when he was twenty, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem.
Four years he had spent in making ready for his manly work. The summers sixteen to twenty are naturally seasons of preparation. They are schooldays now; they are days of special studies, days of budding ambitions, and of plodding work; they are days of foundation laying. With few exceptions, they are days whose use becomes an earnest of afterlife. If they are misspent, squandered in riotous living, one reaches his manhood a moral and intellectual bankrupt, and never recovers the lost future. It was Lamennais who once wrote to a young man passing through these critical years saying, You are now at an age at which decision must be formed by you. A little later and you have to groan within the tomb you yourself dug, without the power of rolling away the stone. That which the easiest becomes a habit in us is the will. Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither like a withered leaf by every wind that blows. But Lamennais mistake is the common one of feeling that fixedness of purpose, superior education, or some personal accomplishment is the bed-rock on which to build character, to lay the superstructure of a noble life.
Beckford had a fixedness of purpose. He was going to make Fonthill Abbey the famous temple of luxury and pleasure. But his failure was as signal as that of the men who started Babel in the plain of Shinar. He died in despair because he had no hope in God. William Pitt was splendidly educated, and yet his days ended in grief. Haydon the artist was accomplished, but finding no satiety in his own successes, he sickened of life and by his own hand shortened it. There is many a man chasing some phantom that promises happiness, but which, when taken, is a bauble ready to burst and leave him empty-handed, empty-hearted, disappointed, despairing.
Better than all fixedness of purpose; better than all education; better than any personal accomplishment, is the fixedness of faith, education in Gods truth, and talent for Divine suffering or service. Better converted to God young than display the most marked mental abilities. Better at Christs feet for five minutes a day for four years, sixteen to twenty, than in the university, under a halfscore of renowned instructors. There are parents that bank much on educating the boys, on finishing the girls, but mental development without moral and religious foundation is in vain, and finished girls who dont know God in His saving and keeping power are open to temptations that may easily render their education a means of evil, and their morals an everlasting ruin.
President Harrison is reported to have excused himself from drinking with one who proposed his toast by saying to those who sat at the table, I am one of a class of seventeen young men who graduated at college together. The other sixteen members of my class now fill drunkards graves, and all from the pernicious habit of wine drinking. They were as well educated as he; some of them more talented. But he put into the preparation of his life Christ, the Foundation Stone, and stood like granite against the stones of passion that swept his sixteen fellows into the sea of sin and drowned their souls. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Mat 6:33).
But Josiah would teach us a third lesson, for he is one of the immortal names who though dead, yet speaketh.
HE ASSOCIATED WITH THE AGE OF MANHOOD, MANLY ACTION
When twenty years old, in the twelfth year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem. When the teens are left the boy ought to become a man, and the world ought to feel the touch of twenty years. The greatest achievements have been wrought in the twenties by many men. It may be so that Plutarch began Latin at seventy, Cato, Greek at eighty, and Theophrastus wrote his best at ninety. But Alexander the Great made his name in the twenties. It was the boy Raphael that made canvas live; Philip Sidney was dying at thirty-two, while others in statesmenship, letters, art and war, won their largest laurels before they ceased the use of two to tell their age.
Young men and young men, let me beg you to reflect that now, to-night, you are settling your course for all of time, and deciding your eternal destiny. You who are full-grown in physique, what are you in morals, in self-mastery, in mental power, in strength of soul? What you are to-night is an earnest of what you are going to become. If you are purging the citadel of your own soul of unclean idols; if you are seeking to purify and sweeten the social atmosphere about you; if you are in love with and in league with God, well and good. Go on! Go on! There is a beauty about youthful religion that pleases God and is approved of all good men. There is security in it against Satans purpose to capture and imprison your souls. There is holiness, and holiness is happiness, and heaven! The soul can never be satisfied short of that. If you deny it God, you orphan it, and permit its adoption by the arch-enemy, and prepare for its never-ceasing sorrow.
Dr. Martyn, in last Mondays lecture, told how our city authorities cart the sick children who are suffering with smallpox, to our pest-house, and how, deprived by law, or lawlessness, of mother, they wail, and wail, until exhausted of pain and piteous unavailing appeal, they weaken to sleep. But the sleep is feverish and full of sobs. Awake or asleep they suffer that unutterable sense of mothers loss. So the soul cries for God. You may quiet it at times into apparent peace, but its stillest hour has in it a cry, a sob, and when awake again to its sickness in sin, and its wretched watchers, it sobs aloud. It is for you to say whether, as a man in age, you will be a man in action; whether you will turn out of its room the enemy and alien and let God come in, claim His own, and touch with His healing power every leprous spot and make you clean.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
(3) For.Now.
In the eighth year.The specifications of time in this verse are peculiar to the chronicler.
While he was yet young.Being about sixteen.
He began to seek.2Ch. 17:3-4; 1Ch. 13:3.
And in the twelfth year.When, perhaps, he began to govern alone.
He began to purge.It is not said that the whole work was completed in the twelfth year; indeed, 2Ch. 34:33 implies the contrary. But the writer having begun the story of the destruction of idolatrous objects, naturally continues it to its close, though that properly belongs to Josiahs eighteenth year (2Ki. 22:3, compared with 2Ki. 23:4 seq.). It is not, therefore, clear (as Thenius asserts) that the chronicler has put the extirpation of idolatry first, simply to show that the pious king needed no special prompting to such a course; or that, as Noldeke supposes, the writer meant to clear this highly-extolled king from the reproach of having quietly put up with the abomination for full eighteen years.
The high places.2Ki. 23:5; 2Ki. 23:8-9; 2Ki. 23:13.
The groves.The Asherim (2Ki. 23:4; 2Ki. 6:7; 2Ki. 6:14). There was an Asherah in the Temple, as well as in the high places which Solomon built for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom. The carved and molten images are not mentioned in the parallel passage, which, however, gives a much clearer and more original description of the different kinds of idolatry abolished by Josiah. (The Syriac has, he began to root out the altars, and idols, and leopards, and chapels, and collars, and bells, and all the trees which they made for the idols.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(3-7) Idolatry extirpated. This brief account is parallel to 2Ki. 23:4-20.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
The younger part of his reign no doubt was agreeable to his childhood, but very tender and imperfect in divine things; yet what an interesting account the Holy Ghost hath given of Josiah, in that while he was yet young we are told, he began to seek after the God of David his father. What an unspeakable mercy it is, and I cannot forego the opportunity which here presents itself of noticing it, that in this land of bibles our children are from their youngest years taught, as far as the outward teaching of the scriptures can lead, the things which concern the Lord God of our fathers. O thou Holy Spirit! whose gracious office it is to illumine the understanding within; do thou condescend to be the Almighty teacher of our youth, and let the rising generation be a seed to seek the Lord, and to serve the Lord from their earliest years.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Ch 34:3 For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.
Ver. 3. For in the eighth year of his reign. ] So soon as he had the reins in his own hands, he began.
He began to seek.
And in the twelfth year.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
he began. Doubtless Zephaniah and Jeremiah were used in influencing Josiah. Both prophesied during his reign. Zephaniah began in first year of Josiah; Jeremiah in his thirteenth year, i.e. in 510.
groves = ‘Asherim. See App-42.
carved images. Same as Deu 7:5.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
groves (See Scofield “Deu 16:21”) See Scofield “Jdg 3:7”.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
am 3370, bc 634 2Ki 18:4
while he: 1Ch 22:5, 1Ch 29:1, Psa 119:9, Ecc 12:1, 2Ti 3:15
to seek: 2Ch 15:2, 1Ch 28:9, Pro 8:17, Mat 6:33
purge: 2Ch 33:17, 2Ch 33:22, Lev 26:30, 2Ki 23:4, 2Ki 23:14
the high places: 2Ch 30:14
Reciprocal: Exo 23:24 – overthrow Exo 34:13 – ye shall Deu 12:3 – and burn Jdg 3:7 – the groves 1Ki 18:12 – from my youth 2Ki 10:27 – brake down the image 2Ki 15:4 – the high places 2Ki 16:2 – did not 2Ki 20:5 – the God 2Ki 21:3 – the high places 2Ki 22:3 – in the 2Ch 17:6 – he took away 2Ch 29:3 – He in the first 2Ch 29:5 – sanctify the house 2Ch 31:1 – brake 2Ch 33:4 – he built 2Ch 34:33 – took away Isa 30:22 – defile Isa 38:5 – God Jer 25:3 – thirteenth Amo 5:4 – Seek Mat 20:2 – he sent
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Ch 34:3. While he was yet young In the sixteenth year of his age; when he was entering into the age of temptation, and had the administration of his kingdom wholly in his own power, and none to restrain him, even then he begins to be religious in good earnest.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
34:3 For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet {b} young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images.
(b) When he was but sixteen years old he showed himself zealous of God’s glory, and at twenty years old he abolished idolatry and restored the true religion.