And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Jehovah, outside Jerusalem, to the torrent of Kidron, and burned it at the torrent of Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder upon the graves of the children of the people.
Josiah's reform began in the hardest place of all: the temple, where an idol had stood with royal approval. He brought it out, burned it, ground it to dust, and scattered the dust over a public graveyard. What was this thing, and why did it have to be destroyed so completely?
Older English Bibles call this idol a "grove," which hides what it really was. A Bible dictionary traces the word, the object, and what it was made of:
asherah, asherath. The word "grove" suggests a row of trees. But that cannot be the meaning, since people set up groves "under every green tree" (1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10). Manasseh set a carved image of the grove that he had made in the temple (2 Kings 21:7). Josiah removed it, burned it, and ground it to powder (2 Kings 23:6). This was doubtless made of metal, but the groves were of wood, as we learn from the fact that they were cut down and burned (Judges 6:25-26; 2 Kings 23:14-15). They are always associated with idols and images, and Judges 3:7 speaks of them being served along with the Baals.
The place is what shocks. This idol stood in the house God had chosen for His name:
Scripture makes a point of noting that "he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD … and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust." "The grove" appears to have been an image of Astarte. Imagine such a horror standing in the house of Jehovah! God had once said of that house that His eyes and His heart would be there always (2 Chron. 7:16). How low Israel had fallen, that such a thing stood in the most sacred spot on earth!
Where he took it mattered too. The valley east of Jerusalem was already treated as unclean ground, and Josiah was not the first king to burn an idol there:
This is the valley, or wide dry riverbed, between the east of Jerusalem and the west of the Mount of Olives… In Old Testament times people treated it as a defiled place. Asa burned his mother's idol there (1 Kings 15:13). Josiah also burned the symbols of idolatry there (2 Kings 23:4, 6, 12). From 2 Kings 23:6 and Jeremiah 31:40 it appears to have been the common burial ground.
Josiah did not stop at burning it. Where the dust landed passed its own verdict on what people had worshipped:
A wooden image had been put in the house of the LORD, just as many churches introduce images that look nice but are an insult to the Lord Jesus. Josiah burned the image at the brook Kidron and threw the ashes on graves (v.6), signifying that the idolatry was worthy only of the corruption of death.
The idol was old, and old things can claim respect. One writer names the single cause behind all this error, and what Josiah refused to be impressed by:
Our devoted young king was able to "grind into dust, and beat into powder" an enormous pile of error. All of it had its origin in the gross neglect of this most precious sentence: "IT IS WRITTEN." It mattered little to Josiah that all these things could boast of age, and the authority of the fathers of the Jewish nation.
Josiah had cleared the temple once before this. Something happened in between that made the second clearance go deeper:
The appalling things still left in the house where Jehovah had set His name suggest that the first cleansing was not thorough. The second cleansing cleared every vile thing out. But why was the second cleansing more thorough than the first? Because the Book of the law had come to light between the two. The ugliness of things people had long tolerated was now clear, at least to the King.
- Neglect — every item in Josiah's clean-up list began with one thing: God's people letting go of what was written. Error accumulates where Scripture is ignored.
- Intrusion — the Asherah was a carved image of the idol Astarte. An earlier king, Manasseh, set it up in the very place where God had promised His eyes and heart would rest.
- Light — Josiah had purged the temple once already. The deeper second clearance came only after they found the Book of the law. It showed him the ugliness of what everyone had tolerated for years.
- Removal — the image was carried out to the Kidron, a valley already treated as defiled ground, where King Asa had once burned his mother's idol.
- Verdict — Josiah burned the idol, beat it to dust, and scattered it over public graves. That marked it as fit for nothing but the corruption of death. Age and royal approval bought it no protection.
And he broke down the houses of the sodomites, which were in the house of Jehovah, where the women wove tents for the Asherah.
Josiah's reform reaches the worst place of all. Rooms inside the temple area served cult prostitution, and women wove hangings there for the Asherah image. Two questions follow. How did such filth get into God's house? And what does a faithful man do when he finds it?
The scandal is not only the sin but its address. One writer sets it beside God's own promise about that house. He then turns to later church history.
The record makes a point of saying that "he brought the Asherah out of the house of the LORD ... and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust" (2 Kings 23:6). The Asherah, which older translations call "the grove," appears to have been an image of Astarte. Imagine such a horror standing in the house of the LORD! Of that house He once said that His eyes and His heart would be there always (2 Chron. 7:16). Next to the temple stood the houses of the male cult prostitutes! Horror upon horror; how low Israel had fallen, to have such depravity in the most sacred spot on earth! The history of Christendom has been just as fearful.
Some have taken this word to mean a holy woman or a seer. One writer tests that against how the word is used elsewhere.
Few serious readers, I think, will agree with the notion that this word means a holy woman or seer. Far more probable is the ordinary view, which takes it as a "consecration" to the corrupt Astarte, or Venus, of early and later idolatry. … The masculine form of the word occurs in Deut. 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24; 2 Kings 23:7; Job 36:14. Can it be argued that holy men, or seers, are intended here? They are forms of the same word, and the idea of holiness, or consecration, of course runs through both. … Terrible to say, prostitution was an almost universal element of heathen sanctity!
The women's weaving was not decoration. A reference work explains what the Asherah was and what the women made.
On the whole it seems most probable that the groves were wooden symbols of a goddess. They took the form of images or pillars, or plain tree trunks set in the earth. In 2 Kings 23:7 we read that women wove "hangings" for the groves. The word really means "houses" or "tents." So these coverings enclosed the groves, probably for impure purposes, since immorality went almost always with idolatry.
Who put this inside the temple? One writer, quoting another, names one king.
"The account of Josiah's later reformation shows both the extent and the shameless immorality of the idolatry now common (2 Kings 23:4-8). Earlier kings had brought in practices of their own. But one thing must have been the work of Manasseh. He placed a class of priests, probably in the outer court of the temple, whose unnatural vice combined a kind of madness with the deepest moral degradation. Beside them, and in fellowship with them, he placed priestesses of Astarte."
How could anyone call this worship? One writer answers, and turns the question on us.
Look with the prophet through the hole in the wall, into the rooms full of images in the idol's temple. See the almost unbelievable horrors pictured there; human corruption in its lowest forms. You say, how could a people think that was religious worship? Dear friends, it is just what all men do. They turn away from God as He has revealed Himself to us in Christ. They make a god of their own imagination. They give free rein to the desires of their own hearts. That is why there is so much corruption in the name of religion. It should make us tremble to think that if you or I leave the path of obedience to God, and begin to serve a god of our own imagining, God will give us up to the desires of our own corrupt hearts.
Josiah pulled the buildings down; he did not put them to some other use. One writer holds up that thoroughness and contrasts it with a church slow to judge evil among its own.
No one ever rooted out idolatry as thoroughly as Josiah did, right across the land of Israel. He killed all the priests, burned their bones on their altars, and then destroyed the altars themselves, grinding them to powder. Such thoroughness God loves. The Corinthian believers were very slow to deal with wickedness in the assembly. Yet they were active in avenging their personal wrongs, even taking one another to the world's courts (1 Cor. 5:6).
- Location — The offence is the address. Cult prostitution sat inside the house where God said His eyes and His heart would always be.
- Language — The word means "consecrated." Among the nations, prostitution was part of religion, so vice arrived dressed as holiness.
- Loom — The women's "hangings" were tent-like coverings around the Asherah, a wooden symbol of a goddess. Ordinary daily work fed the corruption.
- Legacy — Commentators trace the arrangement to Manasseh. One reign can plant evils that a later king has to tear out.
- Levelling — Josiah did not renovate the houses. He broke them down. God loves that thoroughness, and it shames slowness to judge evil in the church.