God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 34:1-7 The Purge

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, June 12, 2025

34:1 Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD. He walked in the ways of his father David. He did not turn aside to the right or to the left. 3 In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David, and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, and the carved and cast images. 4 While he watched, they broke apart the altars of the Baals; and he broke down the sun pillars that stood above them. He cut the Asherah poles to pieces. He ground the carved images and cast images to dust and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. 5 He also burned the bones of their priests on their altars, and so purged Judah and Jerusalem. 6 In the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins all around them, 7 he broke apart the altars, and beat the Asherah poles and the images into powder, and broke down all the sun pillars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

Young Josiah was just eight when his father was murdered. It isn’t surprising that he looked around, even as a boy, and saw that his father’s religion is mostly what got him killed. But he didn’t simply avoid his father’s paganism as a way of preserving his life. He “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Our prophet tells us that he did not turn aside to the right or the left, but he walked that narrow middle way of faith. This is the path that avoids the ditches of pride and arrogance on one side, and the ditches of grim despair on the other side. God is loving—but this doesn’t mean he doesn’t punish sin. God is loving—but this doesn’t mean that we don’t want to repent. Josiah wanted to walk in the ways of the Lord, and to everyone who watched the boy grow up, it was like seeing David himself among them.

By the eighth year of his reign, he was fifteen, turning sixteen. That was how old his father Amon had been when Josiah was born. Our author calls Josiah a na’ar, “youth, boy” at sixteen. This word can also mean a baby so young that he is still nursing, or simply a youth. Joseph is described this way at seventeen (Genesis 37:2). By this time King Josiah was married to at least two wives. One wife’s name was Hamutal, she was from Libnah, a city on the Philistine border on the very edge of Judah. During this eighth year of Josiah’s reign, he and Hamutal had a son and named him Jehoahaz. But two years before, Josiah had already fathered another son, Eliakim, to his wife Zebidah (2 Kings 23:36). We will consider Josiah’s sons and their ages when we come to the last chapter of Chronicles and the kings I call the Final Four.

It was four years after he began to actively seek the Lord and to follow in his ways, when Josiah was nineteen or just turning twenty, that he began to purge Judah of its idols. He wanted to turn the nation back to right worship, but rather than just commanding it, he went out himself and did something about it. First came the purge. The high places were removed. It is worth noting that this is the last time the high places are mentioned in Chronicles, although Jeremiah (a contemporary of Josiah) will complain about their return under the last king of Judah during one of Jeremiah’s imprisonments (Jeremiah 32:1-2, 32:25).

Josiah did not just toss the statues out into the valley. He stood and made his servants break apart the altars. He smashed and ground up the idols themselves, wood, metal, or stone, and he scattered the dust on the graves of the people who had worshiped those gods. Josiah also broke down the “sun pillars.” These were objects used for worship, probably as standing stones for worship at precise times and days according to sunrise or sunset on certain moments of the solar cycle such as the solstice or the equinoxes. Since they were not simply calendars (which would have been acceptable and even useful things) but were used for pagan worship, Josiah had them broken apart and rendered unusable. These pillars might also be mentioned in 2 Chronicles 14:5 and in Ezekiel 6:6.

Another thing the king did was to exhume the priests of the false gods and have their bones burned. By scattering that dust on the altars of the false gods or on the soil of the high places, he desecrated that worship and made it impossible to resume properly.

Josiah did this from place to place to place. The purge began in Jerusalem, and then went outward throughout the cities of Judah including his wife’s hometown, Libnah. He led the purge throughout Ephraim (Shiloh, Aphek and Gezer) and then up into Manasseh (Shechem, Samaria, the villages around Mount Ebal and Mount Gerezim) and as far north at Naphtali. Naphtali and Zebulun touched the Sea of Galilee. But then Simeon is also called out—Simeon was the tribe than had been absorbed within Judah, but a few cities there like Beersheba and Ziklag are fairly well known in the deep south.

Josiah led his purge of idolatry everywhere throughout Judah and Israel. He met people, he talked with people; he showed his faith, and the people of the kingdom got to know him. How can we say this? We can say it with certainty because of the phrase that ends verse 7: “Then he returned to Jerusalem.” This was a circuit of the whole kingdom by the king. But he didn’t do it to impose a new tax or to raise an army for his own gain. He did it to remove idolatry from the nation and to serve God with his whole heart.

He was walking the narrow middle road of true faith, without turning to the right or to the left. Consider the errors that form the ditches beside the narrow road that we, too, walk in this lifetime. As my professor and college advisor, Daniel Deutschlander, put it: “There is a narrow middle road between these two errors: the one which so emphasizes grace that it perverts it into a license to sin and the other which so emphasizes God’s justice that it either places a limit on God’s grace or requires me to do something to aid in my own salvation.” To which he added a warning: “Despair and self-righteousness are, after all, two side of the same coin.”

Josiah wanted to do his best as a king, and that began with doing his best as a man, a husband, and as a father. Rid the heart of idols, and rid the house, and the temple, the city, and the nation. Then trust in the word and promises of God, the coming Christ and the forgiveness he was going to bring, and encourage everyone in his house, city and nation to do the same. We don’t have the same reach as young Josiah, but we can concentrate on the heart and home part of his plan. Trust in the word and promises of God, and encourage everyone under your roof to do the same. And pray for them.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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