2 Chronicles 34:4

While he directed them, his workers tore down the altars where people worshiped Baal. They smashed the altars that were near those altars, where people burned incense. They smashed the poles to honor the goddess Asherah and the idols and statues. They smashed them to bits and scattered the bits over the graves of those who had offered sacrifices to them.

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them.

In Context

3When he had been ruling for almost eight years, while he was still a young man, he began to worship God like his ancestor King David had done. Four years later, he began to get rid of all the pagan shrines on hilltops in Jerusalem and in other places in Judah, and the poles to honor the goddess Asherah, and the carved idols and statues of gods.

5They burned the bones of the priests who had offered sacrifices; they burned them on their own altars. In that way Josiah caused Jerusalem and other places in Judah to be acceptable places to worship Yahweh again.

Read all of 2 Chronicles 34

Cross References

Exodus 23:24Do not bow down before their gods/idols or worship them. And do not do the things that they think that their gods want them to do. Completely destroy their gods/idols, and smash to pieces their sacred stones.

Leviticus 26:30I will cause the shrines where you worship idols on hilltops to be destroyed. I will smash the altars where you burn incense to worship your gods, and I will cause your corpses to be piled on the lifeless statues of your gods. And I will detest you.

Deuteronomy 7:25You must burn the wooden idols that represent their gods. Do not desire to take the silver or gold decorations that are on those idols, because if you take them for yourselves, they will be like a trap to cause you to want to worship those idols. Yahweh hates the worship of those idols.

1 Kings 13:2Saying what Yahweh told him to say, the prophet shouted, “This is what Yahweh says about this altar [APO]: ‘I want you to know that some day a descendant [MTY] of King David will be born. His name will be Josiah, and he will come here. He will slaughter at this altar the priests who are burning incense for sacrifices on the hills in this area, and he will burn the bones of dead people on this altar.’” [APO]

2 Kings 23:4Then the king commanded Hilkiah the Supreme Priest and all the other priests who assisted him and the men who guarded the entrance to the temple to bring out from the temple all the items that people had been using to worship Baal, the goddess Asherah, and the stars. After they carried them out, they burned all those things outside the city near the Kidron Valley. Then they took all the ashes to Bethel, because that city was already considered to be desecrated/unholy.

2 Kings 23:11He also removed the horses that the previous kings of Judah had dedicated to worshiping the sun, and he burned the chariots that were used in that worship. Those horses and chariots were kept in the courtyard outside the temple, near the entrance to the temple, and near the room where one of Josiah’s officials, whose name was Nathan-Melech, lived.

Matthew Henry on 2 Chronicles 34:2-8

The Reign of Josiah. ( b. c. 623.) 1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years. 2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord , and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined neither to the right hand, nor to the left. 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… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study 2 Chronicles 34:4