2 Kings 23:7

He also destroyed the rooms in the temple where the temple male prostitutes lived. That was where women wove robes that were used to worship the goddess Asherah.

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

In Context

6He commanded that the statue of the goddess Asherah be taken out of the temple. Then they took it outside Jerusalem, down to the Kidron Brook, and burned it. Then they pounded the ashes to powder and scattered that over the graves in the public cemetery.

8Josiah also brought to Jerusalem all the priests who were offering sacrifices in the other cities in Judah. He also desecrated the places on the tops of hills where the priests had burned incense to honor idols, from Geba in the north to Beersheba in the south. Those priests were not allowed to offer sacrifices in the temple, but they were allowed to eat the unleavened bread that the priests who worked in the temple ate. He also commanded that the altars that were dedicated to the goat demons near the gate built by Joshua, the mayor of Jerusalem, be destroyed. Those altars were at the left of the main gate into the city.

Read all of 2 Kings 23

Cross References

Exodus 35:25All the women who were skilled to make cloth brought fine linen thread and blue, purple, or red yarn/thread that they had made/spun.

1 Kings 14:24Also, there were male prostitutes at these places of worship. The Israeli people did the same disgraceful things that had been done by the people whom Yahweh had expelled while the Israelis were advancing through the land.

1 Kings 22:46Jehoshaphat’s father Asa had tried to expel the male prostitutes that stayed at the pagan shrines, but some of them were still there. Jehoshaphat got rid of them.

Ezekiel 8:14Then he took me to the entrance at the north gate of the temple. I saw women sitting there, mourning for the death of the god of the people of Babylonia, Tammuz.

Hosea 2:13I will punish my people for all the times that they burned incense to honor the idols of Baal. They decorated themselves with rings and jewelry, and they went to worship those false gods/idols that they thought [IRO] loved them, but they abandoned/forgot me! That is what I, Yahweh, say.

Hosea 4:14But it is not only your daughters whom I will punish for having become prostitutes, and it is not only your daughters-in-law whom I will punish for committing adultery, because the men also are having sex with prostitutes, and they offer sacrifices with the prostitutes who search for men at the shrines of the idols. They are all foolish people, and they will all be ruined.

Matthew Henry on 2 Kings 23:5-25

Josiah Reforms Judah. ( b. c. 623.) 4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Beth-el. 5 And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study 2 Kings 23:7