destruction of all the high places. Chief among these, as the common resort of those who passed in

or came out of the city, were "the high places of the gates: that at the entrance of the gate of

Joshua the governor of the city, [as well as] that at the left of a man, in the city-gate."*

* So according to all the best critics. The rendering alike in the A.V. and the R.V. gives not any

intelligible meaning.

Similarly Topheth was permanently defiled. The sacred horses dedicated by previous kings to the

sun, and perhaps used in processional worship, were "put away," and the sun-chariots burned. The

altars, alike those on the roof of the Aliyah of Ahaz, and those set up by Manasseh in the two

courts of the Temple, were broken down, their debris "made to run down from thence,"* and the

dust of them cast into the Kidron.

* That is, from where they were standing and broken down. We propose t hus to translate 2 Kings

23:12 (A. and R.V.: "beat them down from thence"). The word should be pointed as Kimchi, and

after him Thenius proposes (...) "he made run" - threw down the earthen debris.

Nor was this all. Outside Jerusalem, on the southern poin t of the Mount of Olives, there appear

still to have been remains of even more ancient idolatry, which dated from the time of Solomon.

These were now removed, and the places desecrated. And beyond Judah proper the movement

extended throughout the ancient kingdom of Israel, even to the remotest northern tribal possession

of Naphtali (2 Chronicles 34:6). This again affords indication of an approximation between the

Israelitish inhabitants left in what had been the northern kingdom and Judah. And in the increasing

weakness of the Assyrian empire, alike Josiah and the Israelitish remnant may have contemplated

a reunion and restoration under a king of the house of David. At any rate the rulers of Assyria

were not in a condition to interfere in the affairs of Pale stine, nor to check the influence which

Josiah exercised over the northern tribes. On the other hand, we can understand that the measures

against former idolatry should have been all the more rigorously carried out in the ancient

Israelitish kingdom, which had so terribly suffered from the consequences of former apostasy

(comp. 2 Kings 23:20). In Beth-el itself, the original seat of Jeroboam's spurious worship, not only

was the altar destroyed, but the high place - that is, the sanctuary there - was burned, as also the

Asherah, which seems to have taken the place of the golden call But as they proceeded further

publicly to defile the altar in the usual manner by burning upon it dead men's bones, Josiah espied

among the sepulchers close by - perhaps visible f rom where he stood* - the monument** of the

prophet of old sent to announce, in the high-day of the consecration of that altar, the desolation

which should lay it waste (comp. 1 Kings 13:1, 2).

* This seems the meaning of 2 Kings 23:16: "And as Josiah turned himself."

** "Monuments:" Genesis 35:20; Jeremiah 31:21; Ezekiel 39:15.

But while they rifled the graves of an idolatrous people, they reverently left untouched the

sepulcher which held the bones of the man of God from Judah, and by their side those of his host,

the prophet of Beth el. And so literally did the judgment announced of old come to pass, that the

bodies of the idol-priests were slain upon the altars at which they had ministered. And not only in

Beth-el, but in the furthest cities of Sa maria - as the chronicler graphically and pathetically puts it

(2 Chronicles 34:6), "in their ruins round about"* - was judgment executed, and even more

severely than according to the letter of the Deuteronomic law (Deuteronomy 17:2 - 5); for the

representatives of the old idolatry were not only stoned, but slain "upon the altars."

* With the generality of critics we read sh,ytebor]j;B] comp. Psalm 109:10.

It is with almost a sense of relief that we turn from scenes like these* to the celebration of the

Passover at Jerusalem by a people now at least outwardly purified and conformed to the Mosaic

law. Of this festival, and the special mode of its observance, a full account is given in the Book of