John Gill Commentary 2 Kings 23

And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the
elders of Judah and of Jerusalem .
] Josiah sent messengers throughout the land, and convened all the principal men in it at Jerusalem.

And the king went up into the house of the Lord
To the temple, from his palace:

and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him :
they met him there:

and the priests, and the prophets ;
the prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and Uriah, who, though they might not be at Jerusalem when the book of the law was found, yet, upon this message of the king's, might come up thither from the countries where they were; the Targum interprets the word "scribes": and some take them to be the sons of the prophets, their disciples; in (2 Chronicles 34:30) they are called Levites:

and all the people, both small and great ;
a very numerous assembly:

and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant
which was found in the house of the Lord :
that is, he caused it to be read by others, and perhaps by more than one, the congregation being so large.

And the king stood by a pillar
As the manner of kings was, (2 Kings 11:14) and is thought to be the brasen scaffold erected by Solomon, on which he stood at the dedication of the temple, and now Josiah at the reading of the law, (2 Chronicles 6:13) , it is said to be his place, (2 Chronicles 34:31) , (See Gill on 2 Kings 11:14)

and made a covenant before the Lord :
agreed and promised in the presence of God, both he and his people:

to walk after the Lord :
the worship of the Lord, as the Targum; closely to attend to that:

and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes :
all the laws of God, moral, civil, and ceremonial:

with all their heart, and all their soul :
cordially and sincerely:

to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book :
lately found, and now read unto them:

and all the people stood to the covenant :
agreed to it, and promised to keep it; so the Targum,

``all the people took upon them the covenant,''

engaged to observe it.

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests
of the second order
Or the second course of the priests; the course of Jedaiah, (1 Chronicles 24:7) as some think; or rather, the two chief priests next to the high priest, who were of the line both of Eleazar and Ithamar; though the Targum interprets it of the Sagan of the priests, a deputy of the high priest, such as in later times the high priest had always appointed for him on the day of atonement ^F18 :

and the keepers of the door :
the porters at the door and gates of the temple; or rather the treasurers, as the Targum; such as were appointed over the vessels of the sanctuary, as the Jewish writers generally interpret it, and which best agrees with what follows:

to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were
made for Baal :
used in burning incense, or offering sacrifices to him:

and for the grove :
the idol of the grove, or Asherah, that is, Ashtoreth, or Astarte, the same with Venus, or the moon, as Baal was the sun, the one the husband, and the other the wife, according to the Jews ^F19 :

and for all the host of heaven :
the stars:

and he burnt them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron ;
or plain of Kidron, as the Targum; through which the brook Kidron ran:

and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel ;
where one of Jeroboam's calves was set, and was the source of idolatry; and this he did in contempt of that place; and, to show his detestation of the idolatry there, he made it a dunghill of ashes of things used in idolatrous service; this he could do, that place being in the hands of the kings of Judah from the times of Ahijah, (2 Chronicles 13:19) .

FOOTNOTES:

• F18: Misn. Yoma, c. 1. sect. 1.
• F19: Zohar in Gen. fol. 34. 3.

And he put down the idolatrous priests
The Cemarim, so called, because they wore black clothes, as Kimchi and others, whereas the priests of the Lord were clothed in white linen, (See Gill on Zephaniah 1:4).

whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high
places, in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about
Jerusalem ;
for though those high places were destroyed by Hezekiah, they were rebuilt by Manasseh his son, and priests put in them to officiate there, whom Josiah now deposed, (2 Kings 21:3) ,

them also that burnt incense unto Baal ;
in the same high places; these were the priests, and the others in the preceding clause are thought to be ministers unto them:

to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets ;
the five planets besides the sun and moon, as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus; or to the twelve celestial signs in the firmament, as some ^F20 ; though Theodoret takes it to be a single star, the evening star:

and to all the host of heaven ;
or even to the host of heaven, all the stars thereof: this part of worship,

burning incense ,
which was peculiar to the most high God, yet was frequently made by idolaters to their deities; and from the word ^F21 by which it is here and elsewhere expressed may "nectar" be derived, so much spoken of by the Heathen poets as of a sweet smell ^F23 , and as delicious to their gods; and so Porphyry ^F24 represents the gods as living on smoke, vapours, and perfumes; and frankincense is said, by Diodorus Siculus ^F25 , to be most grateful to them, and beloved by them; this therefore is a much better derivation of the word "nectar" than what Suidas ^F26 gives, that is, as if it was "nectar", because it makes those young that drink it; or than the account Athenaeus ^F1 gives of it, that it is a wine in Babylon so called.

FOOTNOTES:

• F20: David de Pomis Lexic. fol. 77. 3.
• F21: (rjq) "suffitum fecit. Et diis acceptus--" Nidor. Ovid. Metamorph. 1. 12, fab. 4.
• F23: Theocrit. Idyll. xvii. ver. 29.
• F24: De Abstinentia, l. 2. c. 42. Celsus apud Origen. l. 8. p. 417.
• F25: Biblioth. l. 2. p. 132.
• F26: In voce (nektareou) .
• F1: Deipnosophist. l. 1.