He brought the Asherah pole from the house of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and there he burned it, ground it to powder, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people.
What strikes me is the corruption that had festered in the very temple of God for so long, right under the king's own watch. Josiah himself had reigned eighteen years in piety, yet when he searched out idolatry, the filth he found was almost beyond belief. But here is the hard truth: all this thorough cleansing, all these hopeful reforms, could not save Jerusalem from utter ruin a few years after, for the people hated to be reformed.
AI summary
Commenting on 2 Kings 23:4-24
And he brake down the houses of the Sodomites that were by the house of the Lord,.... Near the temple were apartments, in which men, the worshippers of idols, prostituted their bodies to each other; committing that unnatural sin with one another, which has its name from Sodom, and from which those are so called, and which sin they committed in honour of the idols...
Josiah burned all the idolatry apparatus in the fields of Kidron, where Jerusalem cast her filth, but then went further than his reforming forebears: he collected the ashes and fragments and had them carried to Bethel itself, making that accursed place a living monument of horror and aversion. His zeal far outstripped the piety of those who came before him.
AI summary
Commenting on 2 Kings 23:4-28