31 Then the king, taking his place by the pillar, made an agreement before the Lord, to go in the way of the Lord, and to keep his orders and his decisions and his rules with all his heart and with all his soul, and to keep the words of the agreement recorded in this book.
But now his position as priest is higher. because through him God has made a better agreement with man, based on the giving of better things. For if that first agreement had been as good as possible, there would have been no place for a second. For, protesting against them, he says, See, the days are coming when I will make a new agreement with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; Not like the agreement which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand, to be their guide out of the land of Egypt; for they did not keep the agreement with me, and I gave them up, says the Lord. For this is the agreement which I will make with the people of Israel after those days: I will put my laws into their minds, writing them in their hearts: and I will be their God, and they will be my people: And there will be no need for every man to be teaching his brother, or his neighbour, saying, This is the knowledge of the Lord: for they will all have knowledge of me, great and small. And I will have mercy on their evil-doing, and I will not keep their sins in mind. When he says, A new agreement, he has made the first agreement old. But anything which is getting old and past use will not be seen much longer.
And he, answering, said, Have love for the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and for your neighbour as for yourself. And he said, You have given the right answer: do this and you will have life. But he, desiring to put himself in the right, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
You have come here today, all of you, before the Lord your God; the heads of your tribes, the overseers, and those who are in authority over you, with all the men of Israel, And your little ones, your wives, and the men of other lands who are with you in your tents, down to the wood-cutter and the servant who gets water for you: With the purpose of taking part in the agreement of the Lord your God, and his oath which he makes with you today: And so that he may make you his people today, and be your God, as he has said to you, and as he made an oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And not with you only do I make this agreement and this oath; But with everyone who is here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with those who are not here:
And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins; draining out half of the blood over the altar. And he took the book of the agreement, reading it in the hearing of the people: and they said, Everything which the Lord has said we will do, and we will keep his laws. Then Moses took the blood and let it come on the people, and said, This blood is the sign of the agreement which the Lord has made with you in these words.
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Commentary on 2 Chronicles 34 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 34
2Ch 34:1, 2. Josiah's Good Reign.
1. Josiah was eight years old—(See on 2Ki 22:1). The testimony borne to the undeviating steadfastness of his adherence to the cause of true religion places his character and reign in honorable contrast with those of many of his royal predecessors.
2Ch 34:3-7. He Destroys Idolatry.
3. in the eighth year of his reign—This was the sixteenth year of his age, and, as the kings of Judah were considered minors till they had completed their thirteenth year, it was three years after he had attained majority. He had very early manifested the piety and excellent dispositions of his character. In the twelfth year of his reign, but the twentieth of his age, he began to take a lively interest in the purgation of his kingdom from all the monuments of idolatry which, in his father's short reign, had been erected. At a later period, his increasing zeal for securing the purity of divine worship led him to superintend the work of demolition in various parts of his dominion. The course of the narrative in this passage is somewhat different from that followed in the Book of Kings. For the historian, having made allusion to the early manifestation of Josiah's zeal, goes on with a full detail of all the measures this good king adopted for the extirpation of idolatry; whereas the author of the Book of Kings sets out with the cleansing of the temple, immediately previous to the celebration of the passover, and embraces that occasion to give a general description of Josiah's policy for freeing the land from idolatrous pollution. The exact chronological order is not followed either in Kings or Chronicles. But it is clearly recorded in both that the abolition of idolatry began in the twelfth and was completed in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. Notwithstanding Josiah's undoubted sincerity and zeal and the people's apparent compliance with the king's orders, he could not extinguish a strongly rooted attachment to idolatries introduced in the early part of Manasseh's reign. This latent predilection appears unmistakably developed in the subsequent reigns, and the divine decree for the removal of Judah, as well as Israel, into captivity was irrevocably passed.
4. the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them—He treated the graves themselves as guilty of the crimes of those who were lying in them [Bertheau].
5. he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars—A greater brand of infamy could not have been put on idolatrous priests than the disinterment of their bones, and a greater defilement could not have been done to the altars of idolatry than the burning upon them the bones of those who had there officiated in their lifetime.
6. with their mattocks—or, "in their deserts"—so that the verse will stand thus: "And so did [namely, break the altars and burn the bones of priests] he in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, in their deserted suburbs." The reader is apt to be surprised on finding that Josiah, whose hereditary possessions were confined to the kingdom of Judah, exercised as much authority among the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Simeon, and others as far as Naphtali, as he did within his own dominion. Therefore, it is necessary to observe that, after the destruction of Samaria by Shalmaneser, the remnant that continued on the mountains of Israel maintained a close intercourse with Judah, and looked to the sovereigns of that kingdom as their natural protectors. Those kings acquired great influence over them, which Josiah exercised in removing every vestige of idolatry from the land. He could not have done this without the acquiescence of the people in the propriety of this proceeding, conscious that this was conformable to their ancient laws and institutions. The Assyrian kings, who were now masters of the country, might have been displeased at the liberties Josiah took beyond his own territories. But either they were not informed of his doings, or they did not trouble themselves about his religious proceedings, relating, as they would think, to the god of the land, especially as he did not attempt to seize upon any place or to disturb the allegiance of the people [Calmet].
2Ch 34:8-18. He Repairs the Temple.
8. in the eighteenth year of his reign … he sent Shaphan—(See on 2Ki 22:3-9).
2Ch 34:19-33. And, Causing the Law to Be Read, Renews the Covenant between God and the People.
19. when the king had heard the words of the law, &c.—(See on 2Ki 22:11-20; 23:1-3).