17 Because they have given me up, burning offerings to other gods and moving me to wrath by all the work of their hands; so my wrath will be on fire against this place, and will not be put out.
Their images are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but no voice; they have eyes, but they see not; They have ears, but no hearing; they have noses, but no sense of smell; They have hands without feeling, and feet without power of walking; and no sound comes from their throat. Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who puts his faith in them.
And say to the woodland of the South, Give ear to the words of the Lord: this is what the Lord has said: See, I will have a fire lighted in you, for the destruction of every green tree in you and every dry tree: the flaming flame will not be put out, and all faces from the south to the north will be burned by it. And all flesh will see that I the Lord have had it lighted: it will not be put out.
Who say to a tree, You are my father; and to a stone, You have given me life: for their backs have been turned to me, not their faces: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Up! and be our saviour. But where are the gods you have made for yourselves? let them come, if they are able to give you salvation in the time of your trouble: for the number of your gods is as the number of your towns, O Judah.
Has any nation ever made a change in their gods, though they are no gods? but my people have given up their glory in exchange for what is of no profit. Be full of wonder, O heavens, at this; be overcome with fear, be completely waste, says the Lord. For my people have done two evils; they have given up me, the fountain of living waters, and have made for themselves water-holes, cut out from the rock, broken water-holes, of no use for storing water.
Who in your eyes is my equal? or what comparison will you make with me? As for those who take gold out of a bag, and put silver in the scales, they give payment to a gold-worker, to make it into a god; they go down on their faces and give it worship. They put him on their backs, and take him up, and put him in his fixed place, from which he may not be moved; if a man gives a cry for help to him, he is unable to give an answer, or get him out of his trouble. Keep this in mind and be shamed; let it come back to your memory, you sinners.
And the rest of it he makes into a god, even his pictured image: he goes down on his face before it, giving worship to it, and making prayer to it, saying, Be my saviour; for you are my god. They have no knowledge or wisdom; for he has put a veil over their eyes, so that they may not see; and on their hearts, so that they may not give attention. And no one takes note, no one has enough knowledge or wisdom to say, I have put part of it in the fire, and made bread on it; I have had a meal of the flesh cooked with it: and am I now to make the rest of it into a false god? am I to go down on my face before a bit of wood? As for him whose food is the dust of a dead fire, he has been turned from the way by a twisted mind, so that he is unable to keep himself safe by saying, What I have here in my hand is false.
Their land is full of images; they give worship to the work of their hands, even to that which their fingers have made. And the poor man's head is bent, and the great man goes down on his face: for this cause there will be no forgiveness for their sin.
But they were joined to the nations, learning their works. And they gave worship to images; which were a danger to them: They even made offerings of their sons and their daughters to evil spirits, And gave the blood of their sons and their daughters who had done no wrong, offering them to the images of Canaan; and the land was made unclean with blood. So they became unclean through their works, going after their evil desires. Then the wrath of the Lord was burning against his people, and he was angry with his heritage. And he gave them into the hands of the nations; and they were ruled by their haters. By them they were crushed, and made low under their hands.
But they were hard-hearted, and went against your authority, turning their backs on your law, and putting to death your prophets, who gave witness against them with the purpose of turning them back again to you, and they did much to make you angry. And so you gave them up into the hands of their haters who were cruel to them: and in the time of their trouble, when they made their prayer to you, you gave ear to them from heaven; and in your great mercy gave them saviours, who made them free from the hands of their haters.
But if you are turned from my ways, you or your children, and do not keep my orders and my laws which I have put before you, but go and make yourselves servants to other gods and give them worship: Then I will have Israel cut off from the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for myself, I will put away from before my eyes; and Israel will be a public example, and a word of shame among all peoples. And this house will become a mass of broken walls, and everyone who goes by will be overcome with wonder at it and make whistling sounds; and they will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land and to this house? And their answer will be, Because they were turned away from the Lord their God, who took their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they took for themselves other gods and gave them worship and became their servants: that is why the Lord has sent all this evil on them.
Then the children of Israel, crying out to the Lord, said, Great is our sin against you, for we have given up our God and have been servants to the Baals. And the Lord said to the children of Israel, Were not the Egyptians and the Amorites and the children of Ammon and the Philistines And the Zidonians and Amalek and Midian crushing you down, and in answer to your cry did I not give you salvation from their hands? But, for all this, you have given me up and have been servants to other gods: so I will be your saviour no longer. Go, send up your cry for help to the gods of your selection; let them be your saviours in the time of your trouble.
And again the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, worshipping the Baals and Astartes, and the gods of Aram and the gods of Zidon and the gods of Moab and the gods of the children of Ammon and the gods of the Philistines; they gave up the Lord and were servants to him no longer. And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the children of Ammon.
And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and put out of their minds the Lord their God, and became servants to the Baals and the Astartes. So the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel were his servants for eight years.
And they gave up the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had taken them out of the land of Egypt, and went after other gods, the gods of the peoples round about them, worshipping them and moving the Lord to wrath. And they gave up the Lord, and became the servants of Baal and the Astartes. And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of those who violently took their property, and into the hands of their haters all round them, so that they were forced to give way before them.
But Jeshurun became fat and would not be controlled: you have become fat, you are thick and full of food: then he was untrue to the God who made him, giving no honour to the Rock of his salvation. The honour which was his they gave to strange gods; by their disgusting ways he was moved to wrath. They made offerings to evil spirits which were not God, to gods who were strange to them, which had newly come up, not feared by your fathers. You have no thought for the Rock, your father, you have no memory of the God who gave you birth. And the Lord saw with disgust the evil-doing of his sons and daughters.
Truly all the nations will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land? what is the reason for this great and burning wrath? Then men will say, Because they gave up the agreement of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he took them out of the land of Egypt: And they went after other gods and gave them worship, gods who were strange to them, and whom he had not given them: And so the wrath of the Lord was moved against this land, to send on it all the curse recorded in this book: Rooting them out of their land, in the heat of his wrath and passion, and driving them out into another land, as at this day.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on 2 Kings 22
Commentary on 2 Kings 22 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 22
2Ki 22:1, 2. Josiah's Good Reign.
1, 2. Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign—Happier than his grandfather Manasseh, he seems to have fallen during his minority under the care of better guardians, who trained him in the principles and practice of piety; and so strongly had his young affections been enlisted on the side of true and undefiled religion, that he continued to adhere all his life, with undeviating perseverance, to the cause of God and righteousness.
2Ki 22:3-7. He Provides for the Repair of the Temple.
3, 4. in the eighteenth year of king Josiah—Previous to this period, he had commenced the work of national reformation. The preliminary steps had been already taken; not only the builders were employed, but money had been brought by all the people and received by the Levites at the door, and various other preparations had been made. But the course of this narrative turns on one interesting incident which happened in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, and hence that date is specified. In fact the whole land was thoroughly purified from every object and all traces of idolatry. The king now addressed himself to the repair and embellishment of the temple and gave directions to Hilkiah the high priest to take a general survey, in order to ascertain what was necessary to be done (see on 2Ch 34:8-15).
2Ki 22:8-15. Hilkiah Finds the Book of the Law.
8-11. Hilkiah said … I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, &c.—that is, the law of Moses, the Pentateuch. It was the temple copy which, had been laid (De 31:25, 26) beside the ark in the most holy place. During the ungodly reigns of Manasseh and Amon—or perhaps under Ahaz, when the temple itself had been profaned by idols, and the ark also (2Ch 35:3) removed from its site; it was somehow lost, and was now found again during the repair of the temple [Keil]. Delivered by Hilkiah the discoverer to Shaphan the scribe [2Ki 22:8], it was by the latter shown and read to the king. It is thought, with great probability, that the passage read to the king, and by which the royal mind was so greatly excited, was a portion of Deuteronomy, the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth chapters, in which is recorded a renewal of the national covenant, and an enumeration of the terrible threats and curses denounced against all who violated the law, whether prince or people. The impressions of grief and terror which the reading produced on the mind of Josiah have seemed to many unaccountable. But, as it is certain from the extensive and familiar knowledge displayed by the prophets, that there were numbers of other copies in popular circulation, the king must have known its sacred contents in some degree. But he might have been a stranger to the passage read him, or the reading of it might, in the peculiar circumstances, have found a way to his heart in a manner that he never felt before. His strong faith in the divine word, and his painful consciousness that the woeful and long-continued apostasies of the nation had exposed them to the infliction of the judgments denounced, must have come with overwhelming force on the heart of so pious a prince.
12-15. the king commanded … Go, inquire of the Lord for me, &c.—The agitated feelings of the king prompted him to ask immediate counsel how to avert those curses under which his kingdom lay; and forthwith a deputation of his principal officers was sent to one endowed with the prophetic spirit.
Ahikam—a friend of Jeremiah (Jer 26:24).
14. Achbor—or Abdon (2Ch 34:20), a man of influence at court (Jer 26:22). The occasion was urgent, and therefore they were sent—not to Zephaniah (Zep 1:1), who was perhaps young—nor to Jeremiah, who was probably absent at his house in Anathoth, but to one who was at hand and known for her prophetic gifts—to Huldah, who was probably at this time a widow. Her husband Shallum was grandson of one Harhas, "keeper of the wardrobe." If this means the priestly wardrobe, [Harhas] must have been a Levite. But it probably refers to the royal wardrobe.
she dwelt … in the college—rather, "in the Misnah," taking the original word as a proper name, not a school or college, but a particular suburb of Jerusalem. She was held in such veneration that Jewish writers say she and Jehoiada the priest were the only persons not of the house of David (2Ch 24:15, 16) who were ever buried in Jerusalem.
15-20. she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the man that sent you to me—On being consulted, she delivered an oracular response in which judgment was blended with mercy; for it announced the impending calamities that at no distant period were to overtake the city and its inhabitants. But at the same time the king was consoled with an assurance that this season of punishment and sorrow should not be during his lifetime, on account of the faith, penitence, and pious zeal for the divine glory and worship which, in his public capacity and with his royal influence, he had displayed.