17 and all the people enter the house of Baal, and break it down, yea, his altars and his images they have broken, and Mattan priest of Baal they have slain before the altars.
And Elijah saith to them, `Catch ye the prophets of Baal; let not a man escape of them;' and they catch them, and Elijah bringeth them down unto the stream Kishon, and doth slaughter them there.
and ye have broken down their altars, and shivered their standing pillars, and their shrines ye burn with fire, and graven images of their gods ye cut down, and have destroyed their name out of that place.
`And that prophet, or that dreamer of the dream, is put to death, for he hath spoken apostacy against Jehovah your God (who is bringing you out of the land of Egypt, and hath ransomed you out of a house of servants), to drive you out of the way in which Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee to walk, and thou hast put away the evil thing from thy midst. `When thy brother -- son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who `is' as thine own soul -- doth move thee, in secret, saying, Let us go and serve other gods -- (which thou hast not known, thou and thy fathers, of the gods of the peoples who `are' round about you, who are near unto thee, or who are far off from thee, from the end of the earth even unto the end of the earth) -- thou dost not consent to him, nor hearken unto him, nor doth thine eye have pity on him, nor dost thou spare, nor dost thou cover him over. `But thou dost surely kill him; thy hand is on him, in the first place, to put him to death, and the hand of all the people last;
And it cometh to pass at his finishing to make the burnt-offering, that Jehu saith to the runners, and to the captains, `Go in, smite them, let none come out;' and they smite them by the mouth of the sword, and the runners and the captains cast `them' out; and they go unto the city, to the house of Baal, and bring out the standing-pillars of the house of Baal, and burn them, and break down the standing-pillar of Baal, and break down the house of Baal, and appoint it for a draught-house unto this day. And Jehu destroyeth Baal out of Israel,
And all the people of the land go in to the house of Baal, and break it down, its altars and its images they have thoroughly broken, and Mattan priest of Baal they have slain before the altars; and the priest setteth inspectors over the house of Jehovah, and taketh the heads of the hundreds, and the executioners, and the runners, and all the people of the land, and they bring down the king from the house of Jehovah, and come by the way of the gate of the runners, to the house of the king, and he sitteth on the throne of the kings.
he hath turned aside the high places, and broken in pieces the standing-pillars, and cut down the shrine, and beaten down the brazen serpent that Moses made, for unto these days were the sons of Israel making perfume to it, and he calleth it `a piece of brass.'
And they break down before him the altars of the Baalim, and the images that `are' on high above them he hath cut down, and the shrines, and the graven images, and the molten images, he hath broken and beaten small, and streweth on the surface of the graves of those sacrificing to them,
And he breaketh down the altars and the shrines, and the graven images he hath beaten down very small, and all the images he hath cut down in all the land of Israel, and turneth back to Jerusalem.
And it hath come to pass, in that day, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, I cut off the names of the idols from the land, And they are not remembered any more, And also the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness I cause to pass away from the land. And it hath been, when one prophesieth again, That said unto him have his father and his mother, his parents, `Thou dost not live, For falsehood thou hast spoken in the name of Jehovah,' And pierced him through have his father and his mother, his parents, in his prophesying.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 2 Chronicles 23
Commentary on 2 Chronicles 23 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 23
Six years bloody Athaliah had tyrannised; in this chapter we have her deposed and slain, and Joash, the rightful heir, enthroned. We had the story before nearly as it is here related, 2 Ki. 11:4, etc.
2Ch 23:1-11
We may well imagine the bad posture of affairs in Jerusalem during Athaliah's six years' usurpation, and may wonder that God permitted it and his people bore it so long; but after such a dark and tedious night the returning day in this revolution was the brighter and the more welcome. The continuance of David's seed and throne was what God had sworn by his holiness (Ps. 89:35), and an interruption was no defeasance; the stream of government here runs again in the right channel. The instrument and chief manager of the restoration is Jehoiada, who appears to have been,
2Ch 23:12-21
Here we have,