2 Chronicles 34: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Josiah becomes king of Judah at age eight and, while still young, begins seeking God and destroying the altars, Asherah poles, and idols in Judah and in the northern territories. In his eighteenth year he sends officials to repair the temple, and during the work Hilkiah the priest finds the Book of the Law. When it is read to him, Josiah tears his clothes and sends men to the prophetess Huldah, who says disaster will come on the place and its people, but that Josiah will die in peace and not see it. Josiah then reads the book to all the people and makes a covenant to keep it, and has everyone present join him.

Claim by Claim

1. 34:1
   • Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign.
   • Josiah reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.
2. 34:2
   • Josiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
   • Josiah walked in the ways of David his forefather.
   • Josiah did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
3. 34:3
   • In the eighth year of his reign Josiah began to seek the God of David his forefather.
   • At that time Josiah was still a boy.
   • In the twelfth year of his reign Josiah began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places.
   • Josiah began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the Asherah poles.
   • Josiah began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the carved images.
   • Josiah began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the cast metal images.
4. 34:4
   • The altars of the Baals were broken down in Josiah's presence.
   • Josiah cut down the incense altars that stood above the altars of the Baals.
   • Josiah broke in pieces the Asherah poles, the carved images, and the cast metal images.
   • Josiah ground them to dust.
   • Josiah scattered the dust over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
5. 34:5
   • Josiah burned the bones of the priests on their altars.
   • Josiah cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.
6. 34:6
   • Josiah did the same in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali.
   • The Hebrew describing how or where he did this in those cities is obscure; the King James renders it as with their mattocks round about, and it can also be read as among their ruins round about.
7. 34:7
   • Josiah broke down the altars.
   • Josiah beat the Asherah poles and the carved images into powder.
   • Josiah cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel.
   • Josiah then returned to Jerusalem.
8. 34:8
   • In the eighteenth year of his reign Josiah acted to cleanse the land and the temple.
   • Josiah sent Shaphan son of Azaliah.
   • Josiah sent Maaseiah the governor of the city.
   • Josiah sent Joah son of Joahaz the recorder.
   • He sent them to repair the house of the LORD his God.
9. 34:9
   • They came to Hilkiah the high priest.
   • They delivered the money that had been brought into the house of God.
   • The Levites who kept the threshold had gathered that money.
   • They had gathered it from Manasseh and Ephraim.
   • They had gathered it from all the remnant of Israel.
   • They had gathered it from all Judah and Benjamin.
   • The Hebrew here is ambiguous: it can read that the money was also gathered from the inhabitants of Jerusalem, or, as the King James renders it, that they returned to Jerusalem.
10. 34:10
    • They put the money into the hand of the workmen appointed as overseers of the house of the LORD.
    • Those workmen gave it to the men working in the house of the LORD.
    • The money was given to repair and strengthen the house.
11. 34:11
    • They gave money to the craftsmen and the builders.
    • The money was to buy hewn stone.
    • The money was to buy timber for couplings.
    • The money was to make beams for the buildings.
    • The kings of Judah had let those buildings fall into ruin.
12. 34:12
    • The men did the work faithfully.
    • Jahath and Obadiah, Levites of the sons of Merari, were appointed over them.
    • Zechariah and Meshullam, of the sons of the Kohathites, were appointed to direct the work.
    • Other Levites were all skilled with musical instruments.
13. 34:13
    • They were over the bearers of burdens.
    • They directed all who did the work in every kind of service.
    • Some of the Levites were scribes.
    • Some of the Levites were officers.
    • Some of the Levites were gatekeepers.
14. 34:14
    • While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the LORD, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the LORD.
    • That law had been given through Moses.
15. 34:15
    • Hilkiah said to Shaphan the scribe that he had found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.
    • Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan.
16. 34:16
    • Shaphan carried the book to the king.
    • Shaphan brought word back to the king.
    • Shaphan said that all that was committed to the king's servants they were doing.
17. 34:17
    • Shaphan reported that they had emptied out the money found in the house of the LORD.
    • Shaphan reported that they had delivered it into the hand of the overseers and of the workmen.
18. 34:18
    • Shaphan the scribe told the king that Hilkiah the priest had given him a book.
    • Shaphan read it before the king.
19. 34:19
    • The king heard the words of the law.
    • The king tore his clothes.
20. 34:20
    • The king gave a command to Hilkiah.
    • The king gave a command to Ahikam son of Shaphan.
    • The king gave a command to Abdon son of Micah.
    • The king gave a command to Shaphan the scribe.
    • The king gave a command to Asaiah the king's servant.
21. 34:21
    • The king told them to go and inquire of the LORD for him.
    • The king told them to inquire for those left in Israel and in Judah.
    • The inquiry was concerning the words of the book that had been found.
    • The king said the wrath of the LORD poured out upon them is great.
    • The king said this wrath came because their fathers had not kept the word of the LORD.
    • The king said their fathers had not done according to all that is written in this book.
22. 34:22
    • Hilkiah and those the king had appointed went to Huldah the prophetess.
    • Huldah was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvath, son of Hasrah.
    • Shallum was keeper of the wardrobe.
    • Huldah lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter of the city.
    • They spoke to her to that effect.
23. 34:23
    • Huldah answered them.
    • Huldah said that thus says the LORD, the God of Israel.
    • Huldah told them to speak to the man who had sent them to her.
24. 34:24
    • The LORD says he is bringing calamity upon this place.
    • The LORD says he is bringing calamity upon its inhabitants.
    • The calamity is all the curses written in the book.
    • That book had been read before the king of Judah.
25. 34:25
    • The calamity comes because they have forsaken the LORD.
    • The calamity comes because they have burned incense to other gods.
    • They did this so as to provoke the LORD to anger with all the works of their hands.
    • The LORD's wrath will be poured out upon this place.
    • The LORD's wrath will not be quenched.
26. 34:26
    • The king of Judah sent them to inquire of the LORD.
    • They are to say to the king of Judah what follows.
    • Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the words the king has heard.
27. 34:27
    • The king's heart was tender.
    • The king humbled himself before God when he heard God's words against this place and its inhabitants.
    • The king humbled himself before the LORD.
    • The king tore his clothes.
    • The king wept before the LORD.
    • The LORD has heard him.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD.
28. 34:28
    • The LORD will gather the king to his fathers.
    • The king will be gathered to his grave in peace.
    • The king's eyes will not see all the calamity the LORD will bring upon this place and its inhabitants.
    • They brought word back to the king.
29. 34:29
    • The king sent messengers.
    • The king gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
30. 34:30
    • The king went up to the house of the LORD.
    • All the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem went up with him.
    • The priests and the Levites went up with him.
    • All the people, great and small, went up with him.
    • The king read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant found in the house of the LORD.
31. 34:31
    • The king stood in his place.
    • The king made a covenant before the LORD.
    • The covenant was to walk after the LORD.
    • The covenant was to keep his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes.
    • The covenant was to do this with all his heart and with all his soul.
    • The covenant was to perform the words of the covenant written in this book.
32. 34:32
    • The king made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin take their stand in it.
    • The inhabitants of Jerusalem acted according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers.
33. 34:33
    • Josiah removed all the abominations from all the lands belonging to the children of Israel.
    • Josiah made all who were present in Israel serve the LORD their God.
    • All Josiah's days they did not turn aside from following the LORD, the God of their fathers.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

34:1

Josiah ruled Judah, the southern kingdom, from about 640 to 609 BC. The northern kingdom, called Israel, had been destroyed by Assyria roughly eighty years earlier, so by his day the family of David ruled only Judah and Jerusalem. Because he was eight when he took the throne, adults would have governed for him at first.

34:2

KJV "declined neither to the right hand, nor to the left" does not mean he refused anything. "Declined" here means turned aside. The phrase is standard legal language from the law of Moses for staying exactly on a set path without drifting either way.

34:3

"Worship sites on the hills" translates a term usually given as "high places": local open-air shrines, often on a hilltop, with an altar and standing stones. They were the ordinary way people worshiped in the countryside, and were used for the LORD as well as for other gods. "Asherah poles" were wooden objects (a pole, or possibly a stylized tree) set up beside an altar. Asherah was a goddess worshiped across the region, and the poles stood for her. The "carved idols" were shaped from wood or stone; the "metal idols" were cast from molten bronze or silver poured into a mold.

34:4

"The Baals" is a plural. Baal means "lord" or "master" and was the title of the chief storm-and-fertility god of Canaan; each town had its own local version of him, hence the plural. The "incense altars" were small stands, often stone, for burning aromatic resin as an offering; they sometimes stood on top of the larger altars. Scattering the dust on the graves of the worshipers was not just insult. Contact with a grave or a corpse made a person or place ritually unclean, so this permanently spoiled the ground-up idols and the burial sites together.

34:5

Burning human bones on an altar was the strongest possible way of putting it out of use. An altar polluted by corpses could not be used for sacrifice again.

34:6

Manasseh, Ephraim, Simeon and Naphtali are tribal territories, not cities, Naphtali lay in the far north. All of this was outside Judah's borders, in what had been the northern kingdom before Assyria destroyed it, so Josiah was acting well beyond his own realm. The Hebrew phrase behind "in the ruined places all around them" is uncertain; older English versions read it as a word for a digging tool and translated "with their mattocks."

34:8

The eighteenth year of Josiah's reign was about 622 BC. The "record keeper" (older versions: "recorder") held a senior post at court, roughly a chief of staff or royal secretary who kept the official annals and handled communications, not a clerk.

34:9

The Levites were members of the tribe of Levi, set apart to serve at the temple in support roles (guarding doors, handling the offerings, singing, keeping records) under the priests, who came from one family within that tribe. The high priest was the head of the whole priesthood. "Money" here means silver weighed out by amount, not coins; coinage had not yet come into use in Judah. "All who were left in Israel" refers to the people still living in the northern territories after the Assyrian conquest and deportations.

34:11

Cut stone means stone shaped flat so it fits in a wall. Beams are long, strong pieces of wood that hold up a roof.

34:12

Merari and Kohath were two of the three family lines of the tribe of Levi, each traditionally responsible for particular temple duties.

34:13

"Gatekeepers" (older versions: "porters") were the guards posted at the temple entrances, controlling who and what came in. "Secretaries" were record-keepers who tracked the money and materials.

34:14

A "book" at this date was a scroll of leather or papyrus, not a bound volume. What exactly this scroll contained is not stated and is much debated; the curses it lists (verse 24) match those at the end of Deuteronomy.

34:15

A "scribe" was not a copyist but a high-ranking government official, a literate minister who drafted documents, handled state correspondence, and had direct access to the king.

34:18

Almost no one could read, so writings were read out loud to listeners. Even a king normally had someone read to him.

34:19

Tearing one's own clothing was the standard public gesture of grief, shock or dread throughout the ancient Near East, the way a person showed that something terrible had happened.

34:21

To "ask the LORD" about something meant going to a recognized prophet for an answer, in the way one might consult an oracle. It was a formal procedure, which is why the king sends a delegation of named officials.

34:22

A prophetess is a woman who speaks messages received from God; several appear in Israel's history, and Huldah is consulted here in preference to prophets known to be active at the same time. "Looked after the royal clothing" translates "keeper of the wardrobe," a court office responsible for the king's or the temple's garments. The "Second District" is a quarter of Jerusalem, probably a newer expansion of the city. The Hebrew word means "second" or "repeated"; the King James translators took it to mean a school and rendered it "the college."

34:23

"This is what the LORD says" is the fixed opening formula of a messenger delivering someone else's words, the same wording a herald used to introduce a king's message. It marks everything that follows as quoted speech, not the speaker's own opinion.

34:24

The "curses written in the book" are the penalties spelled out at the end of a covenant document, listing what would follow if its terms were broken. Ancient treaties between a ruler and his subjects were drawn up the same way, with blessings for keeping the terms and curses for breaking them.

34:25

Burning incense was an ordinary act of worship, not an extra: aromatic gum was burned so the smoke rose to the god being honored. "Everything they have made with their hands" means the images themselves, objects manufactured by people and then treated as gods.

34:27

"Your heart was soft" renders a phrase meaning receptive or easily moved, not weak or foolish. The point is that he took the words seriously rather than shrugging them off.

34:28

"Bring you to rest with your ancestors" is a standard idiom for dying and being buried in the family tomb, where the bones of earlier generations already lay. "Buried in peace" is contrasted here with living to see the disaster; Josiah is in fact killed in battle in the next chapter, but dies and is buried before Jerusalem falls.

34:29

Elders were the older, respected men who made decisions for a town or a tribe.

34:30

A covenant is a binding agreement with stated terms and consequences, of the kind made between a ruler and his people or between two states. The "book of the covenant" is the document containing those terms. "From the least important to the greatest" is an idiom meaning everyone without exception, whatever their rank.

34:31

"Stood in his place" refers to a fixed spot in the temple where the king customarily stood on public occasions; the parallel account in 2 Kings 23:3 describes it as "by the pillar."

34:33

"Detestable idols" translates a word for anything ritually repulsive, here the images, altars and equipment of the other gods.