Josiah’s purging went all the way back to Solomon; his Passover the best since before the judges!
There was nothing superficial about Josiah’s work. He had destroyed Solomon’s shrines to his wives’ pagan gods. Now he turned his attention to the counterfeit worship set up by Jeroboam at Bethel (ironically meaning “the house of God”). We noted that the man of God from Judah had prophesied 300 years before that Josiah would destroy this nest of idolatry. Sure enough, “the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made,…he broke down; and he burned the high place and crushed it to powder, and burned the wooden image. As Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were there on the mountain. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, and defiled it according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed” (2 Ki 23:15-16). But as they went grave to grave, one grave stopped the king in his tracks. “He said, ‘What gravestone is this that I see?’ So the men of the city told him, ‘It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things which you have done against the altar of Bethel.’ And he said, ‘Let…no one move his bones’” (vv 17-18). The false priests were executed and their bones also burned there. Such is the grisly dead end of those who defy God! But now this is a happy turn. A Passover was called! They were being liberated from idolatry as their forefathers had been in Egypt. It was time to celebrate! And “such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges,” 700 years before, “nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah” (v 22). Remember: “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast,…with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:7-8).