2 Kings 23:10

23:10 The king ¹  ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ² 

2 Kings 23:13

23:13 The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, ³  that King Solomon of Israel had built for the detestable Sidonian goddess Astarte, the detestable Moabite god Chemosh, and the horrible Ammonite god Milcom.

2 Kings 23:16

23:16 When Josiah turned around, he saw the tombs there on the hill. So he ordered the bones from the tombs to be brought; ⁴  he burned them on the altar and defiled it. This fulfilled the Lord’s announcement made by the prophet while Jeroboam stood by the altar during a festival. King Josiah ⁵  turned and saw the grave of the prophet who had foretold this. ⁶ 

2 Kings 23:8

23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined ⁷  the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. ⁸  He tore down the high place of the goat idols ⁹  situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate.

[23:10]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:10]  ² sn Attempts to identify this deity with a god known from the ancient Near East have not yet yielded a consensus. For brief discussions see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor II Kings (AB), 288 and HALOT 592 s.v. מֹלֶךְ. For more extensive studies see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek, and John Day, Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament.

[23:13]  ³ sn This is a derogatory name for the Mount of Olives, involving a wordplay between מָשְׁחָה (mashÿkhah), “anointing,” and מַשְׁחִית (mashÿkhit), “destruction.” See HALOT 644 s.v. מַשְׁחִית and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 289.

[23:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he sent and took the bones from the tombs.”

[23:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “the king”; this has been specified as “King Josiah” in the translation for clarity (cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).

[23:16]  ⁷ tc The MT is much shorter than this. It reads, “according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.” The LXX has a much longer text at this point. It reads: “[which was proclaimed by the man of God] while Jeroboam stood by the altar at a celebration. Then he turned and saw the grave of the man of God [who proclaimed these words].” The extra material attested in the LXX was probably accidentally omitted in the Hebrew tradition when a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the phrase “man of God” (which appears right before the extra material) and the second occurrence of the phrase (which appears at the end of the extra material).

[23:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”

[23:8]  ⁸ sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.

[23:8]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew text reads “the high places of the gates,” which is problematic in that the rest of the verse speaks of a specific gate. The translation assumes an emendation to בָּמוֹת הַשְּׁעָרִים (bamot hashÿ’arim), “the high place of the goats” (that is, goat idols). Worship of such images is referred to in Lev 17:7 and 2 Chr 11:15. For a discussion of the textual issue, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 286-87.