And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
Josiah, as a youthful reformer acting in religious zeal, ordered and himself carried out the removal and sweeping away of the idolatrous buildings, shrines, images and groves that Solomon had erected. He broke them in pieces, cut them down and defaced them. Those shrines stood on the southern slopes and eminence of the Mount of Olives, opposite the temple of God on Mount Moriah, across the Kidron channel and the Jehoshaphat ravine, confronting the temple.
What he destroyed were huge, great misshapen idols of wood and stone for the worship of wood and stone, with altars for idol worship, standing above groves of myrtle and olive. They were specifically Ashtoreth and Chemosh and Molech. Solomon had placed them there to please his foreign, idolatrous, heathen wives, daughters of pagan worshipers. He did so through pride of political power and through alliances with pagan kingdoms and marriage alliances.
Those shrines and images had stood there for upwards of three centuries. Their broken fragments and remains were rolled down the channel toward the Kidron, and the shrines were left in ruins. Yet the destruction was only partial, so broken, defaced debris and masses of ruins and broken idols peering above the trees still remained confronting the temple for generations.
The place is Solomon's mount of offense, and the remaining fragments stand as memorial stones, mute witnesses and evidence of the apostasy of Israel's wisest king and of his fall from the piety and wisdom for which he had once been honored. They tell how Solomon, the beloved of God and steward of the temple on Mount Moriah who offered the prayer at its dedication, separated from obedience to God and thus from wisdom and righteousness. By that separation he became a tool of Satan and a slave to impulse, with blunted sensibilities, seared conscience and clouded perception.
Josiah, as a youthful reformer acting in religious zeal, ordered and himself carried out the removal and sweeping away of the idolatrous buildings, shrines, images and groves that Solomon had erected. He broke them in pieces, cut them down and defaced them. Those shrines stood on the southern slopes and eminence of the Mount of Olives, opposite the temple of God on Mount Moriah, across the Kidron channel and the Jehoshaphat ravine, confronting the temple.
What he destroyed were huge, great misshapen idols of wood and stone for the worship of wood and stone, with altars for idol worship, standing above groves of myrtle and olive. They were specifically Ashtoreth and Chemosh and Molech. Solomon had placed them there to please his foreign, idolatrous, heathen wives, daughters of pagan worshipers. He did so through pride of political power and through alliances with pagan kingdoms and marriage alliances.
Those shrines and images had stood there for upwards of three centuries. Their broken fragments and remains were rolled down the channel toward the Kidron, and the shrines were left in ruins. Yet the destruction was only partial, so broken, defaced debris and masses of ruins and broken idols peering above the trees still remained confronting the temple for generations.
The place is Solomon's mount of offense, and the remaining fragments stand as memorial stones, mute witnesses and evidence of the apostasy of Israel's wisest king and of his fall from the piety and wisdom for which he had once been honored. They tell how Solomon, the beloved of God and steward of the temple on Mount Moriah who offered the prayer at its dedication, separated from obedience to God and thus from wisdom and righteousness. By that separation he became a tool of Satan and a slave to impulse, with blunted sensibilities, seared conscience and clouded perception.