2 Kings 23:6
And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
Josiah brought the Asherah idol out of the temple after the rediscovered book of the law convicted him of disobedience and led him and the people to covenant to obey it, and he carried it outside Jerusalem to the Kidron, burned it, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the common graves to purge idolatrous worship from Judah. It was one act in the greatest cleansing in Hebrew history, removing at least ten polluting forms of Baal, Astarte, Asherah, sun-worship, high places, Tophet, Chemosh, Milcom, calf-worship and spiritism, and fulfilling what had been foretold to Jeroboam in 1 Kings 13 after hundreds of years. Thorough as it was, it could not turn a people who loved idolatry, so after Josiah's death the kingdom fell to Nebuchadnezzar and went into Babylonian captivity. It shows what a ruler who fears the true God does, exercising thorough, heroic and uncompromising iconoclasm that spares no beautiful image, ancient shrine or corrupt priesthood, because nearness to God requires removal of every heathen relic and outward idol in order to establish true worship and beauty of character.
Josiah's Reformation Context
Josiah's reformation began when the book of the law was found during repairs to the temple. That recovered law convicted the king of the people's disobedience, and he covenanted to obey it while the people joined him to restore worship according to Scripture. This belongs to the history of Judah's remaining kingdom after the ten tribes had been swept away, within the account of the kings extending to the Babylonian captivity. It is the one bright chapter closing the books of Kings amid wicked and weak reigns, carried out under the good king Josiah supported by his godly priests and counselors.
The verse records part of that national reform and purification of the temple and its worship. The grove or Asherah idol, with other idolatrous objects and shrines, was removed from the house of the LORD, taken outside Jerusalem to the brook Kidron, burned there, stamped small to powder, and scattered on graves. In this way the objects of idolatrous worship were eliminated from Judah, images and places used for heathen worship were destroyed, and temple worship was reformed and restored. The grove itself belonged to the low, sensual worship of Baal and Ashtoreth or Astarte and of the sun that had displaced the worship and honor of Jehovah. That worship had placed polluting symbols in hill groves and altars on high places throughout the realm under the heathen idea that mountains and hills are protectors, deliverers, and places of refuge.
This was one act in the greatest reformation recorded in Hebrew history, in which Josiah cleansed the Temple and people from at least ten polluting forms of idolatry and iniquity. These were worship of Baal and Astarte, Asherah or phallic abominations, sodomites, Tophet or Moloch, Chemosh of Moab, Milcom of Ammon, Bethel calf worship, consulting familiar spirits, and offering incense in high places. He destroyed all existing relics of idolatry, defiled idol altars and sites, and degraded priests of Jehovah who had corrupted His worship. The action fulfills the prophecy of the man of God to Jeroboam in 1 Kings 13, coming after hundreds of years of waiting just as the Lord declared it would. Josiah was the last king of Jerusalem who obeyed God's commandments and statutes, and the end of his reign marks the point when the Jews' observance of release years and Jubilees ceased. Afterward their kings, people, and land could no longer be redeemed, and the land lay desolate while the people were in enemy territory.
Though thorough and zealous, the reform could not check the downward trend of a people who loved that idolatry. After Josiah's sad death the kingdom soon fell to Nebuchadnezzar and went into Babylonian captivity. Such reforms could be followed by a return to idolatry when another king restored the practices that had been destroyed. The scattering of the powder upon the graves of the children of the people shows that cemeteries or burial places existed outside Jerusalem.
Godly Leadership and Application
A king who fears and serves the true God acts after wicked, sensual kings have led Israel after Baal and Ashtoreth to undo what they did. Those wicked kings had carried out the heathen religious idea that mountains and hills are protectors, deliverers, and places of refuge, placing polluting symbols of idolatrous worship in hill groves and setting altars on the high places throughout the realm. The God-fearing king hews down the hill groves of idolatry and overthrows the mountain altars, bringing the grove out from the house of the Lord and destroying it, so that the people learn righteousness and seek the true place of refuge.
Throwing down idolatrous worship from the house of the LORD so that God Himself is recognized shows that nearness to God is marked by removal of idolatrous temples and even the least outward expression in mere stone and wood. What God desires is beauty of character and beauty in souls rather than architectural beauty and poetry of worship. The removal and destruction of the grove used in heathen worship therefore illustrates the need to eliminate heathen practices and relics of sun-worship and to establish true worship.
The work is thorough, heroic, uncompromising iconoclasm by a reformer who led the high priest, chief priests, and Levites instead of being led by them. At twenty he swept the land of iniquity, and at twenty-six, with new knowledge and strength from the long-lost Bible, he broke every relic of Baal and Astarte into ugly deformity. He spared no beautiful statue on the plea of art, no four-hundred-year-old shrine of Chemosh and Molech set up by Solomon on Olivet, no ancestral garden suburb like Tophet with its shrine, and no priestly office or family and social arrangement, whatever the curses, cost, or charge of narrow Puritanism. A heart that has found the Bible will have nothing to do with compromises, but plucks up root and fibre, sees danger where the blind feel secure, guards against incipient evils, crushes the eggs of the serpent, and is zealous for the Lord God. It lets no beauty justify rivalry with God, condemning the mixture of the beautiful and lascivious that seduces modesty and fashionable amusements identified with loose morals.