2 Kings 11:18

11:18 All the people of the land went and demolished ¹  the temple of Baal. They smashed its altars and idols ²  to bits. ³  They killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altar. Jehoiada the priest ⁴  then placed guards at the Lord’s temple.

2 Kings 17:15

17:15 They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. ⁵  They paid allegiance to ⁶  worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. ⁷  They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command. ⁸ 

2 Kings 23:8

23:8 He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and ruined ⁹  the high places where the priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer Sheba. ¹⁰  He tore down the high place of the goat idols ¹¹  situated at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city official, on the left side of the city gate.

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¹ tn Or “tore down.”

² tn Or “images.”

³ tn The Hebrew construction translated “smashed…to bits” is emphatic. The adverbial infinitive absolute (הֵיטֵב [hetev], “well”) accompanying the Piel form of the verb שָׁבַר (shavar), “break,” suggests thorough demolition.

⁴ tn Heb “the priest.” Jehoiada’s name is added for clarification.

⁵ tn Or “and his warnings he had given them.”

⁶ tn Heb “They went [or, ‘followed’] after.” This idiom probably does not mean much if translated literally. It is found most often in Deuteronomy or in literature related to the covenant. It refers in the first instance to loyalty to God and to His covenant or His commandments (1 Kgs 14:8; 2 Chr 34:31) with the metaphor of a path or way underlying it (Deut 11:28; 28:14). To “follow other gods” was to abandon this way and this loyalty (to “abandon” or “forget” God, Judg 2:12; Hos 2:13) and to follow the customs or religious traditions of the pagan nations (2 Kgs 17:15). The classic text on “following” God or another god is 1 Kgs 18:18, 21 where Elijah taunts the people with “halting between two opinions” whether the Lord was the true God or Baal was. The idiom is often found followed by “to serve and to worship” or “they served and worshiped” such and such a god or entity (Jer 8:2; 11:10; 13:10; 16:11; 25:6; 35:15).

⁷ tn Heb “they followed after the worthless thing/things and became worthless.” The words “to the Lord” are not in the Hebrew text but are implicit from the context. There is an obvious wordplay on the verb “became worthless” and the noun “worthless thing”, which is probably to be understood collectively and to refer to idols as it does in Jer 8:19; 10:8; 14:22; Jonah 2:8.

⁸ tn Heb “and [they walked] after the nations which were around them, concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them.”

⁹ tn Heb “defiled; desecrated,” that is, “made ritually unclean and unusable.”

¹⁰ sn These towns marked Judah’s northern and southern borders, respectively, at the time of Josiah.

¹¹ 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.