2 Kings 23:13

23:13 The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, ¹  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 23:24

23:24 Josiah also got rid of ²  the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, ³  the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, ⁴  and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law ⁵  recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple.

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¹ 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.

² tn Here בִּעֵר (bi’er) is not the well attested verb “burn,” but the less common homonym meaning “devastate, sweep away, remove.” See HALOT 146 s.v. בער.

³ sn See the note at 2 Kgs 21:6.

⁴ sn See the note at 1 Kgs 15:12.

⁵ tn Heb “carrying out the words of the law.”