[II Kings, 23:1–9, 21–25]
“The king summoned” [23:1]. The king sent for and assembled all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the Temple along with the priests, the prophets and all the people from small to great. He read the Torah before them in the Temple. The king stood at the reader’s desk and made a covenant and an oath with Israel that they should go in God’s path with their whole hearts.
“The king ordered Hilkiah” [23:4]. The king commanded the high priest, who was called Hilkiah, and the other priests who were with him and the other nobles who were appointed in the Temple to bring out all the vessels that had been made for the idols and they should be burned outside the city of Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and they should take the ashes to the house that was the primary place of worship of foreign gods. They should disperse the people and the priests who served these foreign gods. They took the linden trees that had been in the Temple outside the city of Jerusalem to the valley of Kidron and they burned them and threw the ashes on the graves. They tore down all the buildings where the foreign gods had been worshipped and where the women had cried and wove the beautiful tapestries and hangings for the linden trees. All of this was destroyed and torn down.
“He brought all the priests” [23:8]. King Josiah gathered all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled all the houses and offering stools of their foreign gods. They commanded that all the animal carcasses should be thrown there, to show that their foreign gods were unclean.
“However, the priests of the high places did not come up” [23:9]. The king took the priests, the descendants of Aaron, into the Temple who had served the foreign gods, and they had to clean out all the foreign gods. However, he did not allow them to do any work with the sacrifices to the Holy One. He considered them as if they had a defect, and they could not participate in the worship of God. However, they were given some parts of the sacrifices to eat.1Rashi, II Kings, 23:9.
“The king commanded” [23:21]. The king commanded that they should celebrate the Passover to God, as is written in the Torah. Israel had not celebrated Passover for a long time, but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah they celebrated the Passover to God in Jerusalem. Also, King Josiah cleaned out all the foreign gods and all the images that were in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, in the hope that they would keep the Torah of God.
“There was no king like him before” [23:25]. There was no king like Josiah before him in piety. He was pious with his whole heart and after him there was no king as pious as Josiah. Some sages say that Josiah was evil at first and later repented. Some sages say that he was always righteous. If so, what is the meaning of “who turned back to the Lord” [23:25]? That is, he had repented and if he had not committed any sins, he would not have to repent. The explanation is that all the cases that Josiah ruled on, from the time he became king until the eighteenth year of his reign, he returned each litigants money. That is to say, he said: perhaps I did not rule properly in my youth. Therefore, King Josiah took money out of his purse and returned it to each one where he had ruled.2B. Shabbat, 56b; Yalkut Shimoni, II Kings, Remez, 247. From here we should learn how very meritorious it is to properly judge cases. The redemption will come from just rulings. Amen.