Daily Bread Bible Reading Thursday 23 June 2022 || 2 Kings 23:3-7

Join the daily bread bible reading Thursday 23 June 2022 from the book of 2 Kings 23:3-7 for our spiritual daily bread for growth and development today.

DAILY BIBLE READING OF THE DAY 6TH JUNE 2022

PREVIOUSLY ON DAILY BREAD BIBLE READING FOR TODAY

Daily Bread Bible Reading Thursday 23 June 2022 || Today’s Scripture: 2 Kings 23:3–7

³Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant.

⁴And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for ^[a]Asherah, and for all ^[b]the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.

⁵Then he removed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the ^[c]constellations, and to all the host of heaven.

⁶And he brought out the wooden^[d] image from the house of the Lord, to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Brook Kidron and ground it to ashes, and threw its ashes on the graves of the common people.

⁷Then he tore down the ritual ^[e]booths of the ^[f]perverted persons that were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the wooden image.

Read full chapter

Daily Bread Bible Reading Thursday 23 June 2022 || Footnotes

2 Kings 23:4 A Canaanite goddess
2 Kings 23:4 The gods of the Assyrians
2 Kings 23:5 Of the Zodiac
2 Kings 23:6 Heb. Asherah, a Canaanite goddess
2 Kings 23:7 Lit. houses
2 Kings 23:7 Heb. qedeshim, those practicing sodomy and prostitution in religious rituals

Daily Bread Bible Reading Thursday 23 June 2022 || Insight

The covenant-renewal activities of King Josiah in 2 Kings 23:3–7 included house cleaning—the “[removal] from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah” (v. 4). Baal (a word that means “owner, lord”) was the most prominent deity among the gods of the Canaanites. It was believed that Baal (the god of life and fertility) controlled the rainfall and crop production. Asherah was the female companion of Baal. Depending on the context, sometimes the word Asherah (translated “grove” or “groves” in the kjv) can refer to the deity itself (2 Kings 21:7) or to the cult objects associated with her worship (1 Kings 14:23). Anything that usurps God’s rule in our lives is an idol and must be eliminated. By: Arthur Jackson