2 Kings 23:1-3 - Exposition

Josiah ' s renewal of the covenant . The first care of Josiah, on receiving Huldah's message, which stamped the book found as the true "book of the covenant," was to call together a great assembly of the nation, which should be sufficiently representative of it, and renew the covenant between God and his people made originally at Horeb ( Exodus 19:5-8 ; Exodus 24:3-8 ), which it was apparent, by the words of the book, that he and his people had broken. His proceedings may be fitly compared with those of Jehoiada, the high priest after the reign of the idolatrous Athaliah, recorded in 2 Kings 11:17 ; but they were still more formal and solemn, inasmuch as the recent alienation of the people from Jehovah had been so much more prolonged, and so much more complete, than the alienation under Athaliah.