2 Kings 23:5

5. Put down The margin is better, he caused to cease; he set them aside by prohibiting their idolatrous service, and destroying all their places of worship.

The idolatrous priests The chemarim, ( כמרים ,) These are mentioned again at Hosea 10:5, and Zephaniah 1:4, where they seem to be the priests of the calf-worship. Here they are described as those whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places, and are distinguished from the priests of Baal and other idolaters. Of the word chemarim, over which there has been dispute, Furst says: “The application to idolatrous priests is obviously only a Hebrew peculiarity, since the Syriac chumero denotes any priest; and it is a question how this designation is united with the meaning of the stem. According to Kimchi, the idolatrous priest is so named from his gloomy, black dress; or, from the Syriac meaning of the stem, to mourn, then, to be an ascetic. But if a particular fundamental signification of the stem should be assumed for this noun, it would be appropriate to take כמר עמר , (Arabic, amar, coluit deum,) and accordingly כמר would be a serving one, a servant, like כהן , priest, in its fundamental meaning.”

To the sun, and to the moon The worship of Baal was really a worship of the sun and moon, for these luminaries were the real gods represented by Baal and Ashtoreth. See note on Judges 2:13.

The planets מזלות , synonymous with מזרות of Job 38:32, stands for the twelve signs or constellations of the zodiac, which the ancients conceived of as so many stations of the sun in his course through the heavens. “In Arabic the twelve stations are called twelve palaces of the sun, and the zodiac is named the circle of palaces.” Furst.