Homiletics Analysis: 2 Kings 23:24–25

Content & Intent

This Text — Content: These two verses close out the extended account of Josiah’s reformation (23:1–25) by cataloguing a final sweep of occult practitioners and idolatrous objects, then delivering the narrator’s sweeping verdict: no king before or after Josiah turned to the LORD with such wholeness — with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might — in accordance with the entire Law of Moses. The final purge targets mediums, spiritists, household gods (teraphim), idols (gillulim, a term of contempt), and every abomination visible in Judah and Jerusalem. These are not incidental targets — they are precisely the categories of forbidden practice enumerated in Deuteronomy 18:9–12, completing the arc of covenantal faithfulness. The verdict in verse 25 is framed as a superlative: not merely that Josiah was faithful, but that his quality of covenantal devotion was unmatched in all of Israel’s history up to that point — and, the narrator adds with painful foreshadowing, none would arise after him either.

This Text — Intent: God is pressing the reader toward a searching self-examination: what does it actually mean to turn to the LORD with all your heart, soul, and might — and how total is your own turning? The passage does not allow halfway measures to pass as faithfulness. It sets before the reader the highest standard of covenantal wholeness, not to crush with the impossibility of it, but to expose the idolatrous residue — the hidden household gods, the consulted mediums, the cherished abominations — that occupy the territory the heart refuses to surrender. The intent is diagnostic and calling at once: here is what full-hearted turning looks like; examine whether anything remains untouched in you.

Subject Sentence: Josiah’s unmatched, whole-hearted turning to the LORD sets the defining standard of covenantal faithfulness.

Primary Claim: God is holding before every reader the portrait of radical, total covenantal turning — stripping away every hidden idol and occult refuge — and calling them to the same wholeness of heart, soul, and might that made Josiah singular in Israel’s history.

Interpretive Evaluation

The “superlative problem” — Josiah vs. Hezekiah: A significant interpretive question arises immediately: how does the narrator’s verdict here (“there was no king like him”) coexist with an almost identical verdict given to Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18:5 (“there was none like him among all the kings of Judah”)? Some interpreters resolve this by reading the two superlatives as applying to different domains — Hezekiah’s trust (batach) versus Josiah’s turning (shub) — with each king representing a different facet of covenantal devotion. The Reformed reading finds this most textually satisfying: the narrator is not contradicting himself but calibrating praise precisely. Hezekiah’s superlative describes the quality of his trust in the LORD during military and existential crisis; Josiah’s describes the comprehensiveness of his covenantal obedience to the Book of the Law. These are complementary, not competing, verdicts. The Deuteronomistic standard (“with all your heart, soul, and might” — echoing Deuteronomy 6:5) appears here in its fullest narrative embodiment, applied to the totality of Josiah’s reforming activity.

Arminian/Wesleyan reading — entire sanctification parallel: Some Wesleyan interpreters have pressed the “all your heart, soul, and might” language toward the doctrine of entire sanctification — treating Josiah as a model of what a fully surrendered, wholly-sanctified believer looks like in practice. The text genuinely supports the emphasis on totality and the rejection of partial devotion. However, the Reformed reading qualifies this by noting that the narrative does not present Josiah as having arrived at a perfected state but as having turned comprehensively in the direction of covenantal obedience. The very next verses (23:26–27) reveal that Josiah’s faithfulness could not reverse the LORD’s determination to judge Judah for Manasseh’s sins — a sobering reminder that even unmatched human faithfulness does not mechanically secure covenant blessing. Josiah is a model of full-hearted turning, not of sinless perfection.

Moralistic reduction — the most common homiletical failure: The chief interpretive pitfall is not a competing theological tradition but a reductive reading that treats this passage as a hero story (“be like Josiah”) or a motivational portrait (“complete your own reformation”). Edmund Clowney’s anti-moralism principle applies with force: the text is not calling readers to generate Josiah-like willpower. The very framing — that no king before or after surpassed him — should forestall that reading. If Josiah is the unrepeatable summit, the passage is not issuing a simple “go and do likewise.” The application must be rooted in what drives total turning, and in the gospel that makes turning possible at all, not merely in admiring the example.

Conclusion: The Reformed reading holds that verse 25 delivers a precise, calibrated verdict on the totality and comprehensiveness of Josiah’s covenantal turning — framed by Deuteronomy 6:5, executed through the specific removals of verse 24, and set within a narrative that is simultaneously celebrating Josiah and lamenting that his faithfulness came too late to avert judgment. This reading best accounts for the literary structure, the Deuteronomistic idiom, and the canonical placement.

Key Canonical Support

• Deuteronomy 6:4–5 — The Shema establishes the standard Josiah embodies: total love for the LORD with heart, soul, and might. Verse 25 is essentially a narrative verdict that Josiah fulfilled the Shema more completely than any Israelite king.

• Deuteronomy 18:9–12 — The specific catalog of prohibited practices (mediums, spiritists, divination) maps directly onto the objects of Josiah’s final purge in verse 24, establishing that his action is covenantal obedience precisely calibrated to Mosaic law.

• 1 Samuel 15:22–23 — Samuel’s word to Saul anchors the principle Josiah embodies: the LORD requires wholehearted obedience, not selective compliance. Saul’s half-reformation contrasts sharply with Josiah’s total one.

• Jeremiah 3:10 — The LORD’s indictment of Judah’s “return” under Josiah as incomplete (“not in truth but in pretense”) provides the canonical counterweight: even Josiah’s comprehensive reform could not produce genuine national heart-transformation. This canonical tension prevents the Josiah portrait from becoming triumphalist.

• Matthew 22:37–38 — Jesus cites the Shema as the greatest commandment, placing the standard of Josiah’s turning into its fullest theological light. Total love for God — heart, soul, and mind — is the first and governing demand of the kingdom.

Aim: To press readers toward a searching examination of whether any hidden idols, occult refuges, or withheld territories remain untouched in their covenantal life — and to ground the call to total turning in the gospel that alone makes such turning possible and sustainable.

Content Table

Divisions Table

Subject Sentence & Primary Claim (restated)

Subject Sentence: Josiah’s unmatched, whole-hearted turning to the LORD sets the defining standard of covenantal faithfulness.

Primary Claim: God is holding before every reader the portrait of radical, total covenantal turning — stripping away every hidden idol and occult refuge — and calling them to the same wholeness of heart, soul, and might that made Josiah singular in Israel’s history.

Applications (Five)

1. (Mind/Belief) — Reckon with what “all” actually demands. The text’s most confronting word is not “mediums” or “idols” — it is “all.” All his heart, all his soul, all his might, all the Law of Moses. Most believers have made peace with a version of faith that is comprehensive in profession but selective in surrender. This passage calls for a reckoning: not whether you are following the LORD, but whether there are categories — habits of mind, consulting patterns, emotional dependencies, cherished private practices — that have never been brought under covenantal scrutiny. The first application is cognitive: refuse to let “all” become a polite exaggeration and let it do its full diagnostic work.

2. (Affections/Worship) — Grieve the household gods you have domesticated. Josiah’s target in verse 24 is not the dramatic, public idolatry already addressed in verses 1–20 — it is the teraphim, the small, household, personal idols. These are the comforting, private functional saviors: the things quietly consulted when anxiety rises, the sources of security that operate just below the level of conscious worship. This passage calls for affective grief — not merely intellectual acknowledgment — over the household gods that have been domesticated into the furniture of daily life. The question is not only “what do you worship publicly?” but “what do you quietly reach for when you are afraid?”

3. (Will/Behavior) — Identify and remove the specific, named thing that remains. Josiah’s reform is notable for its specificity. He does not declare a general intention to be more devoted; he names the categories and removes them one by one. The behavioral application is correspondingly specific: what is the named practice, relationship, media habit, or pattern of inquiry that functions as a medium or household god in your life? Not “idolatry in general” but the specific thing — named, located, and removed. Total turning requires specific action, not vague resolution.

4. (Mind/Belief) — Receive Josiah’s example as gospel-pointer, not guilt-generator. The Reformational discipline here is critical. Josiah’s unmatched faithfulness is ultimately not a standard to achieve in your own strength — it is a portrait that drives you to the one in whom total obedience was finally and perfectly embodied. Jesus is the king who turned to the Father with all His heart, soul, and might without remainder, without hidden residue, without selective compliance. Josiah’s superlative points forward to a greater king whose faithfulness does not merely set a record but secures a people. The believer examines themselves not to earn standing but from within the standing already given.

5. (Affections/Worship) — Let the foreshadowing of verse 25’s close stir longing for a better covenant. The closing phrase — “nor did any arise after him” — is tinged with the narrator’s grief: Josiah’s faithfulness could not ultimately hold back the judgment coming for Judah. That grief should move the reader. No human king, however faithful, was sufficient. The application is doxological: let the pathos of Josiah’s story — the greatest king who still could not be enough — deepen your worship of the One who was enough, whose obedience does not merely set an example but accomplishes what the best of human faithfulness could not. Josiah’s story ends in 23:29–30. The story the gospel tells does not.

Theological Importance: This passage makes a precise theological claim about the nature of covenantal faithfulness: it is not selective, not partial, not sufficient if it leaves any domain of life untouched. The LORD’s covenant requires the whole person — the Shema standard of heart, soul, and might — applied to every visible abomination and every hidden household idol alike. The narrator’s verdict on Josiah is simultaneously a portrait of what genuine covenantal turning looks like and an implicit indictment of every partial version of it. Theologically, this passage also preserves the asymmetry between human faithfulness and divine purpose: even Josiah’s unmatched turning did not and could not reverse the LORD’s determination regarding Judah (23:26–27), which guards against any reading that makes God’s covenant fidelity dependent on human performance alone.

Reformed Theological Significance: The Reformed tradition’s insistence on the totality of grace is here met by the passage’s insistence on the totality of response. This is not a contradiction — it is the covenant’s bilateral shape. Josiah’s turning is genuine, comprehensive, and praised without qualification; it is also insufficient on its own to secure Judah’s future. The passage thus diagrams the precise location of human responsibility within sovereign purpose: real, whole-hearted, specific obedience is commanded and celebrated, and it is not the final ground of standing before God. For Reformed exposition, this passage is a vital corrective to both antinomianism (which minimizes the call to total obedience) and to moralism (which treats total obedience as its own foundation). The gospel dynamic is embedded in the very structure of the narrative: the best human faithfulness points forward to the one whose obedience is both our model and our ground.

Main Takeaway: Josiah removed every medium, every household god, every hidden abomination — not one category left untouched — and the LORD called it what it was: unmatched, total turning with heart, soul, and might. The question this passage will not let you avoid is: what is still there? What have you named “not really an idol” and left in place? Total turning is not a higher tier of Christianity — it is what following the LORD actually means. And the only reason to pursue it without despair is that the king greater than Josiah has already rendered the obedience that Josiah could only approximate.

Preaching/Teaching Pitfalls

• Treating this as a hero story and nothing more. The most common failure is to preach Josiah as a spiritual role model and leave the congregation with an admiration that produces no self-examination. The passage is not a biography to celebrate but a mirror to look into. If the sermon ends with “what a great king Josiah was,” it has not yet begun to preach the text.

• Flattening “all” into an encouraging generality. Preachers often cite the “all your heart, soul, and might” formula as an aspirational encouragement without pressing its diagnostic edge. The formula is confrontational — it is designed to expose what “all” excludes in the listener’s life. Preaching must let the word “all” land before it lifts.

• Ignoring the specific catalog of verse 24. Mediums, spiritists, teraphim, and idols are not historical curiosities. Contemporary functional equivalents — the practices and sources we consult when faith feels insufficient, the private comforts we reach for before we reach for God — deserve to be named. A sermon that does not work to translate verse 24 into the congregation’s present leaves half the text unpreached.

• Failing to hold the canonical tension with 23:26–27. Josiah’s faithfulness is immediately followed by the narrator’s statement that the LORD did not turn from his burning anger against Judah on account of Manasseh. A sermon that ends at verse 25 without acknowledging this tension produces a theology of works — as if comprehensive reformation is sufficient to secure divine favor. The tension must be named and resolved through the gospel, not avoided.

• Resolving the passage into either pure moralism or pure gospel without the other. Two opposite errors are possible: preaching only “be totally obedient like Josiah” (moralism without gospel) or preaching only “Jesus did this for you” without the demanding call to specific, named, comprehensive turning (gospel that evacuates the imperative). The passage holds both — and the exposition must hold both without collapsing either into the other.

• Missing the foreshadowing tone of “nor did any arise after him.” This phrase is not merely a bookend compliment — it is the narrator’s quiet lament that the greatest king could not be enough. Preachers who read verse 25 as triumphalist miss the elegiac undertone that drives the canonical movement forward toward a greater king. The sermon should feel the weight of that “after him” before it resolves into hope.