Catholic Commentary
Summary of Josiah's Reform and Unparalleled Fidelity
24Moreover, Josiah removed those who had familiar spirits, the wizards, and the teraphim, and the idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in Yahweh’s house.25There was no king like him before him, who turned to Yahweh with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; and there was none like him who arose after him.
In 2 Kings 23:24–25, King Josiah completes his religious reform by eradicating all forms of syncretism—mediums, wizards, household idols, and other abominations—to establish the words of the Torah discovered in the temple. The narrator then declares Josiah unsurpassed among all kings for turning to Yahweh with complete heart, soul, and might according to the law of Moses.
Josiah's total fidelity—the only king Scripture says loved God with undivided heart—could not save Judah, revealing that reform alone cannot redeem.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The allegorical sense points forward to Christ, who alone perfectly fulfills Deuteronomy 6:5 (see Matt 22:37). Josiah's fidelity is genuine but creaturely and ultimately insufficient—the very next verse (v. 26) reveals that even Josiah's reform cannot reverse the divine sentence on Judah provoked by Manasseh. He is a figura: a real, admirable king whose very greatness highlights that a greater king is needed. The moral sense calls the reader to a radical interior purge of idols—not merely external cult objects but whatever competes for the heart's total allegiance.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage at several levels.
The Primacy of the Written Word and Sacred Tradition. The Catechism teaches that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition form "one sacred deposit of the Word of God" (CCC 97). Josiah's reform is paradigmatic: the found book (almost certainly Deuteronomy or its core) is not treated as a novelty but as the recovery of something always authoritative. The Church Fathers read this event as a prefiguration of how the Church continually returns to Scripture and Tradition as her normative measure. St. Augustine comments that Israel's forgetfulness of the Law mirrors the soul's darkening through sin, and its rediscovery mirrors conversion (De Catechizandis Rudibus 19).
Purgation of Occult Practice. The Church's consistent condemnation of divination, spiritism, and magic (CCC 2115–2117) draws directly on the Mosaic prohibition that Josiah enforces. The Catechism cites Deuteronomy 18:10 explicitly, and Josiah's purge is its royal, political expression. The Church does not treat these prohibitions as culturally relative: they reflect the absolute claim God makes on human trust and the incompatibility of occult consultation with covenant fidelity.
Totaliter—The Whole Heart. St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on the Shema tradition, argues that the command to love God with all one's powers admits no partition: the intellect, will, and all sensitive appetite must be ordered to God (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 44, a. 5). Josiah's praise for turning with all heart, soul, and might is thus the concrete, historical embodiment of the first and greatest commandment. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium (§42) calls all the faithful to this same "perfect love of God" as the universal vocation of the baptized—not reserved to kings or monastics alone.
The Typology of the Imperfect King. Patristic exegetes from Origen onward read Josiah as a type of Christ's kingship. His reform is magnificent but cannot save; only the Son of David who is also Son of God accomplishes what Josiah could not. The tragic verse 26 immediately following is theologically essential: it prevents a Pelagian reading of reform as self-sufficient. Grace, not human fidelity alone, accomplishes redemption.
Josiah's purge of terāpîm and mediums resonates with striking directness in an age of proliferating occult interest—astrology apps, tarot, séances rebranded as "spirituality," and ancestor-spirit consultation normalized in popular culture. The Catholic is not called to cultural panic but to Josiah's clarity: these are not neutral curiosities but structural competitors to the total allegiance God requires. The same heart cannot be wholly God's and partly hedged toward other oracular sources.
More broadly, verse 25 confronts every Catholic with the question of totality. The Shema framework—heart, soul, might—resists any compartmentalized faith: Sunday Mass plus a thoroughly secular imagination, sacramental practice plus functional materialism. Josiah's greatness lay not in perfection of outcome (Judah still fell) but in the integrity of his orientation. For the contemporary Catholic, the practical application is an examination of the household: what objects, habits, media, or loyalties occupy the space that belongs to God alone? Josiah did not spiritualize the reform—he physically removed what was incompatible. The interior life demands the same concrete decisiveness.
Commentary
2 Kings 23:24 — The Final Sweep of Reform
Verse 24 functions as a deliberate mopping-up catalogue, completing what began in verses 4–20. The items listed—'ôbôt (those with familiar spirits), yidde'ônîm (wizards or "knowing ones"), terāpîm (household cult figurines), gillûlîm (idols, literally "dung-pellets," a deliberately contemptuous term), and unspecified "abominations"—represent the full spectrum of Israelite syncretism. Each category has deep roots: the 'ôb, the ghost-medium, appears in the Mosaic prohibitions of Deuteronomy 18:10–12 and was most notoriously consulted by Saul at Endor (1 Sam 28). The terāpîm surface as far back as Rachel's theft of Laban's household gods (Gen 31) and recur in Micah's private shrine (Judg 17–18), indicating a persistent folk-religious undercurrent that royal religion repeatedly failed to extirpate. Josiah does not merely displace these practices; the text's verb bî'ēr (to burn out, purge) carries the sense of utter eradication, the same root used for the burning out of leaven before Passover—fitting, given that the great Passover celebration immediately precedes this summary (vv. 21–23).
The crucial grammatical hinge is the le-ma'an ("in order that") clause: Josiah acts to confirm (le-hāqîm, to raise up, establish) the words of the Torah found by Hilkiah. This is not reformation for political consolidation or nationalistic pride. The narrator insists the motivation is hermeneutical and covenantal—the written word of God functions as both diagnosis and prescription. The reform is the king's enacted commentary on Scripture. This is remarkable: a monarch submitting royal power entirely to the authority of a text.
2 Kings 23:25 — The Unprecedented Verdict
The Deuteronomist now issues his highest commendation in the entire historical corpus. The praise is structured on the Shema itself—"all your heart (lēbāb), all your soul (nepeš), all your might (me'ōd)"—the threefold formula of Deuteronomy 6:5. No king before or after achieved this totality. Note the sweeping temporal brackets: "before him" encompasses even David and Hezekiah (both praised in Kings but with qualifications); "after him" looks forward, sealing the era. The phrase "according to all the law of Moses" (kekōl tôrat Mōšeh) echoes the commissioning charge of Joshua 1:7–8, suggesting Josiah is the fulfillment of what every king was meant to be.