“And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.”
My Notes
What Does 2 Kings 23:11 Mean?
This verse reveals just how deeply pagan worship had infiltrated the Temple itself. Previous kings of Judah had placed horses and chariots dedicated to the sun god at the very entrance of the LORD's house. Sun worship — complete with horse-drawn chariot imagery representing the sun's daily journey across the sky — was practiced not alongside the Temple but within its precincts.
Josiah's response is thorough: he removes the horses and burns the chariots. He doesn't relocate them or repurpose them. He destroys them completely. The specificity of the account — naming the official Nathanmelech, noting the location near the suburbs — suggests this was a well-known, well-established arrangement that everyone had gotten used to.
The theological horror here is the proximity. These weren't pagan shrines in some distant valley. They were at the entrance of God's house. The sun god's horses stood where worshippers walked in. Over time, the abomination had become part of the scenery — so normal that it took a reforming king to notice it didn't belong.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What 'sun-god chariots' might be parked at the entrance of your spiritual life — things that don't belong but have become normal?
- 2.Why is it so hard to see the things we've been looking at our whole lives? What helps you gain fresh perspective?
- 3.How does compromise move in gradually? Can you trace a compromise in your own life from its beginning to its normalization?
- 4.What would a 'Josiah moment' of clear-eyed reform look like in your personal life right now?
Devotional
Sun-god chariots parked at the entrance of the Temple. Not in a pagan shrine across town — at God's front door. And apparently everyone had gotten so used to them that no one thought to remove them until Josiah.
This is how compromise works. It doesn't announce itself. It moves in gradually, one accommodation at a time, until the thing that would have shocked your grandparents is just part of your scenery. The horses didn't arrive overnight. Some king put them there, and the next king left them, and the next one added to them, until sun worship at the Temple door was just how things were.
Josiah's reform isn't just about removing false worship — it's about seeing what everyone else had stopped seeing. The greatest act of his reign might be this: he looked at what was normal and recognized it as wrong. That takes a kind of vision that most people never develop, because the hardest things to see are the ones you've been looking at your whole life.
What's parked at the entrance of your worship that doesn't belong there? What compromises have become so familiar that you've stopped noticing them? Josiah's gift wasn't just the courage to act — it was the clarity to see what everyone else had normalized.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made,.... Which were on…
A parenthesis giving the earlier reforms of Josiah. 2Ki 23:4 The priests of the second order - This is a new expression;…
The horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun - Jarchi says that those who adored the sun had horses which…
We have here an account of such a reformation as we have not met with in all the history of the kings of Judah, such…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture