"
What MUST have happened is of less consequence to know than what
actually took place. Noldeke relies solely upon the statement of
2Kings xviii.4, 22, that Hezekiah abolished the high places and
altars of Jehovah, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, "Before this
altar shall ye worship in Jerusalem." With reference to that
statement doubts have already been raised above. How startling
was the effect produced at a later date by the similar ordinance
of Josiah! Is it likely then that the other, although the
earlier, should have passed off so quietly and have left so little
mark that the reinforcement of it, after an interval of seventy
or eighty years, is not in the least brought into connection with
it, but in every respect figures as a new first step upon a path
until then absolutely untrodden? Note too how casual is the
allusion to a matter which is elsewhere the chief and most favoured
theme of the Book of Kings! And there is besides all this the
serious difficulty, also already referred to above, that the man
from whom Hezekiah must, from the nature of the case, have received
the impulse to his reformatory movement, the prophet Isaiah, in
one of his latest discourses expressly insists on a cleansing
merely of the local sanctuaries from molten and graven images,
that is to say, does not desire their complete removal.
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