2nd Kings Chapter 23 verse 14 Holy Bible
And he brake in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men.
read chapter 23 in ASV
The stone pillars were broken to bits and the wood pillars cut down, and the places where they had been were made full of the bones of the dead.
read chapter 23 in BBE
And he broke in pieces the columns, and cut down the Asherahs, and filled their place with the bones of men.
read chapter 23 in DARBY
And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
read chapter 23 in KJV
And he broke in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
read chapter 23 in WBT
He broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men.
read chapter 23 in WEB
And he hath broken in pieces the standing-pillars, and cutteth down the shrines, and filleth their place with bones of men;
read chapter 23 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 14. - And he brake in pieces the images - or, pillars (see the comment on 1 Kings 14:23) - and out down the groves - i.e. the asherirn, or "sacred trees" - and filled their places with the bones of men. Whatever spoke of death and dissolution was a special defilement to shrines where the gods worshipped were deities of productivity and generation. Bones of men had also the actual taint of corruption about them. The "uncleanness" of dead bodies arose first out of man's natural shrinking from death, and was then further confirmed by the horrors accompanying decay. The notion was probably coeval with death itself. It received a sanction from the Law, which made it a legal defilement to touch a corpse (Numbers 19:11, 16), and placed under a sentence of uncleanness all that was in the tent where a man died (Numbers 19:14, 15).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(14) The images . . . the groves.--The pillars . . . the ash?rahs. These pillars and sacred trees may have been set up at the high places mentioned in the last verse; but the Hebrew construction does not prove this, for comp. 2Kings 23:10. The reference is probably general.Their places.--Their place or station; a technical term for the position of an idol (the Heb. m?qom, equivalent to Sabaean maqamum. and Arabic muqam, which is still the common designation of holy sites in Palestine.
