And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.

And he brake in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men.

And he broke in pieces the statues, and cut down the groves: and he filled their places with the bones of dead men.

And he broke in pieces the columns, and cut down the Asherahs, and filled their place with the bones of men.

And he broke in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.

And he hath broken in pieces the standing-pillars, and cutteth down the shrines, and filleth their place with bones of men;

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.

And he crushed the statues, and he cut down the sacred groves. And he filled their places with the bones of the dead.

The Law attached uncleanness to the "bones of men," no less than to actual corpses Numbers 19:16. We may gather from this and other passages 2-Kings 23:20; 1-Kings 13:2, that the Jews who rejected the Law were as firm believers in the defilement as those who adhered to the Law.

Filled their places with the bones of men - This was allowed to be the utmost defilement to which any thing could be exposed.

And he brake in pieces the images,.... Of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom, in the above high places; which as these high places had been rebuilt by Manasseh or Amon, so new images of these deities were placed there:
and cut down the groves; in which they were set:
and filled their places with the bones of men; of idolatrous priests and worshippers, buried in parts adjacent; these he dug up and scattered in the high places and groves to defile them, bones of the dead being by law unclean, Numbers 19:15.

filled their places with the bones of men--Every monument of idolatry in his dominion he in like manner destroyed, and the places where they stood he defiled by strewing them with dead men's bones. The presence of a dead carcass rendered both persons and places unclean in the eyes both of Jews and heathens.

Men - Of the idolatrous priests, which he caused to be taken out of their graves, 2-Kings 23:18. As he carried the ashes of the images to the graves, to mingle them with dead mens bones, so he carried dead mens bones to the places where the images had been, that both ways idolatry might be rendered loathsome. Dead men and dead gods were indeed much alike, and fittest to go together.