On Hezeqiah's reform

Concerning whether Hezeqiah had actually reformed what-we-now-call Judaism, Sabine Kleiman is asking the right questions.

For context, the Assyrians under Sennacherib had sandpapered all Israel down to the last holdout Jerusalem. However 2 Kings 18:22 does not have the Assyrians taking credit for removing the Israelite shrines. Instead they mocked Hezeqiah for doing this: claiming that this act and the present siege both suggested that YHWH was on Sennacherib's side and, perhaps, subordinate to Anshar Himself.

Kleiman reasons that Hezeqiah had intended no reform, but simply lost all those temples along with the lands they sat on. Upon Sennacherib's retreat, Hezeqiah had to rebuild, and hadn't got as far as Bethel before passing on his throne. Josiah's faction, recognising Hezeqiah as the saviour of Jerusalem, recast this lag in rebuilding the northern cities as a conscious exercise in refusing to rebuild the temples, any of the temples.

One obvious counter is that Hezeqiah had no writ at Bethel nor points north, which funded their own temples, before Assyria trashed that kingdom. But Kleiman surely knows this as well as Sennacherib knew this. Anyway once Samaria lay in ruins, Bethel might consider prostration to Jerusalem instead.

I'm more concerned with the relayed Ansharite propagandum. It sounds... real, to my ear.

Rather: suppose that Hezeqiah had, indeed, looted several local temples of that wealth (possibly including Bethel). These monies went into the military treasury, in advance of invasion. We know from the Tudors how Henry VIII's squalid landgrab got recast, by his children, as "reformation".

Why do this? Because a beleaguer'd kingdom tends to the monotheletism, as witness Constantinople and, later, Muscovy and - yes - Tudor England. A disunited priesthood might be tempted to go-along-to-get-along syncretism, as not to pose a threat to invaders. Hezeqiah needed his people to pose a threat to invaders.