2 Kings 23

VIN^{(i) 1} Then the king sent for all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to join him. ² And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people, from the smallest to the greatest; and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD. ³ The king stood by the pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and all his soul, to confirm the words of this covenant that were written in this book; and all the people agreed to the covenant. ⁴ The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the secondary order, and the doorkeepers to take out of the LORD's temple all of the implements that had been crafted for Baal, for Asherah, and for every star in the heavens. Then he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried the ashes to Bethel. ⁵ He removed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem and who offered incense to, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. ⁶ He brought the Asherah from the LORD's temple to the Kidron Brook outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Kidron brook, pulverized the ashes to dust, and scattered it over the graves of the common people. ⁷ He tore down the shrines of the male shrine prostitutes which were in the temple of the LORD, where the women were weaving shrines for the Asherah. ⁸ Then he brought all of the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests from Geba up to Beersheba burned incense. He tore down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on the left of each gate of the city. ⁹ However the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers. ¹⁰ And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom: that no man should consecrate there his son, or his daughter, through fire, to Moloch. ¹¹ He also removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the worship of the sun. He burned the chariots used in this worship. ¹² The altars which were on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courtyards of the temple of the LORD, the king tore down and ran from there and threw their ashes into the Wadi Kidron. ¹³ The king defiled the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mountain of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon. ¹⁴ He also broke into pieces the stone pillars and cut down the Asherah poles and covered their sites with human bones. ¹⁵ And also the altar that was in Bethel. the high place that Jeroboam the son of Nebat had made by which he made Israel to sin, both that altar and the high place he broke down, and burned the high place; he ground it into powder, and burned the Asherah. ¹⁶ When Josiah turned and saw the tombs which were there on the hill, he sent and took the bones from the tombs and burned them on the altar. Thus he defiled them according to the word of the LORD that the man of God had proclaimed who had proclaimed these things. ¹⁷ Then he said, "What monument is that which I see?" The men of the city told him, "It is the tomb of the man of God, who came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel." ¹⁸ And he said, Let him rest: no man shall disturb his bones. So they saved his bones, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria. ¹⁹ Josiah removed all the houses of the high places the kings of Israel built in the towns of Samaria. This provoked the LORD to anger and he did with them as he had done in Bethel. ²⁰ He killed all the priests of the high places on the altars. Their bones were burned on the altars. Then the king went back to Jerusalem. ²¹ The king commanded all the people saying, Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. ²² For from the days of the Judges who judged Israel, there had not been during all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Juda, ²³ but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was held to the LORD in Jerusalem. ²⁴ Moreover, the mediums and the spiritists, the household gods and the idols, and all of the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah removed in order to establish the words of the law written on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found in the temple of the LORD. ²⁵ Never before had there been a king like him, turning to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his power, as the law of Moses says; and after him there was no king like him. ²⁶ Even so, the LORD did not turn away from his fierce and great anger that burned against Judah because of everything with which Manasseh had provoked him. ²⁷ So the Lord said, I will remove Juda also from my presence as 1 have removed Israel; and I will cast off this city of Jerusalem which I chose, and this house of which I said, My name shall be there. ²⁸ Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? ²⁹ During his reign, Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, marched out toward the Euphrates River to meet the king of Assyria. King Josiah went out to engage him in battle, but Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo as soon as he saw him. ³⁰ So his servants drove him dead in a chariot from Megiddo, and they brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father. ³¹ Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for three months. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. ³² He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as his fathers had done. ³³ And Pharaoh-neco put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and imposed on the land a tribute of a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold. ³⁴ Pharaoh Necoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim; but he took Jehoahaz away, and he came to Egypt and died there. ³⁵ And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the money according to the commandment of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and the gold from the people of the land, of every one according to his t ³⁶ Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother's name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. ³⁷ He did evil in the eyes of the LORD as his fathers had done.