2 Kings
23
- Then the king called together all the elders
of Judah and Jerusalem.
- He went up to the temple of the LORD with
the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets --
all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all
the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple
of the LORD.
- The king stood by the pillar and renewed
the covenant in the presence of the LORD -- to follow the LORD and keep his
commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus
confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people
pledged themselves to the covenant.
- The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest,
the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of
the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts.
He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took
the ashes to Bethel.
- He did away with the pagan priests appointed
by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah
and on those around Jerusalem -- those who burned incense to Baal, to the
sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts.
- He took the Asherah pole from the temple
of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He
ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.
- He also tore down the quarters of the male
shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women did
weaving for Asherah.
- Josiah brought all the priests from the
towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where
the priests had burned incense. He broke down the shrines at the gates --
at the entrance to the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which is on the
left of the city gate.
- Although the priests of the high places
did not serve at the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread
with their fellow priests.
- He desecrated Topheth, which was in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter
in the fire to Molech.
- He removed from the entrance to the temple
of the LORD the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They
were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melech. Josiah
then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.
- He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah
had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh
had built in the two courts of the temple of the LORD. He removed them from
there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.
- The king also desecrated the high places
that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption -- the
ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the
Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable
god of the people of Ammon.
- Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut
down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.
- Even the altar at Bethel, the high place
made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin -- even that altar
and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder,
and burned the Asherah pole also.
- Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw
the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them
and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the LORD
proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.
- The king asked, "What is that tombstone
I see?" The men of the city said, "It marks the tomb of the man
of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the
very things you have done to it."
- "Leave it alone," he said. "Don't
let anyone disturb his bones." So they spared his bones and those of
the prophet who had come from Samaria.
- Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed
and defiled all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had
built in the towns of Samaria that had provoked the LORD to anger.
- Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those
high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back
to Jerusalem.
- The king gave this order to all the people:
"Celebrate the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this
Book of the Covenant."
- Not since the days of the judges who led
Israel, nor throughout the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah,
had any such Passover been observed.
- But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah,
this Passover was celebrated to the LORD in Jerusalem.
- Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums
and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable
things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements
of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the
temple of the LORD.
- Neither before nor after Josiah was there
a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did -- with all his heart and
with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law
of Moses.
- Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away
from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all
that Manasseh had done to provoke him to anger.
- So the LORD said, "I will remove Judah
also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the
city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, 'There shall my Name be.'"
- As for the other events of Josiah's reign,
and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings
of Judah?
- While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king
of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King
Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him
at Megiddo.
- Josiah's servants brought his body in a
chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. And the
people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him
king in place of his father.
- Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when
he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother's name
was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.
- He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just
as his fathers had done.
- Pharaoh Neco put him in chains at Riblah
in the land of Hamath so that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed
on Judah a levy of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
- Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim son of Josiah
king in place of his father Josiah and changed Eliakim's name to Jehoiakim.
But he took Jehoahaz and carried him off to Egypt, and there he died.
- Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Neco the silver and
gold he demanded. In order to do so, he taxed the land and exacted the silver
and gold from the people of the land according to their assessments.
- Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when
he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother's name
was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah.
- And he did evil in the eyes of the LORD,
just as his fathers had done.
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