2 Kings 23

¹The king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem gathered to him.

²And the king went up to 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 small to great, and he read in their ears all the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD.

³And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and with all his soul, to establish the words of this covenant that are written in this scroll. And all the people stood in the covenant.

⁴The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second rank, and the doorkeepers, to bring out from the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.

⁵And he put an end to the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed, and who burned offerings at the high places in the cities of Judah and in the environs of Jerusalem, and those who burned offerings to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven.

⁶And he brought out the Asherah pole from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, and burned it at the Wadi Kidron and ground it to dust, and scattered its dust upon the grave of the common people.

⁷He also tore down the quarters of the male cult prostitutes that were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove tent-shrines for Asherah.

⁸And he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and desecrated the high places where the priests had burned offerings, from Geba to Beersheba, and he tore down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which is on the left at the gate of the city.

⁹Nevertheless, 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 fellow priests.

¹⁰And he desecrated the Topheth that is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, so that no man could make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech.

¹¹He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the eunuch who was in the precincts; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

¹²And the altars that were on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king broke down, and he ran from there and threw their dust into the Wadi Kidron.

¹³And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were to the right of the Mount of Destruction, 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 sons of Ammon, the king defiled.

¹⁴He smashed the standing stones and cut down the Asherah poles, and filled their places with human bones.

¹⁵And also the altar that was in Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, had made -- also that altar and the high place he tore down; and he burned the high place, crushed it to dust, and burned the Asherah pole.

¹⁶Josiah turned and saw the tombs that were there on the hill; he sent and took the bones from the tombs and burned them on the altar, defiling it, according to the word of the Lord that the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things.

¹⁷And he said, 'What is that marker that I see?' And the men of the city said to him, 'It is the grave of the man of God who came from Judah and called out these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel.'

¹⁸He said, 'Let no one disturb his bones.' So they left his bones undisturbed, with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

¹⁹And also all the shrines of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the LORD to anger, Josiah removed; and he did to them according to all the deeds he had done in Bethel.

²⁰He slaughtered all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars, and burned human bones on them; then he returned to Jerusalem.

²¹And the king commanded all the people, saying, 'Observe the Passover to the Lord the God of you all, as it is written in this scroll of the covenant.'

²²For such a Passover had not been kept from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

²³For this Passover was kept for the Lord in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of King Josiah.

²⁴Moreover, the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah swept away, in order to carry out the words of the law that were written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.

²⁵And there was none like him before him, a king who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the instruction of Moses; and after him none arose like him.

²⁶Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great anger that was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.

²⁷And the LORD said, 'I will also remove Judah from my presence, just as I removed Israel, and I will reject this city that I chose -- Jerusalem -- and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.'

²⁸Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the scroll of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁹In his days Pharaoh Necho the king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria, to the River Euphrates, and King Josiah went to meet him, and Necho killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.

³⁰His servants carried him dead from Megiddo, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb; then the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah, anointed him, and made him king in his father's place.

³¹Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

³²And he did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.

³³Pharaoh Neco put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath, so that he could not reign in Jerusalem, and imposed a tribute on the land of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁴And Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But Jehoahaz he took, and he went to Egypt and died there.

³⁵And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh; but he assessed the land to give the silver at the command of Pharaoh, each according to his valuation; he collected the silver and the gold from the people of the land, to give to Pharaoh Necho.

³⁶Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

³⁷And he did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that his ancestors had done.