2 Kings 23

23 ¹ Then the king sent word, and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ² And the king went up to the house of our Father, with all the men of Judah and all the people of Jerusalem: the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of our Father. ³ And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before our Father: to follow him and keep his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of this covenant written in this book. And all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.

Josiah Tears Down the Idols

⁴ Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of our Father all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. ⁵ And he did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense at the high places in the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, along with those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. ⁶ He brought out the Asherah pole from the house of our Father to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and there he burned it, ground it to dust, and scattered its dust on the graves of the common people. ⁷ And he tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the house of our Father, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. ⁸ He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba. And he broke down the high places at the gates, at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua the city governor, which were on the left as one entered the city gate. ⁹ Yet the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of our Father in Jerusalem, though they ate unleavened bread among their fellow priests. ¹⁰ He also defiled Topheth, in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so that no one could make his son or daughter pass through the fire to Molech. ¹¹ And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of our Father, near the chamber of Nathan-Melech the official, which was in the precincts. And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. ¹² The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of our Father, the king tore down; he smashed them there and threw their dust into the Kidron Valley. ¹³ And the king defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. ¹ 1 v13 The Mount of Corruption was the southern ridge of the Mount of Olives, given this grim name because Solomon had built shrines to foreign gods there. ¹⁴ He smashed the sacred pillars to pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and covered their sites with human bones.

¹⁵ Even the altar at Bethel—the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—that altar and high place he tore down. He burned the high place, ground it to dust, and burned the Asherah pole. ¹⁶ As Josiah turned and saw the tombs there on the hillside, he sent men to take the bones out of the tombs and burn them on the altar, defiling it, in keeping with the word of our Father that the man of God had proclaimed when he foretold these things. ¹⁷ Then he asked, "What is that monument I see?" The men of the city answered him, "It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed against the altar at Bethel the very things you have done."

¹⁸ "Leave it alone," he said. "Let no one disturb his bones." So they left his bones undisturbed, along with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria. ¹⁹ Josiah also removed all the shrines at the high places in the towns of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had built to provoke our Father to anger; and he did to them just as he had done at Bethel. ²⁰ And he slaughtered on the altars all the priests of those high places, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

Josiah Restores the Passover

²¹ Then the king commanded all the people, "Celebrate the Passover to your Father, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant." ²² Indeed, no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who led Israel, nor throughout all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. ²³ But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was kept to our Father in Jerusalem.

²⁴ Moreover, Josiah did away with the mediums and the spiritists, the household gods, the idols, and all the detestable things seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the words of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of our Father. ²⁵ Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him, who turned to our Father with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in keeping with all the law of Moses. ²⁶ Nevertheless, our Father did not turn from the fierceness of his great anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke him.

²⁷ For our Father had said, "I will remove Judah also from my presence, as I removed Israel, and I will cast off this city I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name will be there."

Josiah Falls in Battle

²⁸ Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? ²⁹ In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched up to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River. King Josiah went out to meet him, but Necho killed him at Megiddo when he saw him. ³⁰ His servants brought his body in a chariot from Megiddo 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 place of his father.

Jehoahaz Reigns and Is Carried Off

³¹ Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. ³² And he did evil in the sight of our Father, just as his fathers had done. ³³ Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath, so that he could not reign in Jerusalem, and imposed on the land a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. ³⁴ Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of his father Josiah and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away to Egypt, and there he died. ³⁵ Jehoiakim paid the silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to meet Pharaoh's demand. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land, each according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Necho.

Jehoiakim Reigns in Judah

³⁶ Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah. ³⁷ And he did evil in the sight of our Father, just as his fathers had done.