2 Rois 23

Josiah renews the covenant

¹Then the king sent word, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. ²The king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him went all the people of Judah and all who lived in Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, and all the people, from the least to the greatest. In their hearing he read out all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the house of the LORD. ³The king stood by the pillar and made the covenant in the presence of the LORD: to follow the LORD and to keep his commandments, his decrees and his statutes with all his heart and all his being, and so to carry out the words of this covenant written in this book. And all the people committed themselves to the covenant. ⁴The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the objects made for Baal, for Asherah and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and carried their ashes to Bethel. ⁵He did away with the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense at the high places in the towns of Judah and around Jerusalem, and with those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon, to the constellations and to all the host of heaven.^{a 6}He took the Asherah pole out of the house of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem. He burned it there in the Kidron Valley, ground it to dust and threw the dust on the graves of the common people. ⁷He tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes in the house of the LORD, where the women wove coverings for Asherah.^{bc 8}He brought all the priests in from the towns of Judah and defiled the high places where those priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba. He broke down the high places of the gates that stood at the way into the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, on the left as one enters the city gate.^{d 9}The priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests. ¹⁰He defiled Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would ever again make a son or daughter pass through the fire for Molech.^{e 11}He removed the horses the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun from the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the room of Nathan-melech the official, which was in the precincts. And he burned up the chariots of the sun.^{f 12}The king pulled down the altars that the kings of Judah had made on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the house of the LORD. He broke them in pieces and removed them from there, and he threw their dust into the Kidron Valley.^{g 13}The king defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the detestable goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Milcom the detestable god of the Ammonites. ¹⁴He smashed the standing stones, cut down the Asherah poles, and filled the places where they had stood with human bones. ¹⁵Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who led Israel to sin, even that altar and high place he tore down. He burned the high place and crushed it to dust, and he burned the Asherah pole. ¹⁶As Josiah turned around, he saw the tombs there on the hillside, and he sent men to take the bones out of the tombs. He burned them on the altar and so defiled it, in keeping with the word of the LORD that the man of God had cried out when he foretold these things.^{hi 17}He asked, “What is that grave marker I see?” The men of the town answered, “The man of God who came from Judah is buried there. He cried out against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done.” ¹⁸“Leave him in peace,” he said. “Let no one disturb his bones.” So they spared his bones, together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.^{j 19}Josiah also removed every shrine on the high places in the towns of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made, provoking the LORD to anger. He did to them just what he had done at Bethel. ²⁰He sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars, and he burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem. ²¹The king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the LORD your God in the way that is written in this book of the covenant.” ²²No Passover like this had been kept since the time of the judges who judged Israel, nor through all the time of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. ²³But this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of King Josiah. ²⁴Josiah also purged the mediums and the spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the detestable things to be seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. He did this so as to carry out the words of the law, as they were written in the book Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the house of the LORD. ²⁵Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with his whole heart, with his whole being, and with all his strength, in keeping with all the law of Moses; and after him no one like him arose.^{k 26}Even so, the LORD did not turn away from the fierceness of his great anger, which burned against Judah because of all the ways Manasseh had provoked him. ²⁷The LORD said, “I will remove Judah from my sight too, as I removed Israel. I will reject this city I chose, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, ‘My name will be there.’” ²⁸The rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are written in the Book of the History of the Kings of Judah. ²⁹In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River, and King Josiah marched out to meet him. When Neco saw him, he killed him at Megiddo.^{l 30}His officials carried his body in a chariot from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his own tomb. The people of the land then took Jehoahaz son of Josiah; they anointed him and made him king in place of his father.

Jehoahaz king of Judah

³¹Jehoahaz 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 from Libnah. ³²He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his ancestors had done. ³³Pharaoh Neco put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath, so that he could no longer reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed on the land a payment of about 7,500 pounds of silver and about 75 pounds of gold.^{m 34}Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father. He changed Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim. Jehoahaz, though, he took away, and Jehoahaz went to Egypt and died there. ³⁵Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the silver and the gold, but to raise the money Pharaoh demanded he had to tax the land. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land, each paying the amount assessed, to give to Pharaoh Neco.

Jehoiakim king of Judah

³⁶Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zebudah daughter of Pedaiah from Rumah.^{n 37}He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his ancestors had done.