CHAPTER 23

¹And the king sent out, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem gathered round him. ²And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and every man of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people from the least to the greatest. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the LORD. ³And the king stood on a platform and sealed a covenant before the LORD to walk after the LORD and to keep His commands and His precepts and His statutes with a whole heart and with all their being, to fulfill the words of this covenant written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant. ⁴And the king charged Hilkiah the high priest and the assistant priests and the guards of the threshold to bring out from the LORD’s temple the vessels made for Baal and Asherah and for all the array of the heavens, and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the Kidron fields and bore off their ashes to Bethel. ⁵And he put down the pagan priests that the kings of Judah had set up to burn incense on the high places in the towns of Judah and in the environs of Jerusalem, and those burning incense to Baal and to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the array of the heavens. ⁶And he took out the sacred pole from the house of the LORD outside of Jerusalem to the Kidron Wadi and burned it in the Kidron Wadi and ground it to dust and flung its ashes on the graves of the common people. ⁷And he smashed the houses of the male cult-harlots that were within the house of the LORD where women would weave fabrics for Asherah.⁸And he brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests from Geba to Beersheba had been burning incense. And he smashed the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua commander of the town, which were to a man’s left at the town gate. ⁹Only, the priests of the high places would not go up to the LORD’s altar in Jerusalem, but they ate flatbread in the midst of their kinsmen. ¹⁰And he defiled the Topheth that was in the Valley of Hinnom, so that no man would pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ¹¹And he put down the horses that the kings of Judah would dedicate to the sun, from the entrance of the house of the LORD to the chamber of Nathan-Melech the eunuch, which is in the precincts. And the chariots of the sun he burned in fire. ¹²And the altars that were on the roof of the Upper Chamber 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 smashed, and he hurried off their dust from there and flung it into the Kidron Wadi. ¹³And the high places facing Jerusalem that were to the right of the Mount of the Destroyer, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth foulness of the Sidonians and Chemosh foulness of Moab and Milcom abomination of the Ammonites—the king defiled. ¹⁴And he shattered the steles and cut down the sacred poles and filled their place with human bones. ¹⁵And also the altar that was in Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam son of Nebat had made, who had led Israel to offend, that altar, too, and the high places he smashed and burned the high place, grinding it to dust, and he burned the sacred pole. ¹⁶And Josiah turned and saw the graves that were there on the mountain, and he sent and fetched the bones from the graves and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of the LORD that the man of God called out, who had called out these words. ¹⁷And he said, “What is that marker which I see?” And the townspeople said to him, “It is the grave of the man of God who came from Judah, and who called out these things that you did on the Bethel altar.” ¹⁸And he said, “Let him be. Let no man touch his bones.” And they rescued his bones, with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria. ¹⁹And the structures, too, of the high places that were in the mountains of Samaria which the kings of Israel had made to vex, did Josiah remove, like all the acts that he had done in Bethel. ²⁰And he slaughtered all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars, and he burned human bones on them. And he went back to Jerusalem. ²¹And the king charged all the people, saying, “Make a Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. ²²For it has not been done like this Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel and all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.” ²³But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover to the LORD was done in Jerusalem. ²⁴And the ghosts, too, and the familiar spirits and the household gods and the foul idols and all the vile things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah rooted out, in order to fulfill the words of the teaching written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of the LORD. ²⁵And like him there was no king before him who turned back to the LORD with all his heart and with all his being and with all his might according to all the teaching of Moses, and after him none arose like him. ²⁶Yet the LORD did not turn back from His great smoldering wrath, His wrath that had kindled against Judah, for all the vexations with which Manasseh had vexed Him. ²⁷And the LORD said, “Judah, too, will I remove from My presence, as I removed Israel, and I will spurn this city Jerusalem that I chose, and the house of which I said, Let My name be there.” ²⁸And the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Acts of the Kings of Judah? ²⁹In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt had come up against the king of Assyria by the Euphrates River, and King Josiah sallied forth to meet him, and he put him to death at Megiddo when he saw him. ³⁰And his servants took him off dead on a chariot from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his grave. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in his father’s stead. ³¹Twenty-three years old was Jehoahaz when he became king, and three months he was king in Jerusalem, and his mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah. ³²And he did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD as all that his fathers had done. ³³And Pharaoh Neco put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, removing him as king in Jerusalem, and he imposed a levy on the land of a hundred talents of silver and talents of gold. ³⁴And Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim, son of Josiah, king in Josiah his father’s stead, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. And he took Jehoahaz and brought him to Egypt, and he died there. ³⁵And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he assessed the land so as to give the silver according to Pharaoh’s decree—every man according to his assessment, he wrested the silver and the gold from the people of the land to give to Pharaoh Neco. ³⁶Twenty-five years old was Jehoiakim when he became king, and eleven years he was king in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zebudah daughter of Pedaiah from Rumah. ³⁷And he did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD as all that his fathers had done.