Chapter 23

Josiah the Reformer. ¹ The king then sent and assembled all of the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ² The king went up to the temple of the Lord, and all of the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem went with him, including the priests, the prophets, and all of the people, both the humble and the important. He read aloud all of the words from the book of the covenant that had been found in the temple of the Lord.

³ The king stood by the pillar, and he made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to observe his commandments, his testimonies, and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, fulfilling the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All of the people joined in the covenant.

⁴ The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the doormen to carry out of the temple of the Lord all of the utensils that had been used for Baal, for Asherah, and for the heavenly host. He burned them outside of Jerusalem in a field in the Kidron Valley, and they took their ashes to Bethel.

⁵ He expelled the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and those that surrounded Jerusalem, those who had burned incense to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the planets, and to all of the hosts of heaven. ⁶ He brought the Asherah out of the temple of the Lord, taking it outside of Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley. He smashed it to pieces, tossing its dust upon the graves of the common people.

⁷ He also tore down the quarters that housed the male prostitutes in the temple of the Lord, and where the women did the weavings for the Asherah. ⁸ He brought all of the priests from the cities of Judah, and he desecrated all of the high places from Geba to Beer-sheba where the priests had burned incense. He demolished the shrines at the gates, at the entrance to the gate of Joshua, the leader of the city, which was to the left of the city gate. ⁹ Although the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of the Lord, they did eat the unleavened bread with their brethren.

¹⁰ He desecrated Topheth^[a] in the Valley of Ben-hinnom so that no one could sacrifice his son or daughter in fire to Molech. ¹¹ He removed the horses that the king of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance to the temple of the Lord. They had been in the court near the room of the official Nathan-melech. He burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.

¹² The king demolished the altars^[b] that the kings of Judah had built on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz as well as the two altars that Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He broke them to pieces and cast them into the Kidron Valley. ¹³ The king also desecrated the high places that were to the east of Jerusalem, that is, to the south of the Hill of Corruption which Solomon, the king of Israel, had dedicated to the Ashtaroth, the vile goddess of the Sidonians, to Chemosh, the vile god of the Moabites, and to Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites.

¹⁴ He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah. He defiled these places with human bones. ¹⁵ He broke down the altar in Bethel, the altar and the high place that Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, had built. He burned the high place and crushed it to powder, and he also burned the Asherah.

¹⁶ Josiah looked around and when he saw that there were graves on the hillside, he sent for and removed the bones from the graves. He burned them upon the altar to defile it. This fulfilled the word of the Lord that the man of God had proclaimed through these words.

¹⁷ He then asked, “What is that monument that I see?” The men of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel.” ¹⁸ He said, “Leave it alone! Do not let anyone disturb his bones!” So they left his bones and the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

¹⁹ Josiah also removed all of the shrines of the high places in the cities of Samaria that the kings of Israel had established, thus provoking the Lord to anger, just as he had done at Bethel.

²⁰ Josiah killed all of the priests of the high places upon the altars and he burned human bones upon them. He then returned to Jerusalem.

²¹ The king then commanded all of the people saying, “Observe the Passover of the Lord, your God, according to what is written in this book of this covenant.” ²² Passover had not been observed from the days of the judges who governed Israel nor all throughout the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. ²³ This Passover of the Lord was celebrated in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Josiah.

²⁴ Josiah also expelled the mediums and the wizards. He did away with the household gods, the idols, and all the other abominations that were to be found in the land of Judah and Jerusalem. He did this to fulfill the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the temple of the Lord.

²⁵ There had never before been any king like him nor will there ever be one after him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his might according to the law of Moses.

²⁶ In spite of this, the Lord did not turn away the heat of his fierce anger which raged against Judah because all of the things that Manasseh had done to provoke his anger. ²⁷ The Lord said, “I will remove Judah from out of my sight just as I have removed Israel. I will reject this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the temple of which I said: My name will be there.”

^28 [c]As for all of the other deeds of Josiah, what he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁹ During his reign, Pharaoh Neco, the king of Egypt, traveled up to the Euphrates River to give his assistance to the king of Assyria. King Josiah attacked him. When Pharaoh Neco saw him at Megiddo, he killed him. ³⁰ His servants brought his dead body back from Megiddo to Jerusalem and they buried him in his own tomb.

The people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and they anointed him as king in his father’s stead.

³¹ Reign of Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal, and she was the daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah.

³² He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, everything that his fathers had done.

³³ Pharaoh Neco imprisoned him at Riblah in the land of Hamath so that he could not reign in Jerusalem. He imposed a tribute upon the land of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.^[d]

³⁴ Pharaoh Neco appointed Eliakim, the son of Josiah, as king in his father’s stead. He changed his name to Jehoiakim, and he took Jehoahaz away when he returned to Egypt, where he died.

³⁵ Jehoiakim gave silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to get the money that Pharaoh had demanded. He taxed the people of the land according to their assessments for the silver and the gold that he had to give to Pharaoh.

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

³⁷ He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, everything that his fathers had done.