AB - II Kings - 23

23:1  So they reported the word to the king. and the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to himself.

23:2  And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and every man of Judah, and all who dwelt in Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people small and great; and he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant that was found in the house of the Lord.

23:3  And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His ordinances with all his heart and with all his soul, to confirm the words of this covenant; even all the things written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

23:4  And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and those that kept the door, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and all the host of heaven, and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and took the ashes of them to Bethel.

23:5  And he burned the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had appointed (and they burned incense in the high places and in the cities of Judah, and the places around about Jerusalem); and those that burned incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to Mazuroth, and to the whole host of heaven.

23:6  And he carried out the grove from the house of the Lord to the Brook Kidron, and burned it at the Brook Kidron, and reduced it to powder, and cast its powder on the tombs of the sons of the people.

23:7  And he pulled down the house of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove tents for the grove.

23:8  And he brought up all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests burned incense, from Geba even to Beersheba; and he pulled down the house of the gates that was by the door of the gate of Joshua the ruler of the city, on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

23:9  Only the priests of the high places went not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, for they only ate leavened bread in the midst of their brethren.

23:10  And he defiled Topheth which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, constructed for a man to cause his son or his daughter to pass through fire to Molech.

23:11  And he burned the horses which the king of Judah had given to the sun in the entrance of the house of the Lord, by the treasury of Nathan the king's eunuch, in the suburbs; and he burned the chariot of the sun with fire.

23:12  And the altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did the king pull down and forcibly remove from there, and cast their dust into the Brook of Kidron.

23:13  And the king defiled the house that was before Jerusalem, on the right hand of the Mount of Mosthath, which Solomon king of Israel built to Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and to Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and to Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon.

23:14  And he broke in pieces the pillars, and utterly destroyed the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.

23:15  Also the high altar in Bethel, which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, even that high altar he tore down, and broke in pieces the stones of it, and reduced it to powder, and burnt the grove.

23:16  And Josiah turned aside, and saw the tombs that were there in the city, and sent, and took the bones out of the tombs, and burned them on the altar, and defiled it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God spoke, when Jeroboam stood by the altar at the feast; and he turned and raised his eyes to the tomb of the man of God that spoke these words.

23:17  And he said, What is that mound which I see? And the men of the city said to him, It is the grave of the man of God that came out of Judah, and uttered these things which you have done upon the altar of Bethel.

23:18  And he said, Let him alone; let no one disturb his bones. So his bones were spared, together with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.

23:19  Moreover Josiah removed all the houses of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel made to provoke the Lord, and did to them all that he did in Bethel.

23:20  And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places that were there on the altars, and burned the bones of men upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

23:21  And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in the Book of the Covenant.

23:22  Such a Passover as this had not been kept from the days of the judges who judged Israel, even all the days of the kings of Israel, and of the kings of Judah.

23:23  But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, was the Passover kept to the Lord in Jerusalem.

23:24  Moreover Josiah removed the sorcerers and the wizards and the spiritists and the idols, and all the abominations that had been set up in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might keep the words of the law that were written in the book, which Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of the Lord.

23:25  There was no king like him before him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, according to all the Law of Moses; and after him there rose none like him.

23:26  Nevertheless the Lord turned not from the fierceness of His great anger, wherewith He was wroth in His anger against Judah, because of the provocations, with which Manasseh provoked Him.

23:27  And the Lord said, I will also remove Judah from My presence, as I removed Israel, and I will reject this city which I have chosen, even Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

23:28  And the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are not these things written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

23:29  And in his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up against the king of the Assyrians, to the River Euphrates; and Josiah went out to meet him. And Necho killed him in Megiddo when he saw him.

23:30  And his servants carried him dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his tomb. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in the place of his father.

23:31  Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

23:32  And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.

23:33  And Pharaoh Necho removed him to Riblah in the land of Hamath, so that he should not reign in Jerusalem; and he imposed a tribute on the land, a hundred talents of silver, and a hundred talents of gold.

23:34  And Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim son of Josiah king of Judah over them, in the place of his father Josiah, and he changed his name to Jehoiakim, and he took Jehoahaz and brought him to Egypt, and he died there.

23:35  And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he assessed the land to give the money at the command of Pharaoh: they gave the silver and the gold, each man according to his assessment, together with the people of the land to give to Pharaoh Necho.

23:36  Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Zebudah, daughter of Pedaiah of Rummah.

23:37  And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.