1Then the king sent word, and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
2And the king went up to the house of Yahweh, and every man of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people, from the least to the greatest; and he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh.
3And the king stood by the pillar and cut the covenant before Yahweh — to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all the heart and with all the self, to establish the words of this covenant that were written on this book; and all the people stood in the covenant.
4And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out from the temple of Yahweh all the vessels made for Baal and for Asherah and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel.
5And he abolished the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to make offerings on the high places in the cities of Judah and the surroundings of Jerusalem, and those making offerings to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations and to all the host of heaven.
6And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, outside Jerusalem to the Wadi Kidron, and burned it at the Wadi Kidron, and ground it to dust, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people.
7And he tore down the houses of the male cult-prostitutes that were in the house of Yahweh, where the women were weaving houses for the Asherah.
8And he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beersheba; and he tore down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on the left of a man at the city gate.
9However, the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.
10And he defiled the Topheth, which is in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, so that no one could make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech.
11And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance of the house of Yahweh, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech the official, which was in the precincts; and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.
12And the altars that were on the roof, 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 Yahweh, the king tore down; and he ran from there and threw their dust into the Wadi Kidron.
13And the high places that were east of Jerusalem, that were to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the detestable thing of the Sidonians and for Chemosh the detestable thing of Moab and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites, the king defiled.
14And he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherim, and he filled their place with human bones.
15Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam son of Nebat had made, who caused Israel to sin — that altar too, and the high place, he tore down; and he burned the high place, ground it to dust, and burned the Asherah.
16And Josiah turned and saw the graves that were there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of Yahweh that the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things.
17Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” And the men of the city said to him, “It is the grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel.”
18And he said, “Leave him alone; let no one disturb his bones.” So they let his bones be, along with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.
19And also all the houses of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke to anger, Josiah removed; and he did to them according to all the deeds that he had done at Bethel.
20And he slaughtered all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned human bones on them; then he returned to Jerusalem.
21And the king commanded all the people, saying, “Keep the Passover to Yahweh your God, as it is written on this Book of the Covenant.”
22For no Passover like this one had been kept from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor through all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah;
23but only in the eighteenth year of King Josiah was this Passover kept to Yahweh in Jerusalem.
24Moreover, the mediums and the spiritists and the household idols and the dung-idols and all the detestable things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah purged, in order to establish the words of the law that were written on the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of Yahweh.
25And before him there was no king like him, who turned to Yahweh with all his heart and with all his self and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; and after him none arose like him.
26Yet Yahweh did not turn back from the fierceness of his great anger, which burned against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
27And Yahweh said, “I will remove Judah also from before my face, as I removed Israel, and I will reject this city that I chose, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, ‘My name shall be there.’”
28Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written on the scroll of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?
29In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates, and King Josiah went to meet him; but he put him to death at Megiddo when he saw him.
30And his servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father.
31Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah.
32He did the evil in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done.
33Pharaoh Neco imprisoned him at Riblah in the land of Hamath, so that he would not reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed a fine on the land of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
34Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of Josiah his father, and he changed his name to Jehoiakim. But Jehoahaz he took away, and he came to Egypt and died there.
35Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the silver at Pharaoh’s command; he exacted the silver and the gold from the people of the land, each according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Neco.
36Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zebidah, the daughter of Pedaiah, from Rumah.
37He did the evil in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done.
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