Chapter 13

Reign of Jehoahaz of Israel. ¹ In the twenty-third year of Joash, son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz, son of Jehu, became king over Israel in Samaria for seventeen years.

² He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight: he did not depart from following the sins that Jeroboam, son of Nebat, had caused Israel to commit. ³ The Lord was angry with Israel and for a long time gave them into the power of Hazael, king of Aram, and of Ben-hadad, son of Hazael. ⁴ Then Jehoahaz entreated the Lord, who heard him, since he saw the oppression to which the king of Aram had subjected Israel.^{(A) 5} So the Lord gave Israel a savior,^[a] and the Israelites, freed from the power of Aram, dwelt in their own tents as formerly. ⁶ Nevertheless, they did not desist from the sins the house of Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit, but persisted in them. The Asherah^[b] remained even in Samaria.^(B)

Josiah’s Religious Reform. ⁴ Then the king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, his assistant priests, and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the objects that had been made for Baal, Asherah, and the whole host of heaven. These he burned outside Jerusalem on the slopes of the Kidron; their ashes were carried to Bethel.^(A)

¹⁵ Likewise the altar which was at Bethel, the high place built by Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—this same altar and high place he tore down and burned, grinding the high place to powder and burning the asherah.^{(A) 16} When Josiah turned and saw the graves there on the mountainside, he ordered the bones taken from the graves and burned on the altar, and thus defiled it, according to the Lord’s word proclaimed by the man of God as Jeroboam stood by the altar on the feast day. When the king looked up and saw the grave of the man of God who had proclaimed these words, ¹⁷ he asked, “What is that marker I see?” The people of the city replied, “The grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed the very things you have done to the altar in Bethel.” ¹⁸ “Let him be,” he said, “let no one move his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.^{[a] 19} Josiah also removed all the temples on the high places in the cities of Samaria which the kings of Israel had built, provoking the Lord; he did the very same to them as he had done in Bethel. ²⁰ He slaughtered upon the altars all the priests of the high places that were there, and burned human bones upon them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.