2 Kings 23:4-14

Common English Bible

⁴ The king then commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the second-order priests, and the doorkeepers to remove from the Lord’s temple all the religious objects made for Baal, Asherah, and all the heavenly bodies. The king burned them outside Jerusalem in the Kidron fields and took the ashes to Bethel. ⁵ He got rid of the pagan priests that the Judean kings had appointed to burn incense at the shrines in Judah’s cities and the areas around Jerusalem. He did the same to those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the heavenly bodies. ⁶ He removed the Asherah image^[a] from the Lord’s temple, taking it to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem. There he burned it, ground it to dust, and threw the dust on the public graveyard. ⁷ The king tore down the shrines for the consecrated workers^[b] that were in the Lord’s temple, where women made woven coverings^[c] for Asherah.

⁸ Then Josiah brought all the priests out of Judah’s cities. From Geba to Beer-sheba, he defiled the shrines where the priests had been burning incense. He also tore down the shrines at the gates at the entrance to the gate of Joshua the city’s governor, which were on the left as one entered the city gate. ⁹ Although the priests of these shrines didn’t go up on the Lord’s altar in Jerusalem, they did eat unleavened bread with their fellow priests.

¹⁰ Josiah defiled the Topheth in the Ben-hinnom Valley so no one could burn their child alive in honor of the god Molech. ¹¹ He did away with the horses that Judah’s kings had dedicated to the sun. They were kept at the entrance to the Lord’s temple near a room in the annex^[d] that belonged to an official named Nathan-melech. Josiah set fire to the chariots that were dedicated to the sun. ¹² The king also tore down the altars that were on the roof of Ahaz’s upper story, which had been made by the Judean kings, and he did the same with the altars that Manasseh had built in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He broke them up there^[e] and threw their dust into the Kidron Valley. ¹³ The king then defiled the shrines facing Jerusalem, south of the Mountain of Destruction. Solomon the king of Israel had built these for Ashtoreth, the monstrous Sidonian god, for Chemosh, the monstrous Moabite god, and for Milcom, the detestable Ammonite god. ¹⁴ He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the sacred poles,^[f] filling the places where they had been with human bones.