2 Kings 22-23

21st Century King James Version

22 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath.

² And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

³ And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan the scribe, the son of Azaliah the son of Meshullam, to the house of the Lord, saying,

⁴ “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the silver which is brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the door have gathered from the people.

⁵ And let them deliver it into the hand of the doers of the work, who have the oversight of the house of the Lord; and let them give it to the doers of the work who are in the house of the Lord to repair the breaches of the house —

⁶ unto carpenters and builders and masons — and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the house.

⁷ However there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered into their hand, because they dealt faithfully.”

⁸ And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

⁹ And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought the king word again and said, “Thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of those who do the work, who have the oversight of the house of the Lord.”

¹⁰ And Shaphan the scribe showed the king, saying, “Hilkiah the priest hath delivered to me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king.

¹¹ And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he rent his clothes.

¹² And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the king, saying,

¹³ “Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.”

¹⁴ So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college), and they communed with her.

¹⁵ And she said unto them, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Tell the man who sent you to me,

¹⁶ ‘Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will bring evil upon this place and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read,

¹⁷ because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore My wrath shall be kindled against this place and shall not be quenched.’

¹⁸ But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel concerning the words which thou hast heard:

¹⁹ Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord when thou heardest what I spoke against this place and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard thee, saith the Lord.

²⁰ Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.’” And they brought the king word again.

23 And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

² And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great; and he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant which was found in the house of the Lord.

³ And the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

⁴ And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal and for the Asherah pole and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.

⁵ And he put down the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places round about Jerusalem, those also who burned incense unto Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

⁶ And he brought out the Asherah pole from the house of the Lord outside Jerusalem unto the Brook Kidron, and burned it at the Brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

⁷ And he broke down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah pole.

⁸ And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense from Geba to Beersheba, and broke down the high places of the gates that were in the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city.

⁹ Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

¹⁰ And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

¹¹ And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

¹² And the altars that were on the top 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 beat down and broke them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the Brook Kidron.

¹³ And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

¹⁴ And he broke in pieces the images, and cut down the Asherah poles, and filled their places with the bones of men.

¹⁵ Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he broke down, and burned the high place and stamped it small to powder and burned the Asherah pole.

¹⁶ And as Josiah turned, he spied the sepulchers that were there on the mount, and sent and took the bones out of the sepulchers and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.

¹⁷ Then he said, “What marker is that which I see?” And the men of the city told him, “It is the sepulcher of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.”

¹⁸ And he said, “Let him alone; let no man move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria.

¹⁹ And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.

²⁰ And he slew all the priests of the high places who were there upon the altars and burned men’s bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

²¹ And the king commanded all the people, saying, “Keep the Passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the Book of this Covenant.”

²² Surely there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel nor of the kings of Judah,

²³ but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah wherein this Passover was held to the Lord in Jerusalem.

²⁴ Moreover the workers with familiar spirits and the wizards, and the images and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.

²⁵ And like unto him was there no king before him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.

²⁶ Notwithstanding, the Lord turned not from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him.

²⁷ And the Lord said, “I will remove Judah also out of My sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen and the house of which I said, ‘My name shall be there.’”

²⁸ Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁹ In his days Pharaohnechoh king of Egypt went up together with the king of Assyria to the River Euphrates; and King Josiah went against him. And Pharaohnechoh slew Josiah at Megiddo when he had seen him.

³⁰ And his servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own sepulcher. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s stead.

³¹ Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

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

³³ And Pharaohnechoh put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and put the land under a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁴ And Pharaohnechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the stead of Josiah his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim, and took Jehoahaz away; and he came to Egypt and died there.

³⁵ And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land to give the money according to the commandment of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and the gold from the people of the land, from every one according to his taxation, to give it unto Pharaohnechoh.

³⁶ Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

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