2.Könige 23 | New International Reader’s Version

Josiah promises again to obey the covenant

1 Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 2 He went up to the LORD’s temple. The people of Judah and Jerusalem went with him. So did the priests and prophets. All of them went, from the least important of them to the most important. The king had all the words of the Book of the Covenant read to them. The book had been found in the LORD’s temple. 3 The king stood next to his pillar. He agreed to the terms of the covenant in front of the LORD. The king promised to serve the LORD and obey his commands, directions and rules. He promised to obey them with all his heart and with all his soul. So he agreed to the terms of the covenant written down in that book. Then all the people committed themselves to the covenant as well. 4 Certain things in the LORD’s temple had been made to honour other gods. They were the god named Baal, the female god named Asherah and all the stars in the sky. The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest to remove those things. The king ordered the priests who were next in rank and the men who guarded the doors to help Hilkiah. Josiah took those things that had been in the LORD’s temple and burned them outside Jerusalem. He burned them in the fields in the Kidron Valley. And he took the ashes to Bethel. 5 Josiah got rid of the priests who served other gods. The kings of Judah had appointed those priests to burn incense. They burned the incense on the high places of the towns of Judah. And they burned it on the high places around Jerusalem. They burned incense to honour Baal and the sun and moon. They burned it to honour all the stars. 6 Josiah removed the Asherah pole from the LORD’s temple. It had been used to worship the female god named Asherah. He took it to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem. There he burned it. He ground it into powder. And he scattered it over the graves of the ordinary people. 7 He also tore down the rooms where the male temple prostitutes stayed. Those rooms were in the LORD’s temple. Women had made cloth for Asherah in them. 8 Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and destroyed the high places. He destroyed them from Geba all the way to Beersheba. The priests had burned incense on them. Josiah broke down the gate at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua. It was on the left side of Jerusalem’s city gate. Joshua was the city governor. 9 The priests of the high places didn’t serve at the LORD’s altar in Jerusalem. In spite of that, they ate with the other priests. All of them ate bread made without yeast. 10 Josiah destroyed the high place at Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. He didn’t want anyone to use the high place to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to the god named Molek. 11 Josiah removed the statues of horses from the entrance to the LORD’s temple. The kings of Judah had set them apart to honour the sun. The statues were in the courtyard. They were near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah burned the chariots that had been set apart to honour the sun. 12 He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had set up. They had put them on the palace roof near the upstairs room of Ahaz. Josiah also pulled down the altars Manasseh had built. They were in the two courtyards of the LORD’s temple. Josiah removed the altars from there. He smashed them to pieces. Then he threw the broken pieces into the Kidron Valley. 13 The king also destroyed the high places that were east of Jerusalem. They were at the southern end of the Mount of Olives. They were the ones Solomon, the king of Israel, had built. He had built a high place for worshipping Ashtoreth. She was the evil female god of the people of Sidon. Solomon had also built one for worshipping Chemosh. He was the evil god of Moab. And Solomon had built one for worshipping Molek. He was the god of the people of Ammon. The LORD hated that god. 14 Josiah smashed the sacred stones. He cut down the poles used to worship the female god named Asherah. Then he covered all those places with human bones. 15 There was an altar at Bethel. It was at the high place made by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit sin. Even that altar and high place were destroyed by Josiah. He burned the high place. He ground it into powder. He also burned the Asherah pole. 16 Then Josiah looked around. He saw the tombs on the side of the hill. He had the bones removed from them. And he burned them on the altar to make it ‘unclean’. That’s what the LORD had said would happen. He had spoken that message through a man of God. The man had announced those things long before they took place. 17 The king asked, ‘What’s that stone on the grave over there?’ The people of the city said, ‘It marks the tomb where the man of God is buried. He came from Judah. He spoke against the altar at Bethel. He announced the very things you have done to it.’ 18 ‘Leave it alone,’ Josiah said. ‘Don’t let anyone touch his bones.’ So they spared his bones. They also spared the bones of the prophet who had come from the northern kingdom of Israel. 19 Josiah did in the rest of the northern kingdom the same things he had done at Bethel. He removed all the small temples at the high places. He made them ‘unclean’. The kings of Israel had built them in the towns of the northern kingdom. The people in those towns had made the LORD very angry. 20 Josiah killed all the priests of those high places on the altars. He burned human bones on the altars. Then he went back to Jerusalem. 21 The king gave an order to all the people. He said, ‘Celebrate the Passover Feast to honour the LORD your God. Do what is written in this Book of the Covenant.’ 22 A Passover Feast like that one had not been held for a long time. There hadn’t been any like it in the days of the judges who led Israel. And there hadn’t been any like it during the whole time the kings of Israel and Judah were ruling. 23 King Josiah celebrated the Passover Feast in Jerusalem to honour the LORD. It was in the 18th year of his rule. 24 And that’s not all. Josiah got rid of those who got messages from people who had died. He got rid of those who talked to the spirits of people who had died. He got rid of the statues of family gods and the statues of other gods. He got rid of everything else the LORD hates that was in Judah and Jerusalem. He did it to carry out what the law required. That law was written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the LORD’s temple. 25 There was no king like Josiah either before him or after him. None of them turned to the LORD as he did. He obeyed the LORD with all his heart and all his soul. He obeyed him with all his strength. He did everything the Law of Moses required. 26 In spite of that, the LORD didn’t turn away from his great anger against Judah. That’s because of everything Manasseh had done to make him very angry. 27 So the LORD said, ‘I will remove Judah from my land. I will do to them what I did to Israel. I will turn my back on Jerusalem. It is the city I chose. I will also turn my back on this temple. I spoke about it. I said, “I will put my Name there.” ’ 28 The other events of the rule of Josiah are written down. Everything he did is written in the official records of the kings of Judah. 29 Pharaoh Necho was king of Egypt. He marched up to the River Euphrates. He went there to help the king of Assyria. It happened while Josiah was king. Josiah marched out to meet Necho in battle. When Necho saw him at Megiddo, he killed him. 30 Josiah’s servants brought his body in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem. They buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land went and got Jehoahaz. They anointed him as king in place of his father Josiah.

Jehoahaz king of Judah

31 Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for three months. His mother’s name was Hamutal. She was the daughter of Jeremiah. She was from Libnah. 32 Jehoahaz did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD. He did just as the kings who had ruled before him had done. 33 Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath. That kept him from ruling in Jerusalem. Necho made the people of Judah pay him a tax of almost 4 tonnes of silver and 36 kilograms of gold. 34 Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim king in place of his father Josiah. Necho changed Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz with him to Egypt. And that’s where Jehoahaz died. 35 Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Necho the silver and gold he required. To get the money, Jehoiakim taxed the land. He forced the people to give him the silver and gold. He made each one pay him what he required.

Jehoiakim king of Judah

36 Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for 11 years. His mother’s name was Zebidah. She was the daughter of Pedaiah. She was from Rumah. 37 Jehoiakim did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD. He did just as the kings who had ruled before him had done.

English Standard Version

Josiah’s Reforms

1 Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. 3 And the king stood by the 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 joined in the covenant. 4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. 5 And he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens. 6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah. 8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beersheba. And he broke 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 one’s left at the gate of the city. 9 However, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers. 10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.* 11 And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts.* And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 12 And the altars on the roof of 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 the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces* and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. 13 And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south 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 Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 14 And he broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with the bones of men. 15 Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he pulled down and burned,* reducing it to dust. He also burned the Asherah. 16 And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he 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 that the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things. 17 Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” And the men of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted* these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.” 18 And he said, “Let him be; 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 Josiah removed all the shrines also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the Lord to anger. He did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel. 20 And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

Josiah Restores the Passover

21 And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” 22 For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. 23 But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. 24 Moreover, Josiah put away the mediums and the necromancers and the household gods and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. 25 Before him there was no king like 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, nor did any like him arise after him. 26 Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which 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 I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.”

Josiah’s Death in Battle

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 Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him, and Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo, as soon as he saw him. 30 And his servants carried him dead in a chariot from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s place.

Jehoahaz’s Reign and Captivity

31 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 32 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done. 33 And Pharaoh Neco put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and laid on the land a tribute of a hundred talents* of silver and a talent of gold. 34 And Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he 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 command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, from everyone according to his assessment, to give it to Pharaoh Neco.

Jehoiakim Reigns in Judah

36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. 37 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.

2.Könige 23 | New International Reader’s Version English Standard Version