King Josiah of Judah^(A)

22 Josiah was 8 years old when he began to rule, and he was king for 31 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Jedidah, daughter of Adaiah from Bozkath. ² Josiah did what the Lord considered right. He lived in the ways of his ancestor David and never stopped.

⁴ Then the king ordered the chief priest Hilkiah, the priests who served under Hilkiah, and the doorkeepers to take out of the Lord’s temple all the utensils that had been made for Baal, Asherah, and the entire army of heaven. Josiah burned the utensils outside Jerusalem in an open field near the Kidron Brook. Then he carried their ashes to Bethel.

⁵ He got rid of the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to sacrifice at the illegal places of worship in the cities of Judah and all around Jerusalem. They had been sacrificing to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the zodiac, and the entire army of heaven. ⁶ He took the pole dedicated to the goddess Asherah from the temple to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem. He burned it in the Kidron Valley, ground it to dust, and threw its ashes on the tombs of the common people. ⁷ He tore down the houses of the male temple prostitutes who were in the Lord’s temple, where women did weaving for Asherah.

⁸ He brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah from Geba to Beersheba and made the places where those priests sacrificed unclean.^[a] He tore down the worship site at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the gate named after the mayor of the city. (The worship site was to the left of anyone going through the city gate.)

⁹ The priests of the illegal worship sites had never gone to the Lord’s altar in Jerusalem. Instead, they ate their unleavened bread among the other worshipers.

¹⁰ Josiah also made Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnom unclean so that people would never again sacrifice their sons or daughters by burning them to the god Molech.

¹¹ He removed the horses that Judah’s kings had dedicated to the sun god at the entrance of the Lord’s temple. They were in the temple courtyard near the room of the eunuch Nathan Melech. He also burned the chariots of the sun god, ¹² the altars that Judah’s kings had made and placed on the roof of Ahaz’s upstairs room, and the altars Manasseh had made in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. The king tore them down from there, crushed them, and dumped their rubble in the Kidron Valley.

¹³ The king made the illegal places of worship east of Jerusalem unclean. They were on the southern part of the Hill of Destruction. King Solomon of Israel had built them for Astarte (the disgusting goddess of the Sidonians), Chemosh (the disgusting god of Moab), and Milcom (the disgusting god of the Ammonites). ¹⁴ Josiah crushed the sacred stones, cut down the poles dedicated to Asherah, and filled their places with human bones. ¹⁵ He also tore down the altar at Bethel—the place of worship made by Jeroboam (Nebat’s son), who had made Israel sin. He tore down both the altar and the place of worship. They burned the worship site, crushing it to powder and burning the pole dedicated to Asherah.

¹⁶ When Josiah turned and saw the tombs on the hill there, he sent men to take the bones out of the tombs and burn them on the altar to make it unclean. This fulfilled the Lord’s word announced by the man of God. ¹⁷ Then he asked, “What is this monument that I see?”

The people of the city answered him, “It’s the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah to announce that you would do these things to the altar of Bethel.”

¹⁸ So Josiah said, “Let him rest. Don’t disturb his bones.” So they left his bones with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

¹⁹ Josiah also got rid of all the temples at the illegal places of worship in the cities of Samaria. The kings of Israel had built these places to make the Lord furious. He did to them everything that he had done to the worship places at Bethel. ²⁰ He slaughtered all the priests of the illegal worship sites on their altars and then burned human bones on them. He went back to Jerusalem.