⁴⁴ All these had married foreign women, and they sent them away with their children.^[a](A)

² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.^(A)

³ Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,^(A)

³¹ The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book.^(A)

⁴ Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.^(A)