thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, concerning the words which thou hast heard; 19 Because thy heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast torn thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the LORD. 20 Behold therefore, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thy eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought the king word again.
CHAP. 23.
1 And the king sent, and they gathered to 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 hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD. [1]
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 their heart and all their 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 door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them to 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 around Jerusalem; them also that burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. [2] [3] [4]
6 And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder of it 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 grove. [5]
8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burnt 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 of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the common lands, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire. [6]
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 there, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. [7]
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 Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile. [8]
14 And he broke in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men. [9]
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 grove.
16 And as Josiah turned himself, he espied the sepulchres that were there on the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, 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 title is that which I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre 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
- ↑ both...: Heb. from small even unto great
- ↑ put...: Heb. caused to cease
- ↑ idolatrous...: Heb. Chemarim
- ↑ planets: or, twelve signs or, constellations
- ↑ hangings: Heb. houses
- ↑ chamberlain: or, eunuch, or, officer
- ↑ brake...: or, ran from thence
- ↑ the mount...: that is, the mount of Olives
- ↑ images: Heb. statues
