⁷ Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says:

¹² Who is wise^(N) enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the Lord and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?

¹³ The Lord said, “It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law.^{(O) 14} Instead, they have followed^(P) the stubbornness of their hearts;^(Q) they have followed the Baals, as their ancestors taught them.” ¹⁵ Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “See, I will make this people eat bitter food^(R) and drink poisoned water.^{(S) 16} I will scatter them among nations^(T) that neither they nor their ancestors have known,^(U) and I will pursue them with the sword^(V) until I have made an end of them.”^(W)

¹⁷ This is what the Lord Almighty says:

²² Say, “This is what the Lord declares:

²³ This is what the Lord says:

²⁵ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh^(AN)— ²⁶ Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the wilderness in distant places.^[a](AO) For all these nations are really uncircumcised,^(AP) and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.^(AQ)”

God and Idols^(AR)

10 Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. ² This is what the Lord says:

¹¹ “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish^(BQ) from the earth and from under the heavens.’”^[b]

Coming Destruction

Jeremiah’s Prayer

³ In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God^(A) of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles and idols. ⁴ Under his direction the altars of the Baals were torn down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles^(B) and the idols. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.^{(C) 5} He burned^(D) the bones of the priests on their altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem.

⁴ The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers^(A) to remove^(B) from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. ⁵ He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense^(C) to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts.^{(D) 6} He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley^(E) outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder^(F) and scattered the dust over the graves^(G) of the common people.^{(H) 7} He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes^(I) that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.

⁸ Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba^(J) to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the gateway at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which was on the left of the city gate. ⁹ Although the priests of the high places did not serve^(K) at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.

¹⁰ He desecrated Topheth,^(L) which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom,^(M) so no one could use it to sacrifice their son^(N) or daughter in the fire to Molek. ¹¹ He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah^(O) had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court^[a] near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.^(P)

¹² He pulled down^(Q) the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof^(R) near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts^(S) of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.^{(T) 13} The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon^(U) king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable^(V) god of the people of Ammon.^{(W) 14} Josiah smashed^(X) the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.^(Y)

¹⁵ Even the altar^(Z) at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam^(AA) son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. ¹⁶ Then Josiah^(AB) looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance^(AC) with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.

¹⁷ The king asked, “What is that tombstone I see?”

The people of the city said, “It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.”

¹⁸ “Leave it alone,” he said. “Don’t let anyone disturb his bones^(AD).” So they spared his bones and those of the prophet^(AE) who had come from Samaria.

¹⁹ Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord’s anger.

⁶ In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them, ⁷ he tore down the altars and the Asherah poles and crushed the idols to powder^(A) and cut to pieces all the incense altars throughout Israel. Then he went back to Jerusalem.