⁷ Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:

^12 (J)Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord has spoken, that he may declare it? Why does the land perish and burn up like a wilderness, so that no one can pass through?

¹³ And the Lord said, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have ^(K)not obeyed My voice, nor walked according to it, ¹⁴ but they have ^(L)walked according to the ^[e]dictates of their own hearts and after the Baals, ^(M)which their fathers taught them,” ¹⁵ therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will ^(N)feed them, this people, ^(O)with wormwood, and give them ^[f]water of gall to drink. ¹⁶ I will ^(P)scatter them also among the Gentiles, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. ^(Q)And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.”

The People Mourn in Judgment

¹⁷ Thus says the Lord of hosts:

²² Speak, “Thus says the Lord:

²³ Thus says the Lord:

²⁵ “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that ^(AA)I will punish all who are circumcised with the uncircumcised— ²⁶ Egypt, Judah, Edom, the people of Ammon, Moab, and all who are in the ^(AB)farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are ^(AC)uncircumcised in the heart.”

Idols and the True God

10 Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.

² Thus says the Lord:

¹¹ Thus you shall say to them: ^(AR)“The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth ^(AS)shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”

The Coming Captivity of Judah

¹⁸ For thus says the Lord:

³ For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was still ^(A)young, he began to ^(B)seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began ^(C)to purge Judah and Jerusalem ^(D)of the ^[a]high places, the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images. ^4 (E)They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and the incense altars which were above them he cut down; and the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images he broke in pieces, and made dust of them ^(F)and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. ⁵ He also ^(G)burned the bones of the priests on their ^(H)altars, and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

⁴ And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the ^(A)priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring ^(B)out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for ^[a]Asherah, and for all ^[b]the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. ⁵ Then he removed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the ^[c]constellations, and to ^(C)all the host of heaven. ⁶ And he brought out the ^(D)wooden^[d] image from the house of the Lord, to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Brook Kidron and ground it to ^(E)ashes, and threw its ashes on ^(F)the graves of the common people. ⁷ Then he tore down the ritual ^[e]booths ^(G)of the ^[f]perverted persons that were in the house of the Lord, ^(H)where the ^(I)women wove hangings for the wooden image. ⁸ And he brought all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from ^(J)Geba to Beersheba; also he broke down the high places at the gates which were at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were to the left of the city gate. ^9 (K)Nevertheless the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, ^(L)but they ate unleavened bread among their brethren.

¹⁰ And he defiled ^(M)Topheth, which is in ^(N)the Valley of the ^[g]Son of Hinnom, ^(O)that no man might make his son or his daughter ^(P)pass through the fire to Molech. ¹¹ Then he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had ^[h]dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech, the officer who was in the court; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. ¹² The altars that were ^(Q)on the roof, the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which ^(R)Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king broke down and pulverized there, and threw their dust into the Brook Kidron. ¹³ Then the king defiled the ^[i]high places that were east of Jerusalem, which were on the ^[j]south of ^[k]the Mount of Corruption, which ^(S)Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the people of Ammon. ¹⁴ And he ^(T)broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images, and filled their places with the bones of men.

¹⁵ Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the ^[l]high place ^(U)which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he broke down; and he burned the high place and crushed it to powder, and burned the wooden image. ¹⁶ As Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were there on the mountain. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, and defiled it according to the ^(V)word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. ¹⁷ Then he said, “What gravestone is this that I see?”

So the men of the city told him, “It is ^(W)the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things which you have done against the altar of Bethel.”

¹⁸ And he said, “Let him alone; let no one move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of ^(X)the prophet who came from Samaria.

¹⁹ Now Josiah also took away all the ^[m]shrines of the ^[n]high places that were ^(Y)in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke ^[o]the Lord to anger; and he did to them according to all the deeds he had done in Bethel.

⁶ And so he did in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali and all around, with ^[a]axes. ⁷ When he had broken down the altars and the wooden images, had ^(A)beaten the carved images into powder, and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem.