Pagan Shrines Destroyed

31 Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah and broke down the pillars, cut down the sacred poles,^[a] and pulled down the high places and the altars throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all. Then all the people of Israel returned to their cities, all to their individual properties.^(A)

⁴ He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole.^[a] He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.^(A)

¹² Was it not this same Hezekiah who took away his high places and his altars and commanded Judah and Jerusalem, saying, ‘Before one altar you shall worship, and upon it you shall make your offerings’?^(A)

¹⁶ “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”^(A)

³ For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was still a boy, he began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the sacred poles,^[a] and the carved and the cast images.^{(A) 4} In his presence they pulled down the altars of the Baals; he demolished the incense altars that stood above them. He broke down the sacred poles^[b] and the carved and the cast images; he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.^{(B) 5} He also burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.^{(C) 6} In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali, in their ruins^[c] all around,^{(D) 7} he broke down the altars, beat the sacred poles^[d] and the images into powder, and demolished all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.^(E)

The Great Passover

30 Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the Passover to the Lord the God of Israel. ² For the king and his officials and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month^{(A) 3} (for they could not keep it at its proper time because the priests had not sanctified themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem).^{(B) 4} The plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly. ⁵ So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it in great numbers as prescribed.^{(C) 6} So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his officials, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.^{(D) 7} Do not be like your ancestors and your kindred, who were faithless to the Lord God of their ancestors, so that he made them a desolation, as you see.^{(E) 8} Do not now be stiff-necked as your ancestors were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has sanctified forever, and serve the Lord your God, so that his fierce anger may turn away from you.^{(F) 9} For as you return to the Lord, your kindred and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”^(G)

¹⁰ So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them.^{(H) 11} Only a few from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.^{(I) 12} The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the officials commanded by the word of the Lord.

¹³ Many people came together in Jerusalem to keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread in the second month, a very large assembly.^{(J) 14} They set to work and removed the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for offering incense they took away and threw into the Wadi Kidron.^{(K) 15} They slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. The priests and the Levites were ashamed, and they sanctified themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the Lord.^{(L) 16} They took their accustomed posts according to the law of Moses the man of God; the priests dashed the blood that they received^[a] from the hands of the Levites.^{(M) 17} For there were many in the assembly who had not sanctified themselves; therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to make it holy to the Lord.^{(N) 18} For a multitude of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover contrary to what was prescribed. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the good Lord pardon all^{(O) 19} who set their hearts to seek God, the Lord the God of their ancestors, even though not in accordance with the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.”^{(P) 20} The Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people. ²¹ The people of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the Festival of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness, and the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, accompanied by loud instruments for the Lord.^{(Q) 22} Hezekiah spoke encouragingly to all the Levites who showed good skill in the service of the Lord. So the people ate the food of the festival for seven days, sacrificing offerings of well-being and giving thanks to the Lord the God of their ancestors.^(R)

²³ Then the whole assembly agreed together to keep the festival for another seven days, so they kept it for another seven days with gladness.^{(S) 24} For King Hezekiah of Judah gave the assembly a thousand bulls and seven thousand sheep for offerings, and the officials gave the assembly a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep. The priests sanctified themselves in great numbers.^{(T) 25} The whole assembly of Judah, the priests and the Levites, and the whole assembly that came out of Israel, and the resident aliens who came out of the land of Israel, and the resident aliens who lived in Judah rejoiced. ²⁶ There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon son of King David of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. ²⁷ Then the priests and the Levites stood up and blessed the people, and their voice was heard; their prayer came to his holy dwelling in heaven.^(U)

¹⁷ Then all the people went to the house of Baal and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces, and they killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, in front of the altars.^(A)

³ He took away the foreign altars and the high places, broke down the pillars, cut down the sacred poles,^[a](A)

² The king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord.^{(A) 3} The king stood by the pillar 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 this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant.^(B)

⁴ The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the guardians of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel.^{(C) 5} He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, those also who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. ⁶ He brought out the image of^[a] Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust, and threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.^{(D) 7} He broke down the houses of the illicit priests who were in the house of the Lord, where the women did weaving for Asherah.^{(E) 8} He brought all the priests out of the towns of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba; he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on the left at the gate of the city.^{(F) 9} The priests of the high places, however, did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem but ate unleavened bread among their kindred.^{(G) 10} He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech.^{(H) 11} He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-melech, which was in the precincts;^[b] then he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. ¹² The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz that the kings of Judah had made and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord he pulled down from there and broke in pieces and threw the rubble into the Wadi Kidron.^{(I) 13} The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Destruction, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.^{(J) 14} He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles,^[c] and covered the sites with human bones.^(K)

¹⁵ Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—he pulled down that altar along with the high place. He burned the high place, crushing it to dust; he also burned the sacred pole.^{[d](L) 16} As Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount, and he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of the Lord that the man of God proclaimed when Jeroboam stood by the altar at the festival; he turned and looked up at the tomb of the man of God who had proclaimed these things.^{[e](M) 17} Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” The people of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.”^{(N) 18} He said, “Let him rest; let no one move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria.^{(O) 19} Moreover, Josiah removed all the shrines of the high places that were in the towns of Samaria that kings of Israel had made, provoking the Lord to anger; he did to them just as he had done at Bethel.^{(P) 20} He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.^(Q)