⁶ In the towns of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them,

²⁵ As for all the hills^(A) once cultivated by the hoe, you will no longer go there for fear of the briers and thorns;^(B) they will become places where cattle are turned loose and where sheep run.^(C)

31 When all this had ended, the Israelites who were there went out to the towns of Judah, smashed the sacred stones and cut down^(A) the Asherah poles. They destroyed the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin and in Ephraim and Manasseh. After they had destroyed all of them, the Israelites returned to their own towns and to their own property.

¹⁰ The couriers went from town to town in Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun, but people scorned and ridiculed^(A) them. ¹¹ Nevertheless, some from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled^(B) themselves and went to Jerusalem.^(C)

Hezekiah Celebrates the Passover

30 Hezekiah sent word to all Israel^(A) and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh,^(B) inviting them to come to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover^(C) to the Lord, the God of Israel.

¹⁵ Even the altar^(A) at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam^(B) 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^(C) 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^(D) 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^(E).” So they spared his bones and those of the prophet^(F) 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. ²⁰ Josiah slaughtered^(G) all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones^(H) on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.

²⁰ So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plow points, mattocks, axes and sickles^[a] sharpened. ²¹ The price was two-thirds of a shekel^[b] for sharpening plow points and mattocks, and a third of a shekel^[c] for sharpening forks and axes and for repointing goads.