⁵ But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles,^[a] and burn their idols with fire.^(A)

²⁴ you shall not bow down to their gods or serve them or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces.^(A)

² “You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. ³ Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles^[a] with fire, and cut down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places.^(A)

¹³ Rather, you shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles,^[a](A)

²⁵ That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father and cut down the sacred pole^[a] that is beside it^{(A) 26} and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, in proper order;^[b] then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the sacred pole^[c] that you cut down.”

²² nor shall you set up a stone pillar—things that the Lord your God hates.

²¹ Then I took the sinful thing you had made, the calf, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly, until it was reduced to dust, and I threw the dust into the stream that runs down the mountain.^(A)

²⁵ The images of their gods you shall burn with fire. Do not covet the silver or the gold that is on them and take it for yourself, because you could be ensnared by it, for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.^(A)

Rewards for Obedience

26 “You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them, for I am the Lord your God.^(A)

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.^{(A) 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.^{(B) 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.^{(C) 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.^{(D) 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.^{(E) 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.^{(F) 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.^{(G) 14} He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles,^[c] and covered the sites with human bones.^(H)