⁴ Your altars will be demolished and your incense altars^(A) will be smashed; and I will slay your people in front of your idols.^(B)

⁵ He removed the high places^(A) and incense altars^(B) in every town in Judah, and the kingdom was at peace under him.

³⁰ I will destroy your high places,^(A) cut down your incense altars^(B) and pile your dead bodies^[a] on the lifeless forms of your idols,^(C) and I will abhor^(D) you.

¹³ And they will know that I am the Lord, when their people lie slain among their idols^(A) around their altars, on every high hill and on all the mountaintops, under every spreading tree and every leafy oak^(B)—places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols.^(C)

⁵ I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones^(A) around your altars.^{(B) 6} Wherever you live,^(C) the towns will be laid waste and the high places^(D) demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and devastated, your idols^(E) smashed and ruined, your incense altars^(F) broken down, and what you have made wiped out.^(G)

¹³ There in the temple of the sun^[a](A) in Egypt he will demolish the sacred pillars^(B) and will burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.’”

8 “‘At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones^(A) of the people of Jerusalem will be removed^(B) from their graves. ² They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served^(C) and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped.^(D) They will not be gathered up or buried,^(E) but will be like dung lying on the ground.^(F)

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^(A) and the idols. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.^{(B) 5} He burned^(C) the bones of the priests on their altars, and so he purged Judah and Jerusalem.

¹⁶ Then Josiah^(A) 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^(B) 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^(C).” So they spared his bones and those of the prophet^(D) 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^(E) all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones^(F) on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.