“But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!

Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. “How would you advise me to answer these people?” he asked.

He asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?”

King Rehoboam sent out Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, but the Israelites stoned him to death. King Rehoboam, however, managed to get into his chariot and escape to Jerusalem.

They will, however, become subject to him, so that they may learn the difference between serving me and serving the kings of other lands.”

The king said to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?”

There is, however, some good in you, for you have rid the land of the Asherah poles and have set your heart on seeking God.”

See how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance.

The fear of God came on all the surrounding kingdoms when they heard how the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel.

The high places, however, were not removed, and the people still had not set their hearts on the God of their ancestors.

Amaziah, however, would not listen, for God so worked that he might deliver them into the hands of Jehoash, because they sought the gods of Edom.

He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Uzziah had done, but unlike him he did not enter the temple of the Lord. The people, however, continued their corrupt practices.

The priests, however, were too few to skin all the burnt offerings; so their relatives the Levites helped them until the task was finished and until other priests had been consecrated, for the Levites had been more conscientious in consecrating themselves than the priests had been.

Who of all the gods of these nations that my predecessors destroyed has been able to save his people from me? How then can your god deliver you from my hand?

Now do not let Hezekiah deceive you and mislead you like this. Do not believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or the hand of my predecessors. How much less will your god deliver you from my hand!”

The people, however, continued to sacrifice at the high places, but only to the Lord their God.

His prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty, as well as all his sins and unfaithfulness, and the sites where he built high places and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself—all these are written in the records of the seers.

Josiah, however, would not turn away from him, but disguised himself to engage him in battle. He would not listen to what Necho had said at God’s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo.