Beginning

23 ¶ And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

² And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people, from the smallest to the greatest; and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD.

³ And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, that they would walk after the LORD and keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in that book. And all the people confirmed the covenant.

⁴ ¶ And the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that had been made for Baal and for the grove and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and caused their dust to be carried unto Bethel.

⁵ And he put down the religious persons whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places round about Jerusalem; likewise, those that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

⁶ And he brought out the graven image of the grove from the house of the LORD outside Jerusalem unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and stamped it small to powder and cast the powder of it upon the graves of the sons of the people.

⁷ He likewise broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes that were by the house of the LORD where the women wove hangings for the grove.

⁸ And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and broke down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city.

⁹ Nevertheless, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

¹⁰ And he defiled Tophet, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

¹¹ And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech, the chamberlain who was in charge of the Parbar, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

¹² And the king cast down the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD and made haste and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.

¹³ Likewise, the king defiled the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon, the king of Israel, had built unto Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians, and unto Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites, and unto Milcom, the abomination of the sons of Ammon.

¹⁴ And he broke the images in pieces and cut down the groves and filled their places with the bones of men.

¹⁵ Likewise, the altar that was at Bethel and the high place which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, had made: both that altar and the high place he broke down and burned the high place and stamped it small to powder and burned the grove.

¹⁶ And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount and sent and took the bones out of the sepulchres and burned them upon the altar and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who had proclaimed these words.

¹⁷ Then he said, What title is this that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.

¹⁸ And he said, Let him alone; let no one move his bones. So his bones were saved along with the bones of the prophet that had come out of Samaria.

¹⁹ And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the LORD to anger, Josiah took away and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.

²⁰ And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars and burned men’s bones upon them and returned to Jerusalem.

²¹ Then the king commanded all the people, saying, Make the passover unto the LORD your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant.

²² Such a passover had not been made since the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.

²³ In the year eighteen of King Josiah, this passover was made unto the LORD in Jerusalem.

²⁴ In the same manner Josiah burned the spiritists, the diviners, the teraphim, the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of the LORD.

²⁵ ¶ There was no king before him that converted like this to the LORD with all his heart and all his soul and all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither did any like him arise after him.

²⁶ Even with all this the LORD did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, with which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him to wrath.

²⁷ And the LORD said, I must also remove Judah out of my sight as I have removed Israel, and I must reject this city Jerusalem which I had chosen and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

²⁸ Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁹ In his days Pharaohnechoh, king of Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and King Josiah went against him; but as soon as he saw him, he slew him at Megiddo.

³⁰ And his slaves carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own sepulchre. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and anointed him and made him king in his father’s stead.

³¹ ¶ Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

³² And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.

³³ And Pharaohnechoh put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, as he was reigning in Jerusalem; and put the land to a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁴ Then Pharaohnechoh made Eliakim, the son of Josiah, king in the place of Josiah his father and changed his name to Jehoiakim and took Jehoahaz and carried him to Egypt, and he died there.

³⁵ And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh, but he caused the land to be valued to give this money according to the commandment of Pharaoh; he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of each one according to the estimation of his worth, to give it unto Pharaohnechoh.

³⁶ Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

³⁷ And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done.

24 ¶ In his time Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his slave three years; then he turned and rebelled against him.

² And the LORD sent against him armies of the Chaldees and armies of the Syrians and armies of the Moabites and armies of the sons of Ammon and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by his slaves the prophets.

³ Surely at the commandment of the LORD this came upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did

⁴ and also for the innocent blood that he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon.

⁵ Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

⁶ So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin, his son, reigned in his stead.

⁷ And the king of Egypt never came out of his land again, for the king of Babylon had taken all that pertained to the king of Egypt from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates.

⁸ ¶ Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.

⁹ And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.

¹⁰ At that time the slaves of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged.

¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, also came against the city when his slaves had besieged it.

¹² So Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon, he and his mother and his slaves and his princes and his eunuchs; and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.

¹³ And he carried out of there all the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king’s house and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had said.

¹⁴ And he carried away all Jerusalem and all the princes and all the mighty men of valour, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained except the poorest sort of the people of the land.

¹⁵ He likewise carried Jehoiachin away to Babylon and the king’s mother and the king’s wives and his officers, and the mighty of the land; he carried them all into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.

¹⁶ All the men of might, which were seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths which were one thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.

¹⁷ And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, his father’s brother, king in his stead and changed his name to Zedekiah.

¹⁸ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

¹⁹ And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.

²⁰ For the anger of the LORD was against Jerusalem and Judah until he cast them out from his presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

25 ¶ And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came, he and all his host, against Jerusalem and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about.

² And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

³ And on the ninth of the month the famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.

⁴ And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which is by the king’s garden, with the Chaldees round about the city; and they went by the way of the plain.

⁵ And the army of the Chaldees pursued after the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, after all his army had been scattered from him.

⁶ So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah, and they sentenced him.

⁷ And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him with fetters of brass and carried him to Babylon.

⁸ ¶ And in the fifth month, on the seventh of the month, which was the year nineteen of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a slave of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.

⁹ And he burnt the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house he burnt with fire.

¹⁰ And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about.

¹¹ Now the rest of the people that were left in the city and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried away.

¹² But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen.

¹³ And the Chaldees broke in pieces the pillars of brass that were in the house of the LORD and the bases and the brasen sea that was in the house of the LORD and carried the brass of them to Babylon.

¹⁴ They also took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the spoons and all the vessels of brass, with which they ministered.

¹⁵ And the censers and the bowls and such things as were of gold in gold and of silver in silver the captain of the guard took away, also

¹⁶ the two pillars, one sea, and the bases which Solomon had made for the house of the LORD; the brass of all these vessels was without weight.

¹⁷ The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and the chapiter upon it was brass; and the height of the chapiter three cubits, and network and pomegranates upon the chapiter round about, all of brass; and the second pillar was like the first with network.

¹⁸ And the captain of the guard took Seraiah, the chief priest, and Zephaniah, the second priest, and the three keepers of the door;

¹⁹ and out of the city he took a eunuch, that was set over the men of war, and five men of those that were in the king’s presence, who were found in the city, and the principal scribe of the host, who mustered the people of the land, with sixty men of the people of the land that were found in the city.

²⁰ Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, took these and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah.

²¹ And the king of Babylon smote and slew them at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of their land.

²² ¶ And as for the people whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, left in the land of Judah, he made Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, governor over them.

²³ And when all the captains of the armies, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah governor, they came to Gedaliah to Mizpah, even Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan the son of Careah, and Seraiah, the son of Tanhumeth, the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah, the son of Maachathi, they and their men.

²⁴ Then Gedaliah swore to them and to their men and said unto them, Do not fear the slaves of the Chaldees; dwell in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.

²⁵ But in the seventh month, Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama of the royal seed, came and ten men with him and smote Gedaliah, that he died, and the Jews and the Chaldees that were with him at Mizpah.

²⁶ Then all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the armies, arose and went to Egypt, for they were afraid of the Chaldees.

²⁷ And it came to pass after thirty-seven years of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, that Evilmerodach, king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign lifted up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of the prison house;

²⁸ and he spoke kindly to him and set his seat above the seats of the kings that were with him in Babylon.

²⁹ And he changed his prison garments, and he ate bread continually before him all the days of his life.

³⁰ And the king caused him to be given his food continually, each thing in its time, all the days of his life.