Old/New Testament

Hilkiah Finds the Book of the Law

22 Josiah was eight years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for 31 years. His mother’s name was Jedidah. She was the daughter of Adaiah. She was from Bozkath. ² Josiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He lived the way King David had lived. He didn’t turn away from it to the right or the left.

³ King Josiah sent his secretary Shaphan to the Lord’s temple. It was in the 18th year of Josiah’s rule. Shaphan was the son of Azaliah. Azaliah was the son of Meshullam. Josiah said, ⁴ “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest. Have him add up the money that has been brought into the Lord’s temple. The men who guard the doors have collected it from the people. ⁵ Have them put all the money in the care of certain men. These men have been put in charge of the work on the Lord’s temple. Have them pay the workers who repair it. ⁶ Have them pay the builders and those who work with wood. Have them pay those who lay the stones. Also have them buy lumber and blocks of stone to repair the temple. ⁷ But they don’t have to report how they use the money that is given to them. That’s because they are completely honest.”

⁸ Hilkiah the high priest spoke to Shaphan the secretary. Hilkiah said, “I’ve found the Book of the Law in the Lord’s temple.” Hilkiah gave it to Shaphan, who read it. ⁹ Then Shaphan went to King Josiah. Shaphan told him, “Your officials have paid out the money that was in the Lord’s temple. They’ve put it in the care of the workers and directors there.” ¹⁰ Shaphan continued, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” Shaphan read some of it to the king.

¹¹ The king heard the words of the Book of the Law. When he did, he tore his royal robes. ¹² He gave orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah. Ahikam was the son of Shaphan. Akbor was the son of Micaiah. And Asaiah was the king’s attendant. Josiah commanded them, ¹³ “Go. Ask the Lord for advice. Ask him about what is written in this book that has been found. Do it for me. Also do it for the people and the whole nation of Judah. The Lord is very angry with us. That’s because our people who have lived before us didn’t obey the words of this book. They didn’t do everything written there about us.”

¹⁴ Hilkiah the priest went to speak to Huldah the prophet. So did Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah. Huldah was the wife of Shallum. Shallum was the son of Tikvah. Tikvah was the son of Harhas. Shallum took care of the sacred robes. Huldah lived in the New Quarter of Jerusalem.

¹⁵ Huldah said to them, “The Lord is the God of Israel. He says, ‘Here is what you must tell the man who sent you to me. ¹⁶ Tell him, “The Lord says, ‘I am going to bring horrible trouble on this place and its people. Everything written in the book the king of Judah has read will take place. ¹⁷ That’s because the people have deserted me. They have burned incense to other gods. They have made me very angry because of the statues of gods their hands have made. So my anger will burn like a fire against this place. And the fire of my anger will not be put out.’ ” ’ ¹⁸ The king of Judah sent you to ask the Lord for advice. Tell him, ‘The Lord is the God of Israel. He has a message for you about the things you heard. He says, ¹⁹ “Your heart was tender. You made yourself humble in the eyes of the Lord. You heard what I spoke against this place and its people. I said they would be under a curse. I told them they would be destroyed. You tore your royal robes and wept in front of me. And I have heard you,” announces the Lord. ²⁰ “You will join the members of your family who have already died. You will be buried in peace. Your eyes will not see all the trouble I am going to bring on this place.” ’ ”

Huldah’s answer was taken back to the king.

Josiah Promises Again to Obey the Covenant

23 Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. ² He went up to the Lord’s temple. The people of Judah and Jerusalem went with him. So did the priests and prophets. All of them went, from the least important of them to the most important. The king had all the words of the Book of the Covenant read to them. The book had been found in the Lord’s temple. ³ The king stood next to his pillar. He agreed to the terms of the covenant in front of the Lord. The king promised to serve the Lord and obey his commands, directions and rules. He promised to obey them with all his heart and with all his soul. So he agreed to the terms of the covenant written down in that book. Then all the people committed themselves to the covenant as well.

⁴ Certain things in the Lord’s temple had been made to honor other gods. They were the god named Baal, the female god named Asherah and all the stars in the sky. The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest to remove those things. The king ordered the priests who were next in rank and the men who guarded the doors to help Hilkiah. Josiah took those things that had been in the Lord’s temple and burned them outside Jerusalem. He burned them in the fields in the Kidron Valley. And he took the ashes to Bethel. ⁵ Josiah got rid of the priests who served other gods. The kings of Judah had appointed those priests to burn incense. They burned the incense on the high places of the towns of Judah. And they burned it on the high places around Jerusalem. They burned incense to honor Baal and the sun and moon. They burned it to honor all the stars. ⁶ Josiah removed the Asherah pole from the Lord’s temple. It had been used to worship the female god named Asherah. He took it to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem. There he burned it. He ground it into powder. And he scattered it over the graves of the ordinary people. ⁷ He also tore down the rooms where the male temple prostitutes stayed. Those rooms were in the Lord’s temple. Women had made cloth for Asherah in them.

⁸ Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and destroyed the high places. He destroyed them from Geba all the way to Beersheba. The priests had burned incense on them. Josiah broke down the gate at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua. It was on the left side of Jerusalem’s city gate. Joshua was the city governor. ⁹ The priests of the high places didn’t serve at the Lord’s altar in Jerusalem. In spite of that, they ate with the other priests. All of them ate bread made without yeast.

¹⁰ Josiah destroyed the high place at Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. He didn’t want anyone to use the high place to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to the god named Molek. ¹¹ Josiah removed the statues of horses from the entrance to the Lord’s temple. The kings of Judah had set them apart to honor the sun. The statues were in the courtyard. They were near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah burned the chariots that had been set apart to honor the sun.

¹² He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had set up. They had put them on the palace roof near the upstairs room of Ahaz. Josiah also pulled down the altars Manasseh had built. They were in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple. Josiah removed the altars from there. He smashed them to pieces. Then he threw the broken pieces into the Kidron Valley. ¹³ The king also destroyed the high places that were east of Jerusalem. They were at the southern end of the Mount of Olives. They were the ones Solomon, the king of Israel, had built. He had built a high place for worshiping Ashtoreth. She was the evil female god of the people of Sidon. Solomon had also built one for worshiping Chemosh. He was the evil god of Moab. And Solomon had built one for worshiping Molek. He was the god of the people of Ammon. The Lord hated that god. ¹⁴ Josiah smashed the sacred stones. He cut down the poles used to worship the female god named Asherah. Then he covered all those places with human bones.

¹⁵ There was an altar at Bethel. It was at the high place made by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit sin. Even that altar and high place were destroyed by Josiah. He burned the high place. He ground it into powder. He also burned the Asherah pole. ¹⁶ Then Josiah looked around. He saw the tombs on the side of the hill. He had the bones removed from them. And he burned them on the altar to make it “unclean.” That’s what the Lord had said would happen. He had spoken that message through a man of God. The man had announced those things long before they took place.

¹⁷ The king asked, “What’s that stone on the grave over there?”

The people of the city said, “It marks the tomb where the man of God is buried. He came from Judah. He spoke against the altar at Bethel. He announced the very things you have done to it.”

¹⁸ “Leave it alone,” Josiah said. “Don’t let anyone touch his bones.” So they spared his bones. They also spared the bones of the prophet who had come from the northern kingdom of Israel.

¹⁹ Josiah did in the rest of the northern kingdom the same things he had done at Bethel. He removed all the small temples at the high places. He made them “unclean.” The kings of Israel had built them in the towns of the northern kingdom. The people in those towns had made the Lord very angry. ²⁰ Josiah killed all the priests of those high places on the altars. He burned human bones on the altars. Then he went back to Jerusalem.

²¹ The king gave an order to all the people. He said, “Celebrate the Passover Feast to honor the Lord your God. Do what is written in this Book of the Covenant.” ²² A Passover Feast like that one had not been held for a long time. There hadn’t been any like it in the days of the judges who led Israel. And there hadn’t been any like it during the whole time the kings of Israel and Judah were ruling. ²³ King Josiah celebrated the Passover Feast in Jerusalem to honor the Lord. It was in the 18th year of his rule.

²⁴ And that’s not all. Josiah got rid of those who got messages from people who had died. He got rid of those who talked to the spirits of people who had died. He got rid of the statues of family gods and the statues of other gods. He got rid of everything else the Lord hates that was in Judah and Jerusalem. He did it to carry out what the law required. That law was written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Lord’s temple. ²⁵ There was no king like Josiah either before him or after him. None of them turned to the Lord as he did. He obeyed the Lord with all his heart and all his soul. He obeyed him with all his strength. He did everything the Law of Moses required.

²⁶ In spite of that, the Lord didn’t turn away from his great anger against Judah. That’s because of everything Manasseh had done to make him very angry. ²⁷ So the Lord said, “I will remove Judah from my land. I will do to them what I did to Israel. I will turn my back on Jerusalem. It is the city I chose. I will also turn my back on this temple. I spoke about it. I said, ‘I will put my Name there.’ ” (1 Kings 8:29)

²⁸ The other events of the rule of Josiah are written down. Everything he did is written in the official records of the kings of Judah.

²⁹ Pharaoh Necho was king of Egypt. He marched up to the Euphrates River. He went there to help the king of Assyria. It happened while Josiah was king. Josiah marched out to meet Necho in battle. When Necho saw him at Megiddo, he killed him. ³⁰ Josiah’s servants brought his body in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem. They buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land went and got Jehoahaz. They anointed him as king in place of his father Josiah.

Jehoahaz King of Judah

³¹ Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for three months. His mother’s name was Hamutal. She was the daughter of Jeremiah. She was from Libnah. ³² Jehoahaz did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did just as the kings who had ruled before him had done. ³³ Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath. That kept him from ruling in Jerusalem. Necho made the people of Judah pay him a tax of almost four tons of silver and 75 pounds of gold. ³⁴ Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim king in place of his father Josiah. Necho changed Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz with him to Egypt. And that’s where Jehoahaz died. ³⁵ Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Necho the silver and gold he required. To get the money, Jehoiakim taxed the land. He forced the people to give him the silver and gold. He made each one pay him what he required.

Jehoiakim King of Judah

³⁶ Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king. He ruled in Jerusalem for 11 years. His mother’s name was Zebidah. She was the daughter of Pedaiah. She was from Rumah. ³⁷ Jehoiakim did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did just as the kings who had ruled before him had done.

³¹ His disciples were saying to him, “Rabbi, eat something!”

³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples asked each other, “Did someone bring him food?”

³⁴ Jesus said, “My food is to do what my Father sent me to do. My food is to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying? You say, ‘It’s still four months until harvest time.’ But I tell you, open your eyes! Look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest right now. ³⁶ Even now the one who gathers the crop is getting paid. They are already harvesting the crop for eternal life. So the one who plants and the one who gathers can now be glad together. ³⁷ Here is a true saying. ‘One plants and another gathers.’ ³⁸ I sent you to gather what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work. You have gathered the benefits of their work.”

Many Samaritans Believe in Jesus

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from the town of Sychar believed in Jesus. They believed because of what the woman had said about him. She said, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” ⁴⁰ Then the Samaritans came to him and tried to get him to stay with them. So he stayed two days. ⁴¹ Because of what he said, many more people became believers.

⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said. We have now heard for ourselves. We know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

Jesus Heals an Official’s Son

⁴³ After the two days, Jesus left for Galilee. ⁴⁴ He himself had pointed out that a prophet is not respected in his own country. ⁴⁵ When he arrived in Galilee, the people living there welcomed him. They had seen everything he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast. That was because they had also been there.

⁴⁶ Once more, Jesus visited Cana in Galilee. Cana is where he had turned the water into wine. A royal official was there. His son was sick in bed at Capernaum. ⁴⁷ The official heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea. So he went to Jesus and begged him to come and heal his son. The boy was close to death.

⁴⁸ Jesus told him, “You people will never believe unless you see signs and wonders.”

⁴⁹ The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

⁵⁰ “Go,” Jesus replied. “Your son will live.”

The man believed what Jesus said, and so he left. ⁵¹ While he was still on his way home, his slaves met him. They gave him the news that his boy was living. ⁵² He asked what time his son got better. They said to him, “Yesterday, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

⁵³ Then the father realized what had happened. That was the exact time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole family became believers.

⁵⁴ This was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.