2 Kings 23:1-20 - Josiah's Covenantal Reforms

¹ 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.