So the guards stood assembled, every soldier with weapons in hand, surrounding the king from the right side corner of the Temple to the left side corner, including around the altar and the Temple.

So Jehoiada the priest grabbed a chest, bored an opening in its lid, and placed it next to the altar, on the right side as one enters the LORD's Temple. The priests who tended the entryway put all the money that was brought into the LORD's Temple into the chest.

King Ahaz traveled to Damascus and met with King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, where he observed the altar at Damascus. So King Ahaz sent a set of construction patterns of this altar to Uriah the priest.

Uriah the priest built an altar, following the plans that King Ahaz had sent him from Damascus and finishing the altar before King Ahaz returned from Damascus.

When the king returned from Damascus, as soon as he saw the altar, he approached it and offered sacrifices on it.

He presented a burnt offering, a meat offering, poured out a drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of a peace offering on his altar.

Then he took the bronze altar that stood in the LORD's presence from in front of the Temple, moved it to the north side of his altar,

and issued these orders to Uriah the priest: "Burn the morning burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king's burnt offering and grain offering, the whole burnt offering, the grain offering, and the drink offering on behalf of all the people of the land on the large altar. And sprinkle all the blood from the burnt offering and from the sacrifice. But I will use the bronze altar to ask God questions."

""Of course, you might tell me, "We rely on the LORD our God!" But isn't it he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has demolished, all the while telling Jerusalem, "You're to worship in front of this altar in Jerusalem?"'

Nevertheless, the priests of the high places did not approach the LORD's altar in Jerusalem, but instead they ate unleavened bread given to them by their relatives.

Furthermore, he even broke down the altar that had been at Bethel as well as the high place constructed by Nebat's son Jeroboam, who had caused Israel to sin. He demolished its stones, pulverized them to dust, and burned the Asherah.

As Josiah turned around, he observed the graves located there on the mountain, so he sent for and recovered the bones from the graves and burned them on the altar to defile it, in keeping with the message from the LORD that the godly man had proclaimed when he was declaring these things.

He asked, "What is this monument that I'm looking at?" The men who lived in that city answered him, "It's the grave of that godly man who came from Judah and predicted these things that you've done against the altar at Bethel!"