He picked up Elijah's cloak, which had fallen off him, and went back and stood on the shore of the Jordan.

He then asked, "Which invasion route are we going to take?" Jehoram answered, "By the road through the Desert of Edom."

Now the king had placed the officer who was his right-hand man at the city gate. When the people rushed out, they trampled him to death in the gate. This fulfilled the prophet's word which he had spoken when the king tried to arrest him.

Now the king was talking to Gehazi, the prophet's servant, and said, "Tell me all the great things which Elisha has done."

He joined Ahab's son Joram in a battle against King Hazael of Syria at Ramoth Gilead in which the Syrians defeated Joram.

When he arrived, the officers of the army were sitting there. So he said, "I have a message for you, O officer." Jehu asked, "For which one of us?" He replied, "For you, O officer."

However, Jehu did not repudiate the sins which Jeroboam son of Nebat had encouraged Israel to commit; the golden calves remained in Bethel and Dan.

But Jehu did not carefully and wholeheartedly obey the law of the Lord God of Israel. He did not repudiate the sins which Jeroboam had encouraged Israel to commit.

They were worshiping the Lord and at the same time serving their own gods in accordance with the practices of the nations from which they had been deported.

He was loyal to the Lord and did not abandon him. He obeyed the commandments which the Lord had given to Moses.

At that time King Hezekiah of Judah stripped the metal overlays from the doors of the Lord's temple and from the posts which he had plated and gave them to the king of Assyria.

The king of Assyria sent his commanding general, the chief eunuch, and the chief adviser from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, along with a large army. They went up and arrived at Jerusalem. They went and stood at the conduit of the upper pool which is located on the road to the field where they wash and dry cloth.

Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "The Lord's word which you have announced is appropriate." Then he added, "At least there will be peace and stability during my lifetime."

He built altars in the Lord's temple, about which the Lord had said, "Jerusalem will be my home."

He put an idol of Asherah he had made in the temple, about which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, "This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home.

He followed in the footsteps of his father and worshiped and bowed down to the disgusting idols which his father had worshiped.

"This is what the Lord says: 'I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, the details of which are recorded in the scroll which the king of Judah has read.

He removed from the entrance to the Lord's temple the statues of horses that the kings of Judah had placed there in honor of the sun god. (They were kept near the room of Nathan Melech the eunuch, which was situated among the courtyards.) He burned up the chariots devoted to the sun god.

The Lord announced, "I will also spurn Judah, just as I spurned Israel. I will reject this city that I chose -- both Jerusalem and the temple, about which I said, "I will live there."

Just as the Lord had announced, he rejected Judah because of all the sins which Manasseh had committed.

Nebuchadnezzar took from there all the riches in the treasuries of the Lord's temple and of the royal palace. He removed all the gold items which King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord's temple, just as the Lord had warned.