The house I am going to build will be great, for our God is greater than all the gods.

“But if you [people] turn away and abandon My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and you go and serve other gods and worship them,

Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this adversity and evil on them.’”

“And now you intend to assert yourselves against the kingdom of the Lord which is in the hands of the sons of David, since you are a great multitude and have with you the golden calves (idols) which Jeroboam made for you as gods.

Have you not driven out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made priests for yourselves like the peoples of other lands? So whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams, even he may become a priest of non-existent gods (idols).

After Amaziah came back from the slaughter of the Edomites, he brought the gods of the sons of Seir, and set them up to be his gods, bowed before them, and burned incense to them.

So the anger of the Lord burned against Amaziah, and He sent him a prophet who said to him, “Why have you desired the gods of the people who did not save their own people from your hand?”

But Amaziah would not listen, for it was from God, so that He might hand Judah over to Joash because they had desired the gods of Edom.

For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which had defeated him, and he said, “Since the gods of the kings of Aram (Syria) helped them, I will sacrifice to them so that they may help me.” But they became the ruin and downfall of him and all of Israel.

In every city of Judah he made high places to burn incense to other gods, provoking to anger the Lord, the God of his fathers.

They took action and removed the [pagan] altars which were in Jerusalem; they also removed all the incense altars and threw them into the Brook Kidron [the dumping place for the ashes of such repulsive things].

Do you not know what I and my fathers (ancestors) have done to all the peoples of the [other] lands? Were the gods of the nations of those lands able to rescue their lands from my hand at all?

Who [was there] among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed who was able to rescue his people from my hand, that your God should be able to rescue you from my hand?

The Assyrian king also wrote letters insulting and taunting the Lord God of Israel, and speaking against Him, saying, “As the gods of the nations of other lands have not rescued their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not rescue His people from my hand.”

They spoke of the God of Jerusalem as [they spoke of] the gods of the peoples of the earth, [which are only] the work of the hands of men.

He also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, as well as all the altars which he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem; and he threw them outside the city.

Because they have abandoned (rejected) Me and have burned incense to other gods, in order to provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands, My wrath will be poured out on this place and it will not be extinguished.”’