It was a handbreadth thick, with its brim fashioned like the brim of a cup. Similar in shape to a lily blossom, it could hold 3,000 baths.

"LORD God of Israel, there is no one like you, God of heaven and earth, who watches over his covenant, showing gracious love to your servants who live their lives in your presence with all their hearts. It is you, LORD God, who has kept your promise to my father, your servant David, that you made to him. Indeed, you made a commitment to my father David and then personally fulfilled what you had promised today.

Now as for you, if you commune with me like your father did, doing everything that I have commanded you, including obeying my statutes and my legal decisions,

The king used the algum wood to have steps made for the LORD's Temple and for the royal palace, as well as lyres and harps for the choir, and nothing like that wood had been seen before in the territory of Judah.

Haven't you already driven away the LORD's priests, the descendants of Aaron and the descendants of Levi? Haven't you established your own priests like the people of other lands?

"Let's make a treaty between you and me," he said, "just like the one between my father and your father. Notice that I've sent you silver and gold to break your treaty with King Baasha of Israel, so he'll retreat from his attack on me."

"There is still one man left by whom we could ask the LORD what to do," the king of Israel replied to Jehoshaphat, "but I hate him because he won't prophesy anything good about me. Instead, he always prophesies evil. He is Imla's son Micaiah." But Jehoshaphat rebuked Ahab, "Kings should never talk like that."

All the other prophets were saying similar things, like "Go up to Ramoth-gilead and you will be successful, because the LORD will hand it over to the king!"

And so Micaiah replied: "I saw all of Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep without a shepherd. And the LORD told me, "These have no master, so let them each return to his own home in peace.'"

He lived like the kings of Israel, following the example of Ahab's dynasty, since he had married Ahab's daughter, and he practiced what the LORD considered to be evil.

"This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David says: "You haven't lived like your father Jehoshaphat and like King Asa of Judah. Instead, you have lived like the kings of Israel by causing Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit cultic sexual immorality just like Ahab's dynasty did! And you've killed your brothers who were better than you your own father's dynasty!

So he practiced what the LORD considered to be evil, just like Ahab's dynasty had done, because after his father died, he was given advice that resulted in his destruction.

Instead, he lived like the kings of Israel did. He cast metal images of Baal,

"Listen, you descendants of Israel! Come back to the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so he may come back to those of you who have escaped and survived from domination by the kings of Assyria. Don't be like your ancestors and your relatives, who weren't faithful to the LORD God of their ancestors, who, as a result, made them a desolate horror, as you well know.

So don't be stiff-necked like your ancestors were. Instead, submit to the LORD, enter his sanctuary that he has sanctified forever, and serve the LORD your God so that he'll stop being angry with you.

Even though a large crowd of people from as far away as Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not completed consecrating themselves, they still ate the Passover in a manner not proscribed by the Law, because Hezekiah had prayed like this for them: "May the good LORD extend a pardon on behalf of

There was great joy throughout Jerusalem, because nothing had happened like this in Jerusalem since the days of David's son Solomon, king of Israel.

Now therefore, don't let Hezekiah lie to you or mislead you like this. Don't believe him, because no god of any nation has been able to deliver his people from my control or from the control of my predecessors. So how much less will your God deliver you from me?'"

Sennacherib also wrote letters like this that insulted and slandered the LORD God of Israel: "Just as the gods of the nations in other lands haven't delivered their people from my control, so also the god of Hezekiah won't deliver his people from me!"

In doing so, they spoke about the God of Jerusalem as if he were like the gods of the nations of the earth that are made by the hands of human beings.

except that he never humbled himself to the LORD like his father Manasseh had done. In fact, Amon multiplied his own guilt

There had not been a Passover celebration like it in Israel since Samuel the prophet was alive, nor had any of the kings of Israel celebrated a Passover like Josiah did at that time with the priests, the descendants of Levi, everyone from Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.