The temple that I am building will be great, for our God is greater than any of the gods.

However, if you turn away and abandon My statutes and My commands that I have set before you and if you go and serve other gods and worship them,

Then they will say: Because they abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They clung to other gods and worshiped and served them. Because of this, He brought all this ruin on them.

“And now you are saying you can assert yourselves against the Lord’s kingdom, which is in the hand of one of David’s sons. You are a vast number and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made for you as gods.

Didn’t you banish the priests of Yahweh, the descendants of Aaron and the Levites, and make your own priests like the peoples of other lands do? Whoever comes to ordain himself with a young bull and seven rams may become a priest of what are not gods.

After Amaziah came from the attack on the Edomites, he brought the gods of the Seirites and set them up as his gods. He worshiped before them and burned incense to them.

So the Lord’s anger was against Amaziah, and He sent a prophet to him, who said, “Why have you sought a people’s gods that could not deliver their own people from your hand?”

But Amaziah would not listen, for this turn of events was from God in order to hand them over to their enemies because they went after the gods of Edom.

He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which had defeated him; he said, “Since the gods of the kings of Aram are helping them, I will sacrifice to them so that they will help me.” But they were the downfall of him and of all Israel.

He made high places in every city of Judah to offer incense to other gods, and he provoked the Lord, the God of his ancestors.

“‘Don’t you know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of the lands? Have any of the national gods of the lands been able to deliver their land from my power?

Who among all the gods of these nations that my predecessors completely destroyed was able to deliver his people from my power, that your God should be able to do the same for you?

So now, don’t let Hezekiah deceive you, and don’t let him mislead you like this. Don’t believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my power or the power of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you from my power!’”

He also wrote letters to mock Yahweh, the God of Israel, saying against Him:

Just like the national gods of the lands that did not deliver their people from my power, so Hezekiah’s God will not deliver His people from my power.

They spoke against the God of Jerusalem like they had spoken against the gods of the peoples of the earth, which were made by human hands.

He removed the foreign gods and the idol from the Lord’s temple, along with all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the Lord’s temple and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city.

because they have abandoned Me and burned incense to other gods in order to provoke Me with all the works of their hands. My wrath will be poured out on this place, and it will not be quenched.’