And Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, and got together the men of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand of his best fighting-men, to make war against Israel and get the kingdom back for Rehoboam.

Say to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin,

And the priests and Levites who were in all Israel came together to him from every part of their country.

And after them, from all the tribes of Israel, all those whose hearts were fixed and true to the Lord, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to make offerings to the Lord, the God of their fathers.

Now when Rehoboam's position as king had been made certain, and he was strong, he gave up the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him.

Then the chiefs of Israel and the king made themselves low and said, The Lord is upright.

So King Rehoboam made himself strong in Jerusalem and was ruling there. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king, and he was ruling for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the town which the Lord had made his out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there; and his mother's name was Naamah, an Ammonite woman.

And Abijah took up his position on Mount Zemaraim, in the hill-country of Ephraim, and said, Give ear to me, O Jeroboam and all Israel:

Is it not clear to you that the Lord, the God of Israel, gave the rule over Israel to David and to his sons for ever, by an agreement made with salt?

And now God is with us at our head, and his priests with their loud horns sounding against you. O children of Israel, do not make war on the Lord, the God of your fathers, for it will not go well for you.

And the men of Judah gave a loud cry; and at their cry, God put fear into Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.

And the children of Israel went in flight before Judah, and God gave them up into their hands.

And Abijah and his people put them to death with great destruction: five hundred thousand of the best of Israel were put to the sword.

So at that time the children of Israel were overcome, and the children of Judah got the better of them, because they put their faith in the Lord, the God of their fathers.

Now for a long time Israel has been without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without the law;

But when in their trouble they were turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, searching after him, he let their search be rewarded.

And he got together all Judah and Benjamin and those of Ephraim and Manasseh and Simeon who were living with them; for numbers of them came to him out of Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him.

And that anyone, small or great, man or woman, who was not true to the Lord, the God of Israel, would be put to death.

But the high places were not taken away out of Israel; but still the heart of Asa was true to the Lord all his life.

In the thirty-sixth year of the rule of Asa, Baasha, king of Israel, went up against Judah, building Ramah so that no one was able to go out or in to Asa, king of Judah.

Let there be an agreement between me and you as there was between my father and your father: see, I have sent you silver and gold; go and put an end to your agreement with Baasha, king of Israel, so that he may give up attacking me.

And Ben-hadad did as King Asa said, and sent the captains of his armies against the towns of Israel, attacking Ijon and Dan and Abel-maim, and all the store-towns of Naphtali.

Now the acts of Asa, first and last, are recorded in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

And Jehoshaphat his son became king in his place, and made himself strong against Israel.

But turning to the God of his father and keeping his laws, and not doing as Israel did.

For Ahab, king of Israel, said to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, Will you go with me to Ramoth-gilead? And he said, I am as you are, and my people as your people; we will be with you in the war.

Then Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, Let us now get directions from the Lord.

So the king of Israel got together all the prophets, four hundred men, and said to them, Am I to go to Ramoth-gilead to make war or not? And they said, Go up: for God will give it into the hands of the king.

And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, There is still one man by whom we may get directions from the Lord, but I have no love for him, because he has never been a prophet of good to me, but only of evil: he is Micaiah, the son of Imla. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so.

Then the king of Israel sent for one of his unsexed servants and said, Go quickly and come back with Micaiah, the son of Imla.

Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were seated on their seats of authority, dressed in their robes, by the doorway into Samaria; and all the prophets were acting as prophets before them.

Then he said, I saw all Israel wandering on the mountains like sheep without a keeper; and the Lord said, These have no master: let them go back, every man to his house in peace.

And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not say that he would not be a prophet of good to me, but of evil?

And the Lord said, How may Ahab, king of Israel, be tricked into going up to Ramoth-gilead to his death? And one said one thing and one another.

And the king of Israel said, Take Micaiah and send him back to Amon, the ruler of the town, and to Joash, the king's son;

So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, went up to Ramoth-gilead.

And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, I will make a change in my clothing, so that I do not seem to be the king, and will go into the fight; but do you put on your robes. So the king of Israel made a change in his dress, and they went to the fight.

Now the king of Aram had given orders to the captains of his war-carriages, saying, Make no attack on small or great, but only on the king of Israel.

So when the captains of the war-carriages saw Jehoshaphat, they said, It is the king of Israel. And turning about, they came round him, but Jehoshaphat gave a cry, and the Lord came to his help, and God sent them away from him.

Now when the captains of the war-carriages saw that he was not the king of Israel, they went back from going after him.

And a certain man sent an arrow from his bow without thought of its direction, and gave the king of Israel a wound where his breastplate was joined to his clothing; so he said to the driver of his war-carriage, Go to one side and take me away out of the army, for I am badly wounded.

But the fight became more violent while the day went on; and the king of Israel was supported in his war-carriage facing the Aramaeans till the evening; and by sundown he was dead.

Then in Jerusalem he gave authority to certain of the Levites and the priests and the heads of families of Israel to give decisions for the Lord, and in the causes of those living in Jerusalem.

Did you not, O Lord our God, after driving out the people of this land before your people Israel, give it to the seed of Abraham, your friend, for ever?

And now, see, the children of Ammon and Moab and the people of Mount Seir, whom you kept Israel from attacking when they came out of Egypt, so that turning to one side they did not send destruction on them:

And the Levites, the children of the Kohathites and the Korahites, got to their feet and gave praise to the Lord, the God of Israel, with a loud voice.

And the fear of God came on all the kingdoms of the lands, when they had news of how the Lord made war on those who came against Israel.

Now as for the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, they are recorded in the words of Jehu, the son of Hanani, which were put in the book of the kings of Israel.

After this Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, became friends with Ahaziah, king of Israel, who did much evil:

And he had brothers, sons of Jehoshaphat, Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, Azariah, Michael, and Shephatiah; all these were sons of Jehoshaphat, king of Israel.

Now when Jehoram had taken his place over his father's kingdom, and had made his position safe, he put all his brothers to death with the sword, as well as some of the princes of Israel.

He went in the ways of the kings of Israel, and did as the family of Ahab did, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife; and he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

But have gone in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah and the people of Jerusalem go after false gods, as the family of Ahab did: and because you have put to death your father's sons, your brothers, who were better than yourself:

Acting on their suggestion, he went with Jehoram, son of Ahab, king of Israel, to make war on Hazael, king of Aram, at Ramoth-gilead: and Joram was wounded by the bowmen.

And they went through Judah, getting together the Levites and the heads of families in Israel from all the towns of Judah, and they came to Jerusalem.

And getting together the priests and Levites, he said to them, Go out into the towns of Judah year by year, and get from all Israel money to keep the house of your God in good condition; and see that this is done without loss of time. The Levites, however, were slow in doing so.

Then the king sent for Jehoiada, the chief priest, and said to him, Why have you not given the Levites orders that the tax fixed by Moses, the servant of the Lord, and by the meeting of Israel, for the Tent of witness, is to be got in from Judah and Jerusalem and handed over?

And an order was sent out through all Judah and Jerusalem that payment was to be made to the Lord of the tax which Moses, the servant of God, had put on Israel in the waste land.

And they put him into his last resting-place in the town of David, among the kings, because he had done good in Israel for God and for his house.

And for a hundred talents of silver, he got a hundred thousand fighting-men from Israel.

But a man of God came to him, saying, O king, let not the army of Israel go with you; for the Lord is not with Israel, that is, the children of Ephraim.

Then Amaziah said to the man of God, But what is to be done about the hundred talents which I have given for the armed band of Israel? And the man of God in answer said, God is able to give you much more than this.

And ten thousand more the children of Israel took living, and made them go up to the top of the rock, pushing them down from the top of the rock so that their bodies were broken by the fall.

Then Amaziah, king of Judah, acting on the suggestion of his servants, sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us have a meeting face to face.

And Joash, king of Israel, sent to Amaziah, king of Judah, saying, The thorn-tree in Lebanon sent to the cedar in Lebanon, saying, Give your daughter to my son for a wife: and a beast from the woodland in Lebanon went by, crushing the thorn under his feet.

And so Joash, king of Israel, went up; and he and Amaziah, king of Judah, came face to face at Beth-shemesh in Judah.

And Judah was overcome before Israel, and they went in flight, every man to his tent.

And Joash, king of Israel, made Amaziah, king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, prisoner at Beth-shemesh, and took him to Jerusalem; and he had the wall of Jerusalem pulled down from the doorway of Ephraim to the doorway in the angle, four hundred cubits.

Amaziah, son of Joash, king of Judah, went on living for fifteen years after the death of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, king of Israel.

Now the rest of the acts of Amaziah, first and last, are they not recorded in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel?

Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, and all his wars and his ways, are recorded in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

But he went in the ways of the kings of Israel and made images of metal for the Baals.

More than this, he had offerings burned in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and made his children go through fire, copying the disgusting ways of the nations whom the Lord had sent out of the land before the children of Israel.

So the Lord his God gave him up into the hands of the king of Aram; and they overcame him, and took away a great number of his people as prisoners to Damascus. Then he was given into the hands of the king of Israel, who sent great destruction on him.

And the children of Israel took away as prisoners from their brothers, two hundred thousand, women and sons and daughters, and a great store of their goods, and took them to Samaria.

And said to them, You are not to let these prisoners come here; for what you are designing to do will be a cause of sin against the Lord to us, making even greater our sin and our wrongdoing, which now are great enough, and his wrath is burning against Israel.

For the Lord made Judah low, because of Ahaz, king of Israel; for he had given up all self-control in Judah, sinning greatly against the Lord.

For he made offerings to the gods of Damascus, who were attacking him, and said, Because the gods of the kings of Aram are giving them help, I will make offerings to them so that they may give me help. But they were the cause of his downfall, and of that of all Israel.

Now the rest of his acts and all his ways, first and last, are recorded in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

And Ahaz went to rest with his fathers, and they put his body into the earth in Jerusalem; but they did not put him in the resting-place of the kings of Israel: and Hezekiah his son became king in his place.

The doors of his house have been shut and the lights put out; no perfumes have been burned or offerings made to the God of Israel in his holy place.

Now it is my purpose to make an agreement with the Lord, the God of Israel, so that the heat of his wrath may be turned away from us.

And the priests put them to death, and made a sin-offering with their blood on the altar, to take away the sin of all Israel: for the king gave orders that the burned offering and the sin-offering were for all Israel.

And Hezekiah gave the word for the burned offering to be offered on the altar. And when the burned offering was started, then the song of the Lord was started, with the blowing of horns and with all the instruments of David, king of Israel.

Then Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah, and sent letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, requesting them to come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel.

So it was ordered that word was to be sent out through all Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, that they were to come to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem: because they had not kept it in great numbers in agreement with the law.

So runners went with letters from the king and his chiefs through all Israel and Judah, by the order of the king, saying, O children of Israel, come back again to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that he may come again to that small band of you which has been kept safe out of the hands of the kings of Assyria.

So the children of Israel who were present in Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread for seven days with great joy: and the Levites and the priests gave praise to the Lord day by day, making melody to the Lord with loud instruments.

And all the people of Judah, with the priests and the Levites, and those who had come from Israel, and men from other lands who had come from Israel or who were living in Judah, were glad with great joy.

So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for nothing like this had been seen in Jerusalem from the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.

Now when all this was over, all the men of Israel who were present went out into the towns of Judah, causing the stone pillars to be broken up and the wood pillars to be cut down, pulling down the high places and the altars in all Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, till all were gone. Then all the children of Israel went back to their towns, every man to his property.

And when the order was made public, straight away the children of Israel gave, in great amounts, the first-fruits of their grain and wine and oil and honey, and of the produce of their fields; and they took in a tenth part of everything, a great store.

And the children of Israel and Judah, who were living in the towns of Judah came with the tenth part of their oxen and sheep, and a tenth of all the holy things which were to be given to the Lord their God, and put them in great masses.

And when Hezekiah and the rulers came and saw all the store of goods, they gave praise to the Lord and to his people Israel.

And he sent letters, in addition, to put shame on the Lord, the God of Israel, and to say evil against him, saying, As the gods of the nations of other lands have not been able to keep their people safe from my hands, no more will the God of Hezekiah keep his people safe from my hands.

Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and the good he did, are recorded in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, copying the disgusting ways of the nations whom the Lord had sent out of the land before the children of Israel.

And he put the image he had made in the house of God, the house of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, the town which I have made mine out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

And never again will I let the feet of Israel be moved out of the land which I have given to their fathers; if only they will take care to do all my orders, even all the law and the orders and the rules given to them by Moses.

And Manasseh made Judah and the people of Jerusalem go out of the true way, so that they did more evil than those nations whom the Lord gave up to destruction before the children of Israel.