Then the sons of the prophets who [were in] Bethel came out to Elisha, and they said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh [is] going to take your master {from you} today?" He said, "I also know; be quiet!"

Then the sons of the prophets who [were] in Jericho came near to Elisha, and they said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh [is] going to take your master {from you} today?" He said, "I also know; be quiet!"

Then they [were] walking, talking as they went. Suddenly a fiery chariot with horses of fire [appeared] and separated between the two of them. Elijah went up in the storm [to] the heavens

When the sons of the prophets who [were] at Jericho saw him from [the] other side, they declared, "The spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha," and they came to meet him and bowed down to him to the ground.

Then the waters were purified until this very day according to the word of Elisha that he spoke.

So the king of Israel and the king of Judah and the king of Edom went around, a way of seven days, but there was no water for the army or for the animals which {were with them}.

Now all of Moab had heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, and all {who were fighting age and up} were called up, and they stood at the border.

When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too heavy for him, he took with him seven hundred men who drew the sword to break through to the king of Edom, but they were not able.

So she went from him, and she shut the door behind her and her children. They [were] bringing [containers] to her, and she [kept] pouring.

It happened that when the containers were full, she said to her son, "Bring near me another container," but he said to her, "There is not another container." Then the olive oil stopped flowing.

So Elisha returned to Gilgal. Now the famine [was] in the land, and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him. He said to his servant, put on the large pot and cook a stew for the sons of the prophets.

One went out to the field to gather herbs, and he found a {wild vine} and gathered wild gourds from it [and] filled his cloak. Then he came and cut them into the pot of stew, but they did not know [what they were].

They served the men to eat, but when they ate from the stew, they cried out and said, "There [is] death in the pot, man of God!" They were not able to eat [it].

Now Elisha [was] sitting in his house and the elders [were] sitting with him, and [the king] dispatched a man from before him, but before the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, "Did you see that this son of a murderer has sent to remove my head? Look, when the messenger comes, close the door; and you must {hold the door closed against him}. [Is] not the sound of the feet of his master behind him?"

Now four men who had a skin disease were [at] the entrance of the gate, and they said {to each other}, "Why [are] we sitting here until we die?

When they came, they called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, saying, "We came to the camp of [the] Arameans, and behold, there was no man or the voice of a man there! Only the horses and the donkeys were tied up, and the tents [were left] as they [were]."

He came, and look, the commanders of the army [were] sitting [there]. He said, "I have a word for you, O commander!" Jehu said, "For whom? For all of us?" And he said, "For you, O commander!"

He said to Bidkar his third [servant], "Lift [him] out and throw him on the plot of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, for remember, you and I [were] with the pair [of chariots] behind Ahab his father when Yahweh pronounced this oracle against him:

But they were very afraid, and they said, "Look, two kings could not stand before him; how can we stand?"

Then he wrote to them a second letter, saying, "If you [are] for me, and you [are] listening to my voice, take the heads of the men of the sons of your master and come to me at [this] time tomorrow at Jezreel." Now the sons of the king, seventy men, [were] with the leaders of the city who were raising them.

Only Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat [by] which he caused Israel to sin; [namely,] the calf-shaped idols of gold which [were in] Bethel and Dan.

Now the days which Jehu had reigned over Israel [were] twenty-eight years in Samaria.

But Jehosheba the daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah took Jehoash the son of Ahaziah, and she stole him from among the sons of the king who were being put to death, [putting] him and his nurse in the inner bedroom. So they hid him from the presence of Athaliah, and he was not killed.

Then the priest gave to the commanders of the hundreds spears and small round shields which [were] King David's, which [were] in the temple of Yahweh.

She looked, and there was the king standing by the pillar according to the custom. The commanders and the trumpeters [were] by the king, and all of the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing on the trumpets. Athaliah tore her clothes and she called, "Treason, treason!"

Only the high places were not removed; the people [were] still making sacrifices and offering incense on the high places.

Then Jehoiada the priest took a certain chest and bored a hole in its lid, and he put it beside the altar to the right as a man enters into the temple of Yahweh; then the priests who were keepers of the threshold would put there all of the money brought into the temple.

They placed the money, [which was] weighed out, into the hands of the workers who were appointed over the temple of Yahweh, and they paid [it to] the skilled craftsmen of wood and [to] the builders working on the temple of Yahweh

Only, for the temple of Yahweh, there were not any silver basins, snuffers, bowls for drinking wine, trumpets, or any vessel of gold or silver from the money being brought [to] the temple of Yahweh.

They did not [have to] settle accounts with the men into whose hands they placed the money to give to the workers, for they [were] dealing honestly.

[The] money of [the] guilt offering and [the] money of [the] sin offering was not brought into the temple of Yahweh, but were [each] for the priests.

And it happened that they [were] burying a man; suddenly they saw the marauding band, so they threw the man in the grave of Elisha. [As he] went [in], the man touched the bones of Elisha, and became alive and got up on his feet!

Only the high places were not removed; the people [were] still sacrificing and offering incense on the high places.

Only he did not remove the high places; the people [were] still sacrificing and burning incense on the high places.

At that time Menahem destroyed Tiphsah, all who [were] in it, and all its territory from Tirzah, because [it] had not opened [to him], so he destroyed it and ripped open all of its pregnant women.

Pekah the son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him, so he attacked him in Samaria in the citadel fortress of [the] palace of the king, with Argob and Arieh. With him [also were] fifty men from the children of the Gileadites, and he killed him and became king in his place.

Only the high places were not removed; the people still [were] sacrificing and offering incense on the high places. He built the upper gate of the temple of Yahweh.

Then Rezin the king of Aram went up [with] Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel against Jerusalem for battle, and they besieged Ahaz but were not able to {defeat} him.

Then King Ahaz cut off the side panels of the water carts and removed from upon them the basin, and the sea he took down from the bronze oxen that were under it and put it on a stone base.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh, only not as the kings of Israel who were before him.

The {Israelites} secretly did things which [were] not right, against Yahweh their God; they built high places for themselves in all their towns, from the watchtower up to the fortified city.

They rejected his statutes, his covenant which he {made} with their ancestors, and his warnings which he gave to them; and they went after the idols, became vain, and [went] after all the nations which [were] all around them, which Yahweh had commanded them not to do as they [did].

It happened that when they began living there, they did not fear Yahweh, so Yahweh sent lions among them, and they were killing them.

Yet every nation was making their gods, and they put them in the shrine of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities in which they [were] living.

The Arvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; the Sepharvites were burning their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech the gods of Sepharvaim.

Those who were fearing Yahweh made priests of the high places {from among themselves}, and they were sacrificing for them in the shrines of the high places.

Yahweh they were fearing, but their gods they were serving, according to the customs of the nations from which they were deported.

So these nations were fearing Yahweh, but they were serving their idols, as were their children and their children's children; as their ancestors did, they [are] doing until this day.

He removed the high places, and he smashed the stone pillars; he cut down the poles of Asherah worship and demolished the bronze serpent which Moses had made, for up to those days the {Israelites} were offering incense to it and called it Nehushtan.

The people were silent, and they did not answer him a word, for the command of that king was saying, "You shall not answer him."

Did the gods of the nations that my {predecessors} destroyed deliver them? [Not] Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, [nor] the children of Eden who [were] in Tel Assar.

It happened in that night that an angel of Yahweh went out, and he struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of Assyria. When they got up early in the morning, look! All of them [were] dead corpses.

"Because Manasseh the king of Judah committed these detestable things [and] did evil more than the Amorites did who were before him and caused even Judah to sin with his idols,

because they have done evil in my eyes and were provoking me from the day that their ancestors came out from Egypt up to this day.'"

Then the king went up [to] the temple of Yahweh, and all of the men of Judah and all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem [were] with him, [including] the priests, the prophets, and all of the people from smallest to greatest; and in their {hearing} he read all of the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been found in the temple of Yahweh.

He tore down the shrines of the male shrine prostitutes which were in the temple of Yahweh, where the women were weaving shrines for the Asherah.

Then he brought all of the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests from Geba up to Beersheba burned incense. He tore down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on the left of each gate of the city.

The altars which [were] on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courtyards of the temple of Yahweh, the king tore down and ran from there and threw their ashes into the Wadi Kidron.

The high places which [were] east of Jerusalem, which [were] on the south of the Mountain of Destruction which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the detestable thing of the {Ammonites}, the king defiled.

When Josiah turned and saw the tombs which [were] there on the hill, he sent and took the bones from the tombs and burned [them] on the altar. [Thus] he defiled them according to the word of Yahweh that the man of God had proclaimed who had proclaimed these things.

Moreover, all of the shrines of the high places which [were] in the towns of Samaria which the kings of Israel had made to provoke [Yahweh], Josiah removed, and he did to them like all of the deeds he had done in Bethel

Then he slaughtered all of the priests of the high places who [were] there, on the altars, and he burned the bones of the humans on them. Then he returned [to] Jerusalem.

Moreover, the mediums and the spiritists, the household gods and the idols, and all of the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah removed in order to establish the words of the law written on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found [in] the temple of Yahweh.

Then Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city [while] his servants were besieging it.

For it happened because of the anger of Yahweh, in Jerusalem and in Judah, until they were cast out from his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

Then the city was breached, and all of the men of war [entered] by night by way of the gate between the wall which was by the garden of the king, and the Chaldeans [were] against the city all around, so he left by the way of the Arabah.

He and all the army of [the] Chaldeans who [were with] the imperial guard tore down the wall of Jerusalem all around.

The bronze pillars which [were in] the temple of Yahweh, the water carts, and the bronze sea that was in the temple of Yahweh, the Chaldeans broke into pieces and carried their bronze to Babylon.

The height of the one pillar [was] eighteen cubits; a bronze capital was on it, with the height of the capital [being] three cubits. The latticework and pomegranates on the capital all around were bronze, and likewise on the latticework for the second pillar.

From the city he took one court official who [was] chief officer over the men of war, five men {from the king's council} who were found in the city, the secretary of the commander of the army who mustered the people of the land, and sixty men from the people of the land being found in the city.

But it happened in the seventh month that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah the son of Elishama from the offspring of the kingship came, and ten men with him, and they struck down Gedaliah so that he died with the Judeans and with the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah.

Then all the people, from youngest to oldest, and the commanders of the troops, went [to] Egypt, for they were afraid of the presence of the Chaldeans.

He spoke {kindly} to him, and he gave him a better seat than the seat of the kings who [were] with him in Babylon.