And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

Then doth Menahem smite Tiphsah, and all who are in it, and its borders from Tirzah, for it opened not to him, and he smiteth it, all its pregnant women he hath ripped up.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, of all those who were wealthy, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

Only, the high places were not removed: the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. It was he who built the upper gate of the house of Jehovah.

But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who rise up against me.

He removed from the house of the Lord the covered way for the Sabbath which they had built in the house, and the outer entrance of the king, because of the king of Assyria [who might confiscate them].

and he doth the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah, only, not as the kings of Israel who were before him;

But the king of Assyria uncovered a conspiracy involving Hoshea, who had sent envoys to King So of Egypt and stopped offering tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done annually. As a result, the king of Assyria placed him under arrest and sent him to prison.

And it was so, because the children of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,

And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.

And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger:

And Yahweh testified against Israel and against Judah, through all his prophets - every one who had a vision, saying - Turn ye from your wicked ways, and keep my commandments, my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers; and which I sent unto you through my servants the prophets.

Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their neck, like to the neck of their fathers, who believed not in Jehovah their God.

And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.

For Israel was broken off from the family of David, and they made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, king, who, driving them away from the laws of the Lord, made them do a great sin.

until the LORD removed Israel from his presence, just as he had warned through all of his prophets who served him. So Israel was carried off into exile from their own land into Assyria, where they remain to this day.

And it happened at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they did not fear Jehovah. And Jehovah sent lions among them, who killed them.

So they said to the king of Assyria, "The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the customs of the God of the land, so he sent lions among them, and now they are killing them because they do not know the customs of the God of the land."

Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.

So they feared Jehovah, and made unto them from among themselves priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.

They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel;

With whom the LORD had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them:

But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice.

And you are to give worship to the Lord your God; for it is he who will give you salvation from the hands of all who are against you.

In Jehovah, God of Israel, he hath trusted, and after him there hath not been like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among any who were before him;

King Hezekiah of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria, who was at Lachish, "I have violated our treaty. If you leave, I will do whatever you demand." So the king of Assyria demanded that King Hezekiah of Judah pay three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

And when they had called to the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder.

Thou sayest, (but they are but vain words,) I have counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me?

Now pay attention: you are relying on Egypt, on that staff of crushed reed; if a man leans on it, it will only go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust and rely on him.

Perhaps you will tell me, 'We are trusting in the Lord our God.' But Hezekiah is the one who eliminated his high places and altars and then told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, 'You must worship at this altar in Jerusalem.'

And have I now come up to send destruction on this place without the Lord's authority? It was the Lord himself who said to me, Go up against this land and make it waste.

And Eliakim son of Hilkiah saith -- and Shebna, and Joah -- to the chief of the butlers, 'Speak, we pray thee, unto thy servants in Aramaean, for we are understanding, and do not speak with us in Jewish, in the ears of the people who are on the wall.'

But the Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to say these things? Has he not sent me to the men who sit on the wall, [who are doomed by the siege] to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?”

Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand?

Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.

And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

It may be the LORD thy God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God; and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.

who said to them, “Tell your master this, ‘The Lord says: Don’t be afraid because of the words you have heard, that the king of Assyria’s attendants have blasphemed Me with.

Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

did the gods of the nations deliver them whom my fathers destroyed -- Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden, who are in Thelassar?

And Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of those who had come with it; and after reading it, Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, opening the letter there before the Lord.

And Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah and said, Jehovah, God of Israel, who sittest between the cherubim, thou, the Same, thou alone art the God of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made the heavens and the earth.

Incline thine ear, Jehovah, and hear; open, Jehovah, thine eyes, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, who hath sent him to reproach the living God.

Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.

And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth and give fruit.

For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and out of Mount Zion those who shall escape. The zeal of Yahweh will perform this.'

So Isaiah cried out to the LORD, who brought the shadow back ten steps after it had gone down the stairway of Ahaz.

And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.

He made his son to pass through the fire, and practiced sorcery, and used enchantments, and dealt with those who had familiar spirits, and with wizards: he worked much evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger.

But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel.

Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols;

therefore, thus says Yahweh the God of Israel, 'Look, I am bringing disaster upon Jerusalem and Judah about which the two ears of all who hear it will tingle.

And I will put away from me the rest of my heritage, and give them up into the hands of their haters, who will take their property and their goods for themselves;

Then the people of the land [of Judah] killed all those who had conspired against King Amon, and the people of the land made his son Josiah king in his place.

"Go to the high priest Hilkiah, so he can count the money that has been brought into the LORD's Temple by the doorkeepers who have been gathering it from the people.

And have them deliver it to the hands of the workmen who have been appointed over the house of the Lord, and have them give it to the workmen who are in the house of the Lord to repair the damages of the house—

Do not audit the foremen who disburse the silver, for they are honest."

Hilkiah the high priest told Shaphan the court secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the Lord’s temple,” and he gave the book to Shaphan, who read it.

Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought back word to him: “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have placed it in the hands of the workmen who have been appointed over the house of the Lord.”

So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the prophet Huldah, the wife of Tikvah's son Shallum, the grandson of Harhas and supervisor of the royal wardrobe, who lived in the Second Quarter in Jerusalem. They spoke with her,

And she saith unto them, 'Thus said Jehovah, God of Israel, Say to the man who hath sent you unto me:

But unto the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of Jehovah, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel: As touching the words which thou hast heard,

The king went up to the LORD's Temple, accompanied by all the men of Judah, everyone who lived in Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and everyone including those who were unimportant and those who were important and he read to them everything written in the Book of the Covenant that had been discovered in the LORD's Temple.

And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

Josiah brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, and burned it there, and ground it to dust, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people [who had sacrificed to it].

And he had the houses pulled down of those who were used for sex purposes in the house of the Lord, where women were making robes for the Asherah.

He took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance of the house of Yahweh, by the room of Nathan Melech the officer, who was in the court; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.

And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.

Then he said, What monument is that which I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, who came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Beth-el.

And he saith, 'Let him alone, let no man touch his bones;' and they let his bones escape, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria.

And he slayeth all the priests of the high places who are there by the altars, and burneth the bones of man upon them, and turneth back to Jerusalem.

Surely there hath not been made like this passover from the days of the judges who judged Israel, even all the days of the kings of Israel, and of the kings of Judah;

Moreover those who had familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the teraphim, and the idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh.

And like him there hath not been before him a king who turned back unto Jehovah with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, and after him there hath none risen like him.

As a result, Jehoiakim paid the silver and gold tribute to Pharaoh, but he passed on the costs to the inhabitants of the land in taxes, in keeping with Pharaoh's orders. He exacted the silver and gold from the people who lived in the land, from each according to his assessment, in order to pay it to Pharaoh Neco.

During his lifetime, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jehoiakim, who became his vassal for three years, after which he turned against Nebuchadnezzar and rebelled.

And because of the death of those who had done no wrong, for he made Jerusalem full of the blood of the upright; and the Lord had no forgiveness for it.

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came up against the city, along with his servants, who besieged it.

He deported all the residents of Jerusalem, including all the officials and all the soldiers (10,000 people in all). This included all the craftsmen and those who worked with metal. No one was left except for the poorest among the people of the land.

And, all the men of might - seven thousand, and artificers and smiths - a thousand, all who were valiant and ready to make war, the king of Babylon brought them captive to Babylon.

By the ninth day of the fourth month, the resulting famine had become so severe in the city that no food remained for the people who lived in the land.

On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard who served the king of Babylon, arrived in Jerusalem.

and the walls of Jerusalem round about have all the forces of the Chaldeans, who are with the chief of the executioners, broken down.

And the rest of the people, those left in the city, and those falling who have fallen to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude, hath Nebuzaradan chief of the executioners removed;

And the brass pillars in the house of the Lord, and the wheeled bases, and the great brass water-vessel in the house of the Lord, were broken up by the Chaldaeans, who took the brass to Babylon.

The captain of the royal guard took Seraiah the chief priest and Zephaniah, the priest who was second in rank, and the three doorkeepers.

and out of the city he took an officer that was set over the men of war; and five men of them that saw the king's face, who were found in the city; and the scribe, the captain of the host, who mustered the people of the land; and threescore men of the people of the land, that were found in the city.

And as for the people that remained in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left, even over them he made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, ruler.

When all the captains of the armies, along with their men, heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah, these men visited Gedaliah at Mizpah: Nethaniah's son Ishmael, Kareah's son Johanan, Tanhumeth the Netophathite's son Seraiah, and Jaazaniah, who was descended from the Maacathites.

And it cometh to pass, in the seventh month, come hath Ishmael son of Nathaniah, son of Elishama of the seed of the kingdom, and ten men with him, and they smite Gedaliah, and he dieth, and the Jews and the Chaldeans who have been with him in Mizpah.

Then all the people, including those who were insignificant and those who were important, fled with the captains of the armed forces to Egypt, because they were afraid of the Chaldeans.

and speaketh with him good things and putteth his throne above the throne of the kings who are with him in Babylon,