2 Kings 23:1-13 ▼

1 AND the king sent and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

2 And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great; and he read before them all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD.

3 And the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people agreed to the covenant.

4 Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the doors to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal and for the idols and for all the host of heaven; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Beth-el.

5 And he slew the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places round about Jerusalem, and those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the planets and to all the host of heaven.

6 And he brought out the idol from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron and burned it at the brook Kidron, and ground it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.

7 And he destroyed the houses of the Sodomites which were in the house of the LORD, and the houses of the women who wove hangings for the idols.

8 And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense in them, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and destroyed the shrine which was at the entrance of the gate of Salvation which was on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

9 Nevertheless the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread with their brethren.

10 And he destroyed the high places which the kings of Judah had made in Taphath, which is in the valley of Bar-hannom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Amlech.

11 And he slew the horses which the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entrance of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathan the king's eunuch, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariot of the sun with fire.

12 And the altar that was on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and broke them down from thence and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.

13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and for Malcom, the idol of the children of Ammon, did King Josiah destroy.