Josiah’s Reforms
1 1Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him.
2
And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And
2he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant
3that had been found in the house of the Lord.
3
And the king stood
4by the pillar and
5made a covenant before the Lord,
6to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.
4
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests
7of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for
8Baal, for
9Asherah, and for all the host of heaven.
10He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel.
5
And he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellations
11and all the host of the heavens.
6
And he brought out
12the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron,
13and burned it at the brook Kidron
14and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves
15of the common people.
7
And he broke down the houses of
16the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord,
17where the women wove hangings for
18the Asherah.
8
And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from
19Geba to Beersheba. And he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on one’s left at the gate of the city.