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
1he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant
2that had been found in the house of the Lord.
3
And the king stood
3by the pillar and
4made a covenant before the Lord,
5to 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
6of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for
7Baal, for
8Asherah, and for all the host of heaven.
9He 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
10and all the host of the heavens.
6
And he brought out
11the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron,
12and burned it at the brook Kidron
13and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves
14of the common people.
7
And he broke down the houses of
15the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord,
16where the women wove hangings for
17the 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
18Geba 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.
9
19However, the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their brothers.
10
And he defiled
20Topheth, which is
21in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom,
22that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to
23Molech.
11
And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts. And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.
12
And the altars
24on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars
25that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces and cast the dust of them
26into the brook Kidron.