¹The king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem gathered to him.

²The king went up to the house of Yahweh, and every man of Judah and all those who dwelled in Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets, and all the people, from small to great; and he read aloud in their ears all the words of the record of the covenant that had been found in the house of Yahweh.

³The king stood by the pillar and cut the covenant before Yahweh, to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and with all his being, to establish the words of this covenant that were written on this record; and all the people took their stand in the covenant.

⁴The king commanded Hilkiah the great priest, and the priests of the second rank, and the keepers of the vestibule, to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all the articles that were made for the Baal and for the Asherah and for all the host of the skies; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their dust to Bethel.

⁵He put an end to the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had set up, and who made sacrifices smoke at the high places in the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, and those who made sacrifices smoke for the Baal, for the sun and the moon and the constellations, and for all the host of the skies.

⁶He brought out the Asherah pole from the house of Yahweh, outside Jerusalem, to the wadi of Kidron, and burned it in the wadi of Kidron, and crushed it to dust, and threw its dust on the grave of the sons of the people.

⁷He pulled down the houses of the male temple prostitutes that were in the house of Yahweh, where the women were weaving houses for the Asherah.

⁸He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made sacrifices smoke there, from Geba to Beersheba; and he pulled down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the official of the city, which were on the left of a man at the gate of the city.

⁹Nevertheless, the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of Yahweh in Jerusalem, except that they ate unleavened bread in the midst of their brothers.

¹⁰He defiled the Topheth, which was in the valley of the son of Hinnom, so that no one would make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech.

¹¹He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, from the entrance of the house of Yahweh to the room of Nathan-melech the official, which was in Parbar; and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.

¹²And the altars that were on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, the king pulled down; and he ran from there and threw their dust into the wadi of Kidron.

¹³And the high places that were before the face of Jerusalem, which were on the right of the mountain of Destruction, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Astarte, the detestable thing of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh, the detestable thing of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the sons of Ammon, the king defiled.

¹⁴He broke the sacred pillars, cut down the Asherah poles, and filled their place with the bones of men.

¹⁵Also the altar that was at Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam the son of Nebat had made, he who caused to sin Israel, also that altar and the high place he pulled down; and he burned the high place, crushed it to dust, and burned the Asherah pole.

¹⁶Josiah turned and saw the graves that were there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones out of the graves and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word of Yahweh that the man of God had proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.

¹⁷He said, “What is that marker which I see?” And the men of the city said to him, “It is the grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these words concerning what you have done to the altar of Bethel.”

¹⁸He said, “Leave him alone; let no one disturb his bones.” And they delivered his bones, together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

¹⁹And Josiah also removed all the houses of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke anger; and he did to them according to all the works that he had done at Bethel.

²⁰He slaughtered all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars, and burned the bones of men on them; and he returned to Jerusalem.

²¹The king commanded all the people, saying: Celebrate a passover to Yahweh your God, as it is written in this scroll of the covenant.

²²For no passover like this had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor during all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

²³But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this passover was kept for Yahweh in Jerusalem.

²⁴Josiah also utterly removed the mediums, the spiritists, the teraphim, the idols, and all the detestable things that appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so as to fulfil the words of the instruction written on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh.

²⁵There was not a king like him before him, who turned back to Yahweh with all his heart and with all his being and with all his strength, according to all the instruction of Moses; and after him no one arose like him.

²⁶Yet Yahweh did not turn back from the burning of his great anger, with which his anger burned against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh provoked him to anger.

²⁷And Yahweh said: Also Judah I will remove from my face, as I removed Israel; and I will reject this city that I chose, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name will be there.

²⁸And the rest of the words of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the scroll of the words of the days for the kings of Judah?

²⁹In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and King Josiah went to meet him, and Necho killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.

³⁰His servants had him ride, dead, from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah, anointed him, and made him king in place of his father.

³¹Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah.

³²He did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done.

³³Pharaoh Necho bound him at Riblah in the land of Hamath, to stop him from reigning in Jerusalem, and laid a fine on the land of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁴Pharaoh Necho made king Eliakim son of Josiah in place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim; but he took Jehoahaz, who came to Egypt and died there.

³⁵Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; however, he assessed the land in order to give the silver at Pharaoh's command, and from each man, according to his assessment, he exacted the silver and the gold from the people of the land, to give to Pharaoh Necho.

³⁶Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zebudah, daughter of Pedaiah from Rumah.

³⁷He did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done.