1The king sent and gathered to him all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.2The 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 from small to great; and he read in their hearing all the words of the scroll of the covenant that was found in the house of the LORD.3The king stood upon the pillar and cut the covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all heart and with all soul, to establish the words of this covenant that are written upon this scroll; and all the people stood in the covenant.4The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second rank and the keepers of the threshold to bring out from the temple of the LORD all the articles that were made for Baal and for Asherah and for all the host of heaven, and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and he carried their dust to Bethel.5He removed the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem, as well as those who burned incense to Baal, the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of heaven.6He brought the Asherah out from the house of the LORD outside Jerusalem to the torrent of Kidron, and he burned it in the torrent of Kidron and crushed it to dust and threw its dust upon the graves of the sons of the people.7He tore down the houses of the male cult prostitutes that were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove houses for Asherah.8He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had offered incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he tore down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the ruler of the city, which is on the left of a man in the gate of the city.9Nevertheless, the priests of the high places did not go up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but they ate unleavened bread among their kindred.10He defiled the Topheth that is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, so that no man would cause his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.11He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun at the entrance of the house of the LORD, to the chamber of Nathan-melech the eunuch that was in the colonnade, and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.12The altars that were upon 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 the LORD, the king tore down from there and threw their dust into the torrent of Kidron.13The king also defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the mount of destruction, which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.14And he broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah and filled their place with human bones.15Also the altar that was in Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam son of Nebat had made by which he caused Israel to sin, also that altar and the high place he tore down; he burned the high place, crushed it to dust, and burned the Asherah.16Josiah turned and saw the graves that were there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned them upon the altar and defiled it, according to the word of the LORD that the man of God had called who called these words.17He said, What is this signpost that 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 called these words that you have done upon the altar of Bethel.18He said, Let him rest; let no man shake his bones. So they left his bones undisturbed with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.19Also all the houses of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke, Josiah removed; he did to them according to all the deeds that he had done in Bethel.20He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there and burned human bones upon them; then he returned to Jerusalem.21The king commanded all the people: Keep the Passover to the LORD your God as it is written in this book of the covenant.22No such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel or throughout the days of the kings of Israel and Judah.23Only in the eighteenth year of King Josiah was this Passover kept to the LORD in Jerusalem.24Also the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah burned, in order to establish the words of the instruction that are written upon the scroll that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.25Before him there was no king like him who returned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the instruction of Moses, and after him none arose like him.26Surely the LORD did not turn from the burning anger of his great anger that burned against Judah because of all the vexations with which Manasseh had provoked him.27The LORD said, "I will also remove Judah from before my face, as I removed Israel, and I will reject this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, 'My name shall be there.'"28Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?29In his days Pharaoh-neco king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria upon the river Euphrates; King Josiah went to meet him, and he killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.30His servants carried him dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb; the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father.