12 Who is the man so wise that he can understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? 13 And the Lord says: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, 14 but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have ^ogone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them. 15 ^pTherefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food, and give them poisonous water to drink. 16 I will ^qscatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and ^rI will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.”

23 Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but ^ulet him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

25 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh— 26 Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who ^vcut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are ^wuncircumcised in heart.”

Idols and the Living God

1 Hear the word that the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. 2 Thus says the Lord:

11 Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.”³

3 For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father, and in the twelfth year he began to ^ppurge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and the metal images. 4 And they chopped down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and he cut down the incense altars that stood above them. And he broke in pieces the Asherim and the carved and the metal images, and he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. 5 He also ^qburned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem.

4 And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the ^osecond order and the ^pkeepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven. He ^qburned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron and carried their ashes to ^rBethel. 5 And he deposed the ^spriests 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 ^tburned incense to Baal, to the ^usun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens. 6 And he brought out the Asherah ^vfrom the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the ^wmale cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the 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 Geba 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 However, 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 ^xTopheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might ^yburn his son or his daughter as an offering ^zto Molech.¹ 11 And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the ^asun, at the entrance to the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts.² And he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 12 And the altars ^bon the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and ^cthe altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, he pulled down and broke in pieces³ and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. 13 And the king defiled ^dthe high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 14 And he broke in pieces the pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with the bones of men.

15 Moreover, the ^ealtar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he pulled down and burned,⁴ reducing it to dust. He also burned the Asherah. 16 And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it, ^faccording to the word of the Lord that the man of God proclaimed, who had predicted these things. 17 Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” And the men of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the ^gman of God who came from Judah and predicted⁵ these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.” 18 And he said, “Let him be; let no man move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, ^hwith the bones of the ⁱprophet who came out of Samaria. 19 And Josiah removed all the ^jshrines also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the Lord to anger. He did to them according to all that he had done at Bethel.

6 And in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali, in their ruins¹ all around, 7 he broke down the altars and beat the Asherim and the images into powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.