Immerse: Kingdoms Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 278
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IMMERSE
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KINGDOMS
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dedicated to the sun. They were near the quarters of Nathan-melech
the eunuch, an officer of the court. The king also burned the chariots
dedicated to the sun.
Josiah tore down the altars that the kings of Judah had built on the
palace roof above the upper room of Ahaz. The king destroyed the altars
that Manasseh had built in the two courtyards of the Lord’s Temple. He
smashed them to bits and scattered the pieces in the Kidron Valley. The
king also desecrated the pagan shrines east of Jerusalem, to the south
of the Mount of Corruption, where King Solomon of Israel had built
shrines for Ashtoreth, the detestable goddess of the Sidonians; and for
Chemosh, the detestable god of the Moabites; and for Molech, the vile
god of the Ammonites. He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the
Asherah poles. Then he desecrated these places by scattering human
bones over them.
The king also tore down the altar at Bethel—the pagan shrine that Jer
oboam son of Nebat had made when he caused Israel to sin. He burned
down the shrine and ground it to dust, and he burned the Asherah pole.
Then Josiah turned around and noticed several tombs in the side of the
hill. He ordered that the bones be brought out, and he burned them on
the altar at Bethel to desecrate it. (This happened just as the Lord had
promised through the man of God when Jeroboam stood beside the altar
at the festival.)
Then Josiah turned and looked up at the tomb of the man of God who
had predicted these things. “What is that monument over there?” Josiah
asked.
And the people of the town told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God
who came from Judah and predicted the very things that you have just
done to the altar at Bethel!”
Josiah replied, “Leave it alone. Don’t disturb his bones.” So they did not
burn his bones or those of the old prophet from Samaria.
Then Josiah demolished all the buildings at the pagan shrines in the
towns of Samaria, just as he had done at Bethel. They had been built by
the various kings of Israel and had made the Lord very angry. He executed
the priests of the pagan shrines on their own altars, and he burned human
bones on the altars to desecrate them. Finally, he returned to Jerusalem.
King Josiah then issued this order to all the people: “You must celebrate
the Passover to the Lord your God, as required in this Book of the Cov
enant.” There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the time
when the judges ruled in Israel, nor throughout all the years of the kings
of Israel and Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign, this
Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.
Josiah also got rid of the mediums and psychics, the household gods, the