13. The king then defiled the shrines facing Jerusalem, south of the Mountain of Destruction. Solomon the king of Israel had built these for Ashtoreth, the monstrous Sidonian god, for Chemosh, the monstrous Moabite god, and for Milcom, the detestable Ammonite god.
14. He smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the sacred poles, filling the places where they had been with human bones.
15. Josiah also tore down the altar that was in Bethel. That was the shrine made by Jeroboam, Nebat’s son, who caused Israel to sin. Josiah tore down that altar and its shrine. He burned the shrine, grinding it into dust. Then he burned its sacred pole.
16. When Josiah turned around, he noticed tombs up on the hillside. So he ordered the bones to be taken out of the tombs. He then burned them on the altar, desecrating it. (This was in agreement with the word that the Lord announced by the man of God when Jeroboam stood by the altar at the festival.) Josiah then turned and saw the tomb of the man of God who had predicted these things.
17. "What’s this gravestone I see?" Josiah asked.The people of the city replied, "That tomb belongs to the man of God who came from Judah and announced what you would do to the altar of Bethel."
18. "Let it be," Josiah said. "No one should disturb his bones." So they left his bones untouched, along with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.
19. Moreover, Josiah removed all the shrines on the high hills that the Israelite kings had constructed throughout the cities of Samaria. These had made the Lord angry. Josiah did to them just what he did at Bethel.
20. He actually slaughtered on those altars all the priests of the shrines who were there, and he burned human bones on them. Then Josiah returned to Jerusalem.
21. The king commanded all the people, "Celebrate a Passover to the Lord your God following what is instructed in this scroll containing the covenant."
22. A Passover like this hadn’t been celebrated since the days when the judges judged Israel; neither had it been celebrated during all the days of the Israelite and Judean kings.
23. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s rule, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.
24. Josiah burned those who consulted dead spirits and the mediums, the household gods and the worthless idols—all the monstrous things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way Josiah fulfilled the words of the Instruction written in the scroll that the priest Hilkiah found in the Lord’s temple.