1. Josiah was eight years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for 31 years.
2. He did what was pleasing to the Lord; he followed the example of his ancestor King David, strictly obeying all the laws of God.
3. In the eighth year that Josiah was king, while he was still very young, he began to worship the God of his ancestor King David. Four years later he began to destroy the pagan places of worship, the symbols of the goddess Asherah, and all the other idols.
4. Under his direction the altars where Baal was worshipped were smashed, and the incense altars near them were torn down. They ground to dust the images of Asherah and all the other idols and then scattered the dust on the graves of the people who had sacrificed to them.
5. He burnt the bones of the pagan priests on the altars where they had worshipped. By doing all this, he made Judah and Jerusalem ritually clean again.
6. He did the same thing in the cities and the devastated areas of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far north as Naphtali.
7. Throughout the territory of the Northern Kingdom he smashed the altars and the symbols of Asherah, ground the idols to dust, and broke in pieces all the incense altars. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
8. In the eighteenth year of his reign, after he had purified the land and the Temple by ending pagan worship, King Josiah sent three men to repair the Temple of the Lord God: Shaphan son of Azaliah, Maaseiah, the governor of Jerusalem, and Joah son of Joahaz, a high official.
9. The money that the Levite guards had collected in the Temple was handed over to Hilkiah the High Priest. (It had been collected from the people of Ephraim and Manasseh and the rest of the Northern Kingdom, and from the people of Judah, Benjamin, and Jerusalem.)
10. This money was then handed over to the three men in charge of the temple repairs, and they gave it to
11. the carpenters and the builders to buy the stones and the timber used to repair the buildings that the kings of Judah had allowed to decay.
12. The men who did the work were thoroughly honest. They were supervised by four Levites: Jahath and Obadiah of the clan of Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam of the clan of Kohath. (The Levites were all skilful musicians.)