15. Likewise the altar which was at Bethel, the high place built by Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—this same altar and high place he tore down and burned, grinding the high place to powder and burning the asherah.
16. When Josiah turned and saw the graves there on the mountainside, he ordered the bones taken from the graves and burned on the altar, and thus defiled it, according to the Lord’s word proclaimed by the man of God as Jeroboam stood by the altar on the feast day. When the king looked up and saw the grave of the man of God who had proclaimed these words,
17. he asked, “What is that marker I see?” The people of the city replied, “The grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed the very things you have done to the altar in Bethel.”
18. “Let him be,” he said, “let no one move his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.
19. Josiah also removed all the temples on the high places in the cities of Samaria which the kings of Israel had built, provoking the Lord; he did the very same to them as he had done in Bethel.
20. He slaughtered upon the altars all the priests of the high places that were there, and burned human bones upon them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
21. The king issued a command to all the people: “Observe the Passover of the Lord, your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.”
22. No Passover such as this had been observed during the period when the judges ruled Israel, or during the entire period of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah,
23. until the eighteenth year of King Josiah, when this Passover of the Lord was kept in Jerusalem.
24. Further, Josiah purged the consultation of ghosts and spirits, with the household gods, idols, and all the other horrors to be seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so that he might carry out the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of the Lord.
25. Before him there had been no king who turned to the Lord as he did, with his whole heart, his whole being, and his whole strength, in accord with the entire law of Moses; nor did any king like him arise after him.
26. Yet the Lord did not turn from his fiercely burning anger against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had given.
27. The Lord said: Even Judah will I put out of my sight as I did Israel. I will reject this city, Jerusalem, which I chose, and the house of which I said: There shall my name be.
28. The rest of the acts of Josiah, with all that he did, are recorded in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
29. In his time Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, went up toward the Euphrates River against the king of Assyria. King Josiah set out to meet him, but was slain at Megiddo at the first encounter.