14. He smashed the pillars and cut down the Asherah poles and filled their places with human bones.
15. Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel and the shrine built by Jeroboam son of Nebat—who caused Israel to sin—that altar and the shrine he demolished, too. He burned the shrine and ground it to dust, and burned up the Asherah.
16. Then, as Josiah looked around, he saw the burial caves there on the mountain, so he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, thus desecrating it—as was the word of Adonai which the man of God had proclaimed, who foretold it.
17. Then he asked, “What is this monument I see?” So the men of the town told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God, who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have just done to the altar of Bethel.”
18. “Let him rest,” he said. “Let no one disturb his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed along with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.
19. Josiah also removed all the shrines of the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria to provoke. He did to them just as he had done in Bethel.
20. All the priests of the high places there he slaughtered on the altars, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
21. Then the king commanded all the people saying, “Celebrate the Passover to Adonai your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.”
22. For no Passover like this had been celebrated from the days of the judges who judged Israel or in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.
23. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was observed for Adonai in Jerusalem.
24. Moreover, Josiah got rid of the necromancers and the mediums, the teraphim and the idols, and all the detestable things that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem—in order to confirm the words of the Torah that were written in the scroll that Hilkiah the kohen found in the House of Adonai.
25. Before him there had never been a king like him, who turned to Adonai with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Torah of Moses, nor has any king like him risen since him.
26. Nevertheless, Adonai did not turn from the fury of His great wrath which burned against Judah, because of all that Manasseh had provoked Him.
27. Adonai said, “I will banish Judah also from My presence as I banished Israel, and I have spurned this city, Jerusalem, which I chose, and the House about which I had said: ‘My Name will be there.’”
28. Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and all that he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?
29. In his days Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria to the Euphrates River. King Josiah marched against him, but Neco killed him at Megiddo when he saw him.