2 Kings · 37 verses
2 Kings 23
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
Josiah is praised as no king before or after him, and then Pharaoh Neco kills him at Megiddo; the chapter offers no explanation for the meeting, only the astonishing change of scene.
A kingdom swept cleanvv. 1–25
Josiah gathers the elders, the people, the priests, and the prophets, and reads the recovered Book of the Covenant aloud. He makes a covenant before the LORD, and then the house of the LORD receives a most thorough spring-cleaning: Baal’s articles, Asherah’s pole, the heavenly host’s equipment, shrine quarters, high places, altars, horses dedicated to the sun, and even the sun’s chariots are removed, burned, pulverized, or otherwise made thoroughly inconvenient. At Bethel, Josiah finds an altar with a prophecy already waiting for it, and leaves the bones of the man of God undisturbed. The reform travels through Judah and Samaria, reaches Topheth, and ends in a Passover in Jerusalem unlike any observed in the days of the kings. Yet the king who has turned to the LORD with all his heart cannot turn away the judgment already spoken against Judah.
The swift successionvv. 26–37
The chapter turns from Josiah’s remarkable obedience to the sentence that remains over Jerusalem. During his reign, Neco king of Egypt marches toward the Euphrates; Josiah goes out to confront him and is killed at Megiddo. His servants bring him back to Jerusalem, where the people make Jehoahaz king. That reign lasts three months: Neco imprisons him, lays a levy on Judah, and carries Jehoahaz away to Egypt. Eliakim is installed in his place under the new name Jehoiakim, who taxes the land to pay Neco and, like his predecessor and his fathers before him, does evil in the sight of the LORD. The chapter has barely finished polishing Josiah’s crown before it begins issuing replacements.
The text
Read it
Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
2 Kgs 23:1Then the king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
2 Kgs 23:2And he went up to the house of the LORD with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as the priests and the prophets—all the people small and great—and in their hearing he read all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD.
2 Kgs 23:3So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD to follow the LORD and to keep His commandments, decrees, and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.
2 Kgs 23:4Then the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priests second in rank, and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel.
2 Kgs 23:5Josiah also did away with the idolatrous priests ordained by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem—those who had burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven.
2 Kgs 23:6He brought the Asherah pole from the house of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and there he burned it, ground it to powder, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people.
2 Kgs 23:7He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the house of the LORD, where the women had woven tapestries for Asherah.
2 Kgs 23:8Then Josiah brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He tore down the high places of the gates at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which was to the left of the city gate.
2 Kgs 23:9Although the priests of the high places did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.
2 Kgs 23:10He also desecrated Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom so that no one could sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.
2 Kgs 23:11And he removed from the entrance to the house of the LORD the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the chamber of an official named Nathan-melech. And Josiah burned up the chariots of the sun.
2 Kgs 23:12He pulled down the altars that the kings of Judah had set up on the roof near the upper chamber of Ahaz, and the altars that Manasseh had set up in the two courtyards of the house of the LORD. The king pulverized them there and threw their dust into the Kidron Valley.
2 Kgs 23:13The king also desecrated the high places east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
2 Kgs 23:14He smashed the sacred pillars to pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and covered the sites with human bones.
2 Kgs 23:15He even pulled down the altar at Bethel, the high place set up by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin. Then he burned the high place, ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole.
2 Kgs 23:16And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the hillside, and he sent someone to take the bones out of the tombs, and he burned them on the altar to defile it, according to the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who had foretold these things.
2 Kgs 23:17Then the king asked, “What is this monument I see?” And the men of the city replied, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have done to the altar of Bethel.”
2 Kgs 23:18“Let him rest,” said Josiah. “Do not let anyone disturb his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed, along with those of the prophet who had come from Samaria.
2 Kgs 23:19Just as Josiah had done at Bethel, so also in the cities of Samaria he removed all the shrines of the high places set up by the kings of Israel who had provoked the LORD to anger.
2 Kgs 23:20On the altars he slaughtered all the priests of the high places, and he burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
2 Kgs 23:21The king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover of the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.”
2 Kgs 23:22No such Passover had been observed from the days of the judges who had governed Israel through all the days of the kings of Israel and Judah.
2 Kgs 23:23But in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, this Passover was observed to the LORD in Jerusalem.
2 Kgs 23:24Furthermore, Josiah removed the mediums and spiritists, the household gods and idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. He did this to carry out the words of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the house of the LORD.
2 Kgs 23:25Neither before nor after Josiah was there any king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, according to all the Law of Moses.
2 Kgs 23:26Nevertheless, the LORD did not turn away from the fury of His burning anger, which was kindled against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger.
2 Kgs 23:27For the LORD had said, “I will remove Judah from My sight, just as I removed Israel. I will reject this city Jerusalem, which I chose, and the temple of which I said, ‘My Name shall be there.’”
2 Kgs 23:28As for the rest of the acts of Josiah and all his accomplishments, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?
2 Kgs 23:29During Josiah’s reign, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt marched up to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River. King Josiah went out to confront him, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.
2 Kgs 23:30From Megiddo his servants carried his body in a chariot, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah, anointed him, and made him king in place of his father.
2 Kgs 23:31Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.
2 Kgs 23:32And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his fathers had done.
2 Kgs 23:33And Pharaoh Neco imprisoned Jehoahaz at Riblah in the land of Hamath so that he could not reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed on Judah a levy of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
2 Kgs 23:34Then Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of his father Josiah, and he changed Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim. But Neco took Jehoahaz and carried him off to Egypt, where he died.
2 Kgs 23:35So Jehoiakim paid the silver and gold to Pharaoh Neco, but to meet Pharaoh’s demand he taxed the land and exacted the silver and the gold from the people, each according to his wealth.
2 Kgs 23:36Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah.
2 Kgs 23:37And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his fathers had done.
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 345 passages were voted onto 36 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 161 Kings 13:1–2Suddenly, as Jeroboam was standing beside the altar to burn incense, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD.
- 29Jeremiah 46:2concerning Egypt and the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt, which was defeated at Carchemish on the Euphrates River by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah:
- 171 Kings 13:30–31Then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they lamented over him, “Oh, my brother!”
- 24Leviticus 19:31You must not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out, or you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.
- 32 Kings 11:14And she looked out and saw the king standing by the pillar, according to the custom. The officers and trumpeters were beside the king, and all the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets. Then Athaliah tore her clothes and screamed, “Treason! Treason!”
- 71 Kings 15:12He banished the male shrine prostitutes from the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.
- 7Ezekiel 16:16You took some of your garments and made colorful high places for yourself, and on them you prostituted yourself. Such things should not have happened; never should they have occurred!
- 10Jeremiah 19:6So behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
- 10Isaiah 30:33For Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.
- 161 Kings 13:32for the message that he cried out by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel and against all the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria will surely come to pass.”
- 181 Kings 13:31After he had buried him, the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, you must bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones,
- 252 Kings 18:5Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. No king of Judah was like him, either before him or after him.
- 292 Chronicles 35:20–24After all this, when Josiah had set the temple in order, Neco king of Egypt marched up to fight at Carchemish by the Euphrates, and Josiah went out to confront him.
- 22 Kings 22:8Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD!” And he gave it to Shaphan, who read it.
- 32 Kings 11:17Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD and the king and the people that they would be the LORD’s people. He also made a covenant between the king and the people.
- 71 Kings 14:24There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land. They imitated all the abominations of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.
Onward