When the king passed by, he called out to the king, “Your servant went out into the heat ¹  of the battle, and then a man turned aside and brought me a prisoner. ²  He told me, ‘Guard this prisoner. If he ends up missing for any reason, ³  you will pay with your life or with a talent ⁴  of silver.’ ⁵ 

But the Lord’s angelic messenger told Elijah the Tishbite, “Get up, go to meet the messengers from the king of Samaria. Say this to them: ‘You must think there is no God in Israel! That explains why you are on your way to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub the god of Ekron. ¹ 

The king ¹  sent a third captain and his fifty soldiers. This third captain went up and fell ²  on his knees before Elijah. He begged for mercy, “Prophet, please have respect for my life and for the lives of these fifty servants of yours.

They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. ¹  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree. Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ²  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.

So he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up as a burnt sacrifice on the wall. There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel, ¹  so they broke off the attack ²  and returned to their homeland.

He got up on the bed and spread his body out over ¹  the boy; he put his mouth on the boy’s ²  mouth, his eyes over the boy’s eyes, and the palms of his hands against the boy’s palms. He bent down over him, and the boy’s skin ³  grew warm.

The king got up in the night and said to his advisers, ¹  “I will tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know we are starving, so they left the camp and hid in the field, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we will capture them alive and enter the city.’”

So Jehu ¹  got up and went inside. Then the prophet ²  poured the olive oil on his head and said to him, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I have designated you as king over the Lord’s people Israel.

Jehu ordered ¹  his officer Bidkar, “Pick him up and throw him into the part of the field that once belonged to Naboth of Jezreel. Remember, you and I were riding together behind his father Ahab, when the Lord pronounced this judgment on him,

‘“Know for sure that I saw the shed blood of Naboth and his sons yesterday,” says the Lord, “and that I will give you what you deserve right here in this plot of land,” ¹  says the Lord.’ So now pick him up and throw him into this plot of land, just as the Lord said.” ² 

When he left there, he met ¹  Jehonadab, son of Rekab, who had been looking for him. ²  Jehu greeted him and asked, ³  “Are you as committed to me as I am to you?” ⁴  Jehonadab answered, “I am!” Jehu replied, “If so, give me your hand.” ⁵  So he offered his hand and Jehu ⁶  pulled him up into the chariot.

He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. ¹  He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time ²  the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. ³ 

The king of Assyria sent his commanding general, the chief eunuch, and the chief adviser ¹  from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, ²  along with a large army. They went up and arrived at Jerusalem. They went ³  and stood at the conduit of the upper pool which is located on the road to the field where they wash and dry cloth. ⁴ 

Through your messengers you taunted the sovereign master, ¹  ‘With my many chariots ²  I climbed up the high mountains, the slopes of Lebanon. I cut down its tall cedars, and its best evergreens. I invaded its most remote regions, ³  its thickest woods.

“Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people: ‘This is what the Lord God of your ancestor David says: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. The day after tomorrow ¹  you will go up to the Lord’s temple.

He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky ¹  and worshiped ²  them.

The king went up to the Lord’s temple, accompanied by all the people of Judah, all the residents of Jerusalem, the priests, and the prophets. All the people were there, from the youngest to the oldest. He read aloud ¹  all the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been discovered in the Lord’s temple.

He removed from the entrance to the Lord’s temple the statues of horses ¹  that the kings of Judah had placed there in honor of the sun god. (They were kept near the room of Nathan Melech the eunuch, which was situated among the courtyards.) ²  He burned up the chariots devoted to the sun god. ³ 

Josiah also got rid of ¹  the ritual pits used to conjure up spirits, ²  the magicians, personal idols, disgusting images, ³  and all the detestable idols that had appeared in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. In this way he carried out the terms of the law ⁴  recorded on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the Lord’s temple.

So King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside ¹  it. They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign. ²