He took the officers of the units of hundreds, the Carians, the royal bodyguard, and all the people of land, and together they led the king down from the Lord’s temple. They entered the royal palace through the Gate of the Royal Bodyguard, and the king sat down on the royal throne.

Jehoiada the priest took a chest and drilled a hole in its lid. He placed it on the right side of the altar near the entrance of the Lord’s temple. The priests who guarded the entrance would put into it all the silver brought to the Lord’s temple.

The silver brought to the Lord’s temple was not used for silver bowls, trimming shears, basins, trumpets, or any kind of gold or silver implements.

Menahem got this silver by taxing all the wealthy men in Israel; he took fifty shekels of silver from each one of them and paid it to the king of Assyria. Then the king of Assyria left; he did not stay there in the land.

They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God; they made two metal calves and an Asherah pole, bowed down to all the stars in the sky, and worshiped Baal.

Finally the Lord rejected Israel just as he had warned he would do through all his servants the prophets. Israel was deported from its land to Assyria and remains there to this very day.

This happened because they did not obey the Lord their God and broke his agreement with them. They did not pay attention to and obey all that Moses, the Lord’s servant, had commanded.

Perhaps the Lord your God will hear all these things the chief adviser has spoken on behalf of his master, the king of Assyria, who sent him to taunt the living God. When the Lord your God hears, perhaps he will punish him for the things he has said. So pray for this remnant that remains.’”

‘Look, a time is coming when everything in your palace and the things your ancestors have accumulated to this day will be carried away to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, the details of which are recorded in the scroll which the king of Judah has read.

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 all the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been discovered in the Lord’s temple.

Josiah also removed all the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria. The kings of Israel had made them and angered the Lord. He did to them what he had done to the high place in Bethel.

The king of Egypt did not march out from his land again, for the king of Babylon conquered all the territory that the king of Egypt had formerly controlled between the Brook of Egypt and the Euphrates River.

(Geshur and Aram captured the towns of Jair, along with Kenath and its sixty surrounding towns.) All these were descendants of Makir, the father of Gilead.

Within the territory of the tribe of Benjamin they were allotted Geba and its pasturelands, Alemeth and its pasturelands, and Anathoth and its pasturelands. Their clans were allotted thirteen cities in all.

All these were the descendants of Asher. They were the leaders of their families, the most capable men, who were warriors and served as head chiefs. There were 26,000 warriors listed in their genealogical records as capable of doing battle.

When all the Israelites who were in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled. The Philistines came and occupied them.

all the warriors went and recovered the bodies of Saul and his sons and brought them to Jabesh. They buried their remains under the oak tree in Jabesh and fasted for seven days.

When all the leaders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, David made an agreement with them in Hebron before the Lord. They anointed David king over Israel, just as the Lord had announced through Samuel.

The ark of God remained in Obed-Edom’s house for three months; the Lord blessed Obed-Edom’s family and everything that belonged to him.