King Josiah of Judah

34 Josiah was eight years old when he became the king of Judah. He ruled from Jerusalem for 31 years. 2 He did things that were pleasing to Yahweh and conducted his life like his ancestor King David had done. He fully obeyed [IDM] all the laws of God.

3 When he had been ruling for almost eight years, while he was still a young man, he began to worship God like his ancestor King David had done. Four years later, he began to get rid of all the pagan shrines on hilltops in Jerusalem and in other places in Judah, and the poles to honor the goddess Asherah, and the carved idols and statues of gods. 4 While he directed them, his workers tore down the altars where people worshiped Baal. They smashed the altars that were near those altars, where people burned incense. They smashed the poles tohonor the goddess Asherah and the idols and statues. They smashed them to bits and scattered the bits over the graves of those who had offered sacrifices to them. 5 They burned the bones of the priests who had offered sacrifices; they burned them on their own altars. In that way Josiah caused Jerusalem and other places in Judah to be acceptable places to worship Yahweh again. 6 In the towns in the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far north as the tribe of Naphtali and in the ruins around all those towns, 7 Josiah’s workers tore down the pagan altars and the poles to honor the goddess Asherah, and crushed the idols to powder. They also smashed to pieces all the altars for burning incense throughout Israel. Then Josiah returned to Jerusalem.

8 When Josiah had been ruling for almost 18 years, he did something else to cause the land and the temple to be acceptable places to worship Yahweh. He sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the governor of the city and Joah the son of Joahaz, who wrote on a scroll what happened in the city, to repair the temple of Yahweh.

9 They went to Hilkiah the Supreme Priest and gave him the money that had been brought to the temple. That was the money that the descendants of Levi who guarded the doors of the temple had collected from the people of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim and other places in northern Israel, and also from all the people in Jerusalem and other places in the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

10 Then Hilkiah gave some of the money to the men who had been appointed to supervise the work of repairing the temple. The supervisors paid the men who did the repair work. 11 They also gave some of the money to the carpenters and builders to buy the cut stones and the timber for the joists and the beams for the buildings that the kings of Judah had allowed to decay.

12 The workers did their work faithfully. Their supervisors were Jahath and Obadiah, who were descendants of Levi’s son Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam, who were descendants of Levi’s son Kohath. All the other descendants of Levi, those who played musical instruments well, 13 supervised all the workers as they did their various jobs. Some of the descendants of Levi were secretaries and some kept records and some guarded the gates of the temple.