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3-4 In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent his secretary Shaphan (son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam) to the Temple to give instruction to Hilkiah, the High Priest:
“Collect the money given to the priests at the door of the Temple when the people come to worship. 5-6 Give this money to the building superintendents so that they can hire carpenters and masons to repair the Temple, and to buy lumber and stone.”
7 (The building superintendents were not required to keep account of their expenditures, for they were honest men.)
8 One day Hilkiah the High Priest went to Shaphan the secretary and exclaimed, “I have discovered a scroll in the Temple, with God’s laws written on it!”
He gave the scroll to Shaphan to read. 9-10 When Shaphan reported to the king about the progress of the repairs at the Temple, he also mentioned the scroll found by Hilkiah. Then Shaphan read it to the king. 11 When the king heard what was written in it, he tore his clothes in terror. 12-13 He commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Shaphan, and Asaiah, the king’s assistant, and Ahikam (Shaphan’s son), and Achbor (Michaiah’s son) to ask the Lord, “What shall we do? For we have not been following the instructions of this book: you must be very angry with us, for neither we nor our ancestors have followed your commands.”
14 So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the Mishneh section of Jerusalem to find Huldah the prophetess. (She was the wife of Shallum—son of Tikvah, son of Harhas—who was in charge of the palace tailor shop.) 15-16 She gave them this message from the Lord God of Israel:
“Tell the man who sent you to me that I am going to destroy this city and its people, just as I stated in that book you read. 17 For the people of Judah have thrown me aside and have worshiped other gods and have made me very angry; and my anger can’t be stopped. 18-19 But because you were sorry and concerned and humbled yourself before the Lord when you read the book and its warnings that this land would be cursed and become desolate, and because you have torn your clothing and wept before me in contrition, I will listen to your plea. 20 The death of this nation will not occur until after you die—you will not see the evil that I will bring upon this place.”
So they took the message to the king.
23 1-2 Then the king sent for the elders and other leaders of Judah and Jerusalem to go to the Temple with him. So all the priests and prophets and the people, small and great, of Jerusalem and Judah gathered there at the Temple so that the king could read to them the entire book of God’s laws which had been discovered in the Temple. 3 He stood beside the pillar in front of the people, and he and they made a solemn promise to the Lord to obey him at all times and to do everything the book commanded.
4 Then the king instructed Hilkiah the High Priest and the rest of the priests and the guards of the Temple to destroy all the equipment used in the worship of Baal, Asherah, and the sun, moon, and stars. The king had it all burned in the fields of the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and he carried the ashes to Bethel. 5 He killed the heathen priests who had been appointed by the previous kings of Judah, for they had burned incense in the shrines on the hills throughout Judah and even in Jerusalem. They had also offered incense to Baal and to the sun, moon, stars, and planets. 6 He removed the shameful idol of Asherah from the Temple and took it outside Jerusalem to Kidron Brook; there he burned it and beat it to dust and threw the dust on the graves of the common people. 7 He also tore down the houses of male prostitution around the Temple, where the women wove robes for the Asherah idol.
8 He brought back to Jerusalem the priests of the Lord, who were living in other cities of Judah, and tore down all the shrines on the hills where they had burned incense, even those as far away as Geba and Beersheba. He also destroyed the shrines at the entrance of the palace of Joshua, the former mayor of Jerusalem, located on the left side as one enters the city gate. 9 However, these priests[a] did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, even though they ate with the other priests.
10 Then the king destroyed the altar of Topheth in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, so that no one could ever again use it to burn his son or daughter to death as a sacrifice to Molech. 11 He tore down the statues of horses and chariots located near the entrance of the Temple, next to the quarters of Nathan-melech the eunuch. These had been dedicated by former kings of Judah to the sun god. 12 Then he tore down the altars that the kings of Judah had built on the palace roof above the Ahaz Room. He also destroyed the altars that Manasseh had built in the two courts of the Temple; he smashed them to bits and scattered the pieces in Kidron Valley.
13 Next he removed the shrines on the hills east of Jerusalem and south of Destruction Mountain. (Solomon had built these shrines for Ashtoreth, the evil goddess of the Sidonians; and for Chemosh, the evil god of Moab; and for Milcom, the evil god of the Ammonites.) 14 He smashed the obelisks and cut down the shameful idols of Asherah; then he defiled these places by scattering human bones over them. 15 He also tore down the altar and shrine at Bethel that Jeroboam I had made when he led Israel into sin. He crushed the stones to dust and burned the shameful idol of Asherah.
16 As Josiah was looking around, he noticed several graves in the side of the mountain. He ordered his men to bring out the bones in them and to burn them there upon the altar at Bethel to defile it, just as the Lord’s prophet had declared would happen to Jeroboam’s altar.[b]
17 “What is that monument over there?” he asked.
And the men of the city told him, “It is the grave of the prophet who came from Judah and proclaimed that what you have just done would happen here at the altar at Bethel!”
18 So King Josiah replied, “Leave it alone. Don’t disturb his bones.”
So they didn’t burn his bones or those of the prophet from Samaria.[c]
19 Josiah demolished the shrines on the hills in all of Samaria. They had been built by the various kings of Israel and had made the Lord very angry. But now he crushed them into dust, just as he had done at Bethel. 20 He executed the priests of the heathen shrines upon their own altars, and he burned human bones upon the altars to defile them. Finally he returned to Jerusalem.
21 The king then issued orders for his people to observe the Passover ceremonies as recorded by the Lord their God in The Book of the Covenant. 22 There had not been a Passover celebration like that since the days of the judges of Israel, and there was never another like it in all the years of the kings of Israel and Judah. 23 This Passover was in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Josiah, and it was celebrated in Jerusalem.
24 Josiah also exterminated the mediums and wizards, and every kind of idol worship, both in Jerusalem and throughout the land. For Josiah wanted to follow all the laws that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had found in the Temple. 25 There was no other king who so completely turned to the Lord and followed all the laws of Moses; and no king since the time of Josiah has approached his record of obedience.
26 But the Lord still did not hold back his great anger against Judah, caused by the evils of King Manasseh. 27 For the Lord had said, “I will destroy Judah just as I have destroyed Israel; and I will discard my chosen city of Jerusalem and the Temple that I said was mine.”
28 The rest of the biography of Josiah is written in The Annals of the Kings of Judah. 29 In those days King Neco of Egypt went out to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River. Then King Josiah went out with his troops to fight King Neco; but King Neco withstood him at Megiddo and killed him. 30 His officers took his body back in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem and buried him in the grave he had selected. And his son Jehoahaz was chosen by the nation as its new king.
37-38 As Paul was about to be taken inside, he said to the commander, “May I have a word with you?”
“Do you know Greek?” the commander asked, surprised. “Aren’t you that Egyptian who led a rebellion a few years ago[a] and took 4,000 members of the Assassins with him into the desert?”
39 “No,” Paul replied, “I am a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia which is no small town. I request permission to talk to these people.”
40 The commander agreed, so Paul stood on the stairs and motioned to the people to be quiet; soon a deep silence enveloped the crowd, and he addressed them in Hebrew as follows:
22 “Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I offer my defense.” 2 (When they heard him speaking in Hebrew, the silence was even greater.) 3 “I am a Jew,” he said, “born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, but educated here in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, at whose feet I learned to follow our Jewish laws and customs very carefully. I became very anxious to honor God in everything I did, just as you have tried to do today. 4 And I persecuted the Christians, hounding them to death, binding and delivering both men and women to prison. 5 The High Priest or any member of the Council can testify that this is so. For I asked them for letters to the Jewish leaders in Damascus, with instructions to let me bring any Christians I found to Jerusalem in chains to be punished.
6 “As I was on the road, nearing Damascus, suddenly about noon a very bright light from heaven shone around me. 7 And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?’
8 “‘Who is it speaking to me, sir?’ I asked. And he replied, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you are persecuting.’ 9 The men with me saw the light but didn’t understand what was said.
10 “And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’
“And the Lord told me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told what awaits you in the years ahead.’
11 “I was blinded by the intense light and had to be led into Damascus by my companions. 12 There a man named Ananias, as godly a man as you could find for obeying the law and well thought of by all the Jews of Damascus, 13 came to me, and standing beside me said, ‘Brother Paul, receive your sight!’ And that very hour I could see him!
14 “Then he told me, ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Messiah[b] and hear him speak. 15 You are to take his message everywhere, telling what you have seen and heard. 16 And now, why delay? Go and be baptized and be cleansed from your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow evil men’s advice, who do not hang around with sinners, scoffing at the things of God. 2 But they delight in doing everything God wants them to, and day and night are always meditating on his laws and thinking about ways to follow him more closely.
3 They are like trees along a riverbank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.
4 But for sinners, what a different story! They blow away like chaff before the wind. 5 They are not safe on Judgment Day; they shall not stand among the godly.
6 For the Lord watches over all the plans and paths of godly men, but the paths of the godless lead to doom.
11 The rich man thinks of his wealth as an impregnable defense, a high wall of safety. What a dreamer!
12 Pride ends in destruction; humility ends in honor.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.