And the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up into the house of the Lord with them, with the priests and prophets and all the people both small and great. They read the words of the covenant that were found in the house of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after his commandments and his testimonies and laws with all their hearts and with all their souls. And all entered into a covenant. The king commanded Hilkiah and his priests that they should bring out of the temple all that had been made for Baal and Asherah and the host of heaven and bring it down to the brook Kidron and to burn it there and scatter the ashes on the graves of the common people. And he had the priests go and defile all the high places where they had sacrificed. They were also not to sacrifice at the altar of the Lord, but eat unleavened bread among their brothers. He also defiled Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could make their sons and daughters pass through the fire to Molech. He took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun at the entrance of the house of the Lord in the room of Nathan Melech the officer, who was in the court and they burned the chariots of the sun. He broke down the altars on the roof and in the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and beat the altars of Manasseh into dust and threw them in the brook Kidron. He defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, the abomination of the Sidonians and Chemosh and Moab, and Milcom the idol of the Ammonites. He broke the pillars, the Asherah poles and filled their places with human bones. Even the altar at Bethel which Jeroboam had made. And Josiah saw the tombs, took the bones out and burned them on the altar to make them unclean according to the word of the Lord which the man of God had proclaimed.
The king asked, “What tomb is that I see?” The people of the city said, “It is the tomb of the man of God.” And he said, “Let him be! Let no one move his bones.” So the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria remained undisturbed.
He also removed all the shrines on the high places and in the cities of Samaria, which made the Israelites provoke the Lord to anger and he did to them as he had done in Bethel. He slaughtered the priests and burned them on the altars. Then he returned to Jerusalem. He commanded the people to celebrate the Passover, as it is written in the book of the covenant. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, it was first celebrated. Josiah removed all the mediums and wizards, the idols and abominations in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, to fulfill the words of the law which were written in the book that Hezekiah found in the house of the Lord. There was no king like him, who had turned to the Lord with all his heart, according to the law Moses. But the wrath of the Lord still burned against Judah. Therefore the Lord said, “I will also remove Judah out of my sight, as with Israel. I will cast off Jerusalem and its house, where I said, ‘My name shall be there.’ ”
In his days Pharaoh, Necoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. Josiah went against him and Necoh killed him in Megiddo. His men brought him to Jerusalem to his grave. And Jehoahaz his son became king in his place when we has twenty-five years old.