9. (The priests of the high places could not function at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem; but they, along with their relatives, ate the unleavened bread.)
10. The king also defiled Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, so that there would no longer be any immolation of sons or daughters by fire in honor of Molech.
11. He did away with the horses which the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun; these were at the entrance of the house of the Lord, near the chamber of Nathan-melech the official, which was in the large building. The chariots of the sun he destroyed by fire.
12. He also demolished the altars made by the kings of Judah on the roof (the roof terrace of Ahaz), and the altars made by Manasseh in the two courts of the Lord’s house. He pulverized them and threw the dust into the Wadi Kidron.
13. The king defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of the Destroyer, which Solomon, king of Israel, had built in honor of Astarte, the Sidonian horror, of Chemosh, the Moabite horror, and of Milcom, the Ammonites’ abomination.
14. He broke to pieces the pillars, cut down the asherahs, and filled the places where they had been with human bones.
15. Likewise the altar which was at Bethel, the high place built by Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—this same altar and high place he tore down and burned, grinding the high place to powder and burning the asherah.
16. When Josiah turned and saw the graves there on the mountainside, he ordered the bones taken from the graves and burned on the altar, and thus defiled it, according to the Lord’s word proclaimed by the man of God as Jeroboam stood by the altar on the feast day. When the king looked up and saw the grave of the man of God who had proclaimed these words,
17. he asked, “What is that marker I see?” The people of the city replied, “The grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed the very things you have done to the altar in Bethel.”
18. “Let him be,” he said, “let no one move his bones.” So they left his bones undisturbed together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.
19. Josiah also removed all the temples on the high places in the cities of Samaria which the kings of Israel had built, provoking the Lord; he did the very same to them as he had done in Bethel.