²Then the king went up to the temple of Yahweh, and all of the men of Judah and all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were with him, including the priests, the prophets, and all of the people from smallest to greatest; and in their hearing^a he read all of the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been found in the temple of Yahweh. ³Then the king stood by the pillar, and he made^b a covenant before Yahweh, to go after Yahweh and to keep his commands and his warnings and his statutes with all of his heart and with all of his soul, to keep the words of this covenant written on this scroll. Then all of the people joined^c in the covenant.

⁴Then the king^d commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the second priests, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of Yahweh all of the objects made for Baal and for the Asherah and for all the host of heaven, and he burned them outside of Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and then he carried their ashes to Bethel. ⁵He removed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem and who offered incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. ⁶He brought out the Asherah image from the temple of Yahweh outside of Jerusalem to the Wadi^e Kidron and burnt it at the Wadi Kidron; then he pulverized it to dust and threw its dust upon the tombs^f of the common people.^g

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Footnotes

aLiterally “ears”
bLiterally “cut”
cLiterally “stood”
dThat is, Josiah
eOr “valley”; a wadi is a valley that is dry most of the year, but contains a stream during the rainy season
fHebrew “tomb”
gLiterally “children of the people”