¹ The word of Jehovah that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations.

² Of Egypt: concerning the army of Pharaoh-Necho king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates at Carchemish, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah.

³ Make ready buckler and shield, and draw near to battle!

⁴ Harness the horses, and mount ye horsemen, and stand forth with helmets; polish the spears, put on the coats of mail!

⁵ Why do I see them dismayed, turned away back? And their mighty ones are beaten down, and take to flight, and look not back? Terror [is] on every side, saith Jehovah.

⁶ Let not the swift flee away, neither let the mighty man escape! -- Toward the north, hard by the river Euphrates, they have stumbled and fallen.

⁷ Who is this [that] riseth up as the Nile, whose waters toss themselves like the rivers?

⁸ It is Egypt that riseth up as the Nile, and [his] waters toss themselves like the rivers; and he saith, I will rise up, I will cover the earth; I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof.

⁹ Go up, ye horses, and drive furiously, ye chariots; and let the mighty men go forth: Cush and Phut that handle the shield, and the Ludim that handle the bow [and] bend it.

¹⁰ For this is the day of the Lord Jehovah of hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may be avenged of his adversaries; and the sword shall devour, and it shall be sated and made drunk with their blood; for the Lord Jehovah of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country, by the river Euphrates.

¹¹ Go up to Gilead, and fetch balm, O virgin-daughter of Egypt! In vain shalt thou multiply remedies: there is no healing for thee.

¹² The nations have heard of thy shame, and thy cry hath filled the earth; for the mighty man stumbleth against the mighty, they are both fallen together.

¹³ The word that Jehovah spoke to Jeremiah the prophet, concerning the coming of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon to smite the land of Egypt:

¹⁴ Declare in Egypt, and publish in Migdol, and publish in Noph, and in Tahpanhes; say, Stand fast, and prepare thee; for the sword devoureth round about thee.

¹⁵ Why are thy valiants swept away? They stood not, for Jehovah did thrust them down.

¹⁶ He made many to stumble, yea, one fell upon another; and they said, Arise, and let us return to our own people and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword.

¹⁷ There did they cry, Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he hath let the time appointed go by.

¹⁸ [As] I live, saith the King, whose name is Jehovah of hosts, surely as Tabor among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so shall he come.

¹⁹ Thou, inhabitress, daughter of Egypt, furnish for thyself a captive's baggage, for Noph shall be a desolation and shall be ruined, so that none shall dwell therein.

²⁰ Egypt is a very fair heifer; the gad-fly cometh, it cometh from the north.

²¹ Also her hired men in the midst of her are like fatted bullocks; for they also have turned back, they have fled away together, they did not stand; for the day of their calamity is come upon them, the time of their visitation.

²² Her voice shall go like a serpent's; for they shall march with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood.

²³ They shall cut down her forest, saith Jehovah, though it be impenetrable; for they are more than the locusts, and are innumerable.

²⁴ The daughter of Egypt is put to shame; she is delivered into the hand of the people of the north.

²⁵ Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, saith, Behold, I will punish Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, and her gods, and her kings; yea, Pharaoh and them that confide in him.

²⁶ And I will give them into the hand of those that seek their life, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants; but afterwards it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old, saith Jehovah.

²⁷ But thou, my servant Jacob, fear not, neither be dismayed, Israel: for behold, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make [him] afraid.

²⁸ Fear thou not, my servant Jacob, saith Jehovah: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee; but I will correct thee with judgment, and I will not hold thee altogether guiltless.

¹ And the king sent, and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

² And the king went up into the house of Jehovah, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of Jehovah.

³ And the king stood on the dais, and made a covenant before Jehovah, to walk after Jehovah, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all [his] heart, and with all [his] soul, to establish the words of this covenant that are written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

⁴ And the king commanded Hilkijah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring forth out of the temple of Jehovah all the vessels that had been made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of the heavens; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them to Bethel.

⁵ And he abolished the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah, and the environs of Jerusalem; and them that burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven.

⁶ And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Jehovah, outside Jerusalem, to the torrent of Kidron, and burned it at the torrent of Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder upon the graves of the children of the people.

⁷ And he broke down the houses of the sodomites, which were in the house of Jehovah, where the women wove tents for the Asherah.

⁸ And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba even to Beer-sheba; and he broke down the high places of the gates, those at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, [and] those on the left hand of any [going in] at the gate of the city.

⁹ Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of Jehovah in Jerusalem, but they ate of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

¹⁰ And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no man might cause his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

¹¹ And he abolished the horses that the kings of Judah had appointed to the sun at the entrance of the house of Jehovah, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun, with fire.

¹² And the king broke down the altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Jehovah, and he shattered them, [removing them] from thence, and cast the powder of them into the torrent of Kidron.

¹³ And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

¹⁴ And he broke in pieces the columns, and cut down the Asherahs, and filled their place with the bones of men.

¹⁵ Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, the high place that Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he broke down; and burned the high place, stamped it small to powder, and burned the Asherah.

¹⁶ And Josiah turned himself, and saw the sepulchres that were there on the mount; and he sent and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned [them] upon the altar, and defiled it, according to the word of Jehovah, that the man of God had proclaimed, who proclaimed these things.

¹⁷ Then he said, What tombstone is that which I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things which thou hast done against the altar of Bethel.

¹⁸ And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. And they saved his bones, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria.

¹⁹ And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke [Jehovah] to anger, Josiah removed, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.

²⁰ And he sacrificed upon the altars all the priests of the high places that were there, and burned men's bones upon them. And he returned to Jerusalem.

²¹ And the king commanded all the people saying, Hold the passover to Jehovah your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant.

²² For there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah;

²³ but in the eighteenth year of king Josiah was this passover holden to Jehovah in Jerusalem.

²⁴ Moreover the necromancers and the soothsayers, and the teraphim and the idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah took away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkijah the priest had found in the house of Jehovah.

²⁵ And before him there had been no king like him that turned to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there his like.

²⁶ But Jehovah turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.

²⁷ And Jehovah said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will reject this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

²⁸ And the rest of the acts of Josiah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁹ In his days Pharaoh-Nechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and king Josiah went against him; but [Nechoh] slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

³⁰ And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father's stead.

³¹ Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

³² And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, according to all that his fathers had done.

³³ And Pharaoh-Nechoh had him bound at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and laid a tribute upon the land of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

³⁴ And Pharaoh-Nechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king instead of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. And he took Jehoahaz; and he came to Egypt, and died there.

³⁵ And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he laid a proportional tax on the land to give the money according to the command of Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of every one according to his estimation, to give it to Pharaoh-Nechoh.

³⁶ Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Zebuddah, daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

³⁷ And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, according to all that his fathers had done.