The Unseen God — Part One

Building a Life That Matters for Good -  Buckle Up: Accepting the Free Gift of God’s Grace

God Has Not Forgotten You: When Life Is Turned Upside Down

Dealing With Disappointment

Government of Peace

Authentic Manhood

Titus

Anticipating Heaven

Book of Daniel

101 Prayers for Military Wives

The Listener’s Bible®: NIV Edition

New International Version™  (Anglicised), Audio Edition

Holy Bible, New International Version™ (Anglicised), South Asian Audio Edition

<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bk2KI">
 <div class="chapter ch23" data-usfm="2KI.23">
 <div class="label">23</div><div class="s1">Josiah Renews the Covenant</div><div class="p"> 1Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 2He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets&#8212;all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. 3The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord&#8212;to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.</div><div class="p"> 4The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. 5He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem&#8212;those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. 6He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. 7He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.</div><div class="p"> 8Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the gateway at the entrance of the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which was on the left of the city gate. 9Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.</div><div class="p"> 10He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek. 11He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court#23:11 The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.</div><div class="p"> 12He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. 13The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption&#8212;the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon. 14Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.</div><div class="p"> 15Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin&#8212;even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. 16Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.</div><div class="p"> 17The king asked, &#8220;What is that tombstone I see?&#8221;</div><div class="p">The people of the city said, &#8220;It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 18&#8220;Leave it alone,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Don&#8217;t let anyone disturb his bones.&#8221; So they spared his bones and those of the prophet who had come from Samaria.</div><div class="p"> 19Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria and that had aroused the Lord&#8217;s anger. 20Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem.</div><div class="p"> 21The king gave this order to all the people: &#8220;Celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.&#8221; 22Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. 23But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem.</div><div class="p"> 24Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem. This he did to fulfill the requirements of the law written in the book that Hilkiah the priest had discovered in the temple of the Lord. 25Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did&#8212;with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.</div><div class="p"> 26Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to arouse his anger. 27So the Lord said, &#8220;I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, &#8216;My Name shall be there.&#8217;#23:27 1 Kings 8:29&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 28As for the other events of Josiah&#8217;s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?</div><div class="p"> 29While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Necho faced him and killed him at Megiddo. 30Josiah&#8217;s servants brought his body in a chariot from Megiddo to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father.</div><div class="s1">Jehoahaz King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 31Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother&#8217;s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. 32He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done. 33Pharaoh Necho put him in chains at Riblah in the land of Hamath so that he might not reign in Jerusalem, and he imposed on Judah a levy of a hundred talents#23:33 That is, about 3 3/4 tons or about 3.4 metric tons of silver and a talent#23:33 That is, about 75 pounds or about 34 kilograms of gold. 34Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of his father Josiah and changed Eliakim&#8217;s name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz and carried him off to Egypt, and there he died. 35Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh Necho the silver and gold he demanded. In order to do so, he taxed the land and exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land according to their assessments.</div><div class="s1">Jehoiakim King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 36Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother&#8217;s name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah; she was from Rumah. 37And he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his predecessors had done.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bk2KI">
 <div class="chapter ch24" data-usfm="2KI.24">
 <div class="label">24</div><div class="p"> 1During Jehoiakim&#8217;s reign, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded the land, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. But then he turned against Nebuchadnezzar and rebelled. 2The Lord sent Babylonian,#24:2 Or Chaldean Aramean, Moabite and Ammonite raiders against him to destroy Judah, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by his servants the prophets. 3Surely these things happened to Judah according to the Lord&#8217;s command, in order to remove them from his presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all he had done, 4including the shedding of innocent blood. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive.</div><div class="p"> 5As for the other events of Jehoiakim&#8217;s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? 6Jehoiakim rested with his ancestors. And Jehoiachin his son succeeded him as king.</div><div class="p"> 7The king of Egypt did not march out from his own country again, because the king of Babylon had taken all his territory, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Euphrates River.</div><div class="s1">Jehoiachin King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 8Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother&#8217;s name was Nehushta daughter of Elnathan; she was from Jerusalem. 9He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father had done.</div><div class="p"> 10At that time the officers of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it, 11and Nebuchadnezzar himself came up to the city while his officers were besieging it. 12Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his attendants, his nobles and his officials all surrendered to him.</div><div class="p">In the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner. 13As the Lord had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace, and cut up the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the Lord. 14He carried all Jerusalem into exile: all the officers and fighting men, and all the skilled workers and artisans&#8212;a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left.</div><div class="p"> 15Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin captive to Babylon. He also took from Jerusalem to Babylon the king&#8217;s mother, his wives, his officials and the prominent people of the land. 16The king of Babylon also deported to Babylon the entire force of seven thousand fighting men, strong and fit for war, and a thousand skilled workers and artisans. 17He made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin&#8217;s uncle, king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah.</div><div class="s1">Zedekiah King of Judah</div><div class="p"> 18Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother&#8217;s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. 19He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. 20It was because of the Lord&#8217;s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence.</div><div class="s1">The Fall of Jerusalem</div><div class="p">Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
 <div class="book bk2KI">
 <div class="chapter ch25" data-usfm="2KI.25">
 <div class="label">25</div><div class="p"> 1So in the ninth year of Zedekiah&#8217;s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it. 2The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.</div><div class="p"> 3By the ninth day of the fourth#25:3 Probable reading of the original Hebrew text (see Jer. 52:6); Masoretic Text does not have fourth. month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. 4Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king&#8217;s garden, though the Babylonians#25:4 Or Chaldeans; also in verses 13, 25 and 26 were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah,#25:4 Or the Jordan Valley 5but the Babylonian#25:5 Or Chaldean; also in verses 10 and 24 army pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, 6and he was captured.</div><div class="p">He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him. 7They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.</div><div class="p"> 8On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 9He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. 10The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. 11Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon. 12But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.</div><div class="p"> 13The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the Lord and they carried the bronze to Babylon. 14They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service. 15The commander of the imperial guard took away the censers and sprinkling bowls&#8212;all that were made of pure gold or silver.</div><div class="p"> 16The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea and the movable stands, which Solomon had made for the temple of the Lord, was more than could be weighed. 17Each pillar was eighteen cubits#25:17 That is, about 27 feet or about 8.1 meters high. The bronze capital on top of one pillar was three cubits#25:17 That is, about 4 1/2 feet or about 1.4 meters high and was decorated with a network and pomegranates of bronze all around. The other pillar, with its network, was similar.</div><div class="p"> 18The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers. 19Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men, and five royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land and sixty of the conscripts who were found in the city. 20Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. 21There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed.</div><div class="p">So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.</div><div class="p"> 22Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon appointed Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, to be over the people he had left behind in Judah. 23When all the army officers and their men heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah as governor, they came to Gedaliah at Mizpah&#8212;Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, Jaazaniah the son of the Maakathite, and their men. 24Gedaliah took an oath to reassure them and their men. &#8220;Do not be afraid of the Babylonian officials,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Settle down in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will go well with you.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 25In the seventh month, however, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, who was of royal blood, came with ten men and assassinated Gedaliah and also the men of Judah and the Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah. 26At this, all the people from the least to the greatest, together with the army officers, fled to Egypt for fear of the Babylonians.</div><div class="s1">Jehoiachin Released</div><div class="p"> 27In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He did this on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. 28He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 29So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king&#8217;s table. 30Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.</div>
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