2 Chronicles 21

⁵⁰And Jehoshaphat rested with his fathers and was buried with them in the city of his father David. And his son Jehoram reigned in his place.

¹⁶And Rehoboam rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David. And his son Abijah reigned in his place.

²⁰Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He died, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

¹⁶In the fifth year of the reign of Joram son of Ahab over Israel, Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat succeeded his father as king of Judah.

¹⁷Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years.

³¹And Solomon rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of his father David. And his son Rehoboam reigned in his place.

²So they went throughout Judah and gathered the Levites from all the cities of Judah and the heads of the families of Israel. And when they came to Jerusalem,

⁵So he gathered the priests and Levites and said, “Go out to the cities of Judah and collect the money due annually from all Israel, to repair the house of your God. Do it quickly.” The Levites, however, did not make haste.

⁶So the leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, “The Lord is righteous.”

¹⁸No such Passover had been observed in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel ever observed a Passover like the one that Josiah observed with the priests, the Levites, all Judah, the Israelites who were present, and the people of Jerusalem.

²⁷And Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And his son Hezekiah reigned in his place.

⁴When Jehoram had established himself over his father’s kingdom, he strengthened himself by putting to the sword all his brothers along with some of the princes of Israel.

²³Rehoboam also acted wisely by dispersing some of his sons throughout the districts of Judah and Benjamin, and to all the fortified cities. He gave them abundant provisions and sought many wives for them.

¹⁵If a man has two wives, one beloved and the other unloved, and both bear him sons, but the unloved wife has the firstborn son,

¹⁶when that man assigns his inheritance to his sons he must not appoint the son of the beloved wife as the firstborn over the son of the unloved wife.

⁵Rehoboam lived in Jerusalem, and he built up cities for defense in Judah.

⁶But while he was still alive, Abraham gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.

⁵He went to his father’s house in Ophrah, and on one stone murdered his seventy brothers, the sons of Jerubbaal. But Jotham, the youngest son of Jerubbaal, survived, because he hid himself.

¹⁷So they went to war against Judah, invaded it, and carried off all the possessions found in the king’s palace, along with his sons and wives; not a son was left to him except Jehoahaz, his youngest.

⁸Then Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

¹⁰When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs of the house of Judah.

¹²Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did Cain slay him? Because his own deeds were evil, while those of his brother were righteous.

⁵⁶In this way God repaid the wickedness that Abimelech had done to his father in murdering his seventy brothers.

⁵⁷And God also brought all the wickedness of the men of Shechem back upon their own heads. So the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal came upon them.

¹⁷Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years.

¹⁸And Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For he married a daughter of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord.

¹Now Jehoshaphat had an abundance of riches and honor, and he allied himself with Ahab by marriage.

²⁸After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

¹⁸And Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For he married a daughter of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord.

²Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem one year. His mother’s name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri.

²⁵But Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord and acted more wickedly than all who were before him.

²⁶For he walked in all the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat and in his sins, which he caused Israel to commit, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger with their worthless idols.

²⁵I rebuked them and called down curses on them. I beat some of these men and pulled out their hair. Then I made them take an oath before God and said, “You must not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters as wives for your sons or for yourselves!

²⁶Did not King Solomon of Israel sin in matters like this? There was not a king like him among many nations, and he was loved by his God, who made him king over all Israel—yet foreign women drew him into sin.

³⁶I will give one tribe to his son, so that My servant David will always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put My Name.

¹⁷There I will make a horn grow for David; I have prepared a lamp for My anointed one.

¹⁸I will clothe his enemies with shame, but the crown upon him will gleam.”

¹²And when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.

¹³He will build a house for My Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

⁶⁹He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David,

⁷⁹to shine on those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

¹³Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom away from him. I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

¹⁰So to this day Edom has been in rebellion against the hand of Judah. Likewise, Libnah rebelled against his hand at the same time, because Jehoram had forsaken the Lord, the God of his fathers.

⁹So the king of Israel, the king of Judah, and the king of Edom set out, and after they had traveled a roundabout route for seven days, they had no water for their army or for their animals.

⁴⁷And there was no king in Edom; a deputy served as king.

²⁰In the days of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against the hand of Judah and appointed their own king.

²¹So Jehoram crossed over to Zair with all his chariots. When the Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, he rose up and attacked by night. His troops, however, fled to their homes.

⁴⁰You shall live by the sword and serve your brother. But when you rebel, you will tear his yoke from your neck.”

²²The moment they began their shouts and praises, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir who had come against Judah, and they were defeated.

²³The Ammonites and Moabites rose up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction. And when they had finished off the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another.

³¹and said to Jeroboam, “Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and I will give you ten tribes.

²So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.

⁸When the Rabshakeh heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libnah.

¹⁰But as for us, the Lord is our God. We have not forsaken Him; the priests who minister to the Lord are sons of Aaron, and the Levites attend to their duties.

²¹They have provoked My jealousy by that which is not God; they have enraged Me with their worthless idols. So I will make them jealous by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation without understanding.

³³For they have forsaken Me to worship Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites. They have not walked in My ways, nor done what is right in My eyes, nor kept My statutes and judgments, as Solomon’s father David did.

⁵then I will set My face against that man and his family and cut off from among their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves with Molech.

⁷They must no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat demons to which they have prostituted themselves. This will be a permanent statute for them for the generations to come.’

⁷At that time on a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.

²⁰But I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads My servants to be sexually immoral and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

²¹Even though I have given her time to repent of her immorality, she is unwilling.

¹¹“Since Manasseh king of Judah has committed all these abominations, acting more wickedly than the Amorites who preceded him, and with his idols has caused Judah to sin,

²Destroy completely all the places where the nations you are dispossessing have served their gods—atop the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.

³Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place.

²And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

³He removed the foreign altars and high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and chopped down the Asherah poles.

³Now the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals,

⁴but he sought the God of his father and walked by His commandments rather than the practices of Israel.

¹Shortly before the Lord took Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal,

⁵At that moment the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. As the king watched the hand that was writing,

²“Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations, from the day I first spoke to you during the reign of Josiah until today.

²⁸“Take another scroll and rewrite on it the very words that were on the original scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah has burned.

²⁹You are to proclaim concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah that this is what the Lord says: You have burned the scroll and said, ‘Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon would surely come and destroy this land and deprive it of man and beast?’

⁴When Jehoram had established himself over his father’s kingdom, he strengthened himself by putting to the sword all his brothers along with some of the princes of Israel.

¹¹Jehoram had also built high places on the hills of Judah; he had caused the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves and had led Judah astray.

³⁰However, Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.

³¹And as if it were not enough for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he even married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and he then proceeded to serve and worship Baal.

⁶And Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For he married a daughter of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord.

²¹For behold, the Lord is coming out of His dwelling to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will reveal her bloodshed and will no longer conceal her slain.

⁵⁶In this way God repaid the wickedness that Abimelech had done to his father in murdering his seventy brothers.

⁵⁷And God also brought all the wickedness of the men of Shechem back upon their own heads. So the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal came upon them.

²¹If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

¹¹Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, for he is determined to follow worthless idols.

¹⁶You have kept the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab’s house; you have followed their counsel. Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of contempt; you will bear the scorn of the nations.”

¹⁸After all this, the Lord afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels.

¹⁹This continued day after day until two full years had passed. Finally, his intestines came out because of his disease, and he died in severe pain. And his people did not make a fire in his honor as they had done for his fathers.

¹⁸(Now with the reward for his wickedness Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong and burst open in the middle, and all his intestines spilled out.

²⁷The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs and itch from which you cannot be cured.

¹⁸The cursing that he wore like a coat, may it soak into his body like water, and into his bones like oil.

⁶⁷In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.

³⁷You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the Lord will drive you.

¹¹Some Philistines also brought gifts and silver as tribute to Jehoshaphat, and the Arabs brought him 7,700 rams and 7,700 goats from their flocks.

¹Then the people of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, the youngest son of Jehoram, king in his place, since the raiders who had come into the camp with the Arabs had killed all the older sons. So Ahaziah son of Jehoram became king of Judah.

¹¹So the Lord brought against them the military commanders of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon.

¹⁴Then the Lord raised up against Solomon an adversary, Hadad the Edomite, from the royal line of Edom.

²³And God raised up against Solomon another adversary, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had fled from his master, Hadadezer king of Zobah,

⁶If a ram’s horn sounds in a city, do the people not tremble? If calamity comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?

¹Then the people of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, the youngest son of Jehoram, king in his place, since the raiders who had come into the camp with the Arabs had killed all the older sons. So Ahaziah son of Jehoram became king of Judah.

⁶So he returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds they had inflicted on him at Ramah when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. Then Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to Jezreel to visit Joram son of Ahab, because Joram had been wounded.

²³There at Beth-shemesh, Jehoash king of Israel captured Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz. Then Jehoash brought him to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate—a section of four hundred cubits.

³I have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed.

⁴His sons are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender.

⁷For the sons of that wicked woman Athaliah had broken into the house of God and had even used the sacred objects of the house of the Lord for the Baals.

¹⁵And day after day you yourself will suffer from a severe illness, a disease of your bowels, until it causes your bowels to come out.’”

²³Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

²⁹(In the eleventh year of Joram son of Ahab, Ahaziah had become king over Judah.)

¹⁴And he was buried in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier that was full of spices and various blended perfumes; then they made a great fire in his honor.

⁵you will die in peace. As spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who preceded you, so people will burn spices for you and lament, ‘Alas, O master!’ For I Myself have spoken this word, declares the Lord.”

¹⁸Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: “They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!’ They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!’

²⁵And when the Arameans had withdrawn, they left Joash severely wounded. His own servants conspired against him for shedding the blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest, and they killed him on his bed. So he died and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

²⁷And Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And his son Hezekiah reigned in his place.

²⁸Is this man Coniah a despised and shattered pot, a jar that no one wants? Why are he and his descendants hurled out and cast into a land they do not know?

⁷The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.

²¹and all the people of the land rejoiced. And the city was quiet, because Athaliah had been put to the sword.