"Where are the gods that you made for yourselves? When you are in trouble, let them save you---if they can! Judah, you have as many gods as you have cities.

The LORD says, "If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and becomes another man's wife, he cannot take her back again. This would completely defile the land. But, Israel, you have had many lovers, and now you want to return to me!

Look up at the hilltops. Is there any place where you have not acted like a prostitute? You waited for lovers along the roadside, as an Arab waits for victims in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution.

Their idolatry made the LORD jealous; the evil they did made him angry.

They sacrificed to gods that are not real, new gods their ancestors had never known, gods that Israel had never obeyed.

Then Josiah ordered the High Priest Hilkiah, his assistant priests, and the guards on duty at the entrance to the Temple to bring out of the Temple all the objects used in the worship of Baal, of the goddess Asherah, and of the stars. The king burned all these objects outside the city near Kidron Valley and then had the ashes taken to Bethel.

He removed from office the priests that the kings of Judah had ordained to offer sacrifices on the pagan altars in the cities of Judah and in places near Jerusalem---all the priests who offered sacrifices to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars.

Josiah desecrated the altars that King Solomon had built east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Olives, for the worship of disgusting idols---Astarte the goddess of Sidon, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Molech the god of Ammon.

Their land is full of idols, and they worship objects that they have made with their own hands.

Yet idols are worshiped in Gilead, and those who worship them will die. Bulls are sacrificed in Gilgal, and the altars there will become piles of stone in the open fields."

and they have built altars for Baal in order to burn their children in the fire as sacrifices. I never commanded them to do this; it never even entered my mind.

They have built altars to Baal in Hinnom Valley, to sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god Molech. I did not command them to do this, and it did not even enter my mind that they would do such a thing and make the people of Judah sin."

He built pagan altars in the Temple, the place that the LORD had said was where he should be worshiped.

In the two courtyards of the Temple he built altars for the worship of the stars.