ction, but the original MS. undoubtedly ended with some
analogous formula. I have quoted above the most
characteristic parts of the twenty-eighth chapter.

The assembly took the oath required of them, and the king at once
displayed the utmost zeal in exacting literal performance of the
ordinances contained in the Book of the Law. His first step was to
purify the temple: Hilkiah and his priests overthrew all the idols
contained in it, and all the objects that had been fashioned in
honour of strange gods--the Baals, the Asherim, and all the Host of
Heaven--and, carrying them out of Jerusalem into the valley of the
Kidron, cast them into the flames, and scattered the ashes upon the
place where all the filth of the city was cast out. The altars and the
houses of the Sodomites which defiled the temple courts were demolished,
the chariots of the sun broken in pieces, and the horses of the god
sent to the stables of the king's chamberlain;* the sanctuaries and high
places which had been set up at the gates of the city, in the public
places, and along the walls were razed to the ground, and the Tophet,
where the people made their children pass through the fire, was
transformed into a common sewer.

* [The Hebrew text admits of this meaning, which is,
however, not clear in the English A.V.--Tr.]

The provincial sanctuaries shared the fate of those of the capital; in
a short time, from Geba to Beersheba, there remained not one of those
"high places," at which the ancestors of the nation and their rulers
had offered prayers for generations past. The wave of reform passed even
across the frontier and was borne into the Assyrian province of Samaria;
the temple and image which Jeroboam had set up at Bethel were reduced to
ashes, and human bones were burnt upon the altar to desecrate it beyond
possibility of purification.*

* 2 Kings xxiii. 3-20, 24-27, where several glosses and
interpolations are easily recognisable, such as the episode
at Bethel (v. 15-20), the authenticity of which is otherwise
incontestable. The account in 2 Chron. xxxiv. is a defaced
reproduction of that of 2 Kings, and it places the reform,
in part at least, before the discovery of the new law.

The governor offered no objection to these acts; he regarded them, in
the first place, as the private affairs of the subjects of the empire,
with which he had no need to interfere, so long as the outburst of
religio