1Josiah also kept a Passover to the LORD in Jerusalem. They killed the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month.
2He put the priests in charge of their duties, and encouraged them in the service of the house of the LORD.
3He said to the Levites who taught all Israel, and who were holy to the LORD, "Put the holy ark in the house that Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built. You will not carry it on your shoulders any more. Now serve the LORD your God, and his people Israel."
4"Get yourselves ready by your families, in your divisions, as David king of Israel wrote, and as Solomon his son wrote."
5"Stand in the holy place, arranged by the family groups of your brothers the people, and by the family divisions of the Levites."
6"So kill the Passover lamb, and make yourselves holy, and get things ready for your brothers, so that they may do what the LORD commanded through Moses."
7Josiah gave the people from the flock: lambs and young goats, all for the Passover offerings, for everyone who was there. There were thirty thousand of them, and three thousand bulls. These came from the king's own property.
8His officials gave willingly to the people, to the priests and to the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah and Jehiel, the rulers of the house of God, gave the priests two thousand six hundred small animals and three hundred oxen for the Passover offerings.
9Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethaneel his brothers, and Hashabiah, Jeiel and Jozabad, the chiefs of the Levites, gave the Levites five thousand small animals and five hundred oxen for Passover offerings.
10So the service was made ready. The priests stood in their place, and the Levites in their divisions, as the king had commanded.
11They killed the Passover lambs. The priests sprinkled the blood that they took from their hands, and the Levites skinned the animals.
12They set aside the burnt offerings, to give them to the family groups of the people, so that they could offer them to the LORD, as it is written in the book of Moses. They did the same with the oxen.
13They roasted the Passover lamb with fire, as the rule said. The other holy offerings they boiled in pots, in cauldrons and in pans, and quickly shared them out among all the people.
14After that they got food ready for themselves and for the priests, because the priests, the sons of Aaron, were busy offering the burnt offerings and the fat until night. So the Levites got food ready for themselves and for the priests, the sons of Aaron.
15The singers, the sons of Asaph, were in their place, as David had commanded, and Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun the king's seer. The gatekeepers waited at every gate. They did not need to leave their work, because their brothers the Levites got things ready for them.
16So all the service of the LORD was made ready that same day, to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings on the altar of the LORD, as king Josiah had commanded.
17The people of Israel who were there kept the Passover at that time, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days.
18No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel kept such a Passover as Josiah kept, with the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel who were there, and the people who lived in Jerusalem.
19This Passover was kept in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign.
20After all this, when Josiah had put the temple in order, Necho king of Egypt came up to fight at Carchemish by the Euphrates, and Josiah went out against him.
21But Necho sent messengers to him, saying, "What have I to do with you, king of Judah? I have not come against you today, but against the house I am at war with. God told me to hurry. Stop meddling with God, who is with me, or he will destroy you."
22Even so, Josiah would not turn away from him. Instead he disguised himself so that he could fight him. He did not listen to the words of Necho, which came from the mouth of God, and he came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.
23The archers shot at king Josiah. The king said to his servants, "Take me away, for I am badly wounded."
24So his servants took him out of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had. They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in one of the tombs of his fathers. All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.
25Jeremiah sang a lament for Josiah. All the singing men and the singing women speak of Josiah in their laments to this day. They made it a rule in Israel, and look, these laments are written down.
26Now the rest of the acts of Josiah, and his good deeds, done as it is written in the law of the LORD,
27and his deeds, from first to last, look, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.