2 Kings 23:19

⁶He did this in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to Naphtali, around in their ruins. ⁷He broke down the altars, beat the Asherah poles and the engraved images into powder, and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, then returned to Jerusalem.

³³Ahab made the Asherah; and Ahab did more yet to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

³¹He made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi.

¹⁶For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of Ahab’s house. You walk in their counsels, that I may make you a ruin, and your inhabitants a hissing. You will bear the reproach of my people.”

⁶So the couriers went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, according to the commandment of the king, saying, “You children of Israel, turn again to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may return to the remnant of you that have escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. ⁷Don’t be like your fathers and like your brothers, who trespassed against the LORD, the God of their fathers, so that he gave them up to desolation, as you see. ⁸Now don’t be stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the LORD, and enter into his sanctuary, which he has sanctified forever, and serve the LORD your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. ⁹For if you turn again to the LORD, your brothers and your children will find compassion with those who led them captive, and will come again into this land, because the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you if you return to him.”

¹⁰So the couriers passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even to Zebulun, but people ridiculed them and mocked them. ¹¹Nevertheless some men of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.

¹⁷Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger. Behold, they put the branch to their nose. ¹⁸Therefore I will also deal in wrath. My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”

¹⁸The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. ¹⁹Do they provoke me to anger?” says the LORD. “Don’t they provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own faces?”

¹Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah and broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the Asherah poles, and broke down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, also in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.

⁹The children of Israel secretly did things that were not right against the LORD their God; and they built high places for themselves in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city;

³²For the saying which he cried by the LORD’s word against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely happen.”