Study Desk

But if you tell me, ‘We trust in Adonai our God,' then isn't he the one whose high places and altars Hizkiyahu has removed, telling Y'hudah and Yerushalayim, ‘You must worship before this altar in Yerushalayim'?

But Rav-Shakeh answered them, "Did my master send me to deliver my message just to your master and yourselves? Didn't he send me to address the men sitting on the wall, who, like you, are going to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?"

But the people kept still and didn't answer him so much as a word; for the king's order was, "Don't answer him."

They said to him, "This is what Hizkiyahu says: ‘Today is a day of trouble, rebuke and disgrace. Children are ready to be born, but there is no strength to bring them to birth.

"‘But I know when you sit, when you leave, when you enter — and when you rage against me.

"‘This will be the sign for you: this year, you will eat the grain that grows of itself; the second year, you will eat what grows from that; but in the third year, you will sow, reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

But they did not take heed; and M'nasheh misled them into doing even worse things than the nations Adonai had destroyed ahead of the people of Isra'el.

But the people of the land put to death all those who had been part of the conspiracy against King Amon. Then the people of the land made Yoshiyahu his son king in place of him.

But you are to tell the king of Y'hudah, who sent you to consult Adonai , that Adonai the God of Isra'el also says this: ‘In regard to the words you have heard,

But although the cohanim who had been at the high places did not come up to the altar of Adonai in Yerushalayim, nevertheless they did share matzah with their kinsmen.

But in the eighteenth year of King Yoshiyahu this Pesach was observed to Adonai in Yerushalayim.

During his time Pharaoh N'khoh king of Egypt went up toward the Euphrates River to attack the king of Ashur. King Yoshiyahu went out to oppose him; but at Megiddo, Pharaoh spotted Yoshiyahu and killed him.

Y'hoyakim remitted the silver and gold to Pharaoh; but in order to pay the money Pharaoh demanded, he had to levy a tax on the land. He taxed the people of the land, each according to his means, to pay the silver and gold to Pharaoh N'khoh.

It was in Y'hoyakim's time that N'vukhadnetzar king of Bavel invaded. Y'hoyakim became his vassal for three years, but then he turned against him and rebelled.

He carried all Yerushalayim away captive — all the princes, all the bravest soldiers — 10,000 captives; also all the craftsmen and metalworkers. No one was left but the poorest people of the land.

But the army of the Kasdim went in pursuit of the king and overtook him on the plains near Yericho; all his troops deserted him.

But the commander of the guard left behind some of the poor people of the land to be vineyard-workers and farmers.

But in the seventh month Yishma‘el the son of N'tanyah, the son of Elishama, of royal blood, came with ten men and assassinated G'dalyah and the Judeans and Kasdim who were with him in Mitzpah.

(But G'shur and Aram took Havot-Ya'ir away from them, along with K'nat and its villages — sixty cities.) All these were descendants of Machir the father of Gil‘ad.

Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Yarcha;