2 Kings 23:9-11

Contemporary English Version

⁹Those local priests could not serve at the Lord's altar in Jerusalem, but they were allowed to eat sacred bread,^[a] just like the priests from Jerusalem.

¹⁰^(A) Josiah sent some men to Hinnom Valley just outside Jerusalem with orders to make the altar there unfit for worship. That way, people could no longer use it for sacrificing their children to the god Molech. ¹¹He also got rid of the horses that the kings of Judah used in their ceremonies to worship the sun, and he destroyed the chariots along with them. The horses had been kept near the entrance to the Lord's temple, in a courtyard^[b] close to where an official named Nathan-Melech lived.

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Footnotes

23.9 sacred bread: The Hebrew text has “thin bread,” which may be either the pieces of thin bread made without yeast to be eaten during the Passover Festival (see verses 21-23) or the baked flour used in sacrifices to give thanks to the Lord (see Leviticus 2.4,5).
23.11 in a courtyard: One possible meaning for the difficult Hebrew text.