The whole country was crying loudly as all the troops were passing by. The king was crossing the Kidron Valley, and all the people were moving down the road toward the desert.
“Why did you bring these?” David asked Ziba. “The donkeys are for the king’s family to ride on,” Ziba answered. “The bread and the ripe fruit are for ⌞your⌟ servants to eat. The wine is for those who become tired and thirsty in the desert.”
He also removed his grandmother Maacah from the position of queen mother because she made a statue of the repulsive goddess Asherah. Asa cut the statue down and burned it in the Kidron Valley.
The priests entered the Lord’s temple to make it clean. They carried into the courtyard every unclean thing that they found in the Lord’s temple. Then the Levites took the unclean items outside the city to the Kidron Brook.
The whole valley, filled with its dead bodies and ashes, and the whole area to the Kidron Valley, as far as the corner of Horse Gate in the east, will be holy to the Lord. It will never be uprooted or torn down again.”