Nevertheless the high places were not removed; the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places — Azariah, like his predecessors, fails to eliminate the high places (*bamot*, במות), the persistent institutional compromise that undermines comprehensive reform. The word "nevertheless" (רַק, *rak*, "only") signals the familiar pattern: outward rightness coupled with cultic incompleteness. This persistent institutional failure becomes the structural flaw that no individual king's piety can remedy; systematic idolatry requires systematic reformation. The people's continued unauthorized worship reveals the depth of popular attachment to syncretistic practice.

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