2 Chronicles 30–33

Preparations for Passover

30The people had not been able to celebrate the Passover Festival at the proper time, in the first month, because not enough priests were ritually clean and not many people had assembled in Jerusalem. ^2–3*So King Hezekiah, his officials, and the people of Jerusalem agreed to celebrate it in the second month, and the king sent word to all the people of Israel and Judah. He took special care to send letters to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, inviting them to come to the Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover in honour of the Lord, the God of Israel. ⁴The king and the people were pleased with their plan, ⁵so they invited all the Israelites, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, to come together in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover according to the Law, in larger numbers than ever before. ⁶Messengers went out at the command of the king and his officials through all Judah and Israel with the following invitation:

“People of Israel, you have survived the Assyrian conquest of the land. Now return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he will return to you. ⁷Do not be like your ancestors and your fellow-Israelites who were unfaithful to the Lord their God. As you can see, he punished them severely. ⁸Do not be stubborn as they were, but obey the Lord. Come to the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Lord your God has made holy for ever, and worship him so that he will no longer be angry with you. ⁹If you return to the Lord, then those who have taken your relatives away as prisoners will take pity on them and let them come back home. The Lord your God is kind and merciful, and if you return to him, he will accept you.”

¹⁰The messengers went to every city in the territory of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far north as the tribe of Zebulun, but people laughed at them and ridiculed them. ¹¹Still, there were some from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun who were willing to come to Jerusalem. ¹²God was also at work in Judah and united the people in their determination to obey his will by following the commands of the king and his officials.

Passover Is Celebrated

¹³A great number of people gathered in Jerusalem in the second month to celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. ¹⁴They took all the altars that had been used in Jerusalem for offering sacrifices and burning incense and threw them into the valley of the Kidron. ¹⁵And on the fourteenth day of the month they killed the lambs for the Passover sacrifice. The priests and Levites who were not ritually clean were so ashamed that they dedicated themselves to the Lord, and now they could sacrifice burnt offerings in the Temple. ¹⁶They took their places in the Temple according to the instructions in the Law of Moses, the man of God. The Levites gave the blood of the sacrifices to the priests, who sprinkled it on the altar. ¹⁷Because many of the people were not ritually clean, they could not kill the Passover lambs, so the Levites did it for them, and dedicated the lambs to the Lord. ¹⁸In addition, many of those who had come from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not performed the ritual of purification, and so they were observing Passover improperly. King Hezekiah offered this prayer for them: ¹⁹“O Lord, the God of our ancestors, in your goodness forgive those who are worshipping you with all their heart, even though they are not ritually clean.” ²⁰The Lord answered Hezekiah’s prayer; he forgave the people and did not harm them. ²¹For seven days the people who had gathered in Jerusalem celebrated the Festival of Unleavened Bread with great joy, and day after day the Levites and the priests praised the Lord with all their strength.^{r 22}Hezekiah praised the Levites for their skill in conducting the worship of the Lord.

A Second Celebration

After the seven days during which they offered sacrifices in praise of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, ²³they all decided to celebrate for another seven days. So they celebrated with joy. ²⁴King Hezekiah contributed 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep for the people to kill and eat, and the officials gave them another thousand bulls and 10,000 sheep. A large number of priests went through the ritual of purification. ²⁵So everyone was happy—the people of Judah, the priests, the Levites, the people who had come from the north, and the foreigners who had settled permanently in Israel and Judah. ²⁶The city of Jerusalem was filled with joy, because nothing like this had happened since the days of King Solomon, the son of David. ²⁷The priests and the Levites asked the Lord’s blessing on the people. In his home in heaven God heard their prayers and accepted them.

Hezekiah Reforms Religious Life

31After the festival ended, all the people of Israel went to every city in Judah and broke the stone pillars, cut down the symbols of the goddess Asherah, and destroyed the altars and the pagan places of worship. They did the same thing throughout the rest of Judah, and the territories of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh; then they all returned home.

²King Hezekiah re-established the organization of the priests and Levites, under which they each had specific duties. These included offering the burnt offerings and the fellowship offerings, taking part in the temple worship, and giving praise and thanks in the various parts of the Temple. ^3*From his own flocks and herds he provided animals for the burnt offerings each morning and evening, and for those offered on the Sabbath, at the New Moon Festival, and at the other festivals which are required by the Law of the Lord.

^4*In addition, the king told the people of Jerusalem to bring the offerings to which the priests and the Levites were entitled, so that they could give all their time to the requirements of the Law of the Lord. ^5*As soon as the order was given, the people of Israel brought gifts of their finest corn, wine, olive oil, honey, and other farm produce, and they also brought the tithes^s of everything they had. ⁶All the people who lived in the cities of Judah brought tithes of their cattle and sheep, and they also brought large quantities of gifts, which they dedicated to the Lord their God. ⁷The gifts started arriving in the third month and continued to pile up for the next four months. ⁸When King Hezekiah and his officials saw how much had been given, they praised the Lord and praised his people Israel. ⁹The king spoke to the priests and the Levites about these gifts, ¹⁰and Azariah the High Priest, a descendant of Zadok, said to him, “Since the people started bringing their gifts to the Temple, there has been enough to eat and a large surplus besides. We have all this because the Lord has blessed his people.”

¹¹On the king’s orders they prepared storerooms in the Temple area ¹²and put all the gifts and tithes in them for safe-keeping. They placed a Levite named Conaniah in charge and made his brother Shimei his assistant. ¹³Ten Levites were assigned to work under them: Jehiel, Azaziah, Nahath, Asahel, Jerimoth, Jozabad, Eliel, Ismachiah, Mahath, and Benaiah. All this was done under the authority of King Hezekiah and Azariah the High Priest. ¹⁴Kore son of Imnah, a Levite who was chief guard at the East Gate of the Temple, was in charge of receiving the gifts offered to the Lord and of distributing them. ¹⁵In the other cities where priests lived, he was faithfully assisted in this by other Levites: Eden, Miniamin, Jeshua, Shemaiah, Amariah, and Shecaniah. They distributed the food equally to their fellow-Levites according to what their duties were, ¹⁶and not by clans. They gave a share to all males 30^t years of age or older who had daily responsibilities in the Temple in accordance with their positions. ¹⁷The priests were assigned their duties by clans, and the Levites twenty years of age or older were assigned theirs by work groups. ¹⁸They were all registered together with their wives, children, and other dependants, because they were required to be ready to perform their sacred duties at any time. ¹⁹Among the priests who lived in the cities assigned to Aaron’s descendants, or in the pasture lands belonging to these cities, there were responsible men who distributed the food to all the males in the priestly families and to everyone who was on the rolls of the Levite clans.

²⁰Throughout all Judah, King Hezekiah did what was right and what was pleasing to the Lord his God. ²¹He was successful, because everything he did for the Temple or in observance of the Law, he did in a spirit of complete loyalty and devotion to his God.

The Assyrians Threaten Jerusalem

32After these events, in which King Hezekiah served the Lord faithfully, Sennacherib, the emperor of Assyria, invaded Judah. He besieged the fortified cities and gave orders for his army to break their way through the walls. ²When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib intended to attack Jerusalem also, ^3–4he and his officials decided to cut off the supply of water outside the city in order to prevent the Assyrians from having any water when they got near Jerusalem. The officials led a large number of people out and stopped up all the springs, so that no more water flowed out of them. ⁵The king strengthened the city’s defences by repairing the wall, building towers on it,^u and building an outer wall. In addition, he repaired the defences built on the land that was filled in on the east side of the old part of Jerusalem. He also had a large number of spears and shields made. ⁶He placed all the men in the city under the command of army officers and ordered them to assemble in the open square at the city gate. He said to them, ⁷“Be determined and confident, and don’t be afraid of the Assyrian emperor or of the army he is leading. We have more power on our side than he has on his. ⁸He has human power, but we have the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” The people were encouraged by these words of their king.

⁹Some time later, while…