Hezekiah’s Reforms

He did what was right in the Lord’s eyes, just as his ancestor David had done.

He took away the high places, broke down the stone pillars and chopped down the Asherah pole.

Long before, in the wilderness, the Lord had told Moses to make a snake and set it on a pole: anyone who was bitten would live when he saw it. So Moses made a snake of bronze and put it on the pole. If a snake had bitten someone and he looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

Now Hezekiah smashed that bronze snake to pieces, because in those days the Israelites were burning incense to it. He called it Nehushtan.

He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. Of all the kings of Judah there was no one like him, not after him and not before him. He stayed close to the Lord and never stopped following him, and he kept the commandments the Lord had given Moses.

The Lord was with him, and he prospered wherever he went. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and didn’t serve him. He beat the Philistines all the way to Gaza and the land around it, from the watchmen’s tower to the walled city.

“Listen to me, Levites!” he said. “Make yourselves holy now, and make the house of the Lord, your ancestors’ God, holy too. Carry everything filthy out of the holy place.

“Our ancestors were unfaithful. They did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God. They left him, turned their faces away from the place where the Lord lives, and turned their backs on it. They shut the doors of the porch and put out the lamps. They didn’t burn incense or offer burnt offerings to the God of Israel in the holy place.

“That is why the Lord’s anger came on Judah and Jerusalem. He has handed them over to be tossed back and forth, so that people stare at them in horror and hiss at them in scorn, as you can see for yourselves. Our fathers have been killed by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are captives because of this.

“Now I want to make a covenant with the Lord, Israel’s God, so his fierce anger may turn away from us. My sons, don’t neglect your work now. The Lord chose you to stand in his presence and serve him, to be his ministers and to burn incense.”

They gathered their relatives, made themselves holy, and went in to cleanse the Lord’s house, as the king had commanded, following the Lord’s words. The priests went into the inner part of the Lord’s house and brought everything unclean they found there out into the courtyard. From there the Levites carried it away to the Kidron brook.

They began on the first day of the first month. On the eighth day they reached the porch of the Lord’s house, and in eight more days they had made the whole house holy. On the sixteenth day of the first month they were finished.

Then they went in to King Hezekiah in the palace. “We have cleansed the whole house of the Lord,” they said, “including the altar of burnt offering and the table for the bread of the presence, and all the things used with them. We have also made ready and made holy everything King Ahaz threw away during his reign, when he was unfaithful. There they are, in front of the Lord’s altar.”

They killed the bulls, then the rams, then the lambs, and each time the priests caught the blood and sprinkled it on the altar. After that they brought the male goats for the sin offering in front of the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. Then the priests killed them, and with the goats’ blood they made a sin offering on the altar. It was to make atonement for all Israel, because the king had commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering be made for all Israel.

Hezekiah placed the Levites in the Lord’s house with cymbals, stringed instruments and harps, as King David, his seer Gad and the prophet Nathan had commanded. It was the Lord’s command, given through his prophets. The Levites stood with David’s instruments, and the priests stood with the trumpets.

Then Hezekiah gave the order to offer the burnt offering on the altar. As it began, the Lord’s song began too, with the trumpets and King David’s instruments. Everyone in the assembly worshiped, the singers sang and the trumpets sounded, and it all went on until the burnt offering was finished.

When the offering was over, the king and everyone with him bowed down and worshiped. Then Hezekiah and the leaders told the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. They sang praises gladly, and they bowed their heads and worshiped.

Then Hezekiah said, “Now you have dedicated yourselves to the Lord. Come near, and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the Lord’s house.” The assembly came with sacrifices and thank offerings, and whoever was willing brought burnt offerings as well.

In all, the assembly brought seventy bulls, one hundred rams and two hundred lambs as burnt offerings to the Lord. The holy gifts were six hundred cattle and three thousand sheep.

But there were not enough priests to skin all the burnt offerings. So the Levites, who were the priests’ relatives, helped out until the job was done and until the priests had made themselves holy, because the Levites had been more sincere than the priests about making themselves holy.

There were plenty of burnt offerings, along with the fat of the peace offerings and the drink offerings that went with every burnt offering. So the service of the Lord’s house was set in order. Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had prepared for the people, because it had all happened so suddenly.

The king had agreed with his officials and all the assembly in Jerusalem to keep it in the second month. They could not keep it at the usual time, because not enough priests had made themselves holy, and the people had not gathered in Jerusalem. The king and the whole assembly thought the plan was right.

So they made an official order and announced it through all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan: the people were to come to Jerusalem and keep the Passover for the Lord, the God of Israel. They had not kept it in great numbers in the way it is written.

Runners carried the letters from the king and his officials throughout Israel and Judah, as the king had commanded. “People of Israel,” the letters said, “come back to the Lord, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel, so that he may come back to those of you who are left, who escaped from the Assyrian kings. Don’t be like your ancestors and your relatives. They sinned against the Lord, the God of their ancestors, so he handed them over to ruin, as you see. Don’t be stubborn now, as your ancestors were. Give yourselves to the Lord. Come to his holy place, which he has made holy forever. Serve the Lord your God, so his fierce anger may turn away from you.

“If you come back to the Lord, the people who took your relatives and your children captive will show them compassion. Your relatives and children will come back to this land, because the Lord your God is gracious and merciful. He won’t turn away from you if you return to him.”

So the runners went from town to town through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the way to Zebulun, but people laughed at them and mocked them.

Even so, some men of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. In Judah, too, God’s hand was on the people. He gave them one heart to do what the king and his officials commanded, following the Lord’s word.

They killed the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the second month. The priests and the Levites were ashamed. They made themselves holy and brought burnt offerings into the Lord’s house. They stood at their posts in their usual order, as the law of Moses the man of God says. The priests sprinkled the blood that the Levites handed them.

Many in the assembly had not made themselves holy. So the Levites took charge of killing the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean, to make them holy to the Lord. A great number of the people had not cleansed themselves, including many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun. Yet they ate the Passover, though not in the way it is written, because Hezekiah had prayed for them.

He had said, “May the good Lord forgive everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of his ancestors, even if he is not clean in the way the holy place requires.”

The Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people.

The Israelites in Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread with great gladness for seven days. The Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing to him with loud instruments.

Hezekiah spoke encouraging words to all the Levites who understood the Lord’s service well. So for the seven days of the feast they ate, offered peace offerings, and confessed to the Lord, the God of their ancestors.

For offerings, Hezekiah king of Judah gave one thousand bulls and seven thousand sheep to the assembly, and his officials gave them another thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep. A great number of priests made themselves holy.

The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced, together with the priests and the Levites, everyone who had come from Israel, and the foreigners who had come from the land of Israel and who lived in Judah.

There was great joy in Jerusalem. Nothing like this had happened in Jerusalem since the time of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel.

Then the priests, who were Levites, rose and blessed the people. Their voice was heard, and their prayer went up to God’s holy dwelling place in heaven.

Hezekiah set the priests and the Levites in their divisions and gave each man his own work: burnt offerings and peace offerings, serving, giving thanks and praising at the gates of the Lord’s camp. From what he owned, the king provided the burnt offerings for morning and evening, for the Sabbaths, for the New Moons and for the feasts at their set times, as it is written in the Lord’s law.

He also told the people living in Jerusalem to give the priests and the Levites their share, so that the priests and Levites could give themselves to the Lord’s law. As soon as the order went out, the Israelites brought plenty of the first of their grain, new wine, oil and honey, and of everything their fields grew. They brought in a tithe of everything too, a great deal of it.

People from Israel and Judah who were living in the towns of Judah brought a tithe of their cattle and sheep too, and a tithe of the holy things set apart for the Lord their God. They laid them in heaps. They began the heaps in the third month and finished them in the seventh.

When Hezekiah and the leaders came and saw the heaps, they blessed the Lord and his people Israel. Then Hezekiah asked the priests and the Levites about the heaps. Azariah the chief priest, of the family of Zadok, answered him. “Ever since the people began bringing their offerings into the Lord’s house,” he said, “we have eaten all we need and still have a lot left over, because the Lord has blessed his people. What is left is this huge supply.”

Hezekiah had rooms prepared in the Lord’s house, and they faithfully brought in the offerings, the tithes and the holy things. A Levite named Conaniah was in charge of them, with his brother Shimei as second in charge. Ten overseers worked under Conaniah and Shimei, appointed by King Hezekiah and by Azariah, the leader of God’s house. Kore son of Imnah, a Levite, was the gatekeeper at the east gate. He was in charge of the freewill offerings, the gifts people chose to give to God, and he handed out the Lord’s offerings and the most holy things. Under him were six men in the priests’ towns. They were trusted to give their relatives their shares by divisions, to the great and the small alike.

Besides these, there were the people on the family lists. There were the males three years old and up, everyone who came into the Lord’s house for his daily duties by divisions. There were the priests, listed by their families, and the Levites twenty years old and up. And there were all their little ones, wives, sons and daughters, through the whole community, because in their position of trust they kept themselves holy. There were also priests, Aaron’s descendants, who lived in the pasture lands around their towns. For them, in every town, men were chosen by name to hand out portions to all the male priests and to all the Levites on the family lists.

Hezekiah did this throughout Judah. He did what was good, right and faithful in the presence of the Lord his God. Whatever work he began, in the service of God’s house, in the law and in the commandments, he did it to seek his God. He did it with all his heart, and he prospered.