Hezekiah (Chronicles)

Chapter 29

¹Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem; his mother’s name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. ²He did what was pleasing to the Lord, just as his father David had done.

³He, in the first month of the first year of his reign, opened the doors of the House of the Lord and repaired them. ⁴He summoned the priests and the Levites and assembled them in the east square. ⁵He said to them, “Listen to me, Levites! Sanctify yourselves and sanctify the House of the Lord God of your fathers, and take the abhorrent things out of the holy place. ⁶For our fathers trespassed and did what displeased the Lord our God; they forsook Him and turned their faces away from the dwelling-place of the Lord, turning their backs on it. ⁷They also shut the doors of the porch and put out the lights; they did not offer incense and did not make burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. ⁸The wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem; He made them an object of horror, amazement, and hissing as you see with your own eyes. ⁹Our fathers died by the sword, and our sons and daughters and wives are in captivity on account of this. ¹⁰Now I wish to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, so that His rage may be withdrawn from us. ¹¹Now, my sons, do not be slack, for the Lord chose you to attend upon Him, to serve Him, to be His ministers and to make offerings to Him.”

¹²So the Levites set to—Mahath son of Amasai and Joel son of Azariah of the sons of Kohath; and of the sons of Merari, Kish son of Abdi and Azariah son of Jehallelel; and of the Gershonites, Joah son of Zimmah and Eden son of Joah; ¹³and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeiel; and of the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah;¹⁴and of the sons of Heman, Jehiel and Shimei; and of the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel—¹⁵and, gathering their brothers, they sanctified themselves and came, by a command of the king concerning the Lord’s ordinances, to purify the House of the Lord. ¹⁶The priests went into the House of the Lord to purify it, and brought all the unclean things they found in the Temple of the Lord out into the court of the House of the Lord; [there] the Levites received them, to take them outside to Wadi Kidron. ¹⁷They began the sanctification on the first day of the first month; on the eighth day of the month they reached the porch of the Lord. They sanctified the House of the Lord for eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished. ¹⁸Then they went into the palace of King Hezekiah and said, “We have purified the whole House of the Lord and the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the table of the bread of display and all its utensils; ¹⁹and all the utensils that King Ahaz had befouled during his reign, when he trespassed, we have made ready and sanctified. They are standing in front of the altar of the Lord.”

²⁰King Hezekiah rose early, gathered the officers of the city, and went up to the House of the Lord. ²¹They brought seven bulls and seven rams and seven lambs and seven he-goats as a sin offering for the kingdom and for the Sanctuary and for Judah. He ordered the Aaronite priests to offer them on the altar of the Lord. ²²The cattle were slaughtered, and the priests received the blood and dashed it against the altar; the rams were slaughtered and the blood was dashed against the altar; the lambs were slaughtered and the blood was dashed against the altar. ²³The he-goats for the sin offering were presented to the king and the congregation, who laid their hands upon them. ²⁴The priests slaughtered them and performed the purgation rite with the blood against the altar, to expiate for all Israel, for the king had designated the burnt offering and the sin offering to be for all Israel. ²⁵He stationed the Levites in the House of the Lord with cymbals and harps and lyres, as David and Gad the king’s seer and Nathan the prophet had ordained, for the ordinance was by the Lord through His prophets.

²⁶When the Levites were in place with the instruments of David, and the priests with their trumpets, ²⁷Hezekiah gave the order to offer the burnt offering on the altar. When the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord and the trumpets began also, together with the instruments of King David of Israel. ²⁸All the congregation prostrated themselves, the song was sung and the trumpets were blown—all this until the end of the burnt offering. ²⁹When the offering was finished, the king and all who were there with him knelt and prostrated themselves. ³⁰King Hezekiah and the officers ordered the Levites to praise the Lord in the words of David and Asaph the seer; so they praised rapturously, and they bowed and prostrated themselves.

³¹Then Hezekiah said, “Now you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord; come, bring sacrifices of wellbeing and thanksgiving to the House of the Lord.” The congregation brought sacrifices of well-being and thanksgiving, and all who felt so moved brought burnt offerings. ³²The number of burnt offerings that the congregation brought was 70 cattle, 100 rams, 200 lambs— all these for burnt offerings to the Lord. ³³The sacred offerings were 600 large cattle and 3,000 small cattle. ³⁴The priests were too few to be able to flay all the burnt offerings, so their kinsmen, the Levites, reinforced them till the end of the work, and till the [rest of the] priests sanctified themselves. (The Levites were more conscientious about sanctifying themselves than the priests.) ³⁵For beside the large number of burnt offerings, there were the fat parts of the sacrifices of well-being and the libations for the burnt offerings; so the service of the House of the Lord was properly accomplished. ³⁶Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had enabled the people to accomplish, because it had happened so suddenly. [ . . . ]

Chapter 32

¹After these faithful deeds, King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah and encamped against its fortified towns with the aim of taking them over. ²When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, intent on making war against Jerusalem, ³he consulted with his officers and warriors about stopping the flow of the springs outside the city, and they supported him. ⁴A large force was assembled to stop up all the springs and the wadi that flowed through the land, for otherwise, they thought, the king of Assyria would come and find water in abundance. ⁵He acted with vigor, rebuilding the whole breached wall, raising towers on it, and building another wall outside it. He fortified the Millo of the City of David, and made a great quantity of arms and shields. ⁶He appointed battle officers over the people; then, gathering them to him in the square of the city gate, he rallied them, saying, ⁷“Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the king of Assyria or by the horde that is with him, for we have more with us than he has with him. ⁸With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles.” The people were encouraged by the speech of King Hezekiah of Judah.

⁹Afterward, King Sennacherib of Assyria sent his officers to Jerusalem—he and all his staff being at Lachish—with this message to King Hezekiah of Judah and to all the people of Judah who were in Jerusalem: ¹⁰“Thus said King Sennacherib of Assyria: On what do you trust to enable you to endure a siege in Jerusalem? ¹¹Hezekiah is seducing you to a death of hunger and thirst, saying, ‘The Lord our God will save us from the king of Assyria.’ ¹²But is not Hezekiah the one who removed His shrines and His altars and commanded the people of Judah and Jerusalem saying, ‘Before this one altar you shall prostrate yourselves, and upon it make your burnt offerings’? ¹³Surely you know what I and my fathers have done to the peoples of the lands? Were the gods of the nations of the lands able to save their lands from me? ¹⁴Which of all the gods of any of those nations whom my fathers destroyed was able to save his people from me, that your God should be able to save you from me? ¹⁵Now then, do not let Hezekiah delude you; do not let him seduce you in this way; do not believe him. For no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to save his people from me or from my fathers—much less your God, to save you from me!” ¹⁶His officers said still more things against the Lord God and against His servant Hezekiah. ¹⁷He also wrote letters reviling the Lord God of Israel, saying of Him, “Just as the gods of the other nations of the earth did not save their people from me, so the God of Hezekiah will not save his people from me.” ¹⁸They called loudly in the language of Judah to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten them into panic, so as to capture the city. ¹⁹They spoke of the God of Jerusalem as though He were like the gods of the other peoples of the earth, made by human hands. ²⁰Then King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz prayed about this, and cried out to heaven.

²¹The Lord sent an angel who annihilated every mighty warrior, commander, and officer in the army of the king of Assyria, and he returned in disgrace to his land. He entered the house of his god, and there some of his own offspring struck him down by the sword. ²²Thus the Lord delivered Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from King Sennacherib of Assyria, and from everyone; He provided for them on all sides. ²³Many brought tribute to the Lord to Jerusalem, and gifts to King Hezekiah of Judah; thereafter he was exalted in the eyes of all the nations.

²⁴At that time, Hezekiah fell deathly sick. He prayed to the Lord, who responded to him and gave him a sign. ²⁵Hezekiah made no return for what had been bestowed upon him, for he grew arrogant; so wrath was decreed for him and for Judah and Jerusalem. ²⁶Then Hezekiah humbled himself where he had been arrogant, he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and no wrath of the Lord came on them during the reign of Hezekiah. ²⁷Hezekiah enjoyed riches and glory in abundance; he filled treasuries with silver and gold, precious stones, spices, shields, and all lovely objects; ²⁸and store-cities with the produce of grain, wine, and oil, and stalls for all kinds of beasts, and flocks for sheepfolds. ²⁹And he acquired towns, and flocks of small and large cattle in great number, for God endowed him with very many possessions. ³⁰It was Hezekiah who stopped up the spring of water of Upper Gihon, leading it downward west of the City of David; Hezekiah prospered in all that he did. ³¹So too in the matter of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who were sent to him to inquire about the sign that was in the land, when God forsook him in order to test him, to learn all that was in his mind.

³²The other events of Hezekiah’s reign, and his faithful acts, are recorded in the visions of the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ³³Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and was buried on the upper part of the tombs of the sons of David. When he died, all the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem accorded him much honor. Manasseh, his son, succeeded him.