For Teaching

2 Chronicles 29: What the Passage Says

108 claims across 36 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Chronicles 29 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Hezekiah becomes king of Judah at twenty-five and, in the first month of his first year, reopens and repairs the doors of the temple, which his father Ahaz had shut. He calls the priests and Levites to purify themselves and the building, and over sixteen days they clear out everything unclean and restore the vessels Ahaz had thrown away. The king then gathers the city officials for sin offerings and burnt offerings for all Israel, with Levite singers and priests with trumpets performing music set up by David. The people bring so many offerings that the priests need Levite help, and regular temple service is set in order again.

Claim by Claim

29:1
- Hezekiah began to reign at twenty-five years old.
- Hezekiah reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem.
- Hezekiah's mother was named Abijah.
- Abijah was the daughter of Zechariah.
29:2
- Hezekiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD.
- Hezekiah acted according to all that David his father had done.
29:3
- In the first year of his reign, in the first month, Hezekiah opened the doors of the house of the LORD.
- Hezekiah repaired the doors of the house of the LORD.
29:4
- Hezekiah brought in the priests and the Levites.
- Hezekiah gathered them together into the open square on the east.
29:5
- Hezekiah said to them, Hear me, you Levites.
- He told them to sanctify themselves.
- He told them to sanctify the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers.
- He told them to carry the impurity out of the holy place.
29:6
- Hezekiah said our fathers have acted unfaithfully.
- He said they did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD our God.
- He said they forsook the LORD.
- He said they turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the LORD.
- He said they turned their backs on it.
29:7
- Hezekiah said they also shut the doors of the porch.
- He said they put out the lamps.
- He said they did not burn incense in the holy place to the God of Israel.
- He said they did not offer burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.
29:8
- Hezekiah said the wrath of the LORD was upon Judah and Jerusalem.
- He said the LORD delivered them to terror, to astonishment, and to hissing.
- He said this is as they see with their own eyes.
29:9
- Hezekiah said our fathers have fallen by the sword.
- He said our sons and daughters and wives are in captivity.
- He said this captivity is because of this.
29:10
- Hezekiah said it is in his heart to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel.
- Hezekiah said the purpose is that the LORD's fierce anger may turn away from us.
29:11
- Hezekiah addressed them as my sons.
- He told them not to be negligent now.
- He said the LORD has chosen them to stand before him and serve him.
- He said the LORD has chosen them to be ministers to him and to burn offerings.
29:12
- The Levites arose.
- Mahath son of Amasai was among them, of the sons of the Kohathites.
- Joel son of Azariah was among them, of the sons of the Kohathites.
- Kish son of Abdi was among them, of the sons of Merari.
- Azariah son of Jehalelel was among them, of the sons of Merari.
- Joah son of Zimmah was among them, of the Gershonites.
- Eden son of Joah was among them, of the Gershonites.
29:13
- Shimri and Jeiel were of the sons of Elizaphan.
- Zechariah and Mattaniah were of the sons of Asaph.
29:14
- Jehiel and Shimei were of the sons of Heman.
- Shemaiah and Uzziel were of the sons of Jeduthun.
29:15
- They gathered their brethren.
- They sanctified themselves.
- They came according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD.
29:16
- The priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD to cleanse it.
- The priests brought out all the uncleanness they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD.
- The Levites took it to carry it out to the brook Kidron.
29:17
- They began to sanctify on the first day of the first month.
- On the eighth day of the month they came to the porch of the LORD.
- They sanctified the house of the LORD in eight days.
- On the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.
29:18
- They went in to Hezekiah the king.
- They said they had cleansed all the house of the LORD.
- They said they had cleansed the altar of burnt offering with all its vessels.
- They said they had cleansed the table of the showbread with all its vessels.
29:19
- They said all the vessels that king Ahaz cast away in his reign in his unfaithfulness they had prepared and sanctified.
- They said those vessels are before the altar of the LORD.
29:20
- Hezekiah the king rose early.
- Hezekiah gathered the rulers of the city.
- Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD.
29:21
- They brought seven bullocks, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven he goats for a sin offering.
- The sin offering was for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah.
- The king commanded the priests, the sons of Aaron, to offer them on the altar of the LORD.
29:22
- They killed the bullocks.
- The priests received the blood and sprinkled it on the altar.
- They killed the rams and sprinkled the blood on the altar.
- They killed the lambs and sprinkled the blood on the altar.
29:23
- They brought the he goats for the sin offering before the king and the congregation.
- They laid their hands upon the goats.
29:24
- The priests killed the goats.
- The priests made a sin offering with their blood on the altar to make atonement for all Israel.
- The king had commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering be made for all Israel.
29:25
- Hezekiah set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals, with lutes, and with lyres.
- This was according to the commandment of David, of Gad the king's seer, and of Nathan the prophet.
- The commandment was from the LORD by his prophets.
29:26
- The Levites stood with the instruments of David.
- The priests stood with the trumpets.
29:27
- Hezekiah commanded to offer the burnt offering upon the altar.
- When the burnt offering began, the song of the LORD began also, with the trumpets and with the instruments of David king of Israel.
29:28
- All the congregation worshipped.
- The singers sang.
- The trumpeters sounded.
- All of this continued until the burnt offering was finished.
29:29
- When they had finished offering, the king and all present with him bowed themselves.
- They worshipped.
29:30
- Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praise to the LORD with the words of David and of Asaph the seer.
- They sang praises with gladness.
- They bowed their heads and worshipped.
29:31
- Hezekiah said, Now you have consecrated yourselves to the LORD.
- Hezekiah told them to come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of the LORD.
- The congregation brought in sacrifices and thank offerings.
- All who were willing of heart brought burnt offerings.
29:32
- The number of burnt offerings the congregation brought was seventy bullocks, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs.
- All of these were for a burnt offering to the LORD.
29:33
- The consecrated things were six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep.
29:34
- The priests were too few.
- The priests could not flay all the burnt offerings.
- Their brethren the Levites helped them until the work was ended and until the priests had sanctified themselves.
- The Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests.
29:35
- The burnt offerings were in abundance, with the fat of the peace offerings and the drink offerings for the burnt offering.
- The service of the house of the LORD was set in order.
29:36
- Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had prepared for the people.
- The thing was done suddenly.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

29:1: The books of Chronicles cover only the southern kingdom of Judah, ruled from Jerusalem by David's descendants. Hezekiah reigned in the late 700s BC. Judah's records routinely name each king's mother, since the queen mother held a recognized position at court.
29:2: David lived roughly three centuries before Hezekiah. Hebrew uses "father" for any male ancestor, and the rendering's "forefather" carries that sense. "Did what was right in the LORD's sight" is the standard verdict formula Chronicles applies to each king.
29:3: The first month is Nisan, falling in our March–April; the Hebrew year began in the spring. "The house of the LORD" is the temple in Jerusalem, built by Solomon. Its doors needed opening because Hezekiah's father Ahaz had shut them and stopped the worship there (2 Chronicles 28:24).
29:4: Priests and Levites are not the same office. Priests were the descendants of Aaron, the only men permitted to handle the altar and enter the temple building. Levites were the rest of the tribe of Levi, who did the supporting work: guarding, carrying, cleaning, and, since David's time, the music.
29:5: "Unclean" here is a ritual category, not dirt: an object or person could be unfit for use in worship without being physically soiled, and a set procedure (washing, waiting, sacrifice) restored fitness. "Set apart" translates the same Hebrew root, meaning removed from ordinary use and reserved for God. The "holy place" is the main room of the temple building.
29:6: The temple was spoken of as the place where God dwelled among his people, without implying he was confined there. Turning the back on someone was a deliberate gesture of insult and rejection.
29:7: The entrance porch was the covered portico across the front of the temple. The lamps are those of the lampstands kept burning inside; incense was burned on a dedicated altar twice daily; and a burnt offering was an animal placed entirely on the altar fire, offered every morning and evening. Stopping all three meant the temple's daily routine had simply ceased.
29:8: "Hissing" in the King James is not a whisper but a sharp intake of breath, the noise people make at a shocking sight. The three words together describe a nation others point at as a warning.
29:9: This refers to the disasters of Ahaz's reign described in 2 Chronicles 28: heavy losses in war with Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel, and large numbers of Judeans carried off as captives.
29:10: A covenant was a formal, binding agreement with stated terms and obligations, of the kind made between a ruler and his people or between two parties before witnesses, not a private feeling or resolution.
29:11: "My sons" is how a king or elder addressed younger men under his authority; these Levites were not his children. Burning incense was among the duties assigned to Levi's tribe.
29:12: Kohath, Merari, and Gershon were the three sons of Levi, and their descendants formed the three main divisions of the tribe, each with assigned duties going back to the wilderness period.
29:13: Elizaphan was head of a Kohathite family (Numbers 3:30). Asaph was one of the three chief musicians David appointed for the sanctuary; "the sons of Asaph" means the guild of singers descended from him.
29:14: Heman and Jeduthun, like Asaph, headed the families of temple singers David established. Naming men from all these lines shows every branch of the Levites took part.
29:15: "Brethren" here means fellow Levites rather than blood brothers. The point of the verse is that the work had two authorities behind it: the king's order and the written instructions of the law.
29:16: Only priests could go inside the temple building itself, so they carried the objects out to the courtyard for the Levites to remove. The Kidron is the ravine running along the east side of Jerusalem, outside the city; kings repeatedly used it as the dumping and burning ground for objects removed from the temple.
29:17: Sixteen days in all. Passover fell on the fourteenth day of this same first month, so the work ran two days past it, which is why the Passover in the next chapter is held a month late.
29:18: The altar for burnt offerings stood in the courtyard, outside the building. The "bread that is set out" (the King James "shewbread") was twelve loaves arranged on a table inside the holy place and replaced with fresh loaves each week; the old loaves were eaten by the priests.
29:19: Ahaz was Hezekiah's father and immediate predecessor. He had cut up and removed temple furnishings, remodeled the altar on a foreign pattern, and closed the building (2 Kings 16; 2 Chronicles 28).
29:21: The Hebrew term behind "sin offering" refers to a sacrifice that removes contamination and restores fitness for worship, closer to a purification offering than to a fine paid. Seven of each animal is a number signaling completeness. The three beneficiaries named (kingdom, sanctuary, Judah) cover the royal house, the temple, and the people.
29:22: Sprinkling or splashing blood on the altar was the prescribed action of the ritual; blood was treated as the substance that cleansed the altar and the holy things of accumulated impurity.
29:23: Laying hands on the animal's head was a formal gesture identifying the offerer with the animal, marking it as presented on his behalf. Here the king and the whole assembly do it, so the offering counts for everyone.
29:24: The Hebrew verb behind "atonement" has the sense of wiping clean or covering over. "All Israel" is deliberate: the northern kingdom had just been destroyed by Assyria, and Hezekiah acts for the surviving northern tribes as well as for his own kingdom of Judah.
29:25: The instruments are the standard temple set: bronze cymbals, and two sizes of stringed instrument (the King James "psalteries" and "harps"). A "seer" is an older word for a prophet, one who receives visions. Gad and Nathan were both prophets in David's court, some three hundred years earlier.
29:26: The priests' trumpets were straight silver ones, sounded in pairs at set moments in the ritual, a different instrument from the curved ram's horn.
29:27: "The song of the LORD" means the set temple psalms sung by the Levite choirs, not a single named song.
29:29: "Worshipped" here describes a physical posture, going down on the knees and putting the face toward the ground, which is what people did before a king. The rendering's "knelt down" is the action the word actually names.
29:30: Asaph headed one of the singing guilds under David; a number of the psalms carry his name in their headings.
29:31: The King James "consecrated yourselves" translates a Hebrew idiom, "filled your hand," used for formally installing someone in priestly service. Thank offerings were a kind of shared sacrifice: part burned on the altar, part given to the priests, and the rest eaten by the worshipers and their households at the sanctuary. "Of a free heart" means giving voluntarily, beyond what was required.
29:32: "Threescore and ten" is seventy. A score is twenty, and the King James often counts this way.
29:33: These are distinguished from the burnt offerings just listed. Burnt offerings were consumed entirely on the altar; these "consecrated things" were the shared sacrifices, so most of this meat was eaten by the crowd at the festival.
29:34: Skinning the carcass was part of the priests' work at the altar, and the hide went to the officiating priest. The priests who were not yet ready had not completed the washing and waiting required before handling holy things, a shortage of qualified men, not laziness.
29:35: The fat around the animal's organs was burned on the altar rather than eaten. A drink offering was a measured quantity of wine poured out beside the altar to accompany a sacrifice; the law fixed how much went with each animal.
29:36: "Suddenly" here means quickly and unexpectedly, the whole restoration was completed in far less time than such an undertaking would normally require.

Read 2 Chronicles 29