2 Chronicles 30: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Hezekiah invites all Israel and Judah, including the northern tribes, to keep the Passover in Jerusalem in the second month, since it could not be kept at the usual time. Messengers carry his letters north; some people mock them, but others come. The feast is kept with many people who were not ritually clean, and Hezekiah prays for them and the LORD hears him. The celebration is extended a second week, with great joy of a kind not seen in Jerusalem since Solomon's day.

Claim by Claim

1. 30:1
   • Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah.
   • Hezekiah also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh.
   • The message called them to come to the house of the LORD at Jerusalem.
   • The purpose of coming was to keep the Passover to the LORD, the God of Israel.
2. 30:2
   • The king, his officials, and the whole assembly in Jerusalem took counsel together.
   • They decided to keep the Passover in the second month.
3. 30:3
   • They had not been able to keep the Passover at its proper time.
   • The priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient numbers.
   • The people had not gathered together at Jerusalem.
4. 30:4
   • The plan was right in the eyes of the king.
   • The plan was right in the eyes of the whole assembly.
5. 30:5
   • They established a decree to send a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan.
   • The proclamation called the people to come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the LORD, the God of Israel.
   • They had not kept it in great numbers as it was written.
6. 30:6
   • The runners went with the letters from the hand of the king and his officials throughout all Israel and Judah.
   • They went according to the king's commandment.
   • The letters said: children of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
   • The letters said the LORD will return to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.
7. 30:7
   • The letters said: do not be like your fathers and your brothers.
   • The fathers and brothers acted unfaithfully against the LORD, the God of their fathers.
   • The LORD gave them over to desolation.
   • The letters said that the hearers can see this desolation.
8. 30:8
   • The letters said: do not stiffen your neck as your fathers did.
   • The letters said: give your hand to the LORD, that is, submit to him.
   • The letters said: come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever.
   • The letters said: serve the LORD your God.
   • The letters said that then the fierceness of his anger will turn away from you.
9. 30:9
   • The letters said: if you return to the LORD, your brothers and your sons will find compassion before their captors.
   • The letters said they will return to this land.
   • The letters said the LORD your God is gracious and merciful.
   • The letters said he will not turn his face away from you if you return to him.
10. 30:10
    • The runners passed from city to city through the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun.
    • The people laughed at the runners.
    • The people mocked the runners.
11. 30:11
    • Some men of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves.
    • Those men came to Jerusalem.
12. 30:12
    • In Judah the hand of God was upon the people to give them one heart.
    • The one heart was to do the commandment of the king and the officials, according to the word of the LORD.
13. 30:13
    • Many people gathered at Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the second month.
    • The assembly was very great.
14. 30:14
    • They arose and removed the altars that were in Jerusalem.
    • They removed all the incense altars.
    • They threw them into the Kidron ravine.
15. 30:15
    • They slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month.
    • The priests and the Levites were ashamed.
    • The priests and the Levites consecrated themselves.
    • They brought burnt offerings into the house of the LORD.
16. 30:16
    • They stood at their posts according to their prescribed manner.
    • Their manner was according to the law of Moses the man of God.
    • The priests sprinkled the blood.
    • The priests received the blood from the hand of the Levites.
17. 30:17
    • There were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves.
    • The Levites were in charge of slaughtering the Passover lambs for everyone who was not clean.
    • The purpose was to consecrate them to the LORD.
18. 30:18
    • A large part of the people, many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not purified themselves.
    • They ate the Passover contrary to what was written.
    • Hezekiah prayed for them.
    • Hezekiah said: may the good LORD pardon everyone
19. 30:19
    • Hezekiah's prayer was for everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers.
    • Hezekiah's prayer covered such a person even if he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.
20. 30:20
    • The LORD listened to Hezekiah.
    • The LORD healed the people.
21. 30:21
    • The children of Israel present at Jerusalem kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with great gladness.
    • The Levites and the priests praised the LORD day by day.
    • They praised with loud instruments to the LORD.
22. 30:22
    • Hezekiah spoke encouragingly to all the Levites.
    • The Levites showed good skill toward the LORD.
    • They ate throughout the appointed feast for the seven days.
    • They sacrificed peace offerings.
    • They made confession to the LORD, the God of their fathers.
23. 30:23
    • The whole assembly took counsel to keep another seven days.
    • They kept seven more days with gladness.
24. 30:24
    • Hezekiah king of Judah contributed a thousand bulls and seven thousand sheep to the assembly.
    • The officials contributed a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep to the assembly.
    • A great number of priests consecrated themselves.
25. 30:25
    • The whole assembly of Judah rejoiced.
    • The priests and the Levites rejoiced.
    • The whole assembly that came out of Israel rejoiced.
    • The foreigners who came from the land of Israel rejoiced.
    • The foreigners who lived in Judah rejoiced.
26. 30:26
    • There was great joy in Jerusalem.
    • There had been nothing like this in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel.
27. 30:27
    • The priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people.
    • Their voice was heard.
    • Their prayer came to God's holy dwelling place, to heaven.

Words Worth Explaining

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

30:1

Hezekiah was king of Judah, the southern kingdom, around 715–686 BC. Israel and Judah had been separate kingdoms for roughly two hundred years; Ephraim and Manasseh were tribes of the northern kingdom, which Assyria had recently conquered. Hezekiah is inviting people in territory he does not rule. The Passover was the yearly meal and sacrifice commemorating Israel's escape from slavery in Egypt, when the deaths of the firstborn "passed over" Israelite houses marked with lamb's blood.

30:2

The Passover fell in the first month of the year (roughly March–April). The law of Moses allowed people who were ritually unclean or away traveling at that time to keep it one month later instead (Numbers 9:6–13); Hezekiah applies that provision to the whole nation at once.

30:3

"Ritually clean" does not mean washed. It was a state of ceremonial fitness required for approaching the sanctuary, lost through things like contact with a corpse and regained through set washings, waiting periods and offerings.

30:5

"From Beersheba to Dan" was a stock phrase for the entire land, end to end, the way one might say "from coast to coast."

30:6

Assyria was the empire, centered in what is now northern Iraq, that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and deported much of its population around 722 BC. "Those of you who are left" means the northerners not carried off. "Israel" in the list of ancestors is Jacob, grandson of Abraham, whose other name was Israel.

30:7

"Your fathers and your brothers" are the previous generations of the northern kingdom and its people already taken into exile, the ruin the surviving readers can see around them.

30:8

"Stubborn" translates a Hebrew image of a stiff neck: an ox that will not turn when the yoke is pulled. The sanctuary is the temple in Jerusalem.

30:9

This is about the relatives already carried off by Assyria. Deported populations lived under the control of their captors, and the letter argues that how those exiles are treated abroad depends on what the people still at home do now.

30:10

The mockery has history behind it. For roughly two centuries the northern kingdom had run its own shrines and refused to worship at Jerusalem, so an invitation from a southern king to come to the southern capital would have sounded, to many northerners, like a takeover attempt dressed up as religion.

30:11

The King James "divers" is the old spelling of "diverse" and simply means various or a number of them. It has nothing to do with diving.

30:12

"God's hand" is an old way of talking about God's power at work. It does not mean a real hand.

30:13

The Feast of Unleavened Bread ran for seven days immediately after the Passover meal. During it no yeast was used or even kept in the house, recalling the haste of the departure from Egypt, when there was no time to let bread rise.

30:14

These were altars for worship other than at the temple, set up in Jerusalem under Hezekiah's father Ahaz. The Kidron Valley is the steep ravine on the east side of Jerusalem; it served as the city's dumping ground, and objects thrown there were treated as refuse rather than reused.

30:15

The Passover lamb was killed at dusk on the fourteenth day of the month. "Burnt offerings" were animals burned whole on the altar, with no portion eaten. The priests and Levites were ashamed because ordinary people had arrived ready before they were.

30:16

Priests were descendants of Aaron and alone could handle the blood at the altar; Levites were the wider tribe of Levi who assisted them with slaughtering, carrying and music. The blood of a sacrifice was caught in a basin and thrown against the base of the altar.

30:17

Normally the head of each household killed his own family's Passover lamb. Here the Levites did it on their behalf, because a person who was ritually unclean could not perform the act himself.

30:18

The law barred anyone ritually unclean from eating the Passover; the usual remedy was to wait and keep it a month later (Numbers 9:6–13). These people ate it anyway, out of sequence with the rule.

30:19

The holy rules were the steps God gave for getting ready to come to the temple.

30:20

The word translated "healed" covers repairing or setting right as well as curing illness. No sickness has been mentioned; it refers to the irregularity being put right.

30:21

The Hebrew calls these "instruments of strength", the loud temple instruments, chiefly cymbals, harps and lyres, played by the Levites.

30:22

"Spoke words of encouragement" renders a Hebrew phrase meaning literally "spoke to the heart." Fellowship offerings (also called peace offerings) were sacrifices in which only part of the animal was burned; the rest was cooked and eaten by the worshipers as a shared meal, which is why the people are described as eating their share.

30:23

Seven extra days doubled the festival. The same doubling had happened at Solomon's dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 7:8–9), which is why verse 26 reaches back to him for comparison.

30:24

These animals fed the crowd as well as supplying the altar; a festival on this scale needed meat for tens of thousands of visitors, and providing it was the king's and officials' responsibility.

30:25

"Foreigners" translates a word for non-Israelites settled among the people rather than passing through. They lived under Israel's laws and could take part in the Passover if circumcised.

30:26

Solomon reigned some two and a half centuries before Hezekiah. The comparison is to the festival at the temple's dedication, the largest gathering in the book so far.

30:27

Priests blessed the people with a set form of words (Numbers 6:24–26) at the close of worship. "Their voice was heard" and the prayer "reached" heaven are the writer's way of saying the blessing was accepted, not that anything was audible to the crowd.