¹Hezekiah started to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned in Jerusalem for twenty-nine years. And the name of his mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. ²And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, like everything that his father David did. ³It was he who in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. ⁴And he brought the priests and the Levites in, and he assembled them in the East Square. ⁵And he said to them, “Listen to me, you Levites. Sanctify yourselves now, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and remove the uncleanness from the sanctuary. ⁶For our fathers acted perversely and did what was wrong in the eyes of the Lord our God, and they forsook him, and they turned their faces away from the Lord's tabernacle and showed him the back of the neck. ⁷They also shut the doors of the hall, and they extinguished the candles, and they did not burn incense, nor did they make any burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. ⁸And the anger of the Lord came on Judah and Jerusalem, and he made them a horror and a desolation and an object of jeering, as you see with your eyes. ⁹And the result was that our fathers fell by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives went into captivity for this. ¹⁰It is now in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, so that the fury of his wrath may turn away from us. ¹¹My sons, do not now be lax, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him to serve him and to be his servants and incense-burners.” ¹²And the Levites arose: Mahath the son of Amasai, and Joel the son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites; and from the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi and Azariah the son of Jehalelel; and from the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah and Eden the son of Joah; ¹³and from the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeiel; and from the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah; ¹⁴and from the sons of Heman, Jehiel and Shimei; and from the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel. ¹⁵And they gathered their brothers and sanctified themselves, and they came in, according to the king's commandment, on the Lord's business – to cleanse the house of the Lord. ¹⁶So the priests came into the interior of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and they took all the defilement which they found in the Lord's temple out to the courtyard of the house of the Lord, and the Levites took charge of it, to take it outside to the Kidron Brook. ¹⁷And they began on the first day of the first month to do the sanctification, and on the eighth day of the month they entered the hall of the Lord, and they sanctified the house of the Lord for eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month, they finished. ¹⁸And they went inside to Hezekiah the king and said, “We have cleansed the whole house of the Lord, the burnt offering altar and all its equipment and the showbread table, and all its equipment. ¹⁹And we have prepared and sanctified all the equipment which King Ahaz abused in his reign in his perverseness. And they are before the Lord's altar.” ²⁰Then King Hezekiah rose early and gathered the officials of the city, and he went up to the house of the Lord. ²¹And they 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, and he told the sons of Aaron – the priests – to make the offering on the Lord's altar. ²²So they slaughtered the bulls, and the priests collected the blood and sprinkled it on the altar, and they slaughtered the rams and sprinkled the blood on the altar, and they slaughtered the lambs and sprinkled the blood on the altar. ²³And they brought the goats for the sin-offering before the king and the convocation, and they laid their hands on them, ²⁴and the priests slaughtered them and offered their blood as a sin-offering on the altar to make atonement for all Israel, for the king had said to make a burnt offering and a sin-offering for the whole of Israel. ²⁵And he marshalled the Levites to the house of the Lord with their timbrels and lutes and harps in accordance with the commandment of David, and Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet, for the commandment was given by the Lord through the intermediacy of his prophets. ²⁶So the Levites stood with the instruments specified by David, as did the priests with trumpets. ²⁷And Hezekiah told them to make the burnt offering on the altar. And at the time when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord began, with the trumpets, and in accompaniment were the instruments specified by David king of Israel. ²⁸And the whole convocation was worshipping, and the choir was singing, and the trumpet-players were playing the trumpet. All this went on until the burnt offering was completed. ²⁹And when they had completed making the burnt offering, the king and all those present with him bowed and worshipped. ³⁰And Hezekiah the king and the officials told the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and Asaph the seer. So they praised him with rejoicing, and they bowed down and worshipped. ³¹Then Hezekiah reacted and said, “You have taken up your responsibility to the Lord. Approach and bring sacrifices and thank-offerings to the house of the Lord.” So the convocation brought sacrifices and thank-offerings, and all those of a willing heart brought burnt offerings. ³²And the number of burnt offerings which the convocation brought was seventy bulls, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs. All these were for a burnt offering to the Lord. ³³And the consecrated cattle consisted of six hundred bulls and three thousand sheep. ³⁴But the priests were few, and they were not able to skin all the burnt offerings, and their brothers the Levites assisted them until the completion of the work and until the priests had sanctified themselves, for the Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests. ³⁵But the burnt offerings were nevertheless in abundance, with the fat of the peace-offerings and the libations to the burnt offerings. And the work of the house of the Lord was established. ³⁶And Hezekiah rejoiced, as did all the people, at what God had prepared for the people, for the thing happened suddenly.