4. And the word was pleasing to the king, and to the entire multitude.
5. And they resolved that they would send messengers to all of Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan, so that they might come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem. For many had not kept it, just as it was prescribed by the law.
6. And carriers traveled with the letters, by order of the king and his rulers, to all of Israel and Judah, proclaiming, in accord with what the king had ordered: "O sons of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Israel. And he will return to the remnant who escaped from the hand of the king of the Assyrians.
7. Do not choose to be like your fathers and brothers, who withdrew from the Lord, the God of their fathers. And so he delivered them over to destruction, as you yourselves discern.
8. Do not choose to harden your necks, as your fathers did. Surrender to the hands of the Lord. And go to his Sanctuary, which he has sanctified unto eternity. Serve the Lord, the God of your fathers, and the fury of his wrath will be turned away from you.
9. For if you will return to the Lord, your brothers and sons will find mercy before their masters, who led them away as captives, and they will be returned to this land. For the Lord your God is compassionate and lenient, and he will not avert his face from you, if you will return to him."
10. And so, the carriers were traveling quickly from city to city, throughout the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun, though they were ridiculing and mocking them.
11. Even so, certain men from Asher, and from Manasseh, and from Zebulun, acquiescing to this counsel, went to Jerusalem.
12. Truly, the hand of God was working in Judah, to give them one heart, so that they would accomplish the word of the Lord, according to the precept of the king and of the rulers.
13. And many people gathered together in Jerusalem, so that they could keep the solemnity of unleavened bread, in the second month.
14. And rising up, they destroyed the altars which were in Jerusalem, and all the things in which incense was burned to idols. Overturning these things, they cast them into the torrent Kidron.
15. Then they immolated the Passover on the fourteenth day of the second month. Also, the priests and Levites, at length having been sanctified, offered the holocausts in the house of the Lord.
16. And they stood in their order, according to the disposition and law of Moses, the man of God. Yet truly, the priests took up the blood, which was to be poured out, from the hands of the Levites,