6. Messengers went out at the command of the king and his officials through all Judah and Israel with the following invitation:“People of Israel, you have survived the Assyrian conquest of the land. Now return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he will return to you.
7. Do not be like your ancestors and your fellow-Israelites who were unfaithful to the Lord their God. As you can see, he punished them severely.
8. Do not be stubborn as they were, but obey the Lord. Come to the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Lord your God has made holy for ever, and worship him so that he will no longer be angry with you.
9. If you return to the Lord, then those who have taken your relatives away as prisoners will take pity on them and let them come back home. The Lord your God is kind and merciful, and if you return to him, he will accept you.”
10. The messengers went to every city in the territory of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far north as the tribe of Zebulun, but people laughed at them and ridiculed them.
11. Still, there were some from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun who were willing to come to Jerusalem.
12. God was also at work in Judah and united the people in their determination to obey his will by following the commands of the king and his officials.
13. A great number of people gathered in Jerusalem in the second month to celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
14. They took all the altars that had been used in Jerusalem for offering sacrifices and burning incense and threw them into the valley of the Kidron.
15. And on the fourteenth day of the month they killed the lambs for the Passover sacrifice. The priests and Levites who were not ritually clean were so ashamed that they dedicated themselves to the Lord, and now they could sacrifice burnt offerings in the Temple.
16. They took their places in the Temple according to the instructions in the Law of Moses, the man of God. The Levites gave the blood of the sacrifices to the priests, who sprinkled it on the altar.
17. Because many of the people were not ritually clean, they could not kill the Passover lambs, so the Levites did it for them, and dedicated the lambs to the Lord.
18. In addition, many of those who had come from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun had not performed the ritual of purification, and so they were observing Passover improperly. King Hezekiah offered this prayer for them:
19. “O Lord, the God of our ancestors, in your goodness forgive those who are worshipping you with all their heart, even though they are not ritually clean.”