5. and said to them, “Listen to me, you Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, and sanctify the Lord, the God of your fathers’ house, and carry the filthiness out of the holy place.
6. For our fathers were unfaithful, and have done that which was evil in the Lord our God’s sight, and have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs.
7. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.
8. Therefore the Lord’s wrath was on Judah and Jerusalem, and he has delivered them to be tossed back and forth, to be an astonishment, and a hissing, as you see with your eyes.
9. For, behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.
10. Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, that his fierce anger may turn away from us.
11. My sons, don’t be negligent now; for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him, to minister to him, and that you should be his ministers, and burn incense.”
12. Then the Levites arose, Mahath, the son of Amasai, and Joel the son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites; and of the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi, and Azariah the son of Jehallelel; and of the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah, and Eden the son of Joah;
13. and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeuel; and of the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah;
14. and of the sons of Heman, Jehuel and Shimei; and of the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel.
15. They gathered their brothers, sanctified themselves, and went in, according to the commandment of the king by the Lord’s words, to cleanse the Lord’s house.
16. The priests went into the inner part of the Lord’s house to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the Lord’s temple into the court of the Lord’s house. The Levites took it from there to carry it out to the brook Kidron.
17. Now they began on the first day of the first month to sanctify, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the Lord’s porch. They sanctified the Lord’s house in eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.
18. Then they went in to Hezekiah the king within the palace, and said, “We have cleansed all the Lord’s house, including the altar of burnt offering with all its vessels, and the table of show bread with all its vessels.
19. Moreover have we prepared and sanctified all the vessels which king Ahaz threw away in his reign, when he was unfaithful. Behold, they are before the Lord’s altar.”
20. Then Hezekiah the king arose early, gathered the princes of the city, and went up to the Lord’s house.
21. They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven lambs, and seven male goats, for a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah. He commanded the priests the sons of Aaron to offer them on the Lord’s altar.
22. So they killed the bulls, and the priests received the blood, and sprinkled it on the altar. They killed the rams, and sprinkled the blood on the altar. They also killed the lambs, and sprinkled the blood on the altar.
23. They brought near the male goats for the sin offering before the king and the assembly; and they laid their hands on them.
24. Then the priests killed them, and they made a sin offering with their blood on the altar, to make atonement for all Israel; for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel.
25. He set the Levites in the Lord’s house with cymbals, with stringed instruments, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet; for the commandment was from the Lord by his prophets.