2 Chronicles 29

2 Chronicles 29:1–36✞: Hezekiah Purifies the Temple

Passage

A lot of the book of Chronicles has been going king-by-king, often devoting a chapter to each king, just like the book of Kings did. However, we now enter the reign of Hezekiah, to whom a number of chapters are devoted. (Again, just like they did in Kings.)

We start off by him having to cleanse the Temple, since it was shuttered by his father Ahaz in the previous chapter. This entire chapter, in fact, is about this one task: cleansing and reopening the Temple for worship. I’m not going to write in depth about all that was done (here’s another link to the passage if you want to read it in depth✞), but it’s worth quoting Hezekiah’s speech to the priests and Levites as they begin the work:

⁴ He brought in the priests and the Levites, assembled them in the square on the east side ⁵ and said: “Listen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the LORD, the God of your ancestors. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary. ⁶ Our parents were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the LORD our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the LORD’s dwelling place and turned their backs on him. ⁷ They also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps. They did not burn incense or present any burnt offerings at the sanctuary to the God of Israel. ⁸ Therefore, the anger of the LORD has fallen on Judah and Jerusalem; he has made them an object of dread and horror and scorn, as you can see with your own eyes. ⁹ This is why our fathers have fallen by the sword and why our sons and daughters and our wives are in captivity. ¹⁰ Now I intend to make a covenant with the LORD, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. ¹¹ My sons, do not be negligent now, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before him and serve him, to minister before him and to burn incense.”

verses 4–11✞

The passage lays out the work that was done in two stages:

1. Eight days spent removing anything unclean they found in the Temple
2. Eight additional days spent consecrating the Temple itself.

I honestly don’t know exactly what is meant by removing the unclean things; the previous chapter seemed to indicate that Ahaz had closed the Temple, not that he’d been using it for worship of other gods, but perhaps it was both – or perhaps the Temple had already been defiled before being closed for good. Either way, it took eight whole days to remove anything unclean they found inside, followed by another eight to consecrate anything that was left. (I assume this probably also means the creation of some items; e.g. they might not have had any of the gold utensils left—at least not in a consecrated state!—so they’d either have to create new ones or purify the old ones.)

When the work is done they go back to inform Hezekiah, and then most of the rest of the chapter (verses 20–35✞) are devoted to the sacrifices, music, and other ways in which Hezekiah and the people get back into the Temple to worship their God, as had not been done during Ahaz’ reign.

If we think sixteen days to cleanse the Temple is a long time, it’s actually not that long at all – at least, not according to the people:

Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, because it was done so quickly.

verse 36✞

They seem to have been motivated to get back into proper worship of God.

Thoughts

When I was writing about Hezekiah as I went through the book of Kings I was wondering why we don’t think about him more often – and I’m still wondering! The writers of Kings and Chronicles seemed to believe he was such an important king that they needed to devote a lot of space to him, so why don’t we in the modern world ever talk about him?

And when he becomes king of Judah, the first thing he does (according to Chronicles) is re-open the Temple, including all of the consecration needed to make it acceptable to God for worship of Him. We should remember that Hezekiah is still facing a number of political crises—it’s not an exaggeration to say that, from a human perspective, the nation of Judah is at risk from the Assyrians when he takes the throne—but one of Hezekiah’s critical goals as king, if not the highest goal, is to get the people worshipping God again. Why? Well, at least in part it’s because Judah is only facing extinction by the Assyrians if it’s God’s will – this isn’t a matter of how strong the Assyrians are, it’s a matter of who God is. If God is for Judah, who can be against them? His people have faced impossible odds in the past and overcome those odds, because nothing is impossible for God.

This also explains why such care is taken to properly purify the Temple. It’s not just a matter of repairing the broken furniture and slapping a new coat of paint on it; God had given explicit instructions on how to keep the Temple Holy to Him and the people had desecrated it, so it’s now their job to purify it again, to make it Holy once more. I wrote in the last chapter that being a Christian isn’t a matter of following rules, it’s having a relationship with the God who did it all on our behalf, freeing us to worship Him as we were meant to (but from which we’re prevented in our natural, sinful state). One reason Hezekiah is remembered as a good king is that he’s trying to get God’s people to do the same. No, they don’t know anything about Jesus or the cross, or how He paid for sins once and for all (doing away with the need for a physical Temple going forward), but Hezekiah is trying to get the people to worship God from their hearts, not just as a matter of following rules.

That’s why purifying the Temple is important. Not because the rules say so, but because they view the Temple—the place where God dwells—as so important that it’s worth doing right.