9. For if you turn again to the Lord: your brethren, and children shall find mercy before their masters, that have led them away captive, and they shall return into this land: for the Lord your God is merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.
10. So the posts went speedily from city to city, through the land of Ephraim, and of Manasses, even to Zabulon, whilst they laughed at them and mocked them.
11. Nevertheless some men of Aser, and of Manasses, and of Zabulon, yielding to the counsel, came to Jerusalem.
12. But the hand of God was in Juda, to give them one heart to do the word of the Lord, according to the commandment of the king, and of the princes.
13. And much people were assembled to Jerusalem to celebrate the solemnity of the unleavened bread in the second month:
14. And they arose and destroyed the altars that were in Jerusalem, and took sway all things in which incense was burnt to idols, and cast them into the torrent Cedron.
15. And they immolated the phase on the fourteenth day of the second month. And the priests and the Levites being at length sanctified offered 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: but the priests received the blood which was to be poured out, from the hands of the Levites,
17. Because a great number was not sanctified: and therefore the Levites immolated the phase for them that came not in time to be sanctified to the Lord.
18. For a great part of the people from Ephraim, and Manasses, and Issachar, and Zabulon, that had not been sanctified, ate the phase otherwise than it is written: and Ezechias prayed for them, saying: The Lord who is good will shew mercy,