9. For if you return to Adonai, your brothers and children will receive compassion before their captors, and will return to this land. For Adonai your God is compassionate and merciful; He will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him.”
10. As the couriers traveled from town to town through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh and as far as Zebulun, they were scorned and mocked.
11. Nevertheless some men from Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.
12. The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the officials commanded by the word of Adonai.
13. Now a very large assembly gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Matzot in the second month.
14. They arose and removed the altars and all the incense altars that were in Jerusalem, and threw them into the Kidron Valley.
15. Then they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. The kohanim and the Levites were ashamed and consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings into the House of Adonai.
16. They stood at their post as prescribed in the Torah of Moses, the man of God. The kohanim sprinkled the blood that they received from the hand of the Levites.
17. For there were many in the congregation that had not concecrated themselves, therefore the Levites were in charge of slaughtering the Passover lambs for everyone that was not ceremonially clean in order to concecrate them to Adonai.
18. Although a great multitude of the people—many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun—had not purified themselves, they still ate the Passover lamb contrary to what is written. But Hezekiah prayed for them saying: “May Adonai who is good, atone for
19. every one who prepares his heart to seek Adonai, the God of his fathers, even though he is not pure according to rules of the sanctuary.”