2 Chronicles 31 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~715-710 BC, the early years of Hezekiah's reign, immediately following the great Passover
Location
Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, plus the storerooms attached to the temple where the incoming produce is piled up
Audience
Jewish families who had returned from exile and were arguing about how to fund and staff a working temple
Situation
The festival crowd goes home and smashes the local shrines and sacred pillars across the countryside. Hezekiah then reorganises the priests and Levites into work rotations and orders the people to bring in the share of produce that supports them, and the donations pile up in heaps for months.
Key Background
Priests and Levites owned no farmland of their own, so a tenth of everyone else's harvest and livestock was their entire income, and when that giving lapsed they simply went back to their villages and the temple emptied out. The high places being torn down were local hilltop altars, some of them used to worship Israel's own God, and reformer kings wanted all sacrifice centralised in Jerusalem where it could be supervised. The detailed lists of officials, storerooms and registration by family are the sort of administrative record that mattered enormously to the postexilic community, since proving priestly descent determined who could serve and who got fed.
When all this was finished, all the Israelites who were there went out to the cities of Judah and smashed the cut down the and tore down the and the altars throughout all Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh until they had completely destroyed them all. Then all the Israelites returned to their own cities, each to their own property.
Hezekiah assigned the divisions of the priests and the Levites according to their divisions, each one according to their service — the priests and Levites for burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, to serve and to give thanks and to praise at the gates of
The king contributed from his own possessions for the burnt offerings — the morning and evening burnt offerings, and the burnt offerings for the Sabbaths, the New Moon and the as written in the of
He told the people living in Jerusalem to give the to the priests and the Levites so they could devote themselves fully to the instructions of Yahweh.
As soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the of grain, new wine, olive oil, honey, and everything the field produced. They brought in an abundance — a of everything.
The Israelites and Judahites who lived in the cities of Judah also brought in a tenth of their cattle and sheep, and a tenth of the gifts they had to their and for and they piled them in heaps.
They started piling up the heaps in the third month and finished in the seventh month.
When Hezekiah and the officials came and saw the heaps, they praised Yahweh and his people Israel.
Hezekiah asked the priests and the Levites about the heaps.
the chief priest, from the house of Zadok, answered him, "Since the people began bringing their contributions to the house of Yahweh, we've had plenty to eat with a huge surplus left over, because Yahweh has such for his people that this massive amount is what's left."
Hezekiah then ordered them to prepare storerooms in the house of Yahweh. And they prepared them.
They brought in the contributions, the tenths, and the dedicated things. Conaniah the Levite was the officer in charge, with his brother Shimei as second.
Jehiel, Azaziah, Nahath, Asahel, Jerimoth, Jozabad, Eliel, Ismachiah, Mahath, and Benaiah were overseers under the direction of Conaniah and Shimei his brother, by appointment of King Hezekiah and Azariah the chief officer of the house of God.
Kore son of Imnah the Levite, gatekeeper of the East Gate, was in charge of the voluntary to distributing the contributions made to Yahweh and the for
Under his direction were Eden, Miniamin, Jeshua, Shemaiah, Amariah, and Shecaniah in the cities of the priests, faithfully distributing to their brothers by divisions, to the great and small alike —
in addition to males registered by genealogy three years old and above, everyone who entered the house of Yahweh for the daily requirements, for their service according to their duties by divisions.
The genealogical registration of the priests was by their ancestral houses, while the Levites from twenty years old and above were registered by their duties according to their divisions.
The registration included all their little ones, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, the whole community, because they for
For the descendants of Aaron — the priests — in the pasturelands around their cities, in each and every city, there were men designated by name to distribute portions to every male among the priests and to everyone registered by genealogy among the Levites.
Hezekiah did this throughout all Judah. He did what was and before Yahweh his God.
In everything he undertook — whether in service to the house of God, or in matters of the instructions and the commands, seeking God — he did it with and he