¹⁵ When they had assembled their fellow Levites and consecrated themselves, they went in to purify^(A) the temple of the Lord, as the king had ordered, following the word of the Lord. ¹⁶ The priests went into the sanctuary of the Lord to purify it. They brought out to the courtyard of the Lord’s temple everything unclean that they found in the temple of the Lord. The Levites took it and carried it out to the Kidron Valley.^{(B) 17} They began the consecration on the first day of the first month, and by the eighth day of the month they reached the portico of the Lord. For eight more days they consecrated the temple of the Lord itself, finishing on the sixteenth day of the first month.