Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

84 How lovely is your Temple, O Lord of the armies of heaven.

² I long, yes, faint with longing to be able to enter your courtyard and come near to the Living God. ³ Even the sparrows and swallows are welcome to come and nest among your altars and there have their young, O Lord of heaven’s armies, my King and my God! ⁴ How happy are those who can live in your Temple, singing your praises.

⁵ Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who want above all else to follow your steps. ⁶ When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains! ⁷ They will grow constantly in strength, and each of them is invited to meet with the Lord in Zion.

⁸ O Jehovah, God of the heavenly armies, hear my prayer! Listen, God of Israel. ⁹ O God, our Defender and our Shield, have mercy on the one you have anointed as your king.^[a]

¹⁰ A single day spent in your Temple is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a doorman of the Temple of my God than live in palaces^[b] of wickedness. ¹¹ For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk along his paths.^[c]

¹² O Lord of the armies of heaven, blessed are those who trust in you.

29 Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became the king of Judah, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. ² His reign was generally good in the Lord’s sight, just as his ancestor David’s had been.

³ In the very first month of the first year of his reign, he reopened the doors of the Temple and repaired them. ^4-5 He summoned the priests and Levites to meet him at the open space east of the Temple and addressed them thus:

“Listen to me, you Levites. Sanctify yourselves and sanctify the Temple of the Lord God of your ancestors—clean all the debris from the holy place. ⁶ For our fathers have committed a deep sin before the Lord our God; they abandoned the Lord and his Temple and turned their backs on it. ⁷ The doors have been shut tight, the perpetual flame has been put out, and the incense and burnt offerings have not been offered. ⁸ Therefore, the wrath of the Lord has been upon Judah and Jerusalem. He has caused us to be objects of horror, amazement, and contempt, as you see us today. ⁹ Our fathers have been killed in war, and our sons and daughters and wives are in captivity because of this.

¹⁰ “But now I want to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel so that his fierce anger will turn away from us. ¹¹ My children, don’t neglect your duties any longer, for the Lord has chosen you to minister to him and to burn incense.”

¹⁶ The priests cleaned up the inner room of the Temple and brought out into the court all the filth and decay they found there. The Levites then carted it out to Kidron Brook. ¹⁷ This all began on the first day of April, and by the eighth day they had reached the outer court, which took eight days to clean up, so the entire job was completed in sixteen days.

¹⁸ Then they went back to the palace and reported to King Hezekiah, “We have completed the cleansing of the Temple and of the altar of burnt offerings and of its accessories, also the table of the Bread of the Presence and its equipment. ¹⁹ What’s more, we have recovered and sanctified all the utensils thrown away by King Ahaz when he closed the Temple. They are beside the altar of the Lord.”

²³ That is why the sacred tent down here on earth and everything in it—all copied from things in heaven—all had to be made pure by Moses in this way, by being sprinkled with the blood of animals. But the real things in heaven, of which these down here are copies, were made pure with far more precious offerings.

²⁴ For Christ has entered into heaven itself to appear now before God as our Friend. It was not in the earthly place of worship that he did this, for that was merely a copy of the real temple in heaven. ²⁵ Nor has he offered himself again and again, as the high priest down here on earth offers animal blood in the Holy of Holies each year. ²⁶ If that had been necessary, then he would have had to die again and again, ever since the world began. But no! He came once for all, at the end of the age, to put away the power of sin forever by dying for us.

²⁷ And just as it is destined that men die only once, and after that comes judgment, ²⁸ so also Christ died only once as an offering for the sins of many people; and he will come again, but not to deal again with our sins.

This time he will come bringing salvation to all those who are eagerly and patiently waiting for him.