Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The Joy of Worshiping in the Temple

For the music director; on the Gittith.

Of the sons of Korah. A psalm.^[a]

The Reign of Hezekiah

29 Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And the name of his mother was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah. ² And he did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh, according to all that David his father had done.

³ In the first year of his kingship, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of Yahweh and strengthened them. ⁴ And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and he gathered them into the eastern square. ⁵ And he said to them, “Hear me, O Levites! Sanctify yourselves now, and sanctify the house of Yahweh, the God of your ancestors,^[a] and bring out the defilement from the sanctuary. ⁶ For our ancestors^[b] acted unfaithfully and did evil in the sight of Yahweh our God, and have forsaken him and turned away their faces from the dwelling place of Yahweh. They have turned their backs^[c] on it. ⁷ They also shut the doors of the portico and extinguished the lamps. And they did not burn incense or offer burnt offerings in the sanctuary to the God of Israel. ⁸ And the wrath of Yahweh was upon Judah and Jerusalem. And he made them as an abhorrence, as a desolation and an object of scorn, as you see with your own eyes. ⁹ Now behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity on account of this. ¹⁰ Now it is in my heart^[d] to make^[e] a covenant with Yahweh, the God of Israel, so that his fierce anger might turn away from him. ¹¹ Now, my sons, do not be negligent, for Yahweh has chosen you to stand before him to serve him and to be his servants and incense burners.”

¹⁶ And the priests went into the inner part of the house of Yahweh to purify it. And they brought out all the impurity that they found in the temple of Yahweh out to the courtyard of the house of Yahweh. And the Levites took them to bring them outside to the Wadi^[a] Kidron. ¹⁷ And they began to sanctify themselves on the first day of the first month. And on the eighth day of the month they came to the portico of Yahweh. And they sanctified the house of Yahweh for eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished. ¹⁸ And they went into the inner part to King Hezekiah and said, “We have cleansed all the house of Yahweh: the altar of burnt offering, all its objects, the table of the rows of bread and all its objects, ¹⁹ and all the objects that King Ahaz discarded in his reign when he sinned, we have prepared and sanctified. Look, they are before the altar of Yahweh.”

²³ Therefore it was necessary for the sketches of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf, ²⁵ and not in order that he can offer himself many times, as the high priest enters into the sanctuary year by year^[a] with blood not his own, ²⁶ since it would have been necessary for him to suffer many times from the foundation of the world, but now he has appeared once at the end of the ages for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself. ²⁷ And just as^[b] it is destined for people to die once, and after this, judgment, ²⁸ thus also Christ, having been offered once in order to bear the sins of many, will appear for the second time without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him for salvation.