2 Chronicles29chapter 29

a.of the sons of the Kohathites: Fourteen Levites, two from each of the three Levitical houses and then two more from each of the four song guilds, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and the sons of Elizaphan, answer the summons by name. The names are not decoration: they are the courses David organized in 1 Chr 23-26 reporting for the first work assigned to them since Ahaz's reign began, the structure built two generations earlier proving functional the moment a king calls on it. Barnes notes the sons of Elizaphan as a distinct branch of Kohath with standing privileges going back to the wilderness census at Numbers 3:30, one more thread this list ties to the tabernacle order Chronicles never lets Israel forget.

a.to cleanse the house of the Lord: The date stamps are exact: they begin the first day of the first month and finish the sixteenth, the priests reaching the porch by day eight and the whole house by day sixteen. That leaves them two days past Nisan fourteen, the appointed day of Passover, the gap chapter 30 resolves by keeping the feast in the second month under the provision of Num 9:10-11. Cleansing runs inside out exactly as commanded, priests carrying uncleanness from the inner house to the court and Levites carrying it from the court out to the brook Kidron, a chain of hands matching each order's proper access to the sanctuary.

a.We have cleansed all the house: The Levites report by inventory: the altar of burnt offering, the shewbread table, and every vessel Ahaz had cast away in his transgression, now prepared and sanctified and standing before the altar. Clarke cites the Targum's reading that Ahaz had hidden rather than destroyed some of the vessels, which if so means the restoration recovers actual pieces rather than only replacements, though the verse itself does not specify which. Either way the report names Ahaz's sin by name in front of his own son, the second generation undoing what the first one broke piece by piece.

a.rose early, and gathered the rulers of the city: Four kinds of victim, seven of each, a number Wesley reads as the customary figure for sacred completeness given how many and how varied the kingdom's sins had grown under Ahaz. The offering's stated scope widens in one verse from the kingdom to the sanctuary to Judah, and verse 24 widens it once more; the sin offering is building toward Israel as a whole before it gets there. Hezekiah himself commands the sons of Aaron to the altar, the king directing worship without performing the priest's part, the line Uzziah crossed and never survived at 26:16-21.

a.the priests received the blood: Laying hands on the goats before the sacrifice marks the animals as standing in the offerers' place, Gill reading the gesture as the same substitution pattern Leviticus 1 sets out, though the verse itself only records the ritual act. Verse 24 states the scope plainly, the priests made reconciliation to make an atonement for all Israel, for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel, not Judah alone. Hezekiah is already reaching past his own borders toward the ten tribes that fell in the chapter before, the same reach that becomes an open letter to Ephraim and Manasseh in chapter 30.

a.according to the commandment of David: Three names anchor the order Hezekiah restores: David, who founded the singing courses at 1 Chr 25; Gad, the king's seer who first speaks to David at 1 Sam 22:5; and Nathan, who carries the covenant of 2 Sam 7 and 1 Chr 17. The verse calls their arrangement the commandment of the Lord by his prophets, placing David's temple music on the same footing as the pattern he says at 1 Chr 28:19 the Lord made him understand in writing by his hand upon him. Clarke notes that Moses commanded no instruments for the first tabernacle; what stands here is a later revelation layered onto the first, not a replacement for it, and Chronicles treats both as binding.

a.the song of the Lord began also: The music and the offering start together, and Barnes calls it a burst of music giving notice to the people the moment the old worship resumes after the years of silence Ahaz's shut doors had imposed. The same coordination of singers and offering that Jehoshaphat later sends ahead of an army at 20:21 appears here at its proper occasion, the sanctuary itself, worship set to the length of the sacrifice rather than to a fixed form. Nothing is rushed and nothing is stretched; the song runs exactly until the burnt offering is finished, then stops.

a.bowed themselves, and worshipped: Two acts of worship stand side by side: the king and the whole company bow at the offering's close, and then Hezekiah and the princes command a second act, singing with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer. Asaph is the singer David set over the ark's service at 1 Chr 16:4-7, the man whose psalm that day gave Scripture its refrain his mercy endureth for ever at 1 Chr 16:34, and whose family still leads two centuries later. Calling Asaph a seer rather than only a musician credits the songs themselves with a prophetic standing, the same claim 1 Chr 25:1 makes for the singers who prophesy with harps.

a.Now ye have consecrated yourselves unto the Lord: Hezekiah's invitation, come near and bring sacrifices, moves the day from atonement to fellowship, and the response is voluntary: as many as were of a free heart brought burnt offerings, the same free heart language that describes the giving for the temple's building at 1 Chr 29:9. Gill notes the totals, seventy bullocks and six hundred oxen among them, run smaller than David and Solomon's dedication offerings, the nation poorer after Ahaz's reign and the gift coming from two tribes rather than the whole kingdom David once ruled. The size of the offering matters less to the chapter than its shape, obligation in the morning and free giving by the afternoon.

a.priests were too few, so that: The priests run short handed and the Levites step into work the law reserved for Aaron's sons alone, Clarke calling it a case of necessity rather than a new rule. The verse states the reason without softening it: the Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests, an unfavorable comparison Chronicles lets stand rather than explains away. Henry reads it as encouragement to the zealous Levites and a mark against the priests who had been slower to consecrate themselves for the work in front of them.

a.the burnt offerings were in abundance: The chapter closes on two clauses that carry its whole argument: God had prepared the people, and the thing was done suddenly. Wesley reads the suddenness itself as evidence, a people who had complied with Ahaz's idolatry only a generation before now free and forward in the Lord's service, a change he credits to the Spirit changing their hearts. Clarke adds that a king's example can move a whole people, but the text names its own cause first, the Lord's preparing standing behind the king's summons rather than following it.