2 Chronicles31chapter 31

2 Chronicles 31:1

The reform does not stop at Judah's border. It runs into Ephraim and Manasseh, territory of the fallen northern kingdom with no king left to command it, evidence that the invitation Hezekiah sent north before the Passover of chapter 30 had taken hold. Kings gives the reform one summary verse at 2 Kings 18:4; Chronicles gives the sweep across the old northern tribes and the detail that every worker went home only once the destruction was complete.

2 Chronicles 31:2-4

Hezekiah restores the courses of priests and Levites David had organized in 1 Chr 24-26, so the temple service runs again in its old order, every man knowing his work and his place. He funds the regular offerings from his own portion before he asks anything of anyone else, then commands the people of Jerusalem to give the priests and Levites their due share so they can give themselves wholly to the law. The king's own giving is the first act of the law he then requires.

2 Chronicles 31:5-7

Once the command goes out the response is immediate and large: firstfruits of grain, wine, oil and honey come in from Israel and Judah alike, and the tithe is laid by heaps rather than measured. Gill reads the two building months by the calendar's own feasts, the third month holding Pentecost's early harvest and the seventh month holding the ingathering of Tabernacles, so the heaps span the full agricultural year. A tithe that had lapsed under Ahaz returns to more than the temple can immediately use.

2 Chronicles 31:8-10

they blessed the Lord: Hezekiah and the princes see the heaps and bless the Lord before a single question is asked about them, gratitude coming before accounting. When the king does ask, Azariah the chief priest of the house of Zadok gives the answer the reign is remembered for: since the people began to bring the offerings into the house of the Lord, we have had enough to eat, and have left plenty. The surplus itself is the evidence that the reform reached the people's hands and not only the king's intentions.

2 Chronicles 31:11-13

Storage has to be built for what devotion produced, so Hezekiah orders chambers made ready in the temple to hold the heaps. Cononiah the Levite is set over them with his brother Shimei next under him, and ten further men are named as overseers beneath them by the king's own commandment. Chronicles keeps the names because the reform's success is carried by faithful hands, not by the king's zeal standing alone.

2 Chronicles 31:14-19

Kore, a gatekeeper at the temple's east gate, is set over the freewill offerings and the most holy things, and under him six further Levites distribute the priests' share in the Levitical cities, sorted by the genealogical rolls the book has already spent nine chapters compiling. The distribution reaches priests from twenty years old, and further still to every male from three years old and to every wife, son and daughter of a priestly household, in the towns and in the outlying fields alike. Chronicles counts the youngest child of a consecrated family as owed a portion, because a household that keeps itself in holiness is provided for as a household.

2 Chronicles 31:20-21

The chapter's actions collapse into one closing sentence: Hezekiah wrought that which was good and right and truth before the Lord his God. Verse 21 names the manner rather than another deed, in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered, the seeking refrain the book measures every king by, stated here at its fullest. Wesley and Henry both read the verse as the summary the Chronicler gives his best kings, obedience carried through rather than begun and left.