¹¹My sons, be not now negligent: for the Lord hath chosen you to stand before him, to minister unto him, and that ye should be his ministers, and burn incense.
11. to stand before him] Deuteronomy x. 8.
12–19 (not in 2 Kings).
The Cleansing of the Temple.
With this passage compare 1 Maccabees iv. 36–51 (the cleansing of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus).
¹²Then the Levites arose, Mahath the son of Amasai, and Joel the son of Azariah, of the sons of the Kohathites: and of the sons of Merari, Kish the son of Abdi, and Azariah the son of Jehallelel: and of the Gershonites, Joah the son of Zimmah, and Eden the son of Joah: ¹³and of the sons of Elizaphan, Shimri and Jeuel: and of the sons of Asaph, Zechariah and Mattaniah: ¹⁴and of the sons of Heman, Jehuel and Shimei: and of the sons of Jeduthun, Shemaiah and Uzziel.
12. the Levites] The fourteen persons mentioned in these three verses comprise (a) two representatives each of the three great branches of Levi, namely, Kohath, Merari, and Gershon, (b) two representatives of the great Kohathite family of Elizaphan (compare Numbers iii. 30 and 1 Chronicles xv. 8), (c) two representatives each of the three divisions of the singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun (1 Chronicles xxv. 1).
¹⁵And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and went in, according to the commandment of the king by the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord.
15. by the words of the Lord] i.e. the king’s command was recognised to be in accordance with the Divine will. Read by the word; the plural words is probably only a textual error.
¹⁶And the priests went in unto the inner part of the house of the Lord, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad to the brook Kidron.
16. the priests] The work was so divided between priests and Levites that only the priests went into the house.