[¹] Or, chronicler.
8. Shaphan] According to 2 Kings he was Scribe. See 1 Chronicles xviii. 16 (note).
the governor of the city] Render, a ruler of the city; compare xxix. 20.
the recorder] margin the chronicler; compare 1 Chronicles xviii. 15 (note). Neither Maaseiah nor Joah is mentioned in 2 Kings.
to repair the house of the Lord] It may be conjectured that the disrepair was not due solely to the abuses of Manasseh’s reign, but was connected with the disaster recorded in xxxiii. 11, when an Assyrian army carried off Manasseh to Babylon. Probably the capture of the king was not achieved without the conquest of Jerusalem, and the Temple may easily have suffered serious damage at that time. Note that Kings (which does not record the disaster mentioned in Chronicles) uses strong terms regarding the condition of the Temple when Josiah’s work was put in hand—“to repair the breaches of the house,” 2 Kings xxii. 5.
⁹And they came to Hilkiah the high priest, and delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites, the keepers of the door[¹], had gathered of the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin, and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem[²].
[¹] Hebrew threshold.
[²] Another reading is, and they returned to Jerusalem.
9. And they came ... and delivered] The matter is differently stated in 2 Kings according to which they are sent to Hilkiah with a message to him to “sum,” i.e. to reckon, the total of the money collected in the Temple. The Chronicler has in mind the idea which he set forth in xxiv. 6 ff.—namely, that the money was gathered by a body of Levites who went round the country collecting it.
the Levites, the keepers of the door] In 2 Kings xii. 9 the keepers of the doors are called priests; compare 2 Kings xxv. 18.