9. Our fathers were killed in battle, and our wives and children have been taken away as prisoners.
10. “I have now decided to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, so that he will no longer be angry with us.
11. My sons, do not lose any time. You are the ones that the Lord has chosen to burn incense to him and to lead the people in worshipping him.”
15. These men assembled their fellow-Levites, and they all made themselves ritually clean. Then, as the king had commanded them to do, they began to make the Temple ritually clean, according to the Law of the Lord.; or Then they began to make the Temple ritually clean, as the king, who was acting at the Lord's command, had ordered them to do.
16. The priests went inside the Temple to purify it, and they carried out into the temple courtyard everything that was ritually unclean. From there the Levites took it all outside the city to the valley of the Kidron.
17. The work was begun on the first day of the first month, and by the eighth day they had finished it all, including the entrance room to the Temple. Then they worked for the next eight days, until the sixteenth of the month, preparing the Temple for worship.