Hezekiah is the one who eliminated ¹  the Lord’s ²  high places and altars and then told Judah and Jerusalem, “At one altar you must worship and offer sacrifices.”

They called out loudly in the Judahite dialect to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, trying to scare and terrify them so they could seize the city.

The Lord delivered Hezekiah and the residents of Jerusalem from the power of King Sennacherib of Assyria and from all the other nations. ¹  He made them secure on every side. ² 

But then Hezekiah and the residents of Jerusalem humbled themselves and abandoned their pride, and the Lord was not angry with them for the rest of Hezekiah’s reign. ¹ 

Hezekiah passed away ¹  and was buried on the ascent of the tombs of the descendants of David. All the people of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem buried him with great honor. ²  His son Manasseh replaced him as king.

But Manasseh misled the people of ¹  Judah and the residents of Jerusalem so that they sinned more than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed ahead of the Israelites.

When he prayed to the Lord, ¹  the Lord ²  responded to him ³  and answered favorably ⁴  his cry for mercy. The Lord ⁵  brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh realized that the Lord is the true God.

He removed the foreign gods and images from the Lord’s temple and all the altars he had built on the hill of the Lord’s temple and in Jerusalem; he threw them outside the city.

The king of Egypt prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem and imposed on the land a special tax ¹  of one hundred talents ²  of silver and a talent of gold.

The king of Egypt made Jehoahaz’s ¹  brother Eliakim king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Necho seized his brother Jehoahaz and took him to Egypt.

Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. ¹  He did evil in the sight of ²  the Lord his God.

At the beginning of the year King Nebuchadnezzar ordered him to be brought ¹  to Babylon, along with the valuable items in the Lord’s temple. In his place he made his relative ²  Zedekiah king over Judah and Jerusalem.

All the leaders of the priests and people became more unfaithful and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations. ¹  They defiled the Lord’s temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

“Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: “‘The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has instructed me to build a temple ¹  for him in Jerusalem, ²  which is in Judah.

Anyone who survives in any of those places where he is a resident foreigner must be helped by his neighbors ¹  with silver, gold, equipment, and animals, along with voluntary offerings for the temple of God which is in Jerusalem.’”

Then the leaders ¹  of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and the Levites – all those whose mind God had stirred – got ready ²  to go up in order to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. ³ 

¹ These are the people ²  of the province who were going up, ³  from the captives of the exile whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had forced into exile in Babylon. They returned to Jerusalem ⁴  and Judah, each to his own city.

When they came to the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, some of the family leaders ¹  offered voluntary offerings for the temple of God in order to rebuild ²  it on its site.

Now ¹  let the king be aware that the Jews who came up to us from you have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and odious city. ²  They are completing its walls and repairing its foundations.

So the work on the temple of God in Jerusalem came to a halt. It remained halted until the second year of the reign of King Darius of Persia. ¹