King David replied to Ornan, “No, I insist on buying it for top price. ¹  I will not offer to the Lord what belongs to you or offer a burnt sacrifice ²  that cost me nothing. ³ 

They divided them by lots, for there were officials of the holy place and officials designated by God among the descendants of both Eleazar and Ithamar. ¹ 

This was the order in which they carried out their assigned responsibilities when they entered the Lord’s temple, according to the regulations given them by their ancestor ¹  Aaron, just as the Lord God of Israel had instructed him. ² 

Joab son of Zeruiah started to count the men but did not finish. God was angry with Israel ¹  because of this, so the number was not recorded in the scroll ²  called The Annals of King David.

“If your people Israel are defeated by an enemy ¹  because they sinned against you, then if they come back to you, renew their allegiance to you, ²  and pray for your help ³  before you in this temple,

When the men of Judah ¹  arrived at the observation post overlooking the desert and looked at ²  the huge army, they saw dead bodies on the ground; there were no survivors!

(Wicked Athaliah and her sons had broken into God’s temple and used all the holy items of the Lord’s temple in their worship of the Baals.)

An edict was sent throughout Judah and Jerusalem requiring the people to bring to the Lord the tax that Moses, God’s servant, imposed on Israel in the wilderness. ¹ 

They worked hard and made the repairs. ¹  They followed the measurements specified for God’s temple and restored it. ² 

They abandoned the temple of the Lord God of their ancestors, ¹  and worshiped ²  the Asherah poles and idols. Because of this sinful activity, God was angry with Judah and Jerusalem.

King Joash disregarded ¹  the loyalty his father Jehoiada had shown him and killed Jehoiada’s ²  son. As Zechariah ³  was dying, he said, “May the Lord take notice and seek vengeance!” ⁴ 

The list of Joash’s ¹  sons, the many prophetic oracles pertaining to him, and the account of his building project on God’s temple are included in the record of the Scroll of the Kings. ²  His son Amaziah replaced him as king.

Ahaz gathered the items in God’s temple and removed them. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple and erected altars on every street corner in Jerusalem.

Then the priests slaughtered them. They offered their blood as a sin offering on the altar to make atonement for all Israel, because the king had decreed ¹  that the burnt sacrifice and sin offering were for all Israel.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, the details of which are recorded in the scroll which they read before the king of Judah.

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 

Furthermore, be aware of the fact ¹  that you have no authority to impose tax, tribute, or toll on any of the priests, the Levites, the musicians, the doorkeepers, the temple servants, or the attendants at the temple of this God.

And the leaders of the Levites were Hashabiah, Sherebiah, Jeshua son of Kadmiel, and their colleagues, who stood opposite them to offer praise and thanks, one contingent corresponding to the other, as specified by ¹  David the man of God.

For Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised plans against the Jews to destroy them. He had cast pur (that is, the lot) in order to afflict and destroy them.

For he did not despise or detest the suffering ¹  of the oppressed; ²  he did not ignore him; ³  when he cried out to him, he responded. ⁴