So all the people departed to eat and drink and to share their food ¹  with others ²  and to enjoy tremendous joy, ³  for they had gained insight in the matters that had been made known to them.

“‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you will celebrate the Passover, and for seven days bread made without yeast will be eaten.

I will put an end to all her celebration: her annual religious festivals, monthly new moon celebrations, and weekly Sabbath festivities – all her appointed festivals.

Then all who survive from all the nations that came to attack Jerusalem will go up annually to worship the King, the Lord who rules over all, and to observe the Feast of Tabernacles. ¹ 

If the Egyptians will not do so, they will get no rain – instead there will be the kind of plague which the Lord inflicts on any nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

(Now the Jewish feast of the Passover ¹  was near.) ² 

“When a foreigner lives ¹  with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, ²  and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land ³  – but no uncircumcised person may eat of it.

You are to celebrate the festival seven days before the Lord your God in the place he ¹  chooses, for he ²  will bless you in all your productivity and in whatever you do; ³  so you will indeed rejoice!

(2:1) ¹  Look! A herald is running ²  on the mountains! A messenger is proclaiming deliverance: ³  “Celebrate your sacred festivals, O Judah! Fulfill your sacred vows to praise God! ⁴  For never again ⁵  will the wicked ⁶  Assyrians ⁷  invade ⁸  you, they ⁹  have been completely destroyed.”

Hezekiah sent messages throughout Israel and Judah; he even wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, summoning them to come to the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem ¹  and observe a Passover celebration for the Lord God of Israel.

The Israelites who were in Jerusalem observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with great joy. The Levites and priests were praising the Lord every day with all their might. ¹ 

At that time Solomon and all Israel with him celebrated a festival before the Lord our God for two entire weeks. This great assembly included people from all over the land, from Lebo Hamath in the north to the Brook of Egypt ¹  in the south. ² 

For seven days ¹  you must eat ²  bread made without yeast, and on the seventh day there is to be ³  a festival to the Lord.

The Israelites must keep the Sabbath by observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.

All the people of the land celebrated, for the city had rest now that they had killed Athaliah. ¹ 

They will talk about the fame of your great kindness, ¹  and sing about your justice. ² 

When the righteous do well, ¹  the city rejoices; ²  when the wicked perish, there is joy.

But on Herod’s birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod,

“You are also to observe ¹  the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors that you have sown in the field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year ²  when you have gathered in ³  your harvest ⁴  out of the field.

They observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with joy, for the Lord had given them joy and had changed the opinion ¹  of the king of Assyria ²  toward them, so that he assisted ³  them in the work on the temple of God, the God of Israel.