2 Chronicles 29:5

⁶Kill the Passover lamb, sanctify yourselves, and prepare for your brothers, to do according to the LORD’s word by Moses.”

¹⁶Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, which you are.

⁹He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here.”

¹⁰So I went in and looked, and saw every form of creeping things, abominable animals, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed around on the wall. ¹¹Seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel stood before them. In the middle of them Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of incense went up.

¹²Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘The LORD doesn’t see us. The LORD has forsaken the land.’” ¹³He said also to me, “You will again see more of the great abominations which they do.”

¹⁴Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’s house which was toward the north; and I saw the women sit there weeping for Tammuz. ¹⁵Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? You will again see yet greater abominations than these.”

¹⁶He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’s house; and I saw at the door of the LORD’s temple, between the porch and the altar, there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the LORD’s temple and their faces toward the east. They were worshiping the sun toward the east.

¹⁷Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger. Behold, they put the branch to their nose. ¹⁸Therefore I will also deal in wrath. My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”

¹²and said to them, “You are the heads of the fathers’ households of the Levites. Sanctify yourselves, both you and your brothers, that you may bring the ark of the LORD, the God of Israel, up to the place that I have prepared for it.

³For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images. ⁴They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; and he cut down the incense altars that were on high above them. He broke the Asherah poles, the engraved images, and the molten images in pieces, made dust of them, and scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. ⁵He burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and purged Judah and Jerusalem. ⁶He did this in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even to Naphtali, around in their ruins. ⁷He broke down the altars, beat the Asherah poles and the engraved images into powder, and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel, then returned to Jerusalem.

⁸Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder to repair the house of the LORD his God.

³⁴But the priests were too few, so that they could not skin all the burnt offerings. Therefore their brothers the Levites helped them until the work was ended, and until the priests had sanctified themselves, for the Levites were more upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests.

¹⁵They gathered their brothers, sanctified themselves, and went in, according to the commandment of the king by the LORD’s words, to cleanse the LORD’s house. ¹⁶The priests went into the inner part of the LORD’s house to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the LORD’s temple into the court of the LORD’s house. The Levites took it from there to carry it out to the brook Kidron.

¹Having therefore these promises, beloved, let’s cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

¹⁵He said to the people, “Be ready by the third day. Don’t have sexual relations with a woman.”

²⁵I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.