Haftarah For The Second Day Of Pesah

In some congregations, the Haftara begins at “Then the king commanded” below (at the *). So the king sent for all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, and they came 1" Kings, to him. The king went up to the Temple along with all the men of Judah ~ and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, and all the people, young and old, and he read to them all that was written in the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the Temple. The king stood on his platform and made a covenant before the LORD», [pledg ing ] to walk after Him and to observe His commandments and statutes and laws with all his heart and all his soul, to observe the words of that covenant written in the scroll of the Torah — and all the people commit ted themselves to the covenant. *Then the king commanded Hilkiyahu ate the high priest and the priests second in rank and the gatekeepers, to take all of the vessels that had been made for Baal and Ashera and for all the hosts of the heavens out of the LORD’s sanctuary; he burned all of these outside Jerusalem, on the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Beit El. He put an end to the practice of the idolatrous priests who had been appointed by the kings of Judah, those who had offered up incense on the high places of worship in the cities of Judah and in places all around Jerusalem, as well as those who had burned incense to Ba/al and to the sun and moon and constellations and to all of the hosts of heaven. He took the Ashera out of the Temple and brought it out of Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley and burned it there, grinding it to fine dust, and threw its ashes upon the graves of the people. He destroyed the rooms of the male temple-prostitutes in the House of the LORD, where the women would weave hangings in honor of the Ashera. He brought in all of the priests from the cities of Judah; he defiled the high places upon which the priests had worshiped, from Geva [in the north] all the way to Be’er Sheva [in the south]; he shattered the high places of the gate which were at the gate of Joshua, the city sentry, to the left of those who entered the city’s gates. But the priests of the high The mood of national religious revival led to a spectacular celebration of Pesah, on a scale and with a fervor that had not been seen for many centuries.