GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 29:31-36
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31 Then Hezekiah said, “Now you are ordained to the service of the LORD. Come and bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the House of the LORD.” So the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all whose hearts were willing brought burnt offerings. 32 The number of burnt offerings that the assembly brought was seventy bulls, a hundred rams and two hundred male lambs– all of them for burnt offerings to the LORD. 33 Consecrated were: six hundred bulls and three thousand sheep and goats. 34 But there were were too few priests to skin all the burnt offerings, so their brothers the Levites helped them until the task was finished and until other priests had been consecrated, for the Levites had been more upright in heart in consecrating themselves than the priests had been. 35 There were a great many burnt offerings, together with the fat of the fellowship offerings and the drink offerings that went with the burnt offerings. So the service of the temple of the LORD was restored. 36 Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, and because it was done so quickly.
The chapter ends with many more sacrifices being made. The initial four groups of seven each, or 28 burnt offerings for sin and guilt, were supplemented by 370 additional burnt offerings, and then 3,600 more offerings of thanksgiving and fellowship. These were stripped and the fat was burned, and then the meat was able to be eaten by the people. Drink offerings– mostly wine– were brought forward as well. While all of this was going on, the music continued as well (verse 28). It must have been an amazing sight. Animals were led forward and dispatched– so many were brought that there weren’t enough priests to do the work, so that Levites had to help. Some of these Levites may have included younger men who were not old enough to serve as priests, or older, retired priests (fifty was the age set by the Lord through Moses, Numbers 8:25) as well as Levites.
There are two terms in this passage that are sometimes both translated as “consecrate.” One is qadosh, “to be holy” or “to make holy.” This is the word in verse 34, where we are told that the Levites were more “upright in heart” at consecrating themselves than the priests. Professor Paul O. Wendland says: “We can only suppose that Ahaz’ corruption of the priesthood (see 2 Kings 16:10-16) still had lingering effects on the morale and general character of the priestly sons of Aaron” (People’s Bible: 2 Chronicles p. 343). This is easy to understand when we remember that Ahaz had only been dead for about seventeen days. The speed of the reversal of the new king must have had the heads of a lot of people spinning.
There is another word that is sometimes translated “consecrate” (ESV, KJV), or “dedicate” (NIV). In the Evangelical Heritage Version, it is “take up (your) duty.” I have translated this term as “ordained.” It is really a phrase, “to fill the hand.” For the past fifteen years, I have been making a special study of the verb stem you sometimes hear me talk about, called the piel (pih-ALE). Of the seven regular verb stems in Hebrew, it is the one that most often brings questions to the translator or the pastor. We ask, “Why this, and not one of the other stems?” For many centuries, Hebrew students and scholars have noticed certain uses for this stem, which I’ve begun to compile into a sort of toolbox for translators. It is a list of more than thirty possible uses or forces of this verb stem. I don’t mean to burden you, the reader, with too much of this, but I confess that a great deal of my private thought and study is taken up by the contemplation of this question. Here, the phrase milletem yedchem “fill the hand (for the Lord)” shows the act of public priesthood being taken up in a formal way. We see this in other places, such as Leviticus 16:32, as well as Leviticus 8:33, where the NIV agrees with my translation: “until the days of your ordination are completed, for your ordination will last seven days” (see also ESV and EHV at that verse). But what has “filling the hand” got to do with the ordination of a priest? Perhaps filling the hand is the priest’s hand being filled with the offerings he takes from the worshiper to the Lord, or the work with which his hand is constantly filled, and this is done over and over again at the altar, a violent, bloody act yet a sacred one as he serves the Lord. For this reason, many of the various piel meanings come into play, but we might also simply call it an idiomatic use, for it was their idiom; their usual expression. It is not so much our task to explain why it was that way if we are given no reason, but simply to recognize that this was how it was. This is what they said; the way that they talked.
Ordination itself does not make the priest, nor does ordination create a pastor today. Ordination merely confirms in a public way that the pastor or minister is legitimately called. “Whoever has the legitimate call of a congregation is a pastor, and needs nothing further to be a pastor,” as Professor Hoenecke (1835-1908) of our Seminary wrote. God gave the right to call pastors to the church. Professor Hoenecke summarizes three points:
- God wants the preaching office to be continued until the last day (Ephesians 4:11; Jeremiah 3:15).
- The indirect call (churches calling in the name of God) is represented in Scripture as an ordinance established and confirmed by God (Psalm 68:11; 1 Corinthians 12:28).
- The congregation as church originally and inherently has from God the right and the obligation to call. Thus the indirect call through the congregation is in the fullest sense a divine call. The ultimate reason for this is that God has given the church the power of the keys and the commission to call (Matthew 18:18-19).
We read clearly in the New Testament: “No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was” (Hebrews 5:4). Therefore the priesthood in Hezekiah’s day, corrupt by Hezekiah’s father and his pagan ways forced upon the people, was purified and ordained once more into good and godly service by Hezekiah and by the church of God, worshiping in the temple in Jerusalem. Doctor Luther instructs us in the Catechism (Table of Duties IX:3): “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 29:31-36 To fill the hand