⁵ and said to them: “Listen to me, you Levites! Sanctify yourselves now and sanctify the house of the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and clean out the filth from the sanctuary.

¹⁵ They gathered their kinfolk together and sanctified themselves; then they came as the king had ordered, in keeping with the words of the Lord, to cleanse the Lord’s house.

³⁴ Since there were too few priests to skin all the victims for the burnt offerings, their fellow Levites assisted them until the task was completed and the priests had sanctified themselves. The Levites, in fact, were more careful than the priests to sanctify themselves.^(A)

³ They could not celebrate it at the regular time because the priests had not sanctified themselves in sufficient numbers, and the people were not gathered at Jerusalem.