2 Chronicles 29 Bible study: The doors opened

One chapter earlier, Ahaz "shut up the doors of the LORD’s house; and he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem" (28:24). Hezekiah's reign begins with the answer: "In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the LORD’s house and repaired them" (29:3) (tap opened and repaired). Hezekiah names what the fathers had done: "they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel" (29:7). In Hebrew, Ahaz shut up the doors (28:24) and the fathers shut up the doors of the porch (29:7) with the same verb, sagar. These were the very things Abijah had said Judah kept: "They burn to the LORD every morning and every evening burnt offerings and sweet incense" and "care for the gold lamp stand with its lamps, to burn every evening" (13:11). The verdicts on father and son are set side by side too. Ahaz "didn’t do that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, like David his father" (28:1); Hezekiah "did that which was right in the LORD’s eyes, according to all that David his father had done" (29:2).

2 Chronicles 29:24→leads to1 John 2:2

At Hezekiah's command the priests "made a sin offering with their blood on the altar, to make atonement for all Israel; for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel" (29:24). John writes of Jesus, "And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2). 1 John doesn't cite 2 Chronicles 29, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on what both verses say about whom the offering is for: 29:24 says "for all Israel" twice, and 1 John 2:2 says "not for ours only, but also for the whole world". Some see in the king's command, an offering made for the whole people, a picture of the atoning sacrifice John says is for the whole world. Others read 29:24 in its own setting, Hezekiah's command for Israel in his day, and draw no line to 1 John, since no New Testament verse names this chapter. 2 Chronicles is written in Hebrew and 1 John in Greek, and no link between their words is claimed.

כָּפַרkafarsay ka-FAR

Brown-Driver-Briggs gives "cover over (fig.), pacify, make propitiation", and, of rites the Law set out, "cover over, atone for sin and persons by legal rites". Strong's: "figuratively, to expiate or condone". "They made a sin offering with their blood on the altar, to make atonement for all Israel" (29:24). It is the verb of the sin offering in the Law: "the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven" (Leviticus 4:20). 2 Chronicles uses the verb only twice: here, and in the next chapter, where Hezekiah prays, "May the good LORD pardon everyone" (30:18), and pardon is this verb.