2 Chronicles 30 Bible study: If you return to him

"Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the LORD’s house at Jerusalem, to keep the Passover to the LORD, the God of Israel" (30:1). Since the kingdom was torn in two, the book has said, "So Israel rebelled against David’s house to this day" (10:19). Now a king of David's line writes to Ephraim and Manasseh. The proclamation goes "throughout all Israel, from Beersheba even to Dan" (30:5), and it gives a reason: "for they had not kept it in great numbers in the way it is written" (30:5). The letters speak to "the remnant of you that have escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria" (30:6), and of "your brothers and your children" in the hands of "those who led them captive" (30:9). The chapter doesn't say more about who was taken, or when.

2 Chronicles 30:20→leads toMark 2:17

Many who came "had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover other than the way it is written" (30:18). Hezekiah prayed, "May the good LORD pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even if they aren’t clean according to the purification of the sanctuary" (30:18-19), and "The LORD listened to Hezekiah, and healed the people" (30:20). When the scribes and the Pharisees asked his disciples why Jesus ate "with tax collectors and sinners" (Mark 2:16), he said, "Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17). Jesus doesn't name this chapter, and the two aren't the same: the people here were not clean "according to the purification of the sanctuary" (30:19), and Mark speaks of sinners. Setting them side by side is a reading, resting on what each says: in 30:18-20 people who weren't clean ate, the LORD heard the prayer for them and healed; in Mark 2:15-17 Jesus eats with sinners and answers with the sick who need a physician. Others read Mark 2:17 in its own setting only, and draw no line from it to Hezekiah's Passover.

שׁוּבshuvsay SHOOV

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "turn back, return", and among its uses, "turn back to God (= seek penitently)" and, of the LORD, "return (to shew favour)". Strong's: "to turn back (hence, away)". It comes six times in 30:6-9 and nowhere else in the chapter, and the WEB gives it several ways: "turn again" and "that he may return" (30:6), "that his fierce anger may turn away" (30:8), and "if you turn again", "will come again" and "if you return to him" (30:9). In 30:6 it is used both ways: the people turn to the LORD, and the LORD returns to them. Hezekiah had used it of the LORD's anger (29:10), and the LORD's answer to Solomon has it: "and turn from their wicked ways" (7:14). At the book's end the last king "hardened his heart against turning to the LORD, the God of Israel" (36:13), with the same verb.