2 Chronicles 35 Bible study: Prepare for your brothers

Before the Passover, Josiah speaks to "the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to the LORD" (35:3) (tap taught): "Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built. It will no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve the LORD your God and his people Israel" (35:3) (tap burden and shoulders). Carrying the ark had been the Levites' work. When David brought it up to Jerusalem, he said, "No one ought to carry God’s ark but the Levites" (1 Chronicles 15:2), and "The children of the Levites bore God’s ark on their shoulders with its poles, as Moses commanded according to the LORD’s word" (1 Chronicles 15:15). Later David said, "Also the Levites will no longer need to carry the tabernacle and all its vessels for its service" (1 Chronicles 23:26). In the same breath as "no longer", Josiah gives the Levites their work now: "Now serve the LORD your God and his people Israel" (35:3). The chapter doesn't say where the ark had been, and these notes don't guess.

2 Chronicles 35:6→leads toLuke 22:8

Josiah told the Levites, "Kill the Passover lamb, sanctify yourselves, and prepare for your brothers, to do according to the LORD’s word by Moses" (35:6), and "the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of Aaron" (35:14). When "The day of unleavened bread came, on which the Passover must be sacrificed" (Luke 22:7), Jesus sent Peter and John (Luke 22:8), saying, "Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat" (Luke 22:8). Jesus doesn't name 2 Chronicles 35, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on the same feast and the same task, not only on the shared word: in both, the Passover is made ready by some so that others may keep it, the Levites for their brothers and the priests, and Peter and John for the meal Jesus ate with the twelve apostles (Luke 22:14). Some see Josiah's Passover, kept "according to the LORD’s word by Moses" (35:6), beside the Passover Jesus sent his disciples to prepare. Others read 35:6 in its own setting, the Passover kept "in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah" (35:19), and draw no line to Luke 22, since no New Testament verse names this chapter. 2 Chronicles is in Hebrew and Luke in Greek, and no link between their words is claimed.

כּוּןkunsay KOON

Brown-Driver-Briggs gives, among the senses of the form Josiah uses, "fix, so as to be ready, make ready, prepare". Strong's: "properly, to be erect (i.e. stand perpendicular); hence (causatively) to set up". The Hebrew of this chapter has the verb eight times, and the WEB gives prepare or prepared every time: "Prepare yourselves" (35:4), "prepare for your brothers" (35:6), "So the service was prepared" (35:10), twice in 35:14, "their brothers the Levites prepared for them" (35:15), "So all the service of the LORD was prepared the same day" (35:16), and "when Josiah had prepared the temple" (35:20). Hezekiah's chapter ended with the same verb: "Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because of that which God had prepared for the people" (29:36).