We see today a couple examples of God's flexibility with his law. When Hezekiah reinstates the Passover he delays it to the second month even though God had specified it was to be held the first month. This was because 1) the priests and temple needed to be consecrated and 2) the first king of Israel, Jeroboam, had delayed Israel's version of the Passover by one month to discourage his people from continuing in Judah's traditions. Since Hezekiah wanted to include Israel in the Passover as well he decided to delay the Passover a month.
Another example is in 2 Chronicles 30:18-20 where the people eat the Passover despite not purifying themselves. We see how Hezekiah prayed for them and God had mercy on them.
All of this shows how God is not as concerned about the letter of the law as he is concerned about where people's hearts are at. In these situations, although the people were a bit rusty or other circumstances threw kinks in the plans, the emphasis was clearly on worshipping the Lord with all their hearts, and God was pleased.
The Biblical text doesn't give us much of a clue, but I thought it was very interesting that after Hezekiah prayed for the people it states that God heard Hezekiah's prayer and he "healed" the people. It makes me wonder whether there was a breakout of some physical type of plague because of the people's actions or whether it meant that God was healing the weakness of their faith.
ReplyDeleteGood question. I wondered that myself but I didn't see any mention of that in the People's Bible or the Concordia Bible. I just looked in the online Kretzmann commentary and that says, "It was either that in consequence of their transgression they had reason to fear disease and even death, Lev. 15, 31, or that some of them had already been stricken with some malady."
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