Hezekiah ordered the burnt sacrifice to be offered on the altar. As they began to offer the sacrifice, they also began to sing to the Lord, accompanied by the trumpets and the musical instruments of King David of Israel.

He began building on the second day of the second month of the fourth year of his reign.

In the third month they began piling their contributions in heaps and finished in the seventh month.

In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his ancestor David. In his twelfth year he began ridding Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, Asherah poles, idols, and images.

When they began to shout and praise, the Lord suddenly attacked the Ammonites, Moabites, and men from Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.

He wholeheartedly and successfully reinstituted service in God’s temple and obedience to the law, in order to follow his God.

Solomon began building the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. This was the place that David prepared at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

On the first day of the first month they began consecrating; by the eighth day of the month they reached the porch of the Lord’s temple. For eight more days they consecrated the Lord’s temple. On the sixteenth day of the first month they were finished.

Azariah, the head priest from the family of Zadok, said to him, “Since the contributions began arriving in the Lord’s temple, we have had plenty to eat and have a large quantity left over. For the Lord has blessed his people, and this large amount remains.”