Hezekiah had now provided for the regular services of the Temple, and had given the inhabitants of Jerusalem a full opportunity of returning to Jehovah; but the people of the provinces were chiefly acquainted with the Temple through the great annual festivals. These, too, had long been in abeyance; and special steps had to be taken to secure their future observance. In order to do this, it was necessary to recall the provincials to their allegiance to Jehovah. Under ordinary circumstances the great festival of the Passover would have been observed in the first month, but at the time appointed for the paschal feast the Temple was still unclean, and the priests and Levites were occupied in its purification. But Hezekiah could not endure that the first year of his reign should be marked by the omission of this great feast. He took counsel with the princes and public assembly—nothing is said about the priests—and they decided to hold the Passover in the second month instead of the first. We gather from casual allusions in vv. 6-8 that the kingdom of Samaria had already come to an end; the people had been carried into captivity, and only a remnant were left in the land.(420) From this point the kings of Judah act as religious heads of the whole nation and territory of Israel. Hezekiah sent invitations to all Israel from Dan to Beersheba. He made special efforts to secure a favourable response from the northern tribes, sending letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, _i.e._, to the ten tribes under their leadership. He reminded them that their brethren had gone into captivity because the northern tribes had deserted the Temple; and held out to them the hope that, if they worshipped at the Temple and served Jehovah, they should themselves escape further calamity, and their brethren and children who had gone into captivity should return to their own land. “So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even unto Zebulun.” Either Zebulun is used in a broad sense for all the Galilean tribes, or the phrase “from Beersheba to Dan” is merely rhetorical, for to the north, between Zebulun and Dan, lay the territories of Asher and Naphtali. It is to be noticed that the tribes beyond Jordan are nowhere referred to; they had already fallen out of the history of Israel, and were scarcely remembered in the time of the chronicler. Hezekiah’s appeal to the surviving communities of the northern kingdom failed: they laughed his messengers to scorn, and mocked them; but individuals responded to his invitation in such numbers that they are spoken of as “a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun.” There were also men of Asher among the northern pilgrims.(421)