Bird's-eye view
This brief passage is a masterful miniature of how God's call to revival and reformation always plays out in a fallen world. King Hezekiah, in a bold act of faith, sends out a call to all Israel, including the apostate northern tribes, to return to the Lord and celebrate the Passover. The response is starkly divided, and in this division, we see the collision of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. On the one hand, you have the proud, cynical majority who meet God's gracious invitation with scorn and mockery. Their hearts are hard, and they see the call to repentance as a joke. On the other hand, a humble remnant responds. They hear the king's summons as the word of the Lord, they humble themselves, and they come. The text does not leave us guessing as to the ultimate cause of this division. While the mockers are left to their pride, the positive response in both the north (the remnant) and the south (Judah) is explicitly attributed to the direct intervention of God. The hand of God works on the hearts of the humble remnant, and the hand of God gives the people of Judah a supernatural unity to obey. This is how revival always works: God extends a broad, public call, which serves to harden the proud and reveal the humble. And for those who do respond, their very ability to do so is a gift, a direct work of God's sovereign grace.
In three short verses, we are shown the anatomy of a true spiritual awakening. It begins with the faithful proclamation of God's word (the king's command). It is met with contempt by the world. It is received by a few whose hearts have been prepared. And it results in a unified, obedient people whose unity is not the product of human negotiation but of divine operation. This is a story of scorn, humility, and sovereignty, and it is a pattern that repeats itself from Genesis to Revelation.
Outline
- 1. The Divided Response to God's Call (2 Chron 30:10-12)
- a. The Scorn of the Majority (v. 10)
- b. The Humility of the Remnant (v. 11)
- c. The Sovereignty of God in Creating Unity (v. 12)
Context In 2 Chronicles
This passage is set in the early days of the reign of Hezekiah, one of Judah's great reforming kings. His father, Ahaz, had been a disaster, shutting the doors of the temple and plunging the nation into idolatry (2 Chronicles 28). Hezekiah's first act upon taking the throne is to reopen and cleanse the temple (2 Chronicles 29). Having restored proper worship in principle, he now seeks to restore it in practice for the whole nation. The Passover had been neglected, and Hezekiah is determined to celebrate it according to the law. His vision, however, is larger than just his own kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been decimated by the Assyrians (c. 722 B.C.) as a judgment for their centuries of apostasy. Hezekiah's invitation to the survivors in the north (Ephraim, Manasseh, Zebulun) is therefore a radical call to covenant renewal, an attempt to reunite all the tribes of Israel in the worship of the one true God. The events of our passage are the direct result of this gospel invitation being sent into enemy territory, into a land long given over to syncretism and idolatry. It is a test case for whether the deep spiritual rot can be reversed.
Key Issues
- The Nature of a True Revival Summons
- Human Depravity and Resistance to Grace
- The Doctrine of the Remnant
- The Relationship Between Humility and Repentance
- God's Sovereignty in Effectual Calling
- The Basis of True Christian Unity
The Anatomy of Revival
Whenever God determines to move among His people, He does so by means of His Word. Hezekiah doesn't form a committee or conduct a survey. He sends out couriers with a command "by the word of Yahweh" (v. 12). The call is simple and direct: repent of your idolatry, return to the God of your fathers, and come to the place He has appointed for worship. This is not a suggestion; it is a royal summons. And the response it provokes is a great sifting. The gospel call, when faithfully proclaimed, never returns void. It always accomplishes God's purpose, which is twofold. It softens and saves some, and it hardens and exposes others. We see this pattern throughout Scripture. Isaiah is told that his preaching will make hearts dull and ears heavy (Isaiah 6:10). Jesus' parables reveal the truth to His disciples while concealing it from the crowds (Matthew 13:10-13). The gospel is an aroma of life to some and an aroma of death to others (2 Corinthians 2:16). The reaction to Hezekiah's couriers is not an anomaly; it is the norm. The world's default reaction to the call for repentance is mockery. The miracle is that anyone responds at all.
Verse by Verse Commentary
10 So the couriers passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they were laughing at them to scorn and mocking them.
The couriers are doing exactly what they were told. They are faithfully carrying the king's message throughout the territories of the fallen northern kingdom. This was not an easy task. They were messengers from Judah, a rival kingdom, entering a land that had been steeped in rebellion against the house of David and the temple in Jerusalem for over two centuries. The response of the general populace is precisely what we should expect from unregenerate man. They met a gracious invitation to life with contempt. The text uses two strong words: laughing to scorn and mocking. This was not polite disagreement. It was derision. They saw the summons to return to Yahweh as absurd, pathetic, and worthy of ridicule. Why? Because pride always scoffs at grace. The gospel call to repent and believe is an insult to the self-sufficient man. It tells him he is lost, that his own efforts at religion are worthless, and that his only hope is to abandon his own way and submit to God's way. The proud heart finds this laughable. This is the spirit of the age in every age.
11 Nevertheless some men of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.
Here is the glorious exception. The word "nevertheless" is a hinge upon which salvation turns. Despite the widespread mockery, the call was not a complete failure. A remnant responded. The text is specific, naming men from three of the northern tribes. And what characterized their response? One thing: they humbled themselves. This is the absolute antithesis of the mockers. Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less, and thinking of God more. It is seeing God in His holiness and yourself in your sinfulness. While their neighbors were puffing out their chests in arrogant scorn, these men bowed the knee. They received the king's message as God's message. They acknowledged their sin and the sin of their fathers. And their humility was not just an internal feeling; it resulted in action. They "came to Jerusalem." True repentance always has feet. It turns around and walks in a new direction. This small band of men represents the true Israel, the Israel of faith, preserved by God in the midst of a faithless nation.
12 The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of Yahweh.
If verse 11 shows us the subjective response of the humble, verse 12 shows us the ultimate, objective cause. The Chronicler pulls back the curtain to reveal the divine machinery behind the scenes. The situation in Judah was different. They didn't just have a remnant respond; they had a unified response. And the source of this unity was not Hezekiah's brilliant leadership or the persuasiveness of the princes. The text is explicit: the hand of God was also on Judah. This is the language of sovereign, effectual grace. God Himself intervened. He reached down and did something in the hearts of the people of Judah. What did He do? He gave them "one heart." He took their divided, distracted, and disobedient hearts and forged them into a single instrument of obedience. Humanly speaking, getting an entire nation to agree on anything is impossible. But with God, it is not. This unity was not for some political project, but specifically "to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of Yahweh." God's sovereign work produced obedient submission to His revealed will. The humility of the northern remnant and the unity of Judah were two sides of the same coin, and both were minted in heaven.
Application
This passage puts three timeless realities squarely before us. First, we must expect the world to mock the gospel. When we call our friends, our culture, our nation to repent and submit to King Jesus, we should not be surprised when the initial reaction is scorn. The faithful Christian is one who, like Hezekiah's couriers, keeps delivering the message even when the doors are slammed and the laughter is loud. Our job is faithfulness, not results.
Second, we learn what true repentance looks like. It is humility in action. It is the opposite of the self-assured mockery of the world. The men of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun provide the model. To humble ourselves is to agree with God's verdict against us. It is to stop defending ourselves, stop making excuses, and simply surrender to His gracious summons. And this internal posture of humility must lead to the external action of "coming to Jerusalem", that is, coming to Christ and His people, to the place of true worship.
Finally, and most importantly, this passage is a profound comfort and a source of great confidence. Our hope for revival, for unity in the church, and for the salvation of sinners does not rest on our cleverness or the world's open-mindedness. It rests on "the hand of God." If God could give all of Judah "one heart" to obey His word, He can do the same for our fractured and contentious churches. If God could pull a remnant out of apostate Israel, He can save our most hardened and cynical neighbors. Our task is to proclaim the king's command, which is the word of the Lord. And as we do, we pray for the sovereign hand of God to do what only He can do: crush the heart of pride, grant the gift of humility, and create a unified people zealous to obey His will.