Then Hezekiah spoke encouragingly to all the Levites who demonstrated good understanding of the service of Adonai. For seven days they ate their assigned portions while sacrificing peace offerings and praising Adonai, the God of their fathers.
Ezra the kohen brought the Torah before the assembly, which included men and women and all who could understand what they heard. This happened on the first day of the seventh month.
Then they said: “Come, let us devise plans against Jeremiah. Surely Torah from the kohen will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor will the word from the prophet. Come, let’s strike at him with the tongue, and pay no attention to any of his words.”
The kohanim did not ask, ‘Where is Adonai?’ The Torah experts did not know Me. The shepherds rebelled against Me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and went after unprofitable things.
You are to act according to the instruction they teach you and the judgment they tell you—you must not turn aside from the sentence they tell you, to the right or to the left.
“Take care in the plague of tza'arat—be very careful to do all that the Levitical kohanim instruct you, just as I commanded them, so you are to take care to do.