27 Then the priests the Levites arose and blessed the people: and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to his holy habitation, even to heaven.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And their voice was heard - God accepted the fruits of that pious disposition which himself had infused.
And their prayer came up - As the smoke of their sacrifices ascended to the clouds, so did their prayers, supplications, and thanksgivings, ascend to the heavens. The Targum says: "Their prayer came up to the dwelling-place of his holy shechinah, which is in heaven." Israel now appeared to be in a fair way of regaining what they had lost; but alas, how soon were all these bright prospects beclouded for ever!
It is not for the want of holy resolutions and heavenly influences that men are not saved but through their own unsteadiness; they do not persevere, they forget the necessity of continuing in prayer, and thus the Holy Spirit is grieved, departs from them, and leaves them to their own darkness and hardness of heart. When we consider the heavenly influences which many receive who draw back to perdition, and the good fruits which for a time they bore, it is blasphemy to say they had no genuine or saving grace; they had it, they showed it, they trifled with it, sinned against it, continued in their rebellions, and therefore are lost.
Then the priests the Levites arose and (q) blessed the people: and their voice was heard, and their prayer came [up] to his holy dwelling place, [even] unto heaven.
(q) According to that which is written in (Numbers 6:23) when they should dismiss the people.
Then the priests the Levites arose,.... The priests who were of the tribe of Levi; for there were some in Israel that were not, but were made of any of the people, as in the times of Jeroboam; though some supply the copulative "and"; so the Targum: "and blessed the people"; which was the proper work and business of the priests to do; though, while they were blessing, the Levites might be singing:
and their voice was heard; meaning not by the people, though undoubtedly it was, but by the Lord; the Targum is,"their prayer was heard or received;''for the blessing was delivered in a petitionary way, Numbers 6:24, and was no other than a request that God would bless them, which he did:
and their prayer came up to his holy dwellingplace, even unto heaven; see Psalm 3:4 by what means it was known their prayer was heard and accepted cannot be said; there might be some visible token of it, as the people were dismissed, and departed.
At the end of the Levitic priests dismissed the people with the blessing (the ו before הלויּם in some MSS, and which the lxx, Vulg., and Syr. also have, is a copyist's gloss brought from 2-Chronicles 30:25; cf. against it, 2-Chronicles 23:18), and the historian adds, "Their voice was heard, and their prayer came to His holy dwelling-place, to heaven." This conclusion he draws from the divine blessing having been upon the festival; traceable partly in the zeal which the people afterwards showed for the public worship in the temple (2 Chron 31), partly in the deliverance of Judah and Jerusalem from the attack of the Assyrian Sennacherib (2 Chron 32).
The Levites - Those of the Levites who were priests also; for to them only this work belonged.
*More commentary available at chapter level.