Hezekiah invites all Israel to a delayed Passover

Letters run from Beer-sheba to Dan for a second-month Passover

Hezekiah sends to all Israel and Judah, and writes also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the LORD at Jerusalem to keep the passover. The king, princes, and congregation in Jerusalem take counsel to keep it in the second month, because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently, neither had the people gathered to Jerusalem. The thing pleases the king and all the congregation. They establish a decree from Beer-sheba even to Dan, for they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written.

The delay is practical: unclean priests and an ungathered people. Second-month observance is an accommodation so the feast can be kept, not a discarding of the feast. The invitation is Jerusalem-centered and aimed at all Israel, including the north already marked by Assyrian power.

Some mock the posts; some from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun come

The posts go with the letters: Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. Be not like your fathers and brethren who trespassed. Yield yourselves, enter his sanctuary, serve the LORD, that wrath may turn. If ye turn, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, and shall come again into this land; for the LORD is gracious and merciful. The posts pass from city to city through Ephraim and Manasseh even unto Zebulun: but they laugh them to scorn and mock them. Nevertheless divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humble themselves and come to Jerusalem. In Judah the hand of God gives them one heart to do the commandment of the king and princes by the word of the LORD.

Posts means couriers. The remnant language is for Israelites who have already seen deportation, not a slur, and not a church claim to replace Judah. Mockery is named; so is a northern remnant that actually walks south. The call to return does not authorize harassment, forced pilgrimage, or treating nonattendance as ethnic inferiority.