The connector For introduces why the religious leaders were to purify themselves and the Temple.

Our fathers have been unfaithful: The ancestors of the people of Judah were unfaithful to God, which Good News Translation and Parole de Vie make explicit. For the Hebrew verb rendered have been unfaithful, see the comments on 1 Chr 10.13.

And have done what was evil in the sight of the LORD our God: See the comments on 2 Chr 21.6. God’s Word says “and did what the LORD our God considered evil.”

They have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD, and turned their backs: These three clauses are quite similar in meaning and may be seen as a kind of parallelism intended to have a cumulative effect. Good News Translation reduces the three clauses to two. The receptor language may have idiomatic expressions that are very different from the Hebrew ones here, but which carry the same meaning. However, many languages use the expression “turn the back” in a figurative way. The habitation of the LORD refers to the Temple. But it is not the most common way of referring to this structure. The Hebrew word for habitation is the same one rendered “tabernacle” in 2 Chr 1.5. It literally means “dwelling place” (New International Version, New Living Translation, Bible de Jérusalem). For this whole sentence Moffatt has “they have abandoned him, they have ignored the dwelling-place of the Eternal and turned their backs upon him.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Chronicles, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2014. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .