hold it in the first month is that the priests had not sufficiently purified themselves, and the people had not assembled themselves in Jerusalem, we learn with certainty from these reasons that it is not a celebration of the passover in the first year of Hezekiah's reign which is here treated of, as almost all commentators think.[1]
In the whole narrative there is nothing to favour such a supposition, except (1) the circumstance that the account of this celebration is connected by ו consec. (in ויּשׁלח) with the preceding purification of the temple and restoration of the Jahve-worship which took place in the first year of Hezekiah's reign; and (2) the statement that the priests had not sufficiently sanctified themselves, 2Ch 30:3, which, when compared with that in 2Ch 29:34, that the number of priests who had sanctified themselves was not sufficient to flay the beasts for sacrifice, makes it appear as if the passover had been celebrated immediately after the consecration of the temple; and (3) the mention of the second month in 2Ch 30:2, which, taken in connection with the mention of the first month in 2Ch 29:3, 2Ch 29:17, seems to imply that the second month of the first year of Hezekiah's reign is meant. But of these three apparent reasons none is convincing.
The use of ו consec. to connect the account of the celebration of the passover with the preceding, without the slightest hint that the celebration took place in another (later) year, is fully accounted for by the fact that in no case is the year in which any event of Hezekiah's twenty-nine years' reign occurred stated in the Chronicle. In 2Ch 32:1, Sennacherib's invasion of Judah is introduced only by the indefinite formula, “and after these events,” though it happened in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah; while the arrangements as to the public worship made by this king, and recorded in 2 Chron 31, belong to the first years of his reign. Only in the case of the restoration of the Jahve-worship is it remarked, 2Ch 29:3, that Hezekiah commenced it in the very first year of his reign, because that was important in forming an estimate of the spirit of his reign; but the statement of the year in which his other acts were done had not much bearing upon the practical aim of the chronicler. Nor does the reason given for the transfer of the celebration of the passover to the second month, viz., that the priests had not
- ↑ Cf. the elaborate discussion of this question in Caspari, Beitr. zur Einl. in das B. Jesaja, S. 109ff.
