are the עלה and the חלבים (2Ch 35:14)” (Berth.); but it by no means follows from that, that “at the passover, besides the regular burnt-offering (Num 28:4), no burnt-offering would seem to have been offered,” but rather that the words have a more general signification, and denote the sacrifices at the passover and Mazzoth festivals.
Verse 17
The duration of the festival. The Israelites who had come kept the passover “at that time (that is, according to 2Ch 35:1, on the fourteenth day of the first month), and the Mazzoth seven days,” i.e., from the 15th to the 21st of the same month.
Verses 18-19
2Ch 35:18-19 2Ch 35:18 contains the remark that the Israelites had not held such a passover since the days of the prophet Samuel and all the kings; cf. 2Ki 23:22, where, instead of the days of Samuel, the days of the judges are mentioned. On the points which distinguished this passover above others, see the remarks on 2Ki 23:22. In the concluding clause we have a rhetorical enumeration of those who participated in the festival, beginning with the king and ending with the inhabitants of Jerusalem. הנּמצא ישׂראל are the remnant of the kingdom of the ten tribes who had come to the festival; cf. 2Ch 34:33. - In 2Ch 35:19 the year of this passover is mentioned in conclusion. The statement, “in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah,” refers back to the same date at the beginning of the account of the cultus reform (2Ch 34:8 and 2Ki 22:3), and indicates that Josiah's cultus reform culminated in this passover. Now since the passover fell in the middle of the first month of the year, and, according to 2 Chron 34 and 2 Kings 22, the book of the law was also found in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, many commentators have imagined that the eighteenth year of the king is dated from the autumn; so that all that is narrated in 2 Chronicles, from 34:8-35:19, happened within a period of six months and a half. This might possibly be the case; since the purification and repair of the temple may have been near their completion when the book of the law was found, so that they might hold the passover six months afterwards. But our passage does not require that the years of the king's reign should be dated from the autumn, and there are not sufficient grounds for believing that such was the case. Neither in our narrative, nor in 2 Kings 22 and 23, is it said that the passover was resolved upon or arrange din consequence of the finding of the book of the law. Josiah may therefore have thought of closing and ratifying the
