2 Chronicles 35:1-19

2 Chronicles 35:1–19✞: Josiah Celebrates the Passover

In this passage Josiah celebrates the Passover with the people of Judah. This is an activity that shouldn’t be all that surprising—at least I don’t think it should be—but one gets the impression that Passover is hardly ever getting celebrated by God’s people near the end of the kingdom of Judah¹, so every time it is, it’s special.

Much of the passage is devoted to preparations for the event, and I won’t go through it all, but there are some points to call out:

• Josiah instructs the priests to put the Ark back into the Temple, rather than carrying it around. This tells me two things: 1) that the Ark had been removed from the Temple, and 2) that the priests had been carrying it on its prescribed poles. Reading between the lines, I see the priests trying to do the right thing in treating the Ark with reverence, regardless of what the wicked kings before Josiah had been doing.
• Verse 7✞ tells us that Josiah provides 30,000 lambs and goats for the Passover offerings, and also 3,000 cattle, from his own possessions – not even including the contributions from Josiah’s officials, which adds thousands more!
• • At first, the cattle confused me—the Passover sacrifice was supposed to be a lamb—but then I read the ESV and saw that they’d translated it as “bulls” instead of “cattle,” and as soon as I saw the word “bulls” I did a mental shift: I’m assuming the bulls were probably offered as sin offerings, in addition to the lambs that were used in the Passover ceremony.
• I often wonder about the specific divisions of responsibilities between the “Levites” and the “priests²” but in this passage we’re told that some group of the priests are so busy making sacrifices for the people that they’re not able to do the preparations for their own Passover celebrations, so the Levites make preparations on their behalf.
• • Just in case you were wondering, “but what about the gatekeepers?” – don’t worry! The Levites made preparations for the gatekeepers on their behalf, too, so they didn’t have to leave their posts.

And then we’re given a summary of the entire event:

¹⁶ So at that time the entire service of the LORD was carried out for the celebration of the Passover and the offering of burnt offerings on the altar of the LORD, as King Josiah had ordered. ¹⁷ The Israelites who were present celebrated the Passover at that time and observed the Festival of Unleavened Bread for seven days. ¹⁸ The Passover had not been observed like this in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and none of the kings of Israel had ever celebrated such a Passover as did Josiah, with the priests, the Levites and all Judah and Israel who were there with the people of Jerusalem. ¹⁹ This Passover was celebrated in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign.

verses 16–19✞

Which is interesting, because in Chapter 30 we read about Hezekiah celebrating the Passover, and were told in verse 26✞ that, “There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.” So on the surface, we can say that, since the time of Solomon, nobody had celebrated the Passover like Hezekiah had, and that Josiah then surpassed even Hezekiah in how much he celebrated the Passover – except, when we read about the Passover back in Chapter 30, it seems a lot more expansive than this. Josiah celebrates the Passover for the prescribed seven days, but when Hezekiah had done it, they were so passionate about the celebrations that they extended the whole thing a further seven days! So I see one of two conclusions:

1. Although the time spent by Josiah was less than the time spent by Hezekiah, it was still a larger celebration in other ways, or
2. (My assumption) saying that it had never been celebrated like this “since the days of Solomon” is just a figure of speech, not intended to be directly compared (like I’m doing here).

As I say, I assume it’s #2, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t reading the Bible “literally,” it just means that we have to read it the way the original authors had intended us to read it. If they used figures of speech, we should read them as figures of speech.

Footnotes

1: Or… maybe throughout the history of the nations of Israel/Judah?

2: Closer reading through the Old Testament laws would probably clear some of that confusion up…