Charles Ellicott Commentary


Charles Ellicott Commentary
"Surely there was not kept such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah;" — 2 Kings 23:22 (ASV)
Surely there was not held ... — For there was not held (a passover) like this passover. This and the next verse constitute a parenthetic remark, in which the historian emphasizes the phrase, “As it is written in this book of the covenant.” No passover, from the time of the Judges onward had been celebrated in such strict conformity to the prescriptions of the Law. The Septuagint omits the particle of comparison: ὅτι οὐκ ἐγενήθη τὸ πασχα τοῦτο.
On the ground of this difference, and the one mentioned in the Note on 2 Kings 23:21, Thenius thinks it not improbable that the text of Kings has been altered to bring into harmony with the account in Chronicles about the restoration of the feast of the passover by Hezekiah —a weighty inference from such slight data. The chronicler repeats this very verse at the close of his narrative of Josiah’s passover (2 Chronicles 35:18).