John Gill Commentary 2 Chronicles 30

Ver. 1. And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah Sent 2 Chronicles 30:2

For the king had taken counsel, and his princes, and all the congregation in Jerusalem He and his nobles, and the great sanhedrim or senate of the nation, had consulted together:

to keep the passover in the second month ; in the month Ijar, as the Targum, because they could not keep it in the first month, as it should have been kept, according to the law of God, for the reasons following.

One kid of the goats for a sin offering .
] (See Gill on Numbers 7:16).

For they could not keep it at the time
In the month Nisan, as the Targum adds, on the fourteenth day of the month, as the law enjoined, because the cleansing of the temple was not finished until the sixteenth day, see (2 Chronicles 29:17) and, besides this, two other reasons follow:

because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently ;
that is, a sufficient number of them were not sanctified, to slay all the passover lambs the people that came to the feast would want:

neither had the people gathered themselves together to Jerusalem ;
they had no notice of it, nor summons for it; and it was required that, at such a time, all the males in the land should appear at Jerusalem; but this custom having been long disused, it required time to acquaint them of the revival of it.

And the thing pleased the king, and all the congregation .
] They all unanimously agreed to it, and determined it should be done.

So they established a decree, to make proclamation throughout
all Israel
Passed a vote, that heralds should be appointed and sent to proclaim it throughout the land, that all might know it, and none plead ignorance:

from Beersheba even to Dan ;
the one being the southern and the other the northern boundary of the whole land of Israel:

that they should come to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel
at Jerusalem :
the only proper place where it was to be kept:

for they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written ;
as prescribed in the law those of the ten tribes had not observed it from the time of the schism of Jeroboam, and many in the kingdom of Judah had neglected it, at least had not kept it as the law required; for the phrase which we render "of a long time" rather respects a multitude of persons than length of time, who had been very deficient in their observance of this ordinance;

the Targum is, that many has not done it in its time, in Nisan, and suggests that it was kept twice this year, first in Nisan by a few, and now again in the second month Ijar, and which is the sense of some Talmudic writers ^F16, but has no foundation in the text.

FOOTNOTES:

• F16: T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 12. 2.