¹²Also in Judah was the hand of God to give them one heart, to do the commandment of the king and of the princes by the word of the Lord.
12. Also in Judah was the hand of God] i.e. the mighty working of God, which brought some penitents from far parts of Israel, manifested itself in Judah also.
the commandment of the king ... by the word of the Lord] The king’s command was according to God’s command in the Law.
13–27 (not in 2 Kings).
Hezekiah’s Great Passover.
It seems clear that the story of Hezekiah’s Passover has been composed by the Chronicler on the analogy of Josiah’s grand celebration of that feast (see xxxv. 1–19), which the present festival even surpasses in some respects—viz. in its scope (for all Israel and strangers, whereas Josiah’s was for Judeans only) and in its duration (for two weeks, Josiah’s for one). Josiah’s Passover was famous because of the account of it in Kings. Doubtless the Chronicler felt that a celebration of that feast was incumbent upon a great reforming monarch, and he has therefore credited Hezekiah with observing it.
¹³And there assembled at Jerusalem much people to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great congregation.
13. the feast of unleavened bread] In the “Passover” were united two separate “feasts,” (1) the eating of the lamb on the fourteenth of Nisan, (2) the eating of unleavened bread from the fourteenth to the twenty-first of Nisan. The combined Feast was sometimes called “the Passover” and sometimes (as here) “the feast of unleavened bread”; compare Exodus xii. 1–14 and 17–20, and note that the intervening verses, 15, 16, bind the two feasts into one celebration.
¹⁴And they arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for incense[¹] took they away, and cast them into the brook Kidron.
[¹] Or, vessels.
14. the altars] Compare xxviii. 24.