The books of Chronicles

by W. A. L. Elmslie

15. the singers] Compare 1 Chronicles xxv. 1 ff.

Heman] But 1 Esdras has Zacharias, a reading which finds some support in 1 Chronicles xv. 18, xvi. 5.

¹⁶So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt offerings upon the altar of the Lord, according to the commandment of king Josiah. ¹⁷And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days.

16. the same day] Literally “on that day,” i.e. the fourteenth of Nisan.

¹⁸And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did any of the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

18. there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel] The statement is simply a reproduction of 2 Kings xxiii. 22, where we read “there was not kept such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel ... but in the eighteenth year of king Josiah was this passover kept to the Lord in Jerusalem.” Actually the novelty of Josiah’s festival was (i) that it was kept in Jerusalem, whereas previously the Passover had been a household feast observed at any “high-place” throughout the country, and (ii) that it thus marked the inauguration of the system of only one legitimate sanctuary—Jerusalem—which was codified in Deuteronomy. The writer in Kings may have clearly understood that the point lay in the words “in Jerusalem.” To the Chronicler, the statement meant merely an assertion that this feast was the grandest Passover since the days of the judges (he prefers to write since Samuel, reckoning him the last of the judges).

A similar but not identical remark regarding Hezekiah’s Passover is made in xxx. 26—“since the time of Solomon there was not the like in Jerusalem.” In some points Hezekiah’s feast as described in xxx. 1 ff. may be said to have surpassed Josiah’s, but it is most unnecessary and indeed pedantic so to magnify this fact as to insist that the sweeping assertion of the present verse about Josiah’s Passover cannot be from the same source as xxx. 1–26. Both passages may well be from the Chronicler (so Curtis, p. 471); in xxx. 1 ff. he was writing a free description of Hezekiah’s feast, and the verse (xxx. 26) quoted above was written by him to impress us duly with its magnificence; in the present verse he was naturally reproducing his source in Kings, and it is most unlikely that he would notice any slight inconsistency with xxx. 26, or that, if he did, he would have been troubled thereby.

from the days of Samuel] In 2 Kings xxiii. 22 “from the days of the judges.”

¹⁹In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept.

19. In the eighteenth year] Comparison of the later Greek version (the so-called LXX.) of this verse with the earlier Greek version (the old LXX.) preserved in 1 Esdras reveals that this passage is one of great interest for the history of the text. After verse 19 “In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept,” 1 Esdras i. 23, 24 has a remarkable addition as follows: “And the works of Josias were upright before his Lord with a heart full of godliness. Moreover the things that came to pass in his days [or ‘the things concerning him’] have been written in times past concerning ... those that sinned and did wickedly against the Lord above every people and kingdom, and how they grieved him exceedingly, so that the words of the Lord were confirmed against Israel.” Then follows verse 25 (compare Hebrew verse 20) “Now after all these acts of Josias it came to pass that Pharaoh, king of Egypt,” etc. Probably some words have been lost at the point where the dots are placed. As it stands, the passage seems to associate the reign of the godly Josiah with wicked and irreligious doings. The inference to be drawn is that this passage was originally part of the Hebrew text (from which the old LXX. was translated), but was subsequently excised on account of its apparent aspersion on the character of Josiah. The gap thus created was filled in some Hebrew MSS. by the insertion of 2 Kings xxiii. 24–27, and from such a Hebrew text the later Greek version (the present LXX.) was made. In other Hebrew MSS., however, the gap was left unfilled, and from one of these was derived the Hebrew text which has reached us (see Torrey, Ezra Studies, pp. 87–89). It is only by the use of the Greek versions that we are now able to perceive that an omission has been made.