2 Chronicles 35: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Josiah holds a Passover in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of his reign. He puts the priests and Levites back at their assigned posts, and he and his officials supply thousands of animals for the offerings, so that the Passover is kept along with the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. The text says no Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel. Later, Josiah goes out to meet Neco king of Egypt at Megiddo, ignores Neco's warning, is shot by archers, and dies; Jeremiah and the singers mourn him.

Claim by Claim

1. 35:1
   • Josiah kept a passover to the LORD in Jerusalem.
   • They slaughtered the passover victim on the fourteenth day of the first month.
2. 35:2
   • Josiah set the priests in their appointed duties.
   • Josiah encouraged the priests to the service of the house of the LORD.
3. 35:3
   • Josiah spoke to the Levites.
   • The Levites instructed all Israel.
   • The Levites were holy to the LORD.
   • Josiah told the Levites to put the holy ark in the house that Solomon son of David king of Israel built.
   • Josiah said the ark would not be a burden on their shoulders.
   • Josiah told them to serve the LORD their God from then on.
   • Josiah told them to serve his people Israel.
4. 35:4
   • Josiah told them to prepare themselves by their fathers' houses.
   • Josiah told them to prepare according to their divisions.
   • The preparation was to follow the writing of David king of Israel.
   • The preparation was also to follow the writing of Solomon his son.
5. 35:5
   • Josiah told the Levites to stand in the holy place.
   • They were to stand according to the divisions of the fathers' houses of their brethren, the lay people.
   • They were to stand according to the division of a father's house for the Levites.
6. 35:6
   • Josiah told them to slaughter the passover victim.
   • Josiah told them to consecrate themselves.
   • Josiah told them to make preparation for their brethren.
   • The purpose was to act according to the word of the LORD given by the hand of Moses.
7. 35:7
   • Josiah contributed to the lay people from the flock: lambs and young goats.
   • All of these were for the passover offerings.
   • The offerings were for everyone who was present.
   • The number of flock animals was thirty thousand.
   • Josiah also contributed three thousand cattle.
   • These animals came from the king's own property.
8. 35:8
   • Josiah's officials made a freewill contribution to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites.
   • Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel were rulers of the house of God.
   • Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel gave the priests two thousand six hundred passover offerings.
   • They also gave three hundred cattle.
9. 35:9
   • Conaniah, Shemaiah and Nethanel his brothers, Hashabiah, Jeiel, and Jozabad were chiefs of the Levites.
   • They contributed to the Levites five thousand passover offerings.
   • They also contributed five hundred cattle.
10. 35:10
    • The service was made ready.
    • The priests stood in their place.
    • The Levites stood in their divisions.
    • This was according to the king's command.
11. 35:11
    • They slaughtered the passover victim.
    • The priests sprinkled the blood received from the Levites' hand.
    • The Levites skinned the animals.
12. 35:12
    • They set aside the burnt offerings.
    • The burnt offerings were to be given to the divisions of the fathers' houses of the lay people.
    • The purpose was to offer them to the LORD.
    • This was as written in the book of Moses.
    • They did the same with the cattle.
13. 35:13
    • They roasted the passover victim with fire according to the ordinance.
    • They boiled the other holy offerings in pots, caldrons, and pans.
    • They brought them quickly to all the lay people.
14. 35:14
    • Afterward they made preparation for themselves and for the priests.
    • The priests, the sons of Aaron, were occupied offering up the burnt offerings and the fat until night.
    • Therefore the Levites made preparation for themselves and for the priests, the sons of Aaron.
15. 35:15
    • The singers, the sons of Asaph, were at their station.
    • This was according to the command of David, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun.
    • Jeduthun was the king's seer.
    • The gatekeepers were at each gate.
    • They did not have to leave their service.
    • The reason was that their brothers the Levites made preparation for them.
16. 35:16
    • All the service of the LORD was made ready that same day.
    • The service was for keeping the passover.
    • The service was also for offering burnt offerings on the altar of the LORD.
    • This was according to the command of king Josiah.
17. 35:17
    • The children of Israel who were present kept the passover at that time.
    • They kept the feast of unleavened bread for seven days.
18. 35:18
    • No passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet.
    • None of the kings of Israel kept a passover like the one Josiah kept.
    • Josiah kept it together with the priests, the Levites, all Judah, the Israelites who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
19. 35:19
    • This passover was kept in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign.
20. 35:20
    • This happened after Josiah had set the temple in order.
    • Necho king of Egypt came up to fight at Carchemish by the Euphrates.
    • Josiah went out against him.
21. 35:21
    • Necho sent messengers to Josiah.
    • Necho asked what quarrel there was between himself and the king of Judah.
    • Necho said he was not coming against Josiah that day.
    • Necho said he was coming against the house with which he was at war.
    • Necho said God had commanded him to make haste.
    • Necho told Josiah to leave off from opposing God, who was with Necho.
    • Necho warned that God would otherwise destroy Josiah.
22. 35:22
    • Josiah would not turn his face away from Necho.
    • Josiah disguised himself in order to fight him.
    • Josiah did not listen to the words of Necho, which came from the mouth of God.
    • Josiah came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.
23. 35:23
    • The archers shot at king Josiah.
    • The king told his servants to take him away.
    • The king said he was severely wounded.
24. 35:24
    • His servants took him out of the chariot.
    • They put him in his second chariot.
    • They brought him to Jerusalem.
    • He died.
    • He was buried in the tombs of his fathers.
    • All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.
25. 35:25
    • Jeremiah chanted a lament for Josiah.
    • All the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah in their laments down to this day.
    • They made these laments a fixed ordinance in Israel.
    • The laments are written in the collection of laments.
26. 35:26
    • There were further acts of Josiah beyond those recorded here.
    • Josiah also had deeds of faithful devotion.
    • These were according to what is written in the law of the LORD.
27. 35:27
    • Josiah's deeds, first and last, are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

35:1

Passover was the yearly festival remembering Israel's escape from slavery in Egypt, when a lamb was killed and its blood put on the doorposts. It fell on the fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan/Abib), which lands in March or April. The lamb was killed at the temple and eaten that evening by households.

35:2

Priests were male descendants of Aaron; only they could handle the altar and the blood. Their "charges" were fixed duty rosters, each family group served the temple in rotation rather than all at once.

35:3

The Levites were the wider tribe of Levi, who assisted the priests, taught the law, sang, guarded the gates, and did the physical work of the sanctuary. The ark was the gold-covered chest holding the stone tablets of the law; in the desert years the Levites carried it on poles resting on their shoulders. Josiah's point is that the ark now has a permanent home in the temple, so that carrying duty is finished and they are free for other work. The Hebrew does not say why the ark needed putting back, whether it had been moved during earlier building work or during the reigns of kings who filled the temple with other gods.

35:4

"Courses" were the standing rotation of work shifts, with each family group of Levites taking its turn on duty. Chronicles credits David and Solomon with setting up the written roster.

35:5

The "holy place" here means the temple courts where the animals were killed, not the inner sanctuary. The Levites were to line up so that each shift faced a matching block of lay families, an assembly-line arrangement for handling thousands of animals.

35:6

To "sanctify" yourself meant going through set rituals of washing and abstaining that made a person fit to handle holy things, a matter of ceremonial status, not moral character.

35:7

Lamb or goat were both allowed for Passover. The bulls were not for the Passover meal itself but for the additional festival sacrifices over the following week. "The king's substance" means Josiah paid out of the royal estate, so that even the poor could take part.

35:8

Hilkiah is the high priest who, according to the previous chapter, found the book of the law during the temple repairs. "Small cattle" in older English means sheep and goats, as against "oxen," the large cattle.

35:11

Blood belonged to God and had to be handled by priests: the Levites killed and drained the animals and passed the blood along, and the priest flung it against the base of the altar. Skinning was normally the worshiper's own job, but with this many animals the Levites took it over.

35:12

The fat and certain internal organs were burned whole on the altar as God's portion; the rest of the animal was eaten. "The book of Moses" means the law contained in the first five books of the Bible.

35:13

There is a known tension in the law here: Exodus says the Passover animal must be roasted and not boiled, while Deuteronomy uses a verb that normally means to boil. Chronicles keeps both, roasting the Passover animals and boiling the other sacrifices.

35:14

"The sons of Aaron" means the priestly line descended from Moses' brother Aaron. The fat was the portion burned on the altar, and burning it for thousands of animals took until after dark, which is why the priests could not stop to prepare their own meal.

35:15

Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun were the three founding families of temple musicians; several psalms carry their names. A "seer" was a prophet, so called because he received messages in visions; the title marks Jeduthun as an official prophet attached to the royal court. The gatekeepers were Levites who controlled access to the temple courts and could not abandon their posts even to eat.

35:16

An altar was a big stone table. Gifts for God were burned on top of it.

35:17

The Feast of Unleavened Bread ran for the seven days following Passover, during which no yeast could be eaten or even kept in the house, a reminder that Israel left Egypt in such haste that the bread had no time to rise.

35:18

Samuel was the last of the leaders called judges, so this reaches back before Israel had kings at all. The parallel account in 2 Kings 23 makes the same claim by saying "since the days of the judges."

35:19

Josiah's eighteenth year is roughly 622 BC, the same year the lost book of the law was found during the temple repairs described in the previous chapter.

35:20

Carchemish was a fortress city on the Euphrates in what is now southern Turkey, controlling the main crossing. Neco was marching north to prop up the collapsing Assyrian empire against Babylon. Josiah's kingdom straddled the route, and Megiddo guarded the pass the Egyptian army had to use.

35:21

"The royal house I am at war with" is literally "the house with which I have war", the ruling dynasty Neco is campaigning against, understood as Babylon or what was left of Assyria's enemies. Neco is a foreign king, and the Hebrew word he uses for God can equally mean "a god"; the narrator, however, treats the message in the next verse as genuinely coming from God.

35:22

Kings disguised themselves in battle to avoid being singled out by enemy archers. Some Hebrew manuscripts and ancient versions read not "disguised himself" but "steeled himself," two verbs that differ by one letter. The valley of Megiddo is the broad plain of Jezreel in northern Israel, the classic battlefield of the region.

35:23

"Sore wounded" in the King James means badly or grievously wounded; it has nothing to do with the modern sense of sore. Archers shot from a distance at chariot crews, and the man in the lead chariot was the natural target.

35:24

A king went to war with a spare chariot and driver; Josiah is moved into it to be carried out of the fighting. Being buried in the ancestral tombs, rock-cut family chambers, was the honorable end for a king, in contrast to the disgraced burials elsewhere in Chronicles.

35:25

These laments are funeral songs, performed by professional mourners. The "book of laments" was a collection that has not survived; it is not the biblical book of Lamentations, which concerns the fall of Jerusalem a generation later.

35:26

The word behind "goodness" or "acts of faithful love" is *hesed*, which covers loyalty, kindness, and keeping faith with an agreement, the steady dependability expected between covenant partners.

35:27

This source book is now lost. Despite the name, it is not the biblical books of 1–2 Kings; Chronicles repeatedly cites older royal records that no longer exist.