2 Kings 23:22

Surely there was not holden[R.V. kept] such a passover The same change is also required in the next verse. The king had said - Keepthe passover".

This verse cannot be tortured into the meaning which some have put upon it, that the passover had been wholly neglected since the days of the Judges, or as the Chronicler puts it, -the days of Samuel the prophet", and through all the reigns of the previous kings of Judah, with the exception of the one recorded passover of Hezekiah. That the passovers are not mentioned comes about because they were a part of the life of the nation, which went on its natural round as a matter of course. That there was a relaxation in portions of the observance we can have no doubt, but that passovers ceased is as little to be accepted as that there was no observance of the great day of atonement because we do not read of it in the books of Samuel or Kings. It is not possible to believe that provision should have been regularly made for placing the ark of the covenant in a separate room, and that Solomon should have made the elaborate arrangements which he did for the Most holy place, and yet that there should have been no regard paid to the one solemn service for which alone the ark and the Holy of Holies were provided. Both the passover and the day of atonement were observed, though there were times when insufficient regard was paid to the required ceremonial. The passover of Josiah however went back to the complete form ordained in this book of the covenant, and in that respect was remarkable above all those which had been held since the days of Joshua and the elders that outlived Joshua, after which days (Judges 2:10) -there arose another generation" and the people fell away, and the ceremonial law was but partially observed, and never so strictly through all that period as in this great passover of king Josiah.