What Does 2 Chronicles 35:19 Mean?
In the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, this Passover was made.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept.THE KEY
The Hebrew says they “did” the Passover: deliverance is not only remembered, but given shape in a shared act.
THE MEANING
Passover makes deliverance present through a shared act of remembrance. Release takes a concrete place in the community’s common life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that freedom and remembrance can remain only inward or abstract; here, they take form in what the community does together.
THE ROOT
הַפֶּסַח
ha-pesaḥ
GROWS FROM
פסח
To pass over; to spare.
Passover carries the movement of passing over and sparing within its name. The feast is remembrance of release made tangible in a shared practice.
ALSO GROWS
pāsaḥ: To pass over; to spare.
פָּסַח
The verb gives the feast its movement: what is marked is passed over and spared.
pesaḥ: Passover, the feast commemorating deliverance.
פֶּסַח
The noun holds that act of sparing in a name the community can gather around and enact.
וַיַּעַשׂ
wayyaʿaś
GROWS FROM
עשה
To do, make, or carry out.
“made” in this verse is wayyaʿaś. Alongside the English “kept,” the Hebrew verb carries the concrete sense of doing or performing the Passover. The observance is not merely an idea preserved; it is an act carried out.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāśâ: To do; to make.
עָשָׂה
This verb supplies the action behind the verse’s observance.
maʿăśeh: A deed, work, or thing done.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun shows the same root taking shape as a completed act, echoing the Passover performed here.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance becomes present in a community when remembrance takes the form of a shared act.
And this day will be for you a remembrance. You will keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations, a statute for the ages.And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord's death until he comes.THE THREAD
Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even the Anointed One, our Passover, was slaughtered for us.The Greek word πάσχα (pascha, Passover) carries the Hebrew פֶּסַח (pesaḥ), from the root פסח, the name of the feast in this verse. Here the Passover’s language of deliverance gathers around a person, opening the feast’s pattern of release into the community’s life.
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