So they established a decree, to make proclamation throughout all Israel,.... Passed a vote, that heralds should be appointed and sent to proclaim it throughout the land, that all might know it, and none plead ignorance:
from Beersheba even to Dan; the one being the southern and the other the northern boundary of the whole land of Israel:
that they should come to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem: the only proper place where it was to be kept:
for they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written; as prescribed in the law those of the ten tribes had not observed it from the time of the schism of Jeroboam, and many in the kingdom of Judah had neglected it, at least had not kept it as the law required; for the phrase which we render "of a long time" rather respects a multitude of persons than length of time, who had been very deficient in their observance of this ordinance; the Targum is, that
"many had not done it in its time, in Nisan,''
and suggests that it was kept twice this year, first in Nisan by a few, and now again in the second month Ijar, and which is the sense of some Talmudic writers p, but has no foundation in the text.
p T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 12. 2.