The Expositor’s Bible
The Books of Chronicles
By
William Henry Bennett
Professor of Old Testament Languages and Literature, Mackney and New
Colleges; Sometime Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge
Hodder & Stoughton
New York
George H, Doran Company
CONTENTS
Preface
Book I. Introduction.
Chapter I. Date And Authorship.
Chapter II. Historical Setting.
Chapter III. Sources And Mode Of Composition.
Chapter IV. The Importance of Chronicles.
Book II. Genealogies.
Chapter I. Names. 1 Chron. i-ix.
Chapter II. Heredity. 1 Chron. i.-ix.
Chapter III. Statistics.
Chapter IV. Family Traditions. 1 Chron. i. 10, 19, 46; ii. 3, 7, 34;
iv. 9, 10, 18, 22, 27, 34-43; v. 10, 18-22; vii. 21-23; viii. 13.
Chapter V. The Jewish Community In The Time Of The Chronicler.
Chapter VI. Teaching By Anachronism. 1 Chron. ix. (cf. xv., xvi.,
xxiii.-xxvii., etc.).
Book III. Messianic And Other Types.
Chapter I. Teaching By Types.
Chapter II. David—I. His Tribe And Dynasty.
Chapter III. David—II. His Personal History.
Chapter IV. David—III. His Official Dignity.
Chapter V. Solomon.
Chapter VI. Solomon (continued).
Chapter VII. The Wicked Kings. 2 Chron. xxviii., etc.
Chapter VIII. The Priests.
Chapter IX. The Prophets.
Chapter X. Satan. 1 Chron. xxi.-xxii. 1.
Chapter XI. Conclusion.
Book IV. The Interpretation Of History.
Chapter I. The Last Prayer Of David. 1 Chron. xxix. 10-19.
Chapter II. Rehoboam And Abijah: The Importance Of Ritual. 2 Chron.
x.-xiii.
Chapter III. Asa: Divine Retribution. 2 Chron. xiv.-xvi.
Chapter IV. Jehoshaphat—The Doctrine Of Non-Resistance. 2 Chron.
xvii.-xx.
Chapter V. Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah: The Consequences of a
Foreign Marriage. 2 Chron. xxi.-xxiii.
Chapter VI. Joash and Amaziah. 2 Chron. xxiv.-xxv.
Chapter VII. Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz. 2 Chron. xxvi.-xxviii.
Chapter VIII. Hezekiah: The Religious Value Of Music. 2 Chron.
xxix.-xxxii.
Chapter IX. Manasseh: Repentance And Forgiveness. 2 Chron. xxxiii.
Chapter X. The Last Kings Of Judah. 2 Chron. xxxiv.-xxxvi.
Footnotes
PREFACE
To expound Chronicles in a series which has dealt with Samuel, Kings,
Ezra, and Nehemiah is to glean scattered ears from a field already
harvested. Sections common to Chronicles with the older histories have
therefore been treated as briefly as is consistent with preserving the
continuity of the narrative. Moreover, an exposition of Chronicles does
not demand or warrant an attempt to write the history of Judah. To
recombine with Chronicles matter which its author deliberately omitted
would only obscure the characteristic teaching he intended to convey. On
the one hand, his selection of material has a religious significance,
which must be ascertained by careful comparison with Samuel and Kings; on
the other hand, we can only do justice to the chronicler as we ourselves
adopt, for the time being, his own attitude towards the history of Hebrew
politics, literature, and religion. In the more strictly expository parts
of this volume I have sought to confine myself to the carrying out of
these principles.
Amongst other obligations to friends, I must specially mention my
indebtedness to the Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A., for a careful reading of the
proof-sheets and many very valuable suggestions.
One object I have had in view has been to attempt to show the fresh force
and clearness with which modern methods of Biblical study have emphasised
the spiritual teaching of Chronicles.
BOOK I. INTRODUCTION.
Chapter I. Date And Authorship.
Chronicles is a curious literary torso. A comparison with Ezra and
Nehemiah shows that the three originally formed a single whole. They are
written in the same peculiar late Hebrew style; they use their sources in
the same mechanical way; they are all saturated with the ecclesiastical
spirit; and their Church order and doctrine rest upon the complete
Pentateuch, and especially upon the Priestly Code. They take the same keen
interest in genealogies, statistics, building operations, Temple ritual,
priests and Levites, and most of all in the Levitical doorkeepers and
singers. Ezra and Nehemiah form an obvious continuation of Chronicles; the
latter work breaks off in the middle of a paragraph intended to introduce
the account of the return from the Captivity; Ezra repeats the beginning
of the paragraph and gives its conclusion. Similarly the register of the
high-priests is begun in 1 Chron. vi. 4-15 and completed in Neh. xii. 10,
11.
We may compare the whole work to the image in Daniel’s vision whose head
was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs
of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Ezra
and Nehemiah preserve some of the finest historical material in the Old
Testament, and are our only authority for a most important crisis in the
religion of Israel. The torso that remains when these two books are
removed is of very mixed character, partly borrowed from the older
historical books, partly taken down from late tradition, and partly
constructed according to the current philosophy of history.
The date(1) of this work lies somewhere between the conquest of the
Persian empire by Alexander and the revolt of the Maccabees, _i.e._,
between B.C. 332 and B.C. 166. The register in Neh. xii. 10, 11, closes
with Jaddua, the well-known high-priest of Alexander’s time; the genealogy
of the house of David in 1 Chron. iii. extends to about the same date, or,
according to the ancient versions, even down to about B.C. 200. The
ecclesiastical system of the priestly code, established by Ezra and
Nehemiah B.C. 444, was of such old standing to the author of Chronicles
that he introduces it as a matter of course into his descriptions of the
worship of the monarchy. Another feature which even more clearly indicates
a late date is the use of the term “king of Persia” instead of simply “the
King” or “the Great King.” The latter were the customary designations of
the Persian kings while the empire lasted; after its fall, the title
needed to be qualified by the name “Persia.” These facts, together with
the style and language, would be best accounted for by a date somewhere
between B.C. 300 and B.C. 250. On the other hand, the Maccabæan struggle
revolutionised the national and ecclesiastical system which Chronicles
everywhere takes for granted, and the silence of the author as to this
revolution is conclusive proof that he wrote before it began.
There is no evidence whatever as to the name of the author; but his
intense interest in the Levites and in the musical service of the Temple,
with its orchestra and choir, renders it extremely probable that he was a
Levite and a Temple-singer or musician. We might compare the Temple, with
its extensive buildings and numerous priesthood, to an English cathedral
establishment, and the author of Chronicles to some vicar-choral, or,
perhaps better, to the more dignified precentor. He would be enthusiastic
over his music, a cleric of studious habits and scholarly tastes, not a
man of the world, but absorbed in the affairs of the Temple, as a monk in
the life of his convent or a minor canon in the politics and society of
the minster close. The times were uncritical, and so our author was
occasionally somewhat easy of belief as to the enormous magnitude of
ancient Hebrew armies and the splendour and wealth of ancient Hebrew
kings; the narrow range of his interests and experience gave him an
appetite for innocent gossip, professional or otherwise. But his sterling
religious character is shown by the earnest piety and serene faith which
pervade his work. If we venture to turn to English fiction for a rough
illustration of the position and history of our chronicler, the name that
at once suggests itself is that of Mr. Harding, the precentor in
_Barchester Towers_. We must however remember that there is very little to
distinguish the chronicler from his later authorities; and the term
“chronicler” is often used for “the chronicler or one of his
predecessors.”
Chapter II. Historical Setting.
In the previous chapter it has been necessary to deal with the chronicler
as the author of the whole work of which Chronicles is only a part, and to
go over again ground already covered in the volume on Ezra and Nehemiah;
but from this point we can confine our attention to Chronicles and treat
it as a separate book. Such a course is not merely justified, it is
necessitated, by the different relations of the chronicler to his subject
in Ezra and Nehemiah on the one hand and in Chronicles on the other. In
the former case he is writing the history of the social and ecclesiastical
order to which he himself belonged, but he is separated by a deep and wide
gulf from the period of the kingdom of Judah. About three hundred years
intervened between the chronicler and the death of the last king of Judah.
A similar interval separates us from Queen Elizabeth; but the course of
these three centuries of English life has been an almost unbroken
continuity compared with the changing fortunes of the Jewish people from
the fall of the monarchy to the early years of the Greek empire. This
interval included the Babylonian captivity and the return, the
establishment of the Law, the use of the Persian empire, and the conquests
of Alexander.
The first three of these events were revolutions of supreme importance to
the internal development of Judaism; the last two rank in the history of
the world with the fall of the Roman empire and the French Revolution. Let
us consider them briefly in detail. The Captivity, the rise of the Persian
empire, and the Return are closely connected, and can only be treated as
features of one great social, political, and religious convulsion, an
upheaval which broke the continuity of all the strata, of Eastern life and
opened an impassable gulf between the old order and the new. For a time,
men who had lived through these revolutions were still able to carry
across this gulf the loosely twisted strands of memory, but when they died
the threads snapped; only here and there a lingering tradition
supplemented the written records. Hebrew slowly ceased to be the
vernacular language, and was supplanted by Aramaic; the ancient history
only reached the people by means of an oral translation. Under this new
dispensation the ideas of ancient Israel were no longer intelligible; its
circumstances could not be realised by those who lived under entirely
different conditions. Various causes contributed to bring about this
change. First, there was an interval of fifty years, during which
Jerusalem lay a heap of ruins. After the recapture of Rome by Totila the
Visigoth in A.D. 546 the city was abandoned during forty days to desolate
and dreary solitude. Even this temporary depopulation of the Eternal City
is emphasised by historians as full of dramatic interest, but the fifty
years’ desolation of Jerusalem involved important practical results. Most
of the returning exiles must have either been born in Babylon or else have
spent all their earliest years in exile. Very few can have been old enough
to have grasped the meaning or drunk in the spirit of the older national
life. When the restored community set to work to rebuild their city and
their temple, few of them had any adequate knowledge of the old Jerusalem,
with its manners, customs, and traditions. “The ancient men, that had seen
the first house, wept with a loud voice”(2) when the foundation of the
second Temple was laid before their eyes. In their critical and
disparaging attitude towards the new building, we may see an early trace
of the tendency to glorify and idealise the monarchical period, which
culminated in Chronicles. The breach with the past was widened by the
novel and striking surroundings of the exiles in Babylon. For the first
time since the Exodus, the Jews as a nation found themselves in close
contact and intimate relations with the culture of an ancient civilisation
and the life of a great city.
Nearly a century and a half elapsed between the first captivity under
Jehoiachin (B.C. 598) and the mission of Ezra (B.C. 458); no doubt in the
succeeding period Jews still continued to return from Babylon to Judæa,
and thus the new community at Jerusalem, amongst whom the chronicler grew
up, counted Babylonian Jews amongst their ancestors for two or even for
many generations. A Zulu tribe exhibited for a year in London could not
return and build their kraal afresh and take up the old African life at
the point where they had left it. If a community of Russian Jews went to
their old home after a few years’ sojourn in Whitechapel, the old life
resumed would be very different from what it was before their migration.
Now the Babylonian Jews were neither uncivilised African savages nor
stupefied Russian helots; they were not shut up in an exhibition or in a
ghetto; they settled in Babylon, not for a year or two, but for half a
century or even a century; and they did not return to a population of
their own race, living the old life, but to empty homes and a ruined city.
They had tasted the tree of new knowledge, and they could no more live and
think as their fathers had done than Adam and Eve could find their way
back into paradise. A large and prosperous colony of Jews still remained
at Babylon, and maintained close and constant relations with the
settlement in Judæa. The influence of Babylon, begun during the Exile,
continued permanently in this indirect form. Later still the Jews felt the
influence of a great Greek city, through their colony at Alexandria.
Besides these external changes, the Captivity was a period of important
and many-sided development of Jewish literature and religion. Men had
leisure to study the prophecies of Jeremiah and the legislation of
Deuteronomy; their attention was claimed for Ezekiel’s suggestions as to
ritual, and for the new theology, variously expounded by Ezekiel, the
later Isaiah, the book of Job, and the psalmists. The Deuteronomic school
systematised and interpreted the records of the national history. In its
wealth of Divine revelation the period from Josiah to Ezra is only second
to the apostolic age.
Thus the restored Jewish community was a new creation, baptised into a new
spirit; the restored city was as much a new Jerusalem as that which St.
John beheld descending out of heaven; and, in the words of the prophet of
the Restoration, the Jews returned to a “new heaven and a new earth.”(3)
The rise of the Persian empire changed the whole international system of
Western Asia and Egypt. The robber monarchies of Nineveh and Babylon,
whose energies had been chiefly devoted to the systematic plunder of their
neighbours, were replaced by a great empire, that stretched out one hand
to Greece and the other to India. The organisation of this great empire
was the most successful attempt at government on a large scale that the
world had yet seen. Both through the Persians themselves and through their
dealings with the Greeks, Aryan philosophy and religion began to leaven
Asiatic thought; old things were passing away: all things were becoming
new.
The establishment of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah was the triumph of a
school whose most important and effective work had been done at Babylon,
though not necessarily within the half-century specially called the
Captivity. Their triumph was retrospective: it not only established a
rigid and elaborate system unknown to the monarchy, but, by identifying
this system with the law traditionally ascribed to Moses, it led men very
widely astray as to the ancient history of Israel. A later generation
naturally assumed that the good kings must have kept this law, and that
the sin of the bad kings was their failure to observe its ordinances.
The events of the century and a half or thereabouts between Ezra and the
chronicler have only a minor importance for us. The change of language
from Hebrew to Aramaic, the Samaritan schism, the few political incidents
of which any account has survived, are all trivial compared to the
literature and history crowded into the century after the fall of the
monarchy. Even the far-reaching results of the conquests of Alexander do
not materially concern us here. Josephus indeed tells us that the Jews
served in large numbers in the Macedonian army, and gives a very dramatic
account of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem; but the historical value of
these stories is very doubtful, and in any case it is clear that between
B.C. 333 and B.C. 250 Jerusalem was very little affected by Greek
influences, and that, especially for the Temple community to which the
chronicler belonged, the change from Darius to the Ptolemies was merely a
change from one foreign dominion to another.
Nor need much be said of the relation of the chronicler to the later
Jewish literature of the Apocalypses and Wisdom. If the spirit of this
literature were already stirring in some Jewish circles, the chronicler
himself was not moved by it. Ecclesiastes, as far as he could have
understood it, would have pained and shocked him. But his work lay in that
direct line of subtle rabbinic teaching which, beginning with Ezra,
reached its climax in the Talmud. Chronicles is really an anthology
gleaned from ancient historic sources and supplemented by early specimens
of Midrash and Hagada.
In order to understand the book of Chronicles, we have to keep two or
three simple facts constantly and clearly in mind. In the first place, the
chronicler was separated from the monarchy by an aggregate of changes
which involved a complete breach of continuity between the old and the new
order: instead of a nation there was a Church; instead of a king there
were a high-priest and a foreign governor. Secondly, the effects of these
changes had been at work for two or three hundred years, effacing all
trustworthy recollection of the ancient order and schooling men to regard
the Levitical dispensation as their one original and antique
ecclesiastical system. Lastly, the chronicler himself belonged to the
Temple community, which was the very incarnation of the spirit of the new
order. With such antecedents and surroundings, he set to work to revise
the national history recorded in Samuel and Kings. A monk in a Norman
monastery would have worked under similar but less serious disadvantages
if he had undertaken to rewrite the _Ecclesiastical History_ of the
Venerable Bede.
Chapter III. Sources And Mode Of Composition.
Our impressions as to the sources of Chronicles are derived from the
general character of its contents, from a comparison with other books of
the Old Testament, and from the actual statements of Chronicles itself. To
take the last first: there are numerous references to authorities in
Chronicles which at first sight seem to indicate a dependence on rich and
varied sources. To begin with, there are “The Book of the Kings of Judah
and Israel,”(4) “The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,”(5) and “The
Acts of the Kings of Israel.”(6) These, however, are obviously different
forms of the title of the same work.
Other titles furnish us with an imposing array of prophetic authorities.
There are “The _Words_” of Samuel the Seer(7), of Nathan the Prophet,(8)
of Gad the Seer,(9) of Shemaiah the Prophet and of Iddo the Seer,(10) of
Jehu the son of Hanani,(11) and of the Seers(12); “The _Vision_” of Iddo
the Seer(13) and of Isaiah the Prophet(14); “The _Midrash_” of the Book of
Kings(15) and of the Prophet Iddo(16); “The _Acts_ of Uzziah,” written by
Isaiah the Prophet(17); and “The _Prophecy_” of Ahijah the Shilonite.(18)
There are also less formal allusions to other works.
Further examination, however, soon discloses the fact that these prophetic
titles merely indicate different sections of “The Book of the Kings of
Israel and Judah.” On turning to our book of Kings, we find that from
Rehoboam onwards each of the references in Chronicles corresponds to a
reference by the book of Kings to the “Chronicles(19) of the Kings of
Judah.” In the case of Ahaziah, Athaliah, and Amon, the reference to an
authority is omitted both in the books of Kings and Chronicles. This close
correspondence suggests that both our canonical books are referring to the
same authority or authorities. Kings refers to the “Chronicles of the
Kings of Judah” for Judah, and to the “Chronicles of the Kings of Israel”
for the northern kingdom; Chronicles, though only dealing with Judah,
combines these two titles in one: “The Book of the Kings of Israel and
Judah.”
In two instances Chronicles clearly states that its prophetic authorities
were found as sections of the larger work. “The Words of Jehu the son of
Hanani” were “inserted in the Book of the Kings of Israel,”(20) and “The
Vision of Isaiah the Prophet, the son of Amoz,” is in the Book of the
Kings of Judah and Israel.(21) It is a natural inference that the other
“Words” and “Visions” were also found as sections of this same “Book of
Kings.”
These conclusions may be illustrated and supported by what we know of the
arrangement of the contents of ancient books. Our convenient modern
subdivisions of chapter and verse did not exist, but the Jews were not
without some means of indicating the particular section of a book to which
they wished to refer. Instead of numbers they used names, derived from the
subject of a section or from the most important person mentioned in it.
For the history of the monarchy the prophets were the most important
personages, and each section of the history is named after its leading
prophet or prophets. This nomenclature naturally encouraged the belief
that the history had been originally written by these prophets. Instances
of the use of such nomenclature are found in the New Testament, _e.g._,
Rom. xi. 2: “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith in Elijah”(22)—_i.e._, in
the section about Elijah—and Mark xii. 26: “Have ye not read in the book
of Moses in the place concerning the bush?”(23)
While, however, most of the references to “Words,” “Visions,” etc., are to
sections of the larger work, we need not at once conclude that _all_
references to authorities in Chronicles are to this same book. The
genealogical register in 1 Chron. v. 17 and the “lamentations” of 2 Chron.
xxxv. 25 may very well be independent works. Having recognised the fact
that the numerous authorities referred to by Chronicles were for the most
part contained in one comprehensive “Book of Kings,” a new problem
presents itself: What are the respective relations of our Kings and
Chronicles to the “Chronicles” and “Kings” cited by them? What are the
relations of these original authorities to each other? What are the
relations of our Kings to our Chronicles? Our present nomenclature is
about as confusing as it well could be; and we are obliged to keep clearly
in mind, first, that the “Chronicles” mentioned in Kings is not our
Chronicles, and then that the “Kings” referred to by Chronicles is not our
Kings. The first fact is obvious; the second is shown by the terms of the
references, which state that information not furnished in Chronicles may
be found in the “Book of Kings,” but the information in question is often
not given in the canonical Kings.(24) And yet the connection between Kings
and Chronicles is very close and extensive. A large amount of material
occurs either identically or with very slight variations in both books. It
is clear that either Chronicles uses Kings, or Chronicles uses a work
which used Kings, or both Chronicles and Kings use the same source or
sources. Each of these three views has been held by important authorities,
and they are also capable of various combinations and modifications.
Reserving for a moment the view which specially commends itself to us, we
may note two main tendencies of opinion. First, it is maintained that
Chronicles either goes back directly to the actual sources of Kings,
citing them, for the sake of brevity, under a combined title, or is based
upon a combination of the main sources of Kings made at a very early date.
In either case Chronicles as compared with Kings would be an independent
and parallel authority on the contents of these early sources, and to that
extent would rank with Kings as first-class history. This view, however,
is shown to be untenable by the numerous traces of a later age which are
almost invariably present wherever Chronicles supplements or modifies
Kings.
The second view is that either Chronicles used Kings, or that the “Book of
the Kings of Israel and Judah” used by Chronicles was a post-Exilic work,
incorporating statistical matter and dealing with the history of the two
kingdoms in a spirit congenial to the temper and interests of the restored
community. This “post-Exilic” predecessor of Chronicles is supposed to
have been based upon Kings itself, or upon the sources of Kings, or upon
both; but in any case it was not much earlier than Chronicles and was
written under the same influences and in a similar spirit. Being virtually
an earlier edition of Chronicles, it could claim no higher authority, and
would scarcely deserve either recognition or treatment as a separate work.
Chronicles would still rest substantially on the authority of Kings.
It is possible to accept a somewhat simpler view, and to dispense with
this shadowy and ineffectual first edition of Chronicles. In the first
place, the chronicler does not appeal to the “Words” and “Visions” and the
rest of his “Book of Kings” as authorities for his own statements; he
merely refers his reader to them for further information which he himself
does not furnish. This “Book of Kings” so often mentioned is therefore
neither a source nor an authority of Chronicles. There is nothing to prove
that the chronicler himself was actually acquainted with the book. Again,
the close correspondence already noted between these references in
Chronicles and the parallel notes in Kings suggests that the former are
simply expanded and modified from the latter, and the chronicler had never
seen the book he referred to. The Books of Kings had stated where
additional information could be found, and Chronicles simply repeated the
reference without verifying it. As some sections of Kings had come to be
known by the names of certain prophets, the chronicler transferred these
names back to the corresponding sections of the sources used by Kings. In
these cases he felt he could give his readers not merely the somewhat
vague reference to the original work as a whole, but the more definite and
convenient citation of a particular paragraph. His descriptions of the
additional subjects dealt with in the original authority may possibly,
like other of his statements, have been constructed in accordance with his
ideas of what that authority should contain; or more probably they refer
to this authority the floating traditions of later times and writers.
Possibly these references and notes of Chronicles are copied from the
glosses which some scribe had written in the margin of his copy of Kings.
If this be so, we can understand why we find references to the Midrash of
Iddo and the Midrash of the book of Kings.(25)
In any case, whether directly or through the medium of a preliminary
edition, called “The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,” our book of
Kings was used by the chronicler. The supposition that the original
sources of Kings were used by the chronicler or this immediate predecessor
is fairly supported both by evidence and authority, but on the whole it
seems an unnecessary complication.
Thus we fail to find in these various references to the “Book of Kings,”
etc., any clear indication of the origin of matter peculiar to Chronicles;
nevertheless it is not difficult to determine the nature of the sources
from which this material was derived. Doubtless some of it was still
current in the form of oral tradition when the chronicler wrote, and owed
to him its permanent record. Some he borrowed from manuscripts, which
formed part of the scanty and fragmentary literature of the later period
of the Restoration. His genealogies and statistics suggest the use of
public and ecclesiastical archives, as well as of family records, in which
ancient legend and anecdote lay embedded among lists of forgotten
ancestors. Apparently the chronicler harvested pretty freely from that
literary aftermath that sprang up when the Pentateuch and the earlier
historical books had taken final shape.
But it is to these earlier books that the chronicler owes most. His work
is very largely a mosaic of paragraphs and phrases taken from the older
books. His chief sources are Samuel and Kings; he also lays the
Pentateuch, Joshua, and Ruth under contribution. Much is taken over
without even verbal alteration, and the greater part is unaltered in
substance; yet, as is the custom in ancient literature, no acknowledgment
is made. The literary conscience was not yet aware of the sin of
plagiarism. Indeed, neither an author nor his friends took any pains to
secure the permanent association of his name with his work, and no great
guilt can attach to the plagiarism of one anonymous writer from another.
This absence of acknowledgment where the chronicler is plainly borrowing
from elder scribes is another reason why his references to the “Book of
the Kings of Israel and Judah” are clearly not statements of sources to
which he is indebted, but simply what they profess to be: indications of
the possible sources of further information.
Chronicles, however, illustrates ancient methods of historical
composition, not only by its free appropriation of the actual form and
substance of older works, but also by its curious blending of identical
reproduction with large additions of quite heterogeneous matter, or with a
series of minute but significant alterations. The primitive ideas and
classical style of paragraphs from Samuel and Kings are broken in upon by
the ritualistic fervour and late Hebrew of the chronicler’s additions. The
vivid and picturesque narrative of the bringing of the Ark to Zion is
interpolated with uninteresting statistics of the names, numbers, and
musical instruments of the Levites.(26) Much of the chronicler’s account
of the revolution which overthrew Athaliah and placed Joash on the throne
is taken word for word from the book of Kings; but it is adapted to the
Temple order of the Pentateuch by a series of alterations which substitute
Levites for foreign mercenaries, and otherwise guard the sanctity of the
Temple from the intrusion, not only of foreigners, but even of the common
people.(27) A careful comparison of Chronicles with Samuel and Kings is a
striking object lesson in ancient historical composition. It is an almost
indispensable introduction to the criticism of the Pentateuch and the
older historical books. The “redactor” of these works becomes no mere
shadowy and hypothetical personage when we have watched his successor the
chronicler piecing together things new and old and adapting ancient
narratives to modern ideas by adding a word in one place and changing a
phrase in another.
Chapter IV. The Importance of Chronicles.
Before attempting to expound in detail the religious significance of
Chronicles, we may conclude our introduction by a brief general statement
of the leading features which render the book interesting and valuable to
the Christian student.
The material of Chronicles may be divided into three parts: the matter
taken directly from the older historical books; material derived from
traditions and writings of the chronicler’s own age; the various additions
and modifications which are the chronicler’s own work.(28) Each of these
divisions has its special value, and important lessons may be learnt from
the way in which the author has selected and combined these materials.
The excerpts from the older histories are, of course, by far the best
material in the book for the period of the monarchy. If Samuel and Kings
had perished, we should have been under great obligations to the
chronicler for preserving to us large portions of their ancient records.
As it is, the chronicler has rendered invaluable service to the textual
criticism of the Old Testament by providing us with an additional witness
to the text of large portions of Samuel and Kings. The very fact that the
character and history of Chronicles are so different from those of the
older books enhances the value of its evidence as to their text. The two
texts, Samuel and Kings on the one hand and Chronicles on the other, have
been modified under different influences; they have not always been
altered in the same way, so that where one has been corrupted the other
has often preserved the correct reading. Probably because Chronicles is
less interesting and picturesque, its text has been subject to less
alteration than that of Samuel and Kings. The more interested scribes or
readers become, the more likely they are to make corrections and add
glosses to the narrative. We may note, for example, that the name
“Meribbaal” given by Chronicles for one of Saul’s sons is more likely to
be correct than “Mephibosheth,” the form given by Samuel.(29)
The material derived from traditions and writings of the chronicler’s own
age is of uncertain historical value, and cannot be clearly discriminated
from the author’s free composition. Much of it was the natural product of
the thought and feeling of the late Persian and early Greek period, and
shares the importance which attaches to the chronicler’s own work. This
material, however, includes a certain amount of neutral matter:
genealogies, family histories and anecdotes, and notes on ancient life and
custom. We have no parallel authorities to test this material, we cannot
prove the antiquity of the sources from which it is derived, and yet it
may contain fragments of very ancient tradition. Some of the notes and
narratives have an archaic flavour which can scarcely be artificial; their
very lack of importance is an argument for their authenticity, and
illustrates the strange tenacity with which local and domestic tradition
perpetuates the most insignificant episodes.(30)
But naturally the most characteristic, and therefore the most important,
section of the contents of Chronicles is that made up of the additions and
modifications which are the work of the chronicler or his immediate
predecessors. It is unnecessary to point out that these do not add much to
our knowledge of the history of the monarchy; their significance consists
in the light that they throw upon the period towards whose close the
chronicler lived: the period between the final establishment of
Pentateuchal Judaism and the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to stamp it
out of existence; the period between Ezra and Judas Maccabæus. The
chronicler is no exceptional and epoch-making writer, has little personal
importance, and is therefore all the more important as a typical
representative of the current ideas of his class and generation. He
translates the history of the past into the ideas and circumstances of his
own age, and thus gives us almost as much information about the civil and
religious institutions he lived under as if he had actually described
them. Moreover, in stating its estimate of past history, each generation
pronounces unconscious judgment upon itself. The chronicler’s
interpretation and philosophy of history mark the level of his moral and
spiritual ideas. He betrays these quite as much by his attitude towards
earlier authorities as in the paragraphs which are his own composition; we
have seen how his use of materials illustrates the ancient, and for that
matter the modern, Eastern methods of historical composition, and we have
shown the immense importance of Chronicles to Old Testament criticism. But
the way in which the chronicler uses his older sources also indicates his
relation towards the ancient morality, ritual, and theology of Israel. His
methods of selection are most instructive as to the ideas and interests of
his time. We see what was thought worthy to be included in this final and
most modern edition of the religious history of Israel. But in truth the
omissions are among the most significant features of Chronicles; its
silence is constantly more eloquent than its speech, and we measure the
spiritual progress of Judaism by the paragraphs of Kings which Chronicles
leaves out. In subsequent chapters we shall seek to illustrate the various
ways in which Chronicles illuminates the period preceding the Maccabees.
Any gleams of light on the Hebrew monarchy are most welcome, but we cannot
be less grateful for information about those obscure centuries which
fostered the quiet growth of Israel’s character and faith and prepared the
way for the splendid heroism and religious devotion of the Maccabæan
struggle.
BOOK II. GENEALOGIES.
Chapter I. Names. 1 Chron. i-ix.
The first nine chapters of Chronicles form, with a few slight exceptions,
a continuous list of names. It is the largest extant collection of Hebrew
names. Hence these chapters may be used as a text for the exposition of
any spiritual significance to be derived from Hebrew names either
individually or collectively. Old Testament genealogies have often
exercised the ingenuity of the preacher, and the student of homiletics
will readily recollect the methods of extracting a moral from what at
first sight seems a barren theme. For instance, those names of which
little or nothing is recorded are held up as awful examples of wasted
lives. We are asked to take warning from Mahalalel and Methuselah, who
spent their long centuries so ineffectually that there was nothing to
record except that they begat sons and daughters and died. Such teaching
is not fairly derived from its text. The sacred writers implied no
reflection upon the Patriarchs of whom they gave so short and conventional
an account. Least of all could such teaching be based upon the lists in
Chronicles, because the men who are there merely mentioned by name include
Adam, Noah, Abraham, and other heroes of sacred story. Moreover, such
teaching is unnecessary and not altogether wholesome. Very few men who are
at all capable of obtaining a permanent place in history need to be
spurred on by sermons; and for most people the suggestion that a man’s
life is a failure unless he secures posthumous fame is false and
mischievous. The Lamb’s book of life is the only record of the vast
majority of honourable and useful lives; and the tendency to
self-advertisement is sufficiently wide-spread and spontaneous already: it
needs no pulpit stimulus. We do not think any worse of a man because his
tombstone simply states his name and age, or any better because it
catalogues his virtues and mentions that he attained the dignity of
alderman or author.
The significance of these lists of names is rather to be looked for in an
opposite direction. It is not that a name and one or two commonplace
incidents mean so little, but that they suggest so much. A mere parish
register is not in itself attractive, but if we consider even such a list,
the very names interest us and kindle our imagination. It is almost
impossible to linger in a country churchyard, reading the half-effaced
inscriptions upon the headstones, without forming some dim picture of the
character and history and even the outward semblance of the men and women
who once bore the names.
“For though a name is neither
... hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man,”
yet, to use a somewhat technical phrase, it _connotes_ a man. A name
implies the existence of a distinct personality, with a peculiar and
unique history, and yet, on the other hand, a being with whom we are
linked in close sympathy by a thousand ties of common human nature and
everyday experience. In its lists of what are now mere names, the Bible
seems to recognise the dignity and sacredness of bare human life.
But the names in these nine chapters have also a collective significance:
they stand for more than their individual owners. They are typical and
representative, the names of kings, and priests, and captains; they sum up
the tribes of Israel, both as a Church and a nation, down all the
generations of its history. The inclusion of these names in the sacred
record, as the express introduction to the annals of the Temple, and the
sacred city, and the elect house of David, is the formal recognition of
the sanctity of the nation and of national life. We are entirely in the
spirit of the Bible when we see this same sanctity in all organised
societies: in the parish, the municipality, and the state; when we attach
a Divine significance to registers of electors and census returns, and
claim all such lists as symbols of religious privilege and responsibility.
But names do not merely suggest individuals and communities: the meanings
of the names reveal the ideas of the people who used them. It has been
well said that “the names of every nation are an important monument of
national spirit and manners, and thus the Hebrew names bear important
testimony to the peculiar vocation of this nation. No nation of antiquity
has such a proportion of names of religious import.”(31) Amongst ourselves
indeed the religious meaning of names has almost wholly faded away;
“Christian name” is a mere phrase, and children are named after relations,
or according to prevailing fashion, or after the characters of popular
novels. But the religious motive can still be traced in some modern names;
in certain districts of Germany the name “Ursula” or “Apollonia” is a sure
indication that a girl is a Roman Catholic and has been named after a
popular saint.(32) The Bible constantly insists upon this religious
significance, which would frequently be in the mind of the devout
Israelite in giving names to his children. The Old Testament contains more
than a hundred etymologies(33) of personal names, most of which attach a
religious meaning to the words explained. The etymologies of the
patriarchal names—“Abraham,” father of a multitude of nations; “Isaac,”
laughter; “Jacob,” supplanter; “Israel,” prince with God—are specially
familiar. The Biblical interest in edifying etymologies was maintained and
developed by early commentators. Their philology was far from accurate,
and very often they were merely playing upon the forms of words. But the
allegorising tendencies of Jewish and Christian expositors found special
opportunities in proper names. On the narrow foundation of an etymology
mostly doubtful and often impossible, Philo, and Origen, and Jerome loved
to erect an elaborate structure theological or philosophical doctrine.
Philo has only one quotation from our author: “Manasseh had sons, whom his
Syrian concubine bare to him, Machir; and Machir begat Gilead.”(34) He
quotes this verse to show that recollection is associated in a subordinate
capacity with memory. The connection is not very clearly made out, but
rests in some way on the meaning of Manasseh, the root of which means to
forget. As forgetfulness with recollection restores our knowledge, so
Manasseh with his Syrian concubine begets Machir. Recollection therefore
is a concubine, an inferior and secondary quality.(35) This ingenious
trifling has a certain charm in spite of its extravagance, but in less
dexterous hands the method becomes clumsy as well as extravagant. It has,
however, the advantage of readily adapting itself to all tastes and
opinions, so that we are not surprised when an eighteenth-century author
discovers in Old Testament etymology a compendium of Trinitarian
theology.(36) _Ahiah_(37) is derived from _’ehad_, one, and _yah_,
Jehovah, and is thus an assertion of the Divine unity; _Reuel_(38) is
resolved into a plural verb with a singular Divine name for its subject:
this is an indication of trinity in unity; _Ahilud_(39) is derived from
_’ehad_, one, and _galud_, begotten, and signifies that the Son is
_only-begotten_.
Modern scholarship is more rational in its methods, but attaches no less
importance to these ancient names, and finds in them weighty evidence on
problems of criticism and theology; and before proceeding to more serious
matters, we may note a few somewhat exceptional names. As pointed in the
present Hebrew text, _Hazarmaveth_(40) and _Azmaveth_(41) have a certain
grim suggestiveness. _Hazarmaveth_, court of death, is given as the name
of a descendant of Shem. It is, however, probably the name of a place
transferred to an eponymous ancestor, and has been identified with
_Hadramawt_, a district in the south of Arabia. As, however, _Hadramawt_,
is a fertile district of Arabia Felix, the name does not seem very
appropriate. On the other hand _Azmaveth_, “strength of death,” would be
very suitable for some strong, death-dealing soldier. _Azubah_,(42)
“forsaken,” the name of Caleb’s wife, is capable of a variety of romantic
explanations. _Hazelelponi_(43) is remarkable in its mere form; and
Ewald’s interpretation, “Give shade, Thou who turnest to me Thy
countenance,” seems rather a cumbrous signification for the name of a
daughter of the house of Judah. _Jushab-hesed_,(44) “Mercy will be
renewed,” as the name of a son of Zerubbabel, doubtless expresses the
gratitude and hope of the Jews on their return from Babylon.(45)
_Jashubi-lehem_,(46) however, is curious and perplexing. The name has been
interpreted “giving bread” or “turning back to Bethlehem,” but the text is
certainly corrupt, and the passage is one of many into which either the
carelessness of scribes or the obscurity of the chronicler’s sources has
introduced hopeless confusion. But the most remarkable set of names is
found in 1 Chron. xxv. 4, where _Giddalti_ and _Romantiezer_,
_Joshbekashah_, _Mallothi_, _Hothir_, _Mahazioth_, are simply a Hebrew
sentence meaning, “I have magnified and exalted help; sitting in
distress,(47) I have spoken(48) visions in abundance.” We may at once set
aside the cynical suggestion that the author lacked names to complete a
genealogy and, to save the trouble of inventing them separately, took the
first sentence that came to hand and cut it up into suitable lengths, nor
is it likely that a father would spread the same process over several
years and adopt it for his family. This remarkable combination of names is
probably due to some misunderstanding of his sources on the part of the
chronicler. His parchment rolls must often have been torn and fragmentary,
the writing blurred and half illegible; and his attempts to piece together
obscure and ragged manuscripts naturally resulted at times in mistakes and
confusion.
These examples of interesting etymologies might easily be multiplied; they
serve, at any rate, to indicate a rich mine of suggestive teaching. It
must, however, be remembered that a name is not necessarily a personal
name because it occurs in a genealogy; cities, districts, and tribes
mingle freely with persons in these lists. In the same connection we note
that the female names are few and far between, and that of those which do
occur the “sisters” probably stand for allied and related families, and
not for individuals.
As regards Old Testament theology, we may first notice the light thrown by
personal names on the relation of the religion of Israel to that of other
Semitic peoples. Of the names in these chapters and elsewhere, a large
proportion are compounded of one or other of the Divine names. _El_ is the
first element in _Elishama_, _Eliphelet_, _Eliada_, etc.; it is the second
in _Othniel_, _Jehaleleel_, _Asareel_, etc. Similarly _Jehovah_ is
represented by the initial _Jeho-_ in _Jehoshaphat_, _Jehoiakim_,
_Jehoram_, etc., by the final _-iah_ in _Amaziah_, _Azariah_, _Hezekiah_,
etc. It has been calculated that there are a hundred and ninety names(49)
beginning or ending with the equivalent of Jehovah, including most of the
kings of Judah and many of the kings of Israel. Moreover, some names which
have not these prefixes and affixes in their extant form are contractions
of older forms which began or ended with a Divine name. Ahaz, for
instance, is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as Jahuhazi—_i.e._,
Jehoahaz—and Nathan is probably a contracted form of Nethaniah.
There are also numerous compounds of other Divine names. _Zur_, rock, is
found in _Pedahzur_,(50) _Shaddai_, A.V. Almighty, in _Ammishaddai_(51);
the two are combined in _Zurishaddai_.(52) _Melech_ is a Divine name in
_Malchi-ram_ and _Malchi-shua_. _Baal_ occurs as a Divine name in
_Eshbaal_ and _Meribbaal_. _Abi_, father, is a Divine name in _Abiram_,
_Abinadab_, etc., and probably also _Ahi_ in _Ahiram_ and _Ammi_ in
_Amminadab_.(53) Possibly, too, the apparently simple names _Melech_,
_Zur_, _Baal_, are contractions of longer forms in which these Divine
names were prefixes or affixes.
This use of Divine names is capable of very varied illustration. Modern
languages have Christian and Christopher, Emmanuel, Theodosius, Theodora,
etc.; names like Hermogenes and Heliogabalus are found in the classical
languages. But the practice is specially characteristic of Semitic
languages. Mohammedan princes are still called _Abdurrahman_, servant of
the Merciful, and _Abdallah_, servant of God; ancient Phœnician kings were
named _Ethbaal_ and _Abdalonim_, where _alonim_ is a plural Divine name,
and the _bal_ in Hannibal and Hasdrubal = _baal_. The Assyrian and
Chaldæan kings were named after the gods Sin, Nebo, Assur, Merodach,
_e.g._, _Sin-akki-irib_ (Sennacherib); _Nebuchadnezzar_; _Assur-bani-pal_;
_Merodach-baladan_.
Of these Divine names El and Baal are common to Israel and other Semitic
peoples, and it has been held that the Hebrew personal names preserve
traces of polytheism. In any case, however, the Baal-names are
comparatively few, and do not necessarily indicate that Israelites
worshipped a Baal distinct from Jehovah; they may be relics of a time when
Baal (Lord) was a title or equivalent of Jehovah, like the later Adonai.
Other possible traces of polytheism are few and doubtful. In Baanah and
Resheph we may perhaps find the obscure(54) Phœnician deities Anath and
Reshaph. On the whole, Hebrew names as compared, for instance, with
Assyrian afford little or no evidence of the prevalence of polytheism.
Another question concerns the origin and use of the name Jehovah. Our
lists conclusively prove its free use during the monarchy and its
existence under the judges. On the other hand, its apparent presence in
Jochebed, the name of the mother of Moses, seems to carry it back beyond
Moses. Possibly it was a Divine name peculiar to his family or clan. Its
occurrence in _Yahubidi_, a king of Hamath, in the time of Sargon may be
due to direct Israelite influence. Hamath had frequent relations with
Israel and Judah.
Turning to matters of practical religion, how far do these names help us
to understand the spiritual life of ancient Israel? The Israelites made
constant use of El and Jehovah in their names, and we have no parallel
practice. Were they then so much more religious than we are? Probably in a
sense they were. It is true that the etymology and even the original
significance of a name in common use are for all practical purposes
quickly and entirely forgotten. A man may go through a life-time bearing
the name of Christopher and never know its etymological meaning. At
Cambridge and Oxford sacred names like “Jesus” and “Trinity” are used
constantly and familiarly without suggesting anything beyond the colleges
so called. The edifying phrase, “God encompasseth us,” is altogether lost
in the grotesque tavern sign “The Goat and Compasses.” Nor can we suppose
that the Israelite or the Assyrian often dwelt on the religious
significance of the _Jeho-_ or _-iah_, the _Nebo_, _Sin_, or _Merodach_,
of current proper names. As we have seen, the sense of _-iah_, _-el_, or
_Jeho-_ was often so little present to men’s minds that contractions were
formed by omitting them. Possibly because these prefixes and affixes were
so common, they came to be taken for granted; it was scarcely necessary to
write them, because in any case they would be understood. Probably in
historic times _Abi-_, _Ahi-_, and _Ammi-_ were no longer recognised as
Divine names or titles; and yet the names which could still be recognised
as compounded of El and Jehovah must have had their influence on popular
feeling. They were part of the religiousness, so to speak, of the ancient
East; they symbolised the constant intertwining of religious acts, and
words, and thoughts with all the concerns of life. The quality of this
ancient religion was very inferior to that of a devout and intelligent
modern Christian; it was perhaps inferior to that of Russian peasants
belonging to the Greek Church; but ancient religion pervaded life and
society more consciously than modern Christianity does; it touched all
classes and occasions more directly, if also more mechanically. And,
again, these names were not the fossil relics of obsolete habits of
thought and feeling, like the names of our churches and colleges; they
were the memorials of comparatively recent acts of faith. The name
“Elijah” commemorated the solemn occasion on which a father professed his
own faith and consecrated a new-born child to the true God by naming his
boy “Jehovah is my God.” This name-giving was also a prayer: the child was
placed under the protection of the deity whose name it bore. The practice
might be tainted with superstition; the name would often be regarded as a
kind of amulet; and yet we may believe that it could also serve to express
a parent’s earnest and simple-minded faith. Modern Englishmen have
developed a habit of almost complete reticence and reserve on religious
matters, and this habit is illustrated by our choice of proper names.
Mary, and Thomas, and James are so familiar that their Scriptural origin
is forgotten, and therefore they are tolerated; but the use of
distinctively Scriptural Christian names is virtually regarded as bad
taste. This reticence is not merely due to increased delicacy of spiritual
feeling: it is partly the result of the growth of science and of literary
and historical criticism. We have become absorbed in the wonderful
revelations of methods and processes; we are fascinated by the ingenious
mechanism of nature and society. We have no leisure to detach our thoughts
from the machinery and carry them further on to its Maker and Director.
Indeed, because there is so much mechanism and because it is so wonderful,
we are sometimes asked to believe that the machine made itself. But this
is a mere phase in the religious growth of mankind: humanity will tire of
some of its new toys, and will become familiar with the rest; deeper needs
and instincts will reassert themselves; and men will find themselves
nearer in sentiment than they supposed to the ancient people who named
their children after their God. In this and other matters the East to-day
is the same as of old; the permanence of its custom is no inapt symbol of
the permanence of Divine truth, which revolution and conquest are
powerless to change.
“The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.”
But the Christian Church is mistress of a more compelling magic than even
Eastern patience and tenacity: out of the storms that threaten her, she
draws new energies for service, and learns a more expressive language in
which to declare the glory of God.
Let us glance for a moment at the meanings of the group of Divine names
given above. We have said that, in addition to _Melech_ in _Malchi-_,
_Abi_, _Ahi_, and _Ammi_ are to be regarded as Divine names. One reason
for this is that their use as prefixes is strictly analogous to that of
_El_ and _Jeho-_. We have _Abijah_ and _Ahijah_ as well as _Elijah_,
_Abiel_ and _Ammiel_ as well as _Eliel_, _Abiram_ and _Ahiram_ as well as
_Jehoram_; _Ammishaddai_ compares with _Zurishaddai_, and _Ammizabad_ with
_Jehozabad_, nor would it be difficult to add many other examples. If this
view be correct, _Ammi_ will have nothing to do with the Hebrew word for
“people,” but will rather be connected with the corresponding Arabic word
for “uncle.”(55) As the use of such terms as “brother” and “uncle” for
Divine names is not consonant with Hebrew theology in its historic period,
the names which contain these prefixes must have come down from earlier
ages, and were used in later times without any consciousness of their
original sense. Probably they were explained by new etymologies more in
harmony with the spirit of the times; compare the etymology “father of a
multitude of nations” given to Abraham. Even _Abi-_, father, in the early
times to which its use as a prefix must be referred, cannot have had the
full spiritual meaning which now attaches to it as a Divine title. It
probably only signified the ultimate source of life. The disappearance of
these religious terms from the common vocabulary and their use in names
long after their significance had been forgotten are ordinary phenomena in
the development of language and religion. How many of the millions who use
our English names for the days of the week ever give a thought to Thor or
Freya? Such phenomena have more than an antiquarian interest. They remind
us that religious terms, and phrases, and formulæ derive their influence
and value from their adaptation to the age which accepts them; and
therefore many of them will become unintelligible or even misleading to
later generations. Language varies continuously, circumstances change,
experience widens, and every age has a right to demand that Divine truth
shall be presented in the words and metaphors that give it the clearest
and most forcible expression. Many of the simple truths that are most
essential to salvation admit of being stated once for all; but dogmatic
theology fossilises fast, and the bread of one generation may become a
stone to the next.
The history of these names illustrates yet another phenomenon. In some
narrow and imperfect sense the early Semitic peoples seem to have called
God “Father” and “Brother.” Because the terms were limited to a narrow
sense, the Israelites grew to a level of religious truth at which they
could no longer use them; but as they made yet further progress they came
to know more of what was meant by fatherhood and brotherhood, and gained
also a deeper knowledge of God. At length the Church resumed these ancient
Semitic terms; and Christians call God “Abba, Father,” and speak of the
Eternal Son as their elder Brother. And thus sometimes, but not always, an
antique phrase may for a time seem unsuitable and misleading, and then
again may prove to be the best expression for the newest and fullest
truth. Our criticism of a religious formula may simply reveal our failure
to grasp the wealth of meaning which its words and symbols can contain.
Turning from these obsolete names to those in common use—_El_; _Jehovah_;
_Shaddai_; _Zur_; _Melech_—probably the prevailing idea popularly
associated with them all was that of strength: _El_, strength in the
abstract; _Jehovah_, strength shown in permanence and independence;
_Shaddai_, the strength that causes terror, the Almighty from whom cometh
destruction(56); _Zur_, rock, the material symbol of strength, _Melech_,
king, the possessor of authority. In early times the first and most
essential attribute of Deity is power, but with this idea of strength a
certain attribute of beneficence is soon associated. The strong God is the
Ally of His people; His permanence is the guarantee of their national
existence; He destroys their enemies. The rock is a place of refuge; and,
again, Jehovah’s people may rejoice in the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land. The King leads them to battle, and gives them their enemies
for a spoil.
We must not, however, suppose that pious Israelites would consciously and
systematically discriminate between these names, any more than ordinary
Christians do between God, Lord, Father, Christ, Saviour, Jesus. Their
usage would be governed by changing currents of sentiment very difficult
to understand and explain after the lapse of thousands of years. In the
year A.D. 3000, for instance, it will be difficult for the historian of
dogmatics to explain accurately why some nineteenth-century Christians
preferred to speak of “dear Jesus” and others of “the Christ.”
But the simple Divine names reveal comparatively little; much more may be
learnt from the numerous compounds they help to form. Some of the more
curious have already been noticed, but the real significance of this
nomenclature is to be looked for in the more ordinary and natural names.
Here, as before, we can only select from the long and varied list. Let us
take some of the favourite names and some of the roots most often used,
almost always, be it remembered, in combination with Divine names. The
different varieties of these sacred names rendered it possible to
construct various personal names embodying the same idea. Also the same
Divine name might be used either as prefix or affix. For instance, the
idea that “God knows” is equally well expressed in the names _Eliada_
(El-yada’), _Jediael_ (Yada’-el), _Jehoiada_ (Jeho-yada’), and _Jedaiah_
(Yada’-yah). “God remembers” is expressed alike by _Zachariah_ and
_Jozachar_; “God hears” by _Elishama_ (El-shama’), _Samuel_ (if for
Shama’-el), _Ishmael_ (also from Shama’-el), _Shemaiah_, and _Ishmaiah_
(_both from_ Shama’ _and_ Yah); “God gives” by _Elnathan_, _Nethaneel_,
_Jonathan_, and _Nethaniah_; “God helps” by _Eliezer_, _Azareel_,
_Joezer_, and _Azariah_; “God is gracious” by _Elhanan_, _Hananeel_,
_Johanan_, _Hananiah_, _Baal-hanan_, and, for a Carthaginian, _Hannibal_,
giving us a curious connection between the Apostle of love, John
(Johanan), and the deadly enemy of Rome.
The way in which the changes are rung upon these ideas shows how the
ancient Israelites loved to dwell upon them. Nestle reckons that in the
Old Testament sixty-one persons have names formed from the root _nathan_,
to give; fifty-seven from _shama_, to hear; fifty-six from _’azar_, to
help; forty-five from _hanan_, to be gracious; forty-four from _zakhar_,
to remember. Many persons, too, bear names from the root _yada’_, to know.
The favourite name is _Zechariah_, which is borne by twenty-five different
persons.
Hence, according to the testimony of names, the Israelites’ favourite
ideas about God were that He heard, and knew, and remembered; that He was
gracious, and helped men, and gave them gifts: but they loved best to
think of Him as God the Giver. Their nomenclature recognises many other
attributes, but these take the first place. The value of this testimony is
enhanced by its utter unconsciousness and naturalness; it brings us nearer
to the average man in his religious moments than any psalm or prophetic
utterance. Men’s chief interest in God was as the Giver. The idea has
proved very permanent; St. James amplifies it: God is the Giver of every
good and perfect gift. It lies latent in names: Theodosius, Theodore,
Theodora, and Dorothea. The other favourite ideas are all related to this.
God hears men’s prayers, and knows their needs, and remembers them; He is
gracious, and helps them by His gifts. Could anything be more pathetic
than this artless self-revelation? Men’s minds have little leisure for sin
and salvation; they are kept down by the constant necessity of preserving
and providing for a bare existence. Their cry to God is like the prayer of
Jacob, “If Thou wilt give me bread to eat and raiment to put on!” The very
confidence and gratitude that the names express imply periods of doubt and
fear, when they said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” times
when it seemed to them impossible that God could have heard their prayer
or that He knew their misery, else why was there no deliverance? Had God
forgotten to be gracious? Did He indeed remember? The names come to us as
answers of faith to these suggestions of despair.
Possibly these old-world saints were not more preoccupied with their
material needs than most modern Christians. Perhaps it is necessary to
believe in a God who rules on earth before we can understand the Father
who is in heaven. Does a man really trust in God for eternal life if he
cannot trust Him for daily bread? But in any case these names provide us
with very comprehensive formulæ, which we are at liberty to apply as
freely as we please: the God who knows, and hears, and remembers, who is
gracious, and helps men, and gives them gifts. To begin with, note how in
a great array of Old Testament names God is the Subject, Actor, and
Worker; the supreme facts of life are God and God’s doings, not man and
man’s doings, what God is to man, not what man is to God. This is a
foreshadowing of the Christian doctrines of grace and of the Divine
sovereignty. And again we are left to fill in the objects of the sentences
for ourselves: God hears, and remembers, and gives—what? All that we have
to say to Him and all that we are capable of receiving from Him.
Chapter II. Heredity. 1 Chron. i.-ix.
It has been said that Religion is the great discoverer of truth, while
Science follows her slowly and after a long interval. Heredity, so much
discussed just now, is sometimes treated as if its principles were a great
discovery of the present century. Popular science is apt to ignore history
and to mistake a fresh nomenclature for an entirely new system of truth,
and yet the immense and far-reaching importance of heredity has been one
of the commonplaces of thought ever since history began. Science has been
anticipated, not merely by religious feeling, but by a universal instinct.
In the old world political and social systems have been based upon the
recognition of the principle of heredity, and religion has sanctioned such
recognition. Caste in India is a religious even more than a social
institution; and we use the term figuratively in reference to ancient and
modern life, even when the institution has not formally existed. Without
the aid of definite civil or religious law the force of sentiment and
circumstances suffices to establish an informal system of caste. Thus the
feudal aristocracy and guilds of the Middle Ages were not without their
rough counterparts in the Old Testament. Moreover, the local divisions of
the Hebrew kingdoms corresponded in theory, at any rate, to blood
relationships; and the tribe, the clan, and the family had even more
fixity and importance than now belong to the parish or the municipality. A
man’s family history or genealogy was the ruling factor in determining his
home, his occupation, and his social position. In the chronicler’s time
this was especially the case with the official ministers of religion, the
Temple establishment to which he himself belonged. The priests, the
Levites, the singers, and doorkeepers formed castes in the strict sense of
the word. A man’s birth definitely assigned him to one of these classes,
to which none but the members of certain families could belong.
But the genealogies had a deeper significance. Israel was Jehovah’s chosen
people, His son, to whom special privileges were guaranteed by solemn
covenant. A man’s claim to share in this covenant depended on his genuine
Israelite descent, and the proof of such descent was an authentic
genealogy. In these chapters the chronicler has taken infinite pains to
collect pedigrees from all available sources and to construct a complete
set of genealogies exhibiting the lines of descent of the families of
Israel. His interest in this research was not merely antiquarian: he was
investigating matters of the greatest social and religious importance to
all the members of the Jewish community, and especially to his colleagues
and friends in the Temple service. These chapters, which seem to us so dry
and useless, were probably regarded by the chronicler’s contemporaries as
the most important part of his work. The preservation or discovery of a
genealogy was almost a matter of life and death. Witness the episode in
Ezra and Nehemiah(57): “And of the priests: the children of Hobaiah, the
children of Hakkoz, the children of Barzillai, which took a wife of the
daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name.
These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy,
but it was not found; therefore they were deemed polluted and put from the
priesthood. And the governor said unto them that they should not eat of
the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.”
Cases like these would stimulate our author’s enthusiasm. As he turned
over dusty receptacles, and unrolled frayed parchments, and painfully
deciphered crabbed and faded script, he would be excited by the hope of
discovering some mislaid genealogy that would restore outcasts to their
full status and privileges as Israelites and priests. Doubtless he had
already acquired in some measure the subtle exegesis and minute casuistry
that were the glory of later Rabbinism. Ingenious interpretation of
obscure writing or the happy emendation of half-obliterated words might
lend opportune aid in the recovery of a genealogy. On the other hand,
there were vested interests ready to protest against the too easy
acceptance of new claims. The priestly families of undoubted descent from
Aaron would not thank a chronicler for reviving lapsed rights to a share
in the offices and revenues of the Temple. This part of our author’s task
was as delicate as it was important.
We will now briefly consider the genealogies in these chapters in the
order in which they are given. Chap. i. contains genealogies of the
patriarchal period selected from Genesis. The existing races of the world
are all traced back through Shem, Ham, and Japheth to Noah, and through
him to Adam. The chronicler thus accepts and repeats the doctrine of
Genesis that God made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the
face of the earth.(58) All mankind, “Greek and Jew, circumcision and
uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman,”(59) were alike
descended from Noah, who was saved from the Flood by the special care of
God; from Enoch, who walked with God; from Adam, who was created by God in
His own image and likeness. The Israelites did not claim, like certain
Greek clans, to be the descendants of a special god of their own, or, like
the Athenians, to have sprung miraculously from sacred soil. Their
genealogies testified that not merely Israelite nature, but human nature,
is moulded on a Divine pattern. These apparently barren lists of names
enshrine the great principles of the universal brotherhood of men and the
universal Fatherhood of God. The chronicler wrote when the broad
universalism of the prophets was being replaced by the hard exclusiveness
of Judaism; and yet, perhaps unconsciously, he reproduces the genealogies
which were to be one weapon of St. Paul in his struggle with that
exclusiveness. The opening chapters of Genesis and Chronicles are among
the foundations of the catholicity of the Church of Christ.
For the antediluvian period only the Sethite genealogy is given. The
chronicler’s object was simply to give the origin of existing races; and
the descendants of Cain were omitted, as entirely destroyed by the Flood.
Following the example of Genesis, the chronicler gives the genealogies of
other races at the points at which they diverged from the ancestral line
of Israel, and then continues the family history of the chosen race. In
this way the descendants of Japheth and Ham, the non-Abrahamic Semites,
the Ishmaelites, the sons of Keturah, and the Edomites are successively
mentioned.
The relations of Israel with Edom were always close and mostly hostile.
The Edomites had taken advantage of the overthrow of the southern kingdom
to appropriate the south of Judah, and still continued to occupy it. The
keen interest felt by the chronicler in Edom is shown by the large space
devoted to the Edomites. The close contiguity of the Jews and Idumæans
tended to promote mutual intercourse between them, and even threatened an
eventual fusion of the two peoples. As a matter of fact, the Idumæan
Herods became rulers of Judæa. To guard against such dangers to the
separateness of the Jewish people, the chronicler emphasises the
historical distinction of race between them and the Edomites.
From the beginning of the second chapter onwards the genealogies are
wholly occupied with Israelites. The author’s special interest in Judah is
at once manifested. After giving the list of the twelve Patriarchs he
devotes two and a half chapters to the families of Judah. Here again the
materials have been mostly obtained from the earlier historical books.
They are, however, combined with more recent traditions, so that in this
chapter matter from different sources is pieced together in a very
confusing fashion. One source of this confusion was the principle that the
Jewish community could only consist of families of genuine Israelite
descent. Now a large number of the returned exiles traced their descent to
two brothers, Caleb and Jerahmeel; but in the older narratives Caleb and
Jerahmeel are not Israelites. Caleb is a Kenizzite,(60) and his
descendants and those of Jerahmeel appear in close connection with the
Kenites.(61) Even in this chapter certain of the Calebites are called
Kenites and connected in some strange way with the Rechabites.(62) Though
at the close of the monarchy the Calebites and Jerahmeelites had become an
integral part of the tribe of Judah, their separate origin had not been
forgotten, and Caleb and Jerahmeel had not been included in the Israelite
genealogies. But after the Exile men came to feel more and more strongly
that a common faith implied unity of race. Moreover, the practical unity
of the Jews with these Kenizzites overbore the dim and fading memory of
ancient tribal distinctions. Jews and Kenizzites had shared the Captivity,
the Exile, and the Return; they worked, and fought, and worshipped side by
side; and they were to all intents and purposes one nation, alike the
people of Jehovah. This obvious and important practical truth was
expressed as such truths were then wont to be expressed. The children of
Caleb and Jerahmeel were finally and formally adopted into the chosen
race. Caleb and Jerahmeel are no longer the sons of Jephunneh the
Kenizzite; they are the sons of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of
Judah.(63) A new genealogy was formed as a recognition rather than an
explanation of accomplished facts.
Of the section containing the genealogies of Judah, the lion’s share is
naturally given to the house of David, to which a part of the second
chapter and the whole of the third are devoted.
Next follow genealogies of the remaining tribes, those of Levi and
Benjamin being by far the most complete. Chap. vi., which is devoted to
Levi, affords evidence of the use by the chronicler of independent and
sometimes inconsistent sources, and also illustrates his special interest
in the priesthood and the Temple choir. A list of high-priests from Aaron
to Ahimaaz is given twice over (vv. 4-8 and 49-53), but only one line of
high-priests is recognised, the house of Zadok, whom Josiah’s reforms had
made the one priestly family in Israel. Their ancient rivals the
high-priests of the house of Eli are as entirely ignored as the
antediluvian Cainites. The existing high-priestly dynasty had been so long
established that these other priests of Saul and David seemed no longer to
have any significance for the religion of Israel.
The pedigree of the three Levitical families of Gershom, Kohath, and
Merari is also given twice over: in vv. 16-30 and 31-49. The former
pedigree begins with the sons of Levi, and proceeds to their descendants;
the latter begins with the founders of the guilds of singers, Heman,
Asaph, and Ethan, and traces back their genealogies to Kohath, Gershom,
and Merari respectively. But the pedigrees do not agree; compare, for
instance, the lists of the Kohathites:—
22-24. 36-38.
Kohath Kohath
_Amminadab_ _Izhar_
Korah Korah
_Assir_
_Elkanah_
Ebiasaph Ebiasaph
Assir Assir
Tahath Tahath
_Uriel_ _Zephaniah_
_Uzziah_ _Azariah_
_Shaul_ etc.
We have here one of many illustrations of the fact that the chronicler
used materials of very different value. To attempt to prove the absolute
consistency of all his genealogies would be mere waste of time. It is by
no means certain that he himself supposed them to be consistent. The frank
juxtaposition of varying lists of ancestors rather suggests that he was
prompted by a scholarly desire to preserve for his readers all available
evidence of every kind.
In reading the genealogies of the tribe of Benjamin, it is specially
interesting to find that in the Jewish community of the Restoration there
were families tracing their descent through Mephibosheth and Jonathan to
Saul.(64) Apparently the chronicler and his contemporaries shared this
special interest in the fortunes of a fallen dynasty, for the genealogy is
given twice over. These circumstances are the more striking because in the
actual history of Chronicles Saul is all but ignored.
The rest of the ninth chapter deals with the inhabitants of Jerusalem and
the ministry of the Temple after the return from the Captivity, and is
partly identical with sections of Ezra and Nehemiah. It closes the family
history, as it were, of Israel, and its position indicates the standpoint
and ruling interests of the chronicler.
Thus the nine opening chapters of genealogies and kindred matter strike
the key-notes of the whole book. Some are personal and professional; some
are religious. On the one hand, we have the origin of existing families
and institutions; on the other hand, we have the election of the tribe of
Judah and the house of David, of the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron.
Let us consider first the hereditary character of the Jewish religion and
priesthood. Here, as elsewhere, the formal doctrine only recognised and
accepted actual facts. The conditions which received the sanction of
religion were first imposed by the force of circumstances. In primitive
times, if there was to be any religion at all, it had to be national; if
God was to be worshipped at all, His worship was necessarily national, and
He became in some measure a national God. Sympathies are limited by
knowledge and by common interest. The ordinary Israelite knew very little
of any other people than his own. There was little international comity in
primitive times, and nations were slow to recognise that they had common
interests. It was difficult for an Israelite to believe that his beloved
Jehovah, in whom he had been taught to trust, was also the God of the
Arabs and Syrians, who periodically raided his crops, and cattle, and
slaves, and sometimes carried off his children, or of the Chaldæans, who
made deliberate and complete arrangements for plundering the whole
country, rasing its cities to the ground, and carrying away the population
into distant exile. By a supreme act of faith, the prophets claimed the
enemies and oppressors of Israel as instruments of the will of Jehovah,
and the chronicler’s genealogies show that he shared this faith; but it
was still inevitable that the Jews should look out upon the world at large
from the standpoint of their own national interests and experience.
Jehovah was God of heaven and earth; but Israelites knew Him through the
deliverance He had wrought for Israel, the punishments He had inflicted on
her sins, and the messages He had entrusted to her prophets. As far as
their knowledge and practical experience went, they knew Him as the God of
Israel. The course of events since the fall of Samaria narrowed still
further the local associations of Hebrew worship.
“God was wroth,
And greatly abhorred Israel,
So that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh,
The tent which He placed among men;
He refused the tent of Joseph,
And chose not the tribe of Ephraim,
But chose the tribe of Judah,
The Mount Zion which He loved:
And He built His sanctuary like the heights,
Like the earth, which He hath established for ever.”(65)
We are doubtless right in criticising those Jews whose limitations led
them to regard Jehovah as a kind of personal possession, the inheritance
of their own nation, and not of other peoples. But even here we can only
blame their negations. Jehovah _was_ their inheritance and personal
possession; but then He was also the inheritance of other nations. This
Jewish heresy is by no means extinct: white men do not always believe that
their God is equally the God of the negro; Englishmen are inclined to
think that God is the God of England in a more especial way than He is the
God of France. When we discourse concerning God in history, we mostly mean
our own history. We can see the hand of Providence in the wreck of the
Armada and the overthrow of Napoleon; but we are not so ready to recognise
in the same Napoleon the Divine instrument that created a new Europe by
relieving her peoples from cruel and degrading tyranny. We scarcely
realise that God cares as much for the Continent as He does for our
island.
We have great and perhaps sufficient excuses, but we must let the Jews
have the benefit of them. God is as much the God of one nation as of
another; but He fulfils Himself to different nations in different ways, by
a various providential discipline. Each people is bound to believe that
God has specially adapted His dealings to its needs, nor can we be
surprised if men forget or fail to observe that God has done no less for
their neighbours. Each nation rightly regards its religious ideas, and
life, and literature as a precious inheritance peculiarly its own; and it
should not be too severely blamed for being ignorant that other nations
have their inheritance also. Such considerations largely justify the
interest in heredity shown by the chronicler’s genealogies. On the
positive, practical side, religion _is_ largely a matter of heredity, and
ought to be. The Christian sacrament of baptism is a continual profession
of this truth: our children are “clean”; they are within the covenant of
grace; we claim for them the privileges of the Church to which we belong.
That was also part of the meaning of the genealogies.
In the broad field of social and religious life the problems of heredity
are in some ways less complicated than in the more exact discussions of
physical science. Practical effects can be considered without attempting
an accurate analysis of causes. Family history not only determines
physical constitution, mental gifts, and moral character, but also fixes
for the most part country, home, education, circumstances, and social
position. All these were a man’s inheritance more peculiarly in Israel
than with us; and in many cases in Israel a man was often trained to
inherit a family profession. Apart from the ministry of the Temple, we
read of a family of craftsmen, of other families that were potters, of
others who dwelt with the king for his work, and of the families of the
house of them that wrought fine linen.(66) Religion is largely involved in
the manifold inheritance which a man receives from his fathers. His birth
determines his religious education, the examples of religious life set
before him, the forms of worship in which as a child he takes part. Most
men live and die in the religion of their childhood; they worship the God
of their fathers; Romanist remains Romanist: Protestant remains
Protestant. They may fail to grasp any living faith, or may lose all
interest in religion; but such religion as most men have is part of their
inheritance. In the Israel of the chronicler faith and devotion to God
were almost always and entirely inherited. They were part of the great
debt which a man owed to his fathers.
The recognition of these facts should tend to foster our humility and
reverence, to encourage patriotism and philanthropy. We are the creatures
and debtors of the past, though we are slow to own our obligations. We
have nothing that we have not received; but we are apt to consider
ourselves self-made men, the architects and builders of our own fortunes,
who have the right to be self-satisfied, self-assertive, and selfish. The
heir of all the ages, in the full vigour of youth, takes his place in the
foremost ranks of time, and marches on in the happy consciousness of
profound and multifarious wisdom, immense resources, and magnificent
opportunity. He forgets or even despises the generations of labour and
anguish that have built up for him his great inheritance. The genealogies
are a silent protest against such insolent ingratitude. They remind us
that in bygone days a man derived his gifts and received his opportunities
from his ancestors; they show us men as the links in a chain, tenants for
life, as it were, of our estate, called upon to pay back with interest to
the future the debt which they have incurred to the past. We see that the
chain is a long one, with many links; and the slight estimate we are
inclined to put upon the work of individuals in each generation recoils
upon our own pride. We also are but individuals of a generation that is
only one of the thousands needed to work out the Divine purpose for
mankind. We are taught the humility that springs from a sense of
obligation and responsibility.
We learn reverence for the workers and achievements of the past, and most
of all for God. We are reminded of the scale of the Divine working:—
“A thousand years in Thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is past
And as a watch in the night.”
A genealogy is a brief and pointed reminder that God has been working
through all the countless generations behind us. The bare series of names
is an expressive diagram of His mighty process. Each name in the earlier
lists stands for a generation or even for several generations. The
genealogies go back into dim, prehistoric periods; they suggest a past too
remote for our imagining. And yet they take us back to Adam, to the very
beginning of human life. From that beginning, however many thousands or
tens of thousands of years ago, the life of man has been sacred, the
object of the Divine care and love, the instrument of the Divine purpose.
Later on we see the pedigree of our race dividing into countless branches,
all of which are represented in this sacred diagram of humanity. The
Divine working not only extends over all time, but also embraces all the
complicated circumstances and relationships of the families of mankind.
These genealogies suggest a lesson probably not intended by the
chronicler. We recognise the unique character of the history of Israel,
but in some measure we discern in this one full and detailed narrative of
the chosen people a type of the history of every race. Others had not the
election of Israel, but each had its own vocation. God’s power, and
wisdom, and love are manifested in the history of one chosen people on a
scale commensurate with our limited faculties, so that we may gain some
faint idea of the marvellous providence in _all_ history of the Father
from whom _every_ family in heaven and on earth is named.
Another principle closely allied to heredity and also discussed in modern
times is the solidarity of the race. Humanity is supposed to possess
something akin to a common consciousness, personality, or individuality.
Such a quality evidently becomes more intense as we narrow its scope from
the race to the nation, the clan, and the family; it has its roots in
family relationships. Tribal, national, humanitarian feelings indicate
that the larger societies have taken upon themselves something of the
character of the family. Thus the common feelings and mutual sympathies of
mankind are due ultimately to blood relationship. The genealogies that set
forth family histories are the symbols of this brotherhood or solidarity
of our race. The chart of converging lines of ancestors in Israel carried
men’s minds back from the separate families to their common ancestor;
again, the ancestry of ancestors led back to a still earlier common
origin, and the process continued till all the lines met in Noah. Each
stage of the process enlarged the range of every man’s kinship, and
broadened the natural area of mutual help and affection. It is true that
the Jews failed to learn this larger lesson from their genealogies, but
within their own community they felt intensely the bond of kinship and
brotherhood. Modern patriotism reproduces the strong Jewish national
feeling, and our humanitarianism is beginning to extend it to the whole
world. By this time the facts of heredity have been more carefully studied
and are better understood. If we drew up typical genealogies now, they
would more fully and accurately represent the mutual relationships of our
people. As far as they go, the chronicler’s genealogies form a clear and
instructive diagram of the mutual dependence of man on man and family on
family. The value of the diagram does not require the accuracy of the
actual names any more than the validity of Euclid requires the actual
existence of triangles called A B C, D E F. These genealogies are in any
case a true symbol of the facts of family relations; but they are drawn,
so to speak, in one dimension only, backwards and forwards in time. Yet
the real family life exists in three dimensions. There are numerous
cross-relations, cousinship of all degrees, as well as sonship and
brotherhood. A man has not merely his male ancestors in the directly
ascending line—father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.—but he has
female ancestors as well. By going back three or four generations a man is
connected with an immense number of cousins; and if the complete network
of ten or fifteen generations could be worked out, it would probably show
some blood bond throughout a whole nation. Thus the ancestral roots of a
man’s life and character have wide ramifications in the former generations
of his people. The further we go back the larger is the element of
ancestry common to the different individuals of the same community. The
chronicler’s genealogies only show us individuals as links in a set of
chains. The more complete genealogical scheme would be better illustrated
by the ganglia of the nervous system, each of which is connected by
numerous nerve fibres with the other ganglia. The Church has been compared
to the body, “which is one, and hath many members, and all the members of
the body, being many, are one body.” Humanity, by its natural kinship, is
also such a body; the nation is still more truly “one body.” Patriotism
and humanity are instincts as natural and as binding as those of the
family; and the genealogies express or symbolise the wider family ties,
that they may commend the virtues and enforce the duties that arise out of
these ties.
Before closing this chapter something may be said on one or two special
points. Women are virtually ignored in these genealogies, a fact that
rather indicates a failure to recognise their influence than the absence
of such influence. Here and there a woman is mentioned for some special
reason. For instance, the names of Zeruiah and Abigail are inserted in
order to show that Joab, Abishai, and Asahel, together with Amasa, were
all cousins of David. The same keen interest in David leads the chronicler
to record the names of his wives. It is noteworthy that of the four women
who are mentioned in St. Matthew’s genealogy of our Lord only two—Tamar
and Bath-shua (_i.e._, Bath-sheba)—are mentioned here. Probably St.
Matthew was careful to complete the list because Rahab and Ruth, like
Tamar and possibly Bath-sheba, were foreigners, and their names in the
genealogy indicated a connection between Christ and the Gentiles, and
served to emphasise His mission to be the Saviour of the world.
Again, much caution is necessary in applying any principle of heredity. A
genealogy, as we have seen, suggests our dependence in many ways upon our
ancestry. But a man’s relations to his kindred are many and complicated; a
quality, for instance, may be latent for one or more generations and then
reappear, so that to all appearance a man inherits from his grandfather or
from a more remote ancestor rather than from his father or mother.
Conversely the presence of certain traits of character in a child does not
show that any corresponding tendency has necessarily been active in the
life of either parent. Neither must the influence of circumstances be
confounded with that of heredity. Moreover, very large allowance must be
made for our ignorance of the laws that govern the human will, an
ignorance that will often baffle our attempts to find in heredity any
simple explanation of men’s characters and actions. Thomas Fuller has a
quaint “Scripture observation” that gives an important practical
application of these principles:—
“Lord, I find the genealogy of my Saviour strangely chequered with four
remarkable changes in four immediate generations:
“1. ‘Rehoboam begat Abiam’; that is, a bad father begat a bad son.
“2. ‘Abiam begat Asa’; that is, a bad father a good son.
“3. ‘Asa begat Jehosaphat’; that is, a good father a good son.
“4. ‘Jehosaphat begat Joram’; that is, a good father a bad son.
“I see, Lord, from hence that my father’s piety cannot be entailed; that
is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always
hereditary; that is good news for my son.”
Chapter III. Statistics.
Statistics play an important part in Chronicles and in the Old Testament
generally. To begin with, there are the genealogies and other lists of
names, such as the lists of David’s counsellors and the roll of honour of
his mighty men. The chronicler specially delights in lists of names, and
most of all in lists of Levitical choristers. He gives us lists of the
orchestras and choirs who performed when the Ark was brought to Zion(67)
and at Hezekiah’s passover,(68) also a list of Levites whom Jehoshaphat
sent out to teach in Judah.(69) No doubt family pride was gratified when
the chronicler’s contemporaries and friends read the names of their
ancestors in connection with great events in the history of their
religion. Possibly they supplied him with the information from which these
lists were compiled. An incidental result of the celibacy of the Romanist
clergy has been to render ancient ecclesiastical genealogies impossible;
modern clergymen cannot trace their descent to the monks who landed with
Augustine. Our genealogies might enable a historian to construct lists of
the combatants at Agincourt and Hastings; but the Crusades are the only
wars of the Church militant for which modern pedigrees could furnish a
muster-roll.
We find also in the Old Testament the specifications and
subscription-lists for the Tabernacle and for Solomon’s temple.(70) These
statistics, however, are not furnished for the second Temple, probably for
the same reason that in modern subscription-lists the donors of shillings
and half-crowns are to be indicated by initials, or described as “friends”
and “sympathisers,” or massed together under the heading “smaller sums.”
The Old Testament is also rich in census returns and statements as to the
numbers of armies and of the divisions of which they were composed. There
are the returns of the census taken twice in the wilderness and accounts
of the numbers of the different families who came from Babylon with
Zerubbabel and later on with Ezra; there is a census of the Levites in
David’s time according to their several families(71); there are the
numbers of the tribal contingents that came to Hebron to make David
king,(72) and much similar information.
Statistics therefore occupy a conspicuous position in the inspired record
of Divine revelation, and yet we often hesitate to connect such terms as
“inspiration” and “revelation” with numbers, and names, and details of
civil and ecclesiastical organisation. We are afraid lest any stress laid
on purely accidental details should distract men’s attention from the
eternal essence of the Gospel, lest any suggestion that the certainty of
Christian truth is dependent on the accuracy of these statistics should
become a stumbling-block and destroy the faith of some. Concerning such
matters there have been many foolish questions of genealogies, profane and
vain babblings, which have increased unto more ungodliness. Quite apart
from these, even in the Old Testament a sanctity attaches to the number
seven, but there is no warrant for any considerable expenditure of time
and thought upon mystical arithmetic. A symbolism runs through the details
of the building, furniture, and ritual alike of the Tabernacle and the
Temple, and this symbolism possesses a legitimate religious significance;
but its exposition is not specially suggested by the book of Chronicles.
The exposition of such symbolism is not always sufficiently governed by a
sense of proportion. Ingenuity in supplying subtle interpretations of
minute details often conceals the great truths which the symbols are
really intended to enforce. Moreover, the sacred writers did not give
statistics merely to furnish materials for Cabbala and Gematria or even to
serve as theological types and symbols. Sometimes their purpose was more
simple and practical. If we knew all the history of the Tabernacle and
Temple subscription-lists, we should doubtless find that they had been
used to stimulate generous gifts towards the erection of the second
Temple. Preachers for building funds can find abundance of suitable texts
in Exodus, Kings, and Chronicles.
But Biblical statistics are also examples in accuracy and thoroughness of
information, and recognitions of the more obscure and prosaic
manifestations of the higher life. Indeed, in these and other ways the
Bible gives an anticipatory sanction to the exact sciences.
The mention of accuracy in connection with Chronicles may be received by
some readers with a contemptuous smile. But we are indebted to the
chronicler for exact and full information about the Jews who returned from
Babylon; and in spite of the extremely severe judgment passed upon
Chronicles by many critics, we may still venture to believe that the
chronicler’s statistics are as accurate as his knowledge and critical
training rendered possible. He may sometimes give figures obtained by
calculation from uncertain data, but such a practice is quite consistent
with honesty and a desire to supply the best available information. Modern
scholars are quite ready to present us with figures as to the membership
of the Christian Church under Antoninus Pius or Constantine; and some of
these figures are not much more probable than the most doubtful in
Chronicles. All that is necessary to make the chronicler’s statistics an
example to us is that they should be the monument of a conscientious
attempt to tell the truth, and this they undoubtedly are.
This Biblical example is the more useful because statistics are often evil
spoken of, and they have no outward attractiveness to shield them from
popular prejudice. We are told that “nothing is so false as statistics,”
and that “figures will prove anything”; and the polemic is sustained by
works like _Hard Times_ and the awful example of Mr. Gradgrind. Properly
understood, these proverbs illustrate the very general impatience of any
demand for exact thought and expression. If “figures” will prove anything,
so will texts.
Though this popular prejudice cannot be altogether ignored, yet it need
not be taken too seriously. The opposite principle, when stated, will at
once be seen to be a truism. For it amounts to this: exact and
comprehensive knowledge is the basis of a right understanding of history,
and is a necessary condition of right action. This principle is often
neglected because it is obvious. Yet, to illustrate it from our author, a
knowledge of the size and plan of the Temple greatly adds to the vividness
of our pictures of Hebrew religion. We apprehend later Jewish life much
more clearly with the aid of the statistics as to the numbers, families,
and settlements of the returning exiles; and similarly the account-books
of the bailiff of an English estate in the fourteenth century are worth
several hundred pages of contemporary theology. These considerations may
encourage those who perform the thankless task of compiling the
statistics, subscription-lists, and balance-sheets of missionary and
philanthropic societies. The zealous and intelligent historian of
Christian life and service will need these dry records to enable him to
understand his subject, and the highest literary gifts may be employed in
the eloquent exposition of these apparently uninteresting facts and
figures. Moreover, upon the accuracy of these records depends the
possibility of determining a true course for the future. Neither societies
nor individuals, for instance, can afford to live beyond their income
without knowing it.
Statistics, too, are the only form in which many acts of service can be
recognised and recorded. Literature can only deal with typical instances,
and naturally it selects the more dramatic. The missionary report can only
tell the story of a few striking conversions; it may give the history of
the exceptional self-denial involved in one or two of its subscriptions;
for the rest we must be content with tables and subscription-lists. But
these dry statistics represent an infinitude of patience and self-denial,
of work and prayer, of Divine grace and blessing. The city missionary may
narrate his experiences with a few inquirers and penitents, but the great
bulk of his work can only be recorded in the statement of visits paid and
services conducted. We are tempted sometimes to disparage these
statements, to ask how many of the visits and services had any result; we
are impatient sometimes because Christian work is estimated by any such
numerical line and measure. No doubt the method has many defects, and must
not be used too mechanically; but we cannot give it up without ignoring
altogether much earnest and successful labour.
Our chronicler’s interest in statistics lays healthy emphasis on the
practical character of religion. There is a danger of identifying
spiritual force with literary and rhetorical gifts; to recognise the
religious value of statistics is the most forcible protest against such
identification. The permanent contribution of any age to religious thought
will naturally take a literary form, and the higher the literary qualities
of religious writing, the more likely it is to survive. Shakespeare,
Milton, and Bunyan have probably exercised a more powerful direct
religious influence on subsequent generations than all the theologians of
the seventeenth century. But the supreme service of the Church in any age
is its influence on its own generation, by which it moulds the generation
immediately following. That influence can only be estimated by a careful
study of all possible information, and especially of statistics. We cannot
assign mathematical values to spiritual effects and tabulate them like
Board of Trade returns; but real spiritual movements will before long have
practical issues, that can be heard, and seen, and felt, and even admit of
being put into tables. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it
goeth”(73); and yet the boughs and the corn bend before the wind, and the
ships are carried across the sea to their desired haven. Tables may be
drawn up of the tonnage and the rate of sailing. So is every one that is
born of the Spirit. You cannot tell when and how God breathes upon the
soul; but if the Divine Spirit be indeed at work in any society, there
will be fewer crimes and quarrels, less scandal, and more deeds of
charity. We may justly suspect a revival which has no effect upon the
statistical records of national life. Subscription-lists are very
imperfect tests of enthusiasm, but any widespread Christian fervour would
be worth little if it did not swell subscription-lists.
Chronicles is not the most important witness to a sympathetic relationship
between the Bible and exact science. The first chapter of Genesis is the
classic example of the appropriation by an inspired writer of the
scientific spirit and method. Some chapters in Job show a distinctly
scientific interest in natural phenomena. Moreover, the direct concern of
Chronicles is in the religious aspects of social science. And yet there is
a patient accumulation of data with no obvious dramatic value: names,
dates, numbers, specifications, and ritual which do not improve the
literary character of the narrative. This conscientious recording of dry
facts, this noting down of anything and everything that connects with the
subject, is closely akin to the initial processes of the inductive
sciences. True, the chronicler’s interests are in some directions narrowed
by personal and professional feeling; but within these limits he is
anxious to make a complete record, which, as we have seen, sometimes leads
to repetition. Now inductive science is based on unlimited statistics. The
astronomer and biologist share the chronicler’s appetite for this kind of
mental food. The lists in Chronicles are few and meagre compared to the
records of Greenwich Observatory or the volumes which contain the data of
biology or sociology; but the chronicler becomes in a certain sense the
forerunner of Darwin, Spencer, and Galton. The differences are indeed
immense. The interval of two thousand odd years between the ancient
annalist and the modern scientists has not been thrown away. In estimating
the value of evidence and interpreting its significance, the chronicler
was a mere child compared with his modern successors. His aims and
interests were entirely different from theirs. But yet he was moved by a
spirit which they may be said to inherit. His careful collection of facts,
even his tendency to read the ideas and institutions of his own time into
ancient history, are indications of a reverence for the past and of an
anxiety to base ideas and action upon a knowledge of that past. This
foreshadows the reverence of modern science for experience, its anxiety to
base its laws and theories upon observation of what has actually occurred.
The principle that the past determines and interprets the present and the
future lies at the root of the theological attitude of the most
conservative minds and the scientific work of the most advanced thinkers.
The conservative spirit, like the chronicler, is apt to suffer its
inherited prepossessions and personal interests to hinder a true
observation and understanding of the past. But the chronicler’s
opportunities and experience were narrow indeed compared with those of
theological students to-day; and we have every right to lay stress on the
progress which he had achieved and the onward path that it indicated
rather than on the yet more advanced stages which still lay beyond his
horizon.
Chapter IV. Family Traditions. 1 Chron. i. 10, 19, 46; ii. 3, 7, 34; iv.
9, 10, 18, 22, 27, 34-43; v. 10, 18-22; vii. 21-23; viii. 13.
Chronicles is a miniature Old Testament, and may have been meant as a
handbook for ordinary people, who had no access to the whole library of
sacred writings. It contains nothing corresponding to the books of Wisdom
or the apocalyptic literature; but all the other types of Old Testament
literature are represented. There are genealogies, statistics, ritual,
history, psalms, and prophecies. The interest shown by Chronicles in
family traditions harmonises with the stress laid by the Hebrew Scriptures
upon family life. The other historical books are largely occupied with the
family history of the Patriarchs, of Moses, of Jephthah, Gideon, Samson,
Saul, and David. The chronicler intersperses his genealogies with short
anecdotes about the different families and tribes. Some of these are
borrowed from the older books; but others are peculiar to our author, and
were doubtless obtained by him from the family records and traditions of
his contemporaries. The statements that “Nimrod began to be mighty upon
the earth”(74); that “the name of one” of Eber’s sons “was Peleg, because
in his days the earth was divided”(75); and that Hadad “smote Moab in the
field of Midian,”(76) are borrowed from Genesis. As he omits events much
more important and more closely connected with the history of Israel, and
gives no account of Babel, or of Abraham, or of the conquest of Canaan,
these little notes are probably retained by accident, because at times the
chronicler copied his authorities somewhat mechanically. It was less
trouble to take the genealogies as they stood than to exercise great care
in weeding out everything but the bare names.
In one instance,(77) however, the chronicler has erased a curious note to
a genealogy in Genesis. A certain Anah is mentioned both in Genesis and
Chronicles among the Horites, who inhabited Mount Seir before it was
conquered by Edom. Most of us, in reading the Authorised Version, have
wondered what historical or religious interest secured a permanent record
for the fact that “Anah found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the
asses of Zibeon his father.” A possible solution seemed to be that this
note was preserved as the earliest reference to the existence of mules,
which animals played an important part in the social life of Palestine;
but the Revised Version sets aside this explanation by substituting “hot
springs” for “mules,” as these hot springs are only mentioned here, the
passage becomes a greater puzzle than ever. The chronicler could hardly
overlook this curious piece of information, but he naturally felt that
this obscure archæological note about the aboriginal Horites did not fall
within the scope of his work. On the other hand, the tragic fates of Er
and Achar(78) had a direct genealogical significance. They are referred to
in order to explain why the lists contain no descendants of these members
of the tribe of Judah. The notes to these names illustrate the more
depressing aspects of history. The men who lived happy, honourable lives
can be mentioned one after another without any comment; but even the
compiler of pedigrees pauses to note the crimes and misfortunes that broke
the natural order of life. The annals of old families dwell with
melancholy pride on murders, and fatal duels, and suicides. History, like
an ancient mansion, is haunted with unhappy ghosts. Yet our interest in
tragedy is a testimony to the blessedness of life; comfort and enjoyment
are too monotonously common to be worth recording, but we are attracted
and excited by exceptional instances of suffering and sin.
Let us turn to the episodes of family life only found in Chronicles. They
may mostly be arranged in little groups of two or three, and some of the
groups present us with an interesting contrast.
We learn from ii. 34-41 and iv. 18 that two Jewish families traced their
descent from Egyptian ancestors. Sheshan, according to Chronicles, was
eighth in descent from Judah and fifth from Jerahmeel, the brother of
Caleb. Having daughters but no son, he gave one of his daughters in
marriage to an Egyptian slave named Jarha. The descendants of this union
are traced for thirteen generations. Genealogies, however, are not always
complete; and our other data do not suffice to determine even
approximately the date of this marriage. But the five generations between
Jerahmeel and Sheshan indicate a period long after the Exodus; and as
Egypt plays no recorded part in the history of Israel between the Exodus
and the reign of Solomon, the marriage may have taken place under the
monarchy. The story is a curious parallel to that of Joseph, with the
parts of Israelite and Egyptian reversed. God is no respecter of persons;
it is not only when the desolate and afflicted in strange lands belong to
the chosen people that Jehovah relieves and delivers them. It is true of
the Egyptian, as well as of the Israelite, that “the Lord maketh poor and
maketh rich.”
“He bringeth low, He also lifteth up;
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust:
He lifteth up the needy from the dunghill,
To make them sit with princes
And inherit the throne of glory.”(79)
This song might have been sung at Jarha’s wedding as well as at Joseph’s.
Both these marriages throw a sidelight upon the character of Eastern
slavery. They show how sharply and deeply it was divided from the hopeless
degradation of negro slavery in America. Israelites did not recognise
distinctions of race and colour between themselves and their bondsmen so
as to treat them as worse than pariahs and regard them with physical
loathing. An American considers himself disgraced by a slight taint of
negro blood in his ancestry, but a noble Jewish family was proud to trace
its descent from an Egyptian slave.
The other story is somewhat different, and rests upon an obscure and
corrupt passage in iv. 18. The confusion makes it impossible to arrive at
any date, even by rough approximation. The genealogical relations of the
actors are by no means certain, but some interesting points are tolerably
clear. Some time after the conquest of Canaan, a descendant of Caleb
married two wives, one a Jewess, the other an Egyptian. The Egyptian was
Bithiah, a daughter of Pharaoh, _i.e._, of the contemporary king of Egypt.
It appears probable that the inhabitants of Eshtemoa traced their descent
to this Egyptian princess, while those of Gedor, Soco, and Zanoah claimed
Mered as their ancestor by his Jewish wife.(80) Here again we have the
bare outline of a romance, which the imagination is at liberty to fill in.
It has been suggested that Bithiah may have been the victim of some Jewish
raid into Egypt, but surely a king of Egypt would have either ransomed his
daughter or recovered her by force of arms. The story rather suggests that
the chiefs of the clans of Judah were semi-independent and possessed of
considerable wealth and power, so that the royal family of Egypt could
intermarry with them, as with reigning sovereigns. But if so, the pride of
Egypt must have been greatly broken since the time when the Pharaohs
haughtily refused to give their daughters in marriage to the kings of
Babylon.
Both Egyptian alliances occur among the Kenizzites, the descendants of the
brothers Caleb and Jerahmeel. In one case a Jewess marries an Egyptian
slave; in the other a Jew marries an Egyptian princess. Doubtless these
marriages did not stand alone, and there were others with foreigners of
varying social rank. The stories show that even after the Captivity the
tradition survived that the clans in the south of Judah had been closely
connected with Egypt, and that Solomon was not the only member of the
tribe who had taken an Egyptian wife. Now intermarriage with foreigners is
partly forbidden by the Pentateuch; and the prohibition was extended and
sternly enforced by Ezra and Nehemiah.(81) In the time of the chronicler
there was a growing feeling against such marriages. Hence the traditions
we are discussing cannot have originated after the Return, but must be at
any rate earlier than the publication of Deuteronomy under Josiah.
Such marriages with Egyptians must have had some influence on the religion
of the south of Judah, but probably the foreigners usually followed the
example of Ruth, and adopted the faith of the families into which they
came. When they said, “Thy people shall be my people,” they did not fail
to add, “and thy God shall be my God.” When the Egyptian princess married
the head of a Jewish clan, she became one of Jehovah’s people; and her
adoption into the family of the God of Israel was symbolised by a new
name: “Bithiah,” “daughter of Jehovah.” Whether later Judaism owed
anything to Egyptian influences can only be matter of conjecture; at any
rate, they did not pervert the southern clans from their old faith. The
Calebites and Jerahmeelites were the backbone of Judah both before and
after the Captivity.
The remaining traditions relate to the warfare of the Israelites with
their neighbours. The first is a colourless reminiscence, that might have
been recorded of the effectual prayer of any pious Israelite. The
genealogies of chap. iv. are interrupted by a paragraph entirely
unconnected with the context. The subject of this fragment is a certain
Jabez never mentioned elsewhere, and, so far as any record goes, as
entirely “without father, without mother, without genealogy,” as
Melchizedek himself. As chap. iv. deals with the families of Judah, and in
ii. 55 there is a town Jabez also belonging to Judah, we may suppose that
the chronicler had reasons for assigning Jabez to that tribe; but he has
neither given these reasons, nor indicated how Jabez was connected
therewith. The paragraph runs as follows(82): “And Jabez was honoured
above his brethren, and his mother called his name Jabez” (_Ya’bēç_),
“saying, In pain” (_’ōçeb_) “I bore him. And Jabez called upon the God of
Israel, saying,—
‘If Thou wilt indeed bless me
By enlarging my possessions,
And Thy hand be with me
To provide pasture,(83) that I be not in distress’ (_’ōçeb_).
And God brought about what he asked.” The chronicler has evidently
inserted here a broken and disconnected fragment from one of his sources;
and we are puzzled to understand why he gives so much, and no more. Surely
not merely to introduce the etymologies of Jabez; or if Jabez were so
important that it was worth while to interrupt the genealogies to furnish
two derivations of his name, why are we not told more about him? Who was
he, when and where did he live, and at whose expense were his possessions
enlarged and pasture provided for him? Everything that could give colour
and interest to the narrative is withheld, and we are merely told that he
prayed for earthly blessing and obtained it. The spiritual lesson is
obvious, but it is very frequently enforced and illustrated in the Old
Testament. Why should this episode about an utterly unknown man be thrust
by main force into an unsuitable context, if it is only one example of a
most familiar truth? It has been pointed out that Jacob vowed a similar
vow and built an altar to El, the God of Israel(84); but this is one of
many coincidences. The paragraph certainly tells us something about the
chronicler’s views on prayer, but nothing that is not more forcibly stated
and exemplified in many other passages; it is mainly interesting to us
because of the light it throws on his methods of composition. Elsewhere he
embodies portions of well-known works and apparently assumes that his
readers are sufficiently versed in them to be able to understand the point
of his extracts. Probably Jabez was so familiar to the chronicler’s
immediate circle that he can take for granted that a few lines will
suffice to recall all the circumstances to a reader.
We have next a series of much more definite statements about Israelite
prowess and success in wars against Moab and other enemies.
In iv. 21, 22, we read, “The sons of Shelah the son of Judah: Er the
father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of
the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea; and
Jokim, and the men of Cozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, who had dominion in
Moab and returned to Bethlehem.”(85) Here again the information is too
vague to enable us to fix any date, nor is it quite certain who had
dominion in Moab. The verb “had dominion” is plural in Hebrew, and may
refer to all or any of the sons of Shelah. But, in spite of uncertainties,
it is interesting to find chiefs or clans of Judah ruling in Moab.
Possibly this immigration took place when David conquered and partly
depopulated the country. The men of Judah may have returned to Bethlehem
when Moab passed to the northern kingdom at the disruption, or when Moab
regained its independence.
The incident in iv. 34-43 differs from the preceding in having a definite
date assigned to it. In the time of Hezekiah some Simeonite clans had
largely increased in number and found themselves straitened for room for
their flocks. They accordingly went in search of new pasturage. One
company went to Gedor, another to Mount Seir.
The situation of Gedor is not clearly known. It cannot be the Gedor of
Josh. xv. 58, which lay in the heart of Judah. The LXX. has Gerar, a town
to the south of Gaza, and this may be the right reading; but whether we
read Gedor or Gerar, the scene of the invasion will be in the country
south of Judah. Here the children of Simeon found what they wanted, “fat
pasture, and good,” and abundant, for “the land was wide.” There was the
additional advantage that the inhabitants were harmless and inoffensive
and fell an easy prey to their invaders: “The land was quiet and
peaceable, for they that dwelt there aforetime were of Ham.” As Ham in the
genealogies is the father of Cainan, these peaceable folk would be
Cainanites; and among them were a people called Meunim, probably not
connected with any of the Maons mentioned in the Old Testament, but with
some other town or district of the same name. So “these written by name
came in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and smote their tents, and
the Meunim that were found there, and devoted them to destruction as
accursed, so that none are left unto this day. And the Simeonites dwelt in
their stead.”(86)
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Then follows in the simplest and most unconscious way the only
justification that is offered for the behaviour of the invaders: “because
there was pasture there for their flocks.” The narrative takes for
granted—
“The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
The expedition to Mount Seir appears to have been a sequel to the attack
on Gedor. Five hundred of the victors emigrated into Edom, and smote the
remnant of the Amalekites who had survived the massacre under Saul(87);
“and they also dwelt there unto this day.”
In substance, style, and ideas this passage closely resembles the books of
Joshua and Judges, where the phrase “unto this day” frequently occurs.
Here, of course, the “day” in question is the time of the chronicler’s
authority. When Chronicles was written the Simeonites in Gedor and Mount
Seir had long ago shared the fate of their victims.
The conquest of Gedor reminds us how in the early days of the Israelite
occupation of Palestine “Judah went with Simeon his brother into the same
southern lands,” and they smote the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and
devoted them to destruction as accursed(88); and how the house of Joseph
took Bethel by treachery.(89) But the closest parallel is the Danite
conquest of Laish.(90) The Danite spies said that the people of Laish
“dwelt in security, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure,”
harmless and inoffensive, like the Gedorites. Nor were they likely to
receive succour from the powerful city of Zidon or from other allies, for
“they were far from the Zidonians, and had no dealings with any man.”
Accordingly, having observed the prosperous but defenceless position of
this peaceable people, they returned and reported to their brethren,
“Arise, and let us go up against them, for we have seen the land, and,
behold, it is very good; and are ye still? Be not slothful to go and to
enter in to possess the land. When ye go, ye shall come unto a people
secure, and the land,” like that of Gedor, “is large, for God hath given
it into your hand, a place where there is no want of anything that is in
the earth.”
The moral of these incidents is obvious. When a prosperous people is
peaceable and defenceless, it is a clear sign that God has delivered them
into the hand of any warlike and enterprising nation that knows how to use
its opportunities. The chronicler, however, is not responsible for this
morality, but he does not feel compelled to make any protest against the
ethical views of his source. There is a refreshing frankness about these
ancient narratives. The wolf devours the lamb without inventing any flimsy
pretext about troubled waters.
But in criticising these Hebrew clans who lived in the dawn of history and
religion we condemn ourselves. If we make adequate allowance for the
influence of Christ, and the New Testament, and centuries of Christian
teaching, Simeon and Dan do not compare unfavourably with modern nations.
As we review the wars of Christendom, we shall often be puzzled to find
any ground for the outbreak of hostilities other than the defencelessness
of the weaker combatant. The Spanish conquest of America and the English
conquest of India afford examples of the treatment of weaker races which
fairly rank with those of the Old Testament. Even to-day the independence
of the smaller European states is mainly guaranteed by the jealousies of
the Great Powers. Still there has been progress in international morality;
we have got at last to the stage of Æsop’s fable. Public opinion condemns
wanton aggression against a weak state; and the stronger power employs the
resources of civilised diplomacy in showing that not only the absent, but
also the helpless, are always wrong. There has also been a substantial
advance in humanity towards conquered peoples. Christian warfare even
since the Middle Ages has been stained with the horrors of the Thirty
Years’ War and many other barbarities; the treatment of the American
Indians by settlers has often been cruel and unjust; but no civilised
nation would now systematically massacre men, women, and children in cold
blood. We are thankful for any progress towards better things, but we
cannot feel that men have yet realised that Christ has a message for
nations as well as for individuals. As His disciples we can only pray more
earnestly that the kingdoms of the earth may in deed and truth become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
The next incident is more honourable to the Israelites. “The sons of
Reuben, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh” did not merely
surprise and slaughter quiet and peaceable people: they conquered
formidable enemies in fair fight.(91) There are two separate accounts of a
war with the Hagrites, one appended to the genealogy of Reuben and one to
that of Gad. The former is very brief and general, comprising nothing but
a bare statement that there was a successful war and a consequent
appropriation of territory. Probably the two paragraphs are different
forms of the same narrative, derived by the chronicler from independent
sources. We may therefore confine our attention to the more detailed
account.
Here, as elsewhere, these Transjordanic tribes are spoken of as
“valiant(92) men,” “men able to bear buckler and sword and to shoot with
the bow, and skilful in war.” Their numbers were considerable. While five
hundred Simeonites were enough to destroy the Amalekites on Mount Seir,
these eastern tribes mustered “forty and four thousand seven hundred and
threescore that were able to go forth to war.” Their enemies were not
“quiet and peaceable people,” but the wild Bedouin of the desert, “the
Hagrites, with Jetur and Naphish and Nodab.” Nodab is mentioned only here;
Jetur and Naphish occur together in the lists of the sons of Ishmael.(93)
Ituræa probably derived its name from the tribe of Jetur. The Hagrites or
Hagarenes were Arabs closely connected with the Ishmaelites, and they seem
to have taken their name from Hagar. In Psalm lxxxiii. 6-8 we find a
similar confederacy on a larger scale:—
“The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
Moab and the Hagarenes
Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre,
Assyria also is joined with them;
They have holpen the children of Lot.”
There could be no question of unprovoked aggression against these children
of Ishmael, that “wild ass of a man, whose hand was against every man, and
every man’s hand against him.”(94) The narrative implies that the
Israelites were the aggressors, but to attack the robber tribes of the
desert would be as much an act of self-defence as to destroy a hornet’s
nest. We may be quite sure that when Reuben and Gad marched eastward they
had heavy losses to retrieve and bitter wrongs to avenge. We might find a
parallel in the campaigns by which robber tribes are punished for their
raids within our Indian frontier, only we must remember that Reuben and
Gad were not very much more law-abiding or unselfish than their Arab
neighbours. They were not engaged in maintaining a _pax Britannica_ for
the benefit of subject nations; they were carrying on a struggle for
existence with persistent and relentless foes. Another partial parallel
would be the border feuds on the Northumbrian marches, when—
“... over border, dale, and fell
Full wide and far was terror spread;
For pathless marsh and mountain cell
The peasant left his lowly shed:
The frightened flocks and herds were pent
Beneath the peel’s rude battlement,
And maids and matrons dropped the tear
While ready warriors seized the spear;
... the watchman’s eye
Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy.”(95)
But the Israelite expedition was on a larger scale than any “warden raid,”
and Eastern passions are fiercer and shriller than those sung by the Last
Minstrel: the maids and matrons of the desert would shriek and wail
instead of “dropping a tear.”
In this great raid of ancient times “the war was of God,” not, as at
Laish, because God found for them helpless and easy victims, but because
He helped them in a desperate struggle. When the fierce Israelite and Arab
borderers joined battle, the issue was at first doubtful; and then “they
cried to God, and He was entreated of them, because they put their trust
in Him,” “and they were helped against” their enemies; “and the Hagrites
were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them, and there
fell many slain, because the war was of God”; “and they took away their
cattle: of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty
thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of slaves a hundred thousand.”
“And they dwelt in their stead until the captivity.”
This “captivity” is the subject of another short note. The chronicler
apparently was anxious to distribute his historical narratives equally
among the tribes. The genealogies of Reuben and Gad each conclude with a
notice of a war, and a similar account follows that of Eastern
Manasseh:—“And they trespassed against the God of their fathers, and went
a-whoring after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God destroyed
before them. And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of
Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, and he
carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara,
and to the river of Gozan, unto this day.”(96) And this war also was “of
God.” Doubtless the descendants of the surviving Hagrites and Ishmaelites
were among the allies of the Assyrian king, and saw in the ruin of Eastern
Israel a retribution for the sufferings of their own people; but the later
Jews and probably the exiles in “Halah, Habor, and Hara,” and by “the
river of Gozan,” far away in North-eastern Mesopotamia, found the cause of
their sufferings in too great an intimacy with their heathen neighbours:
they had gone a-whoring after their gods.
The last two incidents which we shall deal with in this chapter serve to
illustrate afresh the rough-and-ready methods by which the chronicler has
knotted together threads of heterogeneous tradition into one tangled
skein. We shall see further how ready ancient writers were to represent a
tribe by the ancestor from whom it traced its descent. We read in vii. 20,
21, “The sons of Ephraim: Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his
son, and Eleadah his son, and Zabad his son, and Shuthelah his son, and
Ezer and Elead, whom the men of Gath that were born in the land slew,
because they came down to take away their cattle.”
Ezer and Elead are apparently brothers of the second Shuthelah; at any
rate, as six generations are mentioned between them and Ephraim, they
would seem to have lived long after the Patriarch. Moreover, they came
down to Gath, so that they must have lived in some hill-country not far
off, presumably the hill-country of Ephraim. But in the next two verses
(22 and 23) we read, “And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his
brethren came to comfort him. And he went in to his wife, and she
conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Beriah, because it went
evil with his house.”
Taking these words literally, Ezer and Elead were the actual sons of
Ephraim; and as Ephraim and his family were born in Egypt and lived there
all their days, these patriarchal cattle-lifters did not come down from
any neighbouring highlands, but must have come up from Egypt, all the way
from the land of Goshen, across the desert and past several Philistine and
Canaanite towns. This literal sense is simply impossible. The author from
whom the chronicler borrowed this narrative is clearly using a natural and
beautiful figure to describe the distress in the tribe of Ephraim when two
of its clans were cut off, and the fact that a new clan named _Beriah_ was
formed to take their place. Possibly we are not without information as to
how this new clan arose. In viii. 13 we read of two Benjamites, “_Beriah_
and Shema, who were heads of fathers’ houses of the inhabitants of
Aijalon, who put to flight the inhabitants of Gath.” Beriah and Shema
probably, coming to the aid of Ephraim, avenged the defeat of Ezer and
Elead; and in return received the possessions of the clans, who had been
cut off, and Beriah was thus reckoned among the children of Ephraim.(97)
The language of ver. 22 is very similar to that of Gen. xxxvii. 34, 35:
“And Jacob mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his
daughters rose up to comfort him”; and the personification of the tribe
under the name of its ancestor may be paralleled from Judges xxi. 6: “And
the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother.”
Let us now reconstruct the story and consider its significance. Two
Ephraimite clans, Ezer and Elead, set out to drive the cattle “of the men
of Gath, who were born in the land,” _i.e._, of the aboriginal Avvites,
who had been dispossessed by the Philistines, but still retained some of
the pasture-lands. Falling into an ambush or taken by surprise when
encumbered with their plunder, the Ephraimites were cut off, and nearly
all the fighting men of the clans perished. The Avvites, reinforced by the
Philistines of Gath, pressed their advantage, and invaded the territory of
Ephraim, whose border districts, stripped of their defenders, lay at the
mercy of the conquerors. From this danger they were rescued by the
Benjamite clans Shema and Beriah, then occupying Aijalon(98); and the men
of Gath in their turn were defeated and driven back. The grateful
Ephraimites invited their allies to occupy the vacant territory and in all
probability to marry the widows and daughters of their slaughtered
kinsmen. From that time onwards Beriah was reckoned as one of the clans of
Ephraim.
The account of this memorable cattle foray is a necessary note to the
genealogies to explain the origin of an important clan and its double
connection with Ephraim and Benjamin. Both the chronicler and his
authority recorded it because of its genealogical significance, not
because they were anxious to perpetuate the memory of the unfortunate
raid. In the ancient days to which the episode belonged, a frontier cattle
foray seemed as natural and meritorious an enterprise as it did to William
of Deloraine. The chronicler does not think it necessary to signify any
disapproval it is by no means certain that he did disapprove—of such
spoiling of the uncircumcised; but the fact that he gives the record
without comment does not show that he condoned cattle-stealing. Men to-day
relate with pride the lawless deeds of noble ancestors, but they would be
dismayed if their own sons proposed to adopt the moral code of mediæval
barons or Elizabethan buccaneers.
In reviewing the scanty religious ideas involved in this little group of
family traditions, we have to remember that they belong to a period of
Israelite history much older than that of the chronicler; in estimating
their value, we have to make large allowance for the conventional ethics
of the times. Religion not only serves to raise the standard of morality,
but also to keep the average man up to the conventional standard; it helps
and encourages him to do what he believes to be right as well as gives him
a better understanding of what right means. Primitive religion is not to
be disparaged because it did not at once convert the rough Israelite
clansmen into Havelocks and Gordons. In those early days, courage,
patriotism, and loyalty to one’s tribesmen were the most necessary and
approved virtues. They were fostered and stimulated by the current belief
in a God of battles, who gave victory to His faithful people. Moreover,
the idea of Deity implied in these traditions, though inadequate, is by no
means unworthy. God is benevolent; He enriches and succours His people; He
answers prayer, giving to Jabez the land and pasture for which he asked.
He is a righteous God; He responds to and justifies His people’s faith:
“He was entreated of the Reubenites and Gadites because they put their
trust in Him.” On the other hand, He is a jealous God; He punishes Israel
when they “trespass against the God of their fathers and go a-whoring
after the gods of the peoples of the land.” But the feeling here
attributed to Jehovah is not merely one of personal jealousy. Loyalty to
Him meant a great deal more than a preference for a god called Jehovah
over a god called Chemosh. It involved a special recognition of morality
and purity, and gave a religious sanction to patriotism and the sentiment
of national unity. Worship of Moabite or Syrian gods weakened a man’s
enthusiasm for Israel and his sense of fellowship with his countrymen,
just as allegiance to an Italian prince and prelate has seemed to
Protestants to deprive the Romanist of his full inheritance in English
life and feeling. He who went astray after other gods did not merely
indulge his individual taste in doctrine and ritual: he was a traitor to
the social order, to the prosperity and national union, of Israel. Such
disloyalty broke up the nation, and sent Israel and Judah into captivity
piecemeal.
Chapter V. The Jewish Community In The Time Of The Chronicler.
We have already referred to the light thrown by Chronicles on this
subject. Besides the direct information given in Ezra and Nehemiah, and
sometimes in Chronicles itself, the chronicler by describing the past in
terms of the present often unconsciously helps us to reconstruct the
picture of his own day. We shall have to make occasional reference to the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah, but the age of the chronicler is later than
the events which they describe, and we shall be traversing different
ground from that covered by the volume of the “Expositor’s Bible” which
deals with them.
Chronicles is full of evidence that the civil and ecclesiastical system of
the Pentateuch had become fully established long before the chronicler
wrote. Its gradual origin had been forgotten, and it was assumed that the
Law in its final and complete form had been known and observed from the
time of David onwards. At every stage of the history Levites are
introduced, occupying the subordinate position and discharging the menial
duties assigned to them by the latest documents of the Pentateuch. In
other matters small and great, especially those concerning the Temple and
its sanctity, the chronicler shows himself so familiar with the Law that
he could not imagine Israel without it. Picture the life of Judah as we
find it in 2 Kings and the prophecies of the eighth century, put this
picture side by side with another of the Judaism of the New Testament, and
remember that Chronicles is about a century nearer to the latter than to
the former. It is not difficult to trace the effect of this absorption in
the system of the Pentateuch. The community in and about Jerusalem had
become a Church, and was in possession of a Bible. But the hardening,
despiritualising processes which created later Judaism were already at
work. A building, a system of ritual, and a set of officials were coming
to be regarded as the essential elements of the Church. The Bible was
important partly because it dealt with these essential elements, partly
because it provided a series of regulations about washings and meats, and
thus enabled the layman to exalt his everyday life into a round of
ceremonial observances. The habit of using the Pentateuch chiefly as a
handbook of external and technical ritual seriously influenced the current
interpretation of the Bible. It naturally led to a hard literalism and a
disingenuous exegesis. This interest in externals is patent enough in the
chronicler, and the tendencies of Biblical exegesis are illustrated by his
use of Samuel and Kings. On the other hand, we must allow for great
development of this process in the interval between Chronicles and the New
Testament. The evils of later Judaism were yet far from mature, and
religious life and thought in Palestine were still much more elastic than
they became later on.
We have also to remember that at this period the zealous observers of the
Law can only have formed a portion of the community, corresponding roughly
to the regular attendants at public worship in a Christian country. Beyond
and beneath the pious legalists were “the people of the land,” those who
were too careless or too busy to attend to ceremonial; but for both
classes the popular and prominent ideal of religion was made up of a
magnificent building, a dignified and wealthy clergy, and an elaborate
ritual, alike for great public functions and for the minutiæ of daily
life.
Besides all these the Jewish community had its sacred writings. As one of
the ministers of the Temple, and, moreover, both a student of the national
literature and himself an author, the chronicler represents the best
literary knowledge of contemporary Palestinian Judaism; and his somewhat
mechanical methods of composition make it easy for us to discern his
indebtedness to older writers. We turn his pages with interest to learn
what books were known and read by the most cultured Jews of his time.
First and foremost, and overshadowing all the rest, there appears the
Pentateuch. Then there is the whole array of earlier Historical Books:
Joshua, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings. The plan of Chronicles excludes a direct
use of Judges, but it must have been well known to our author. His
appreciation of the Psalms is shown by his inserting in his history of
David a cento of passages from Psalms xcvi., cv., and cvi.; on the other
hand, Psalm xviii. and other lyrics given in the books of Samuel are
omitted by the chronicler. The later Exilic Psalms were more to his taste
than ancient hymns, and he unconsciously carries back into the history of
the monarchy the poetry as well as the ritual of later times. Both
omissions and insertions indicate that in this period the Jews possessed
and prized a large collection of psalms.
There are also traces of the Prophets. Hanani the seer in his address to
Asa(99) quotes Zech. iv. 10: “The eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro
through the whole earth.” Jehoshaphat’s exhortation to his people,
“Believe in the Lord your God; so shall ye be established,”(100) is based
on Isa. vii. 9: “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be
established.” Hezekiah’s words to the Levites, “Our fathers ... have
turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their
backs,”(101) are a significant variation of Jer. ii. 27: “They have turned
their back unto Me, and not their face.” The Temple is substituted for
Jehovah.
There are of course references to Isaiah and Jeremiah and traces of other
prophets; but when account is taken of them all, it is seen that the
chronicler makes scanty use, on the whole, of the Prophetical Books. It is
true that the idea of illustrating and supplementing information derived
from annals by means of contemporary literature not in narrative form had
not yet dawned upon historians; but if the chronicler had taken a tithe of
the interest in the Prophets that he took in the Pentateuch and the
Psalms, his work would show many more distinct marks of their influence.
An apocalypse like Daniel and works like Job, Proverbs, and the other
books of Wisdom lay so far outside the plan and subject of Chronicles that
we can scarcely consider the absence of any clear trace of them a proof
that the chronicler did not either know them or care for them.
Our brief review suggests that the literary concern of the chronicler and
his circle was chiefly in the books most closely connected with the
Temple; viz., the Historical Books, which contained its history, the
Pentateuch, which prescribed its ritual, and the Psalms, which served as
its liturgy. The Prophets occupy a secondary place, and Chronicles
furnishes no clear evidence as to other Old Testament books.
We also find in Chronicles that the Hebrew language had degenerated from
its ancient classical purity, and that Jewish writers had already come
very much under the influence of Aramaic.
We may next consider the evidence supplied by the chronicler as to the
elements and distribution of the Jewish community in his time. In Ezra and
Nehemiah we find the returning exiles divided into the men of Judah, the
men of Benjamin, and the priests, Levites, etc. In Ezra ii. we are told
that in all there returned 42,360, with 7,337 slaves and 200 “singing men
and singing women.” The priests numbered 4,289; there were 74 Levites, 128
singers of the children of Asaph, 139 porters, and 392 Nethinim and
children of Solomon’s servants. The singers, porters, Nethinim, and
children of Solomon’s servants are not reckoned among the Levites, and
there is only one guild of singers: “the children of Asaph.” The Nethinim
are still distinguished from the Levites in the list of those who returned
with Ezra, and in various lists which occur in Nehemiah. We see from the
Levitical genealogies and the Levites in 1 Chron. vi., ix., etc, that in
the time of the chronicler these arrangements had been altered. There were
now three guilds of singers, tracing their descent to Heman, Asaph, and
Ethan(102) or Jeduthun, and reckoned by descent among the Levites. The
guild of Heman seems to have been also known as “the sons of Korah.”(103)
The porters and probably eventually the Nethinim were also reckoned among
the Levites.(104)
We see therefore that in the interval between Nehemiah and the chronicler
the inferior ranks of the Temple ministry had been reorganised, the
musical staff had been enlarged and doubtless otherwise improved, and the
singers, porters, Nethinim, and other Temple servants had been promoted to
the position of Levites. Under the monarchy many of the Temple servants
had been slaves of foreign birth; but now a sacred character was given to
the humblest menial who shared in the work of the house of God. In
after-times Herod the Great had a number of priests trained as masons, in
order that no profane hand might take part in the building of his temple.
Some details have been preserved of the organisation of the Levites. We
read how the porters were distributed among the different gates, and of
Levites who were over the chambers and the treasuries, and of other
Levites how—
“They lodged round about the house of God, because the charge was upon
them, and to them pertained the opening thereof morning by morning.
“And certain of them had charge of the vessels of service; for by tale
were they brought in, and by tale were they taken out.
“Some of them also were appointed over the furniture, and over all the
vessels of the sanctuary, and over the fine flour, and the wine, and the
oil, and the frankincense, and the spices.
“And some of the sons of the priests prepared the confection of the
spices.
“And Mattithiah, one of the Levites who was the first-born of Shallum the
Korahite, had the set office over the things that were baked in pans.
“And some of their brethren, of the sons of the Kohathites, were over the
shewbread to prepare it every sabbath.”(105)
This account is found in a chapter partly identical with Neh. xi., and
apparently refers to the period of Nehemiah; but the picture in the latter
part of the chapter was probably drawn by the chronicler from his own
knowledge of Temple routine. So, too, in his graphic accounts of the
sacrifices by Hezekiah and Josiah,(106) we seem to have an eyewitness
describing familiar scenes. Doubtless the chronicler himself had often
been one of the Temple choir “when the burnt-offering began, and the song
of Jehovah began also, together with the instruments of David, king of
Israel; and all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the
trumpeters sounded; and all this continued till the burnt-offering was
finished.”(107) Still the scale of these sacrifices, the hundreds of oxen
and thousands of sheep, may have been fixed to accord with the splendour
of the ancient kings. Such profusion of victims probably represented
rather the dreams than the realities of the chronicler’s Temple.
Our author’s strong feeling for his own Levitical order shows itself in
his narrative of Hezekiah’s great sacrifices. The victims were so numerous
that there were not priests enough to flay them; to meet the emergency the
Levites were allowed on this one occasion to discharge a priestly function
and to take an unusually conspicuous part in the national festival. In
zeal they were even superior to the priests: “The Levites were more
upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests.” Possibly here
the chronicler is describing an incident which he could have paralleled
from his own experience. The priests of his time may often have yielded to
a natural temptation to shirk the laborious and disagreeable parts of
their duty; they would catch at any plausible pretext to transfer their
burdens to the Levites, which the latter would be eager to accept for the
sake of a temporary accession of dignity. Learned Jews were always experts
in the art of evading the most rigid and minute regulations of the Law.
For instance, the period of service appointed for the Levites in the
Pentateuch was from the age of thirty to that of fifty.(108) But we gather
from Ezra and Nehemiah that comparatively few Levites could be induced to
throw in their lot with the returning exiles; there were not enough to
perform the necessary duties. To make up for paucity of numbers, this
period of service was increased; and they were required to serve from
twenty years old and upward.(109) As the former arrangement had formed
part of the law attributed to Moses, in course of time the later
innovation was supposed to have originated with David.
There were, too, other reasons for increasing the efficiency of the
Levitical order by lengthening their term of service and adding to their
numbers. The establishment of the Pentateuch as the sacred code of Judaism
imposed new duties on priests and Levites alike. The people needed
teachers and interpreters of the numerous minute and complicated rules by
which they were to govern their daily life. Judges were needed to apply
the laws in civil and criminal cases. The Temple ministers were the
natural authorities on the Torah; they had a chief interest in expounding
and enforcing it. But in these matters also the priests seem to have left
the new duties to the Levites. Apparently the first “scribes,” or
professional students of the Law, were mainly Levites. There were priests
among them, notably the great father of the order, “Ezra the priest the
scribe,” but the priestly families took little share in this new work. The
origin of the educational and judicial functions of the Levites had also
come to be ascribed to the great kings of Judah. A Levitical scribe is
mentioned in the time of David.(110) In the account of Josiah’s reign we
are expressly told that “of the Levites there were scribes, and officers,
and porters”; and they are described as “the Levites that taught all
Israel.”(111) In the same context we have the traditional authority and
justification for this new departure. One of the chief duties imposed upon
the Levites by the Law was the care and carriage of the Tabernacle and its
furniture during the wanderings in the wilderness. Josiah, however, bids
the Levites “put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David,
king of Israel, did build; there shall no more be a burden upon your
shoulders; now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel.”(112) In
other words, “You are relieved of a large part of your old duties, and
therefore have time to undertake new ones.” The immediate application of
this principle seems to be that a section of the Levites should do all the
menial work of the sacrifices, and so leave the priests, and singers, and
porters free for their own special service; but the same argument would be
found convenient and conclusive whenever the priests desired to impose any
new functions on the Levites.
Still the task of expounding and enforcing the Law brought with it
compensations in the shape of dignity, influence, and emolument; and the
Levites would soon be reconciled to their work as scribes, and would
discover with regret that they could not retain the exposition of the Law
in their own hands. Traditions were cherished in certain Levitical
families that their ancestors had been “officers and judges” under
David(113); and it was believed that Jehoshaphat had organised a
commission largely composed of Levites to expound and administer the Law
in country districts.(114) This commission consisted of five princes, nine
Levites, and two priests; “and they taught in Judah, having the book of
the law of the Lord with them; and they went about throughout all the
cities of Judah and taught among the people.” As the subject of their
teaching was the Pentateuch, their mission must have been rather judicial
than religious. With regard to a later passage, it has been suggested that
“probably it is the organisation of justice as existing in his own day
that he” (the chronicler) “here carries back to Jehoshaphat, so that here
most likely we have the oldest testimony to the synedrium of Jerusalem as
a court of highest instance over the provincial synedria, as also to its
composition and presidency.”(115) We can scarcely doubt that the form the
chronicler has given to the tradition is derived from the institutions of
his own age, and that his friends the Levites were prominent among the
doctors of the Law, and not only taught and judged in Jerusalem, but also
visited the country districts.
It will appear from this brief survey that the Levites were very
completely organised. There were not only the great classes, the scribes,
officers, porters, singers, and the Levites proper, so to speak, who
assisted the priests, but special families had been made responsible for
details of service: “Mattithiah had the set office over the things that
were baked in pans; and some of their brethren, of the sons of the
Kohathites, were over the shewbread, to prepare it every sabbath.”(116)
The priests were organised quite differently. The small number of Levites
necessitated careful arrangements for using them to the best advantage; of
priests there were enough and to spare. The four thousand two hundred and
eighty-nine priests who returned with Zerubbabel were an extravagant and
impossible allowance for a single temple, and we are told that the numbers
increased largely as time went on. The problem was to devise some means by
which all the priests should have some share in the honours and emoluments
of the Temple, and its solution was found in the “courses.” The priests
who returned with Zerubbabel are registered in four families: “the
children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua; ... the children of Immer;
... the children of Pashhur; ... the children of Harim.”(117) But the
organisation of the chronicler’s time is, as usual, to be found among the
arrangements ascribed to David, who is said to have divided the priests
into their twenty-four courses.(118) Amongst the heads of the courses we
find Jedaiah, Jeshua, Harim, and Immer, but not Pashhur. Post-Biblical
authorities mention twenty-four courses in connection with the second
Temple. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, belonged to the course
of Abijah(119); and Josephus mentions a course “Eniakim.”(120) Abijah was
the head of one of David’s courses; and Eniakim is almost certainly a
corruption of Eliakim, of which name Jakim in Chronicles is a contraction.
These twenty-four courses discharged the priestly duties each in its turn.
One was busy at the temple while the other twenty-three were at home, some
perhaps living on the profits of their office, others at work on their
farms. The high-priest, of course, was always at the Temple; and the
continuity of the ritual would necessitate the appointment of other
priests as a permanent staff. The high-priest and the staff, being always
on the spot, would have great opportunities for improving their own
position at the expense of the other members of the courses, who were only
there occasionally for a short time. Accordingly we are told later on that
a few families had appropriated nearly all the priestly emoluments.
Courses of the Levites are sometimes mentioned in connection with those of
the priests, as if the Levites had an exactly similar organisation.(121)
Indeed, twenty-four courses of the singers are expressly named.(122) But
on examination we find that “course” for the Levites in all cases where
exact information is given(123) does not mean one of a number of divisions
which took work in turn, but a division to which a definite piece of work
was assigned, _e.g._, the care of the shewbread or of one of the gates.
The idea that in ancient times there were twenty-four alternating courses
of Levites was not derived from the arrangements of the chronicler’s age,
but was an inference from the existence of priestly courses. According to
the current interpretation of the older history, there must have been
under the monarchy a very great many more Levites than priests, and any
reasons that existed for organising twenty-four priestly courses would
apply with equal force to the Levites. It is true that the names of
twenty-four courses of singers are given, but in this list occurs the
remarkable and impossible group of names already discussed:—
“_I-have-magnified_, _I-have-exalted-help_; _Sitting-in-distress_,
_I-have-spoken_ _In-abundance Visions_”(124) which are in themselves
sufficient proof that these twenty-four courses of singers did not exist
in the time of the chronicler.
Thus the chronicler provides material for a fairly complete account of the
service and ministers of the Temple; but his interest in other matters was
less close and personal, so that he gives us comparatively little
information about civil persons and affairs. The restored Jewish community
was, of course, made up of descendants of the members of the old kingdom
of Judah. The new Jewish state, like the old, is often spoken of as
“Judah”; but its claim to fully represent the chosen people of Jehovah is
expressed by the frequent use of the name “Israel.” Yet within this new
Judah the old tribes of Judah and Benjamin are still recognised. It is
true that in the register of the first company of returning exiles the
tribes are ignored, and we are not told which families belonged to Judah
or which to Benjamin; but we are previously told that the chiefs of Judah
and Benjamin rose up to return to Jerusalem. Part of this register
arranges the companies according to the towns in which their ancestors had
lived before the Captivity, and of these some belong to Judah and some to
Benjamin. We also learn that the Jewish community included certain of the
children of Ephraim and Manasseh.(125) There may also have been families
from the other tribes; St. Luke, for instance, describes Anna as of the
tribe of Asher.(126) But the mass of genealogical matter relating to Judah
and Benjamin far exceeds what is given as to the other tribes,(127) and
proves that Judah and Benjamin were co-ordinate members of the restored
community, and that no other tribe contributed any appreciable contingent,
except a few families from Ephraim and Manasseh. It has been suggested
that the chronicler shows special interest in the tribes which had
occupied Galilee—Asher, Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar—and that this
special interest indicates that the settlement of Jews in Galilee had
attained considerable dimensions at the time when he wrote. But this
special interest is not very manifest; and later on, in the time of the
Maccabees, the Jews in Galilee were so few that Simon took them all away
with him, together with their wives and their children and all that they
had, and brought them into Judæa.
The genealogies seem to imply that no descendants of the Transjordanic
tribes or of Simeon were found in Judah in the age of the chronicler.
Concerning the tribe of Judah, we have already noted that it included two
families which traced their descent to Egyptian ancestors, and that the
Kenizzite clans of Caleb and Jerahmeel had been entirely incorporated in
Judah and formed the most important part of the tribe. A comparison of the
parallel genealogies of the house of Caleb gives us important information
as to the territory occupied by the Jews. In ii. 42-49 we find the
Calebites at Hebron and other towns of the south country, in accordance
with the older history; but in ii. 50-55 they occupy Bethlehem and
Kirjath-jearim and other towns in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The two
paragraphs are really giving their territory before and after the Exile;
during the Captivity Southern Judah had been occupied by the Edomites. It
is indeed stated in Neh. xi. 25-30 that the children of Judah dwelt in a
number of towns scattered over the whole territory of the ancient tribe;
but the list concludes with the significant sentence, “So they _encamped_
from Beer-sheba unto the valley of Hinnom.” We are thus given to
understand that the occupation was not permanent.
We have already noted that much of the space allotted to the genealogies
of Judah is devoted to the house of David.(128) The form of this pedigree
for the generations after the Captivity indicates that the head of the
house of David was no longer the chief of the state. During the monarchy
only the kings are given as heads of the family in each generation:
“Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abijah his son, Asa his son,” etc., etc.; but
after the Captivity the first-born no longer occupied so unique a
position. We have all the sons of each successive head of the family.
The genealogies of Judah include one or two references which throw a
little light on the social organisation of the times. There were “families
of scribes which dwelt at Jabez”(129) as well as the Levitical scribes. In
the appendix(130) to the genealogies of chap. iv. we read of a house whose
families wrought fine linen, and of other families who were porters to the
king and lived on the royal estates. The immediate reference of these
statements is clearly to the monarchy, and we are told that “the records
are ancient”; but these ancient records were probably obtained by the
chronicler from contemporary members of the families, who still pursued
their hereditary calling.
As regards the tribe of Benjamin, we have seen that there was a family
claiming descent from Saul.
The slight and meagre information given about Judah and Benjamin cannot
accurately represent their importance as compared with the priests and
Levites, but the general impression conveyed by the chronicler is
confirmed by our other authorities. In his time the supreme interests of
the Jews were religious. The one great institution was the Temple; the
highest order was the priesthood. All Jews were in a measure servants of
the Temple; Ephesus indeed was proud to be called the temple-keeper of the
great Diana, but Jerusalem was far more truly the temple-keeper of
Jehovah. Devotion to the Temple gave to the Jews a unity which neither of
the older Hebrew states had ever possessed. The kernel of this later
Jewish territory seems to have been a comparatively small district of
which Jerusalem was the centre. The inhabitants of this district carefully
preserved the records of their family history, and loved to trace their
descent to the ancient clans of Judah and Benjamin; but for practical
purposes they were all Jews, without distinction of tribe. Even the
ministry of the Temple had become more homogeneous; the non-Levitical
descent of some classes of the Temple servants was first ignored and then
forgotten, so that assistants at the sacrifices, singers, musicians,
scribes, and porters, were all included in the tribe of Levi. The Temple
conferred its own sanctity upon all its ministers.
In a previous chapter the Temple and its ministry were compared to a
mediæval monastery or the establishment of a modern cathedral. In the same
way Jerusalem might be compared to cities, like Ely or Canterbury, which
exist mainly for the sake of their cathedrals, only both the sanctuary and
city of the Jews came to be on a larger scale. Or, again, if the Temple be
represented by the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury, Bury St. Edmunds itself
might stand for Jerusalem, and the wide lands of the abbey for the
surrounding districts, from which the Jewish priests derived their
free-will offerings, and first-fruits, and tithes. Still in both these
English instances there was a vigorous and independent secular life far
beyond any that existed in Judæa.
A closer parallel to the temple on Zion is to be found in the immense
establishments of the Egyptian temples. It is true that these were
numerous in Egypt, and the authority and influence of the priesthood were
checked and controlled by the power of the kings; yet on the fall of the
twentieth dynasty the high-priest of the great temple of Amen at Thebes
succeeded in making himself king, and Egypt, like Judah, had its dynasty
of priest-kings.
The following is an account of the possessions of the Theban temple of
Amen, supposed to be given by an Egyptian living about B.C. 1350(131):—
“Since the accession of the eighteenth dynasty, Amen has profited more
than any other god, perhaps even more than Pharaoh himself, by the
Egyptian victories over the peoples of Syria and Ethiopia. Each success
has brought him a considerable share of the spoil collected upon the
battle-fields, indemnities levied from the enemy, prisoners carried into
slavery. He possesses lands and gardens by the hundred in Thebes and the
rest of Egypt, fields and meadows, woods, hunting-grounds, and fisheries;
he has colonies in Ethiopia or in the oases of the Libyan desert, and at
the extremity of the land of Canaan there are cities under vassalage to
him, for Pharaoh allows him to receive the tribute from them. The
administration of these vast properties requires as many officials and
departments as that of a kingdom. It includes innumerable bailiffs for the
agriculture; overseers for the cattle and poultry; treasurers of twenty
kinds for the gold, silver, and copper, the vases and valuable stuffs;
foremen for the workshops and manufactures; engineers; architects;
boatmen; a fleet and an army which often fight by the side of Pharaoh’s
fleet and army. It is really a state within the state.”
Many of the details of this picture would not be true for the temple of
Zion; but the Jews were even more devoted to Jehovah than the Thebans to
Amen, and the administration of the Jewish temple was more than “a state
within the state”: it was the state itself.
Chapter VI. Teaching By Anachronism. 1 Chron. ix. (cf. xv., xvi.,
xxiii.-xxvii., etc.).
“And David the king said, ... Who then offereth willingly?... And
they gave for the service of the house of God ... ten thousand
darics.”—1 CHRON. xxix. 1, 5, 7.
Teaching by anachronism is a very common and effective form of religious
instruction; and Chronicles, as the best Scriptural example of this
method, affords a good opportunity for its discussion and illustration.
All history is more or less guilty of anachronism; every historian
perforce imports some of the ideas and circumstances of his own time into
his narratives and pictures of the past: but we may distinguish three
degrees of anachronism. Some writers or speakers make little or no attempt
at archæological accuracy; others temper the generally anachronistic
character of their compositions by occasional reference to the manners and
customs of the period they are describing; and, again, there are a few
trained students who succeed in drawing fairly accurate and consistent
pictures of ancient life and history.
We will briefly consider the last two classes before returning to the
first, in which we are chiefly interested.
Accurate archæology is, of course, part of the ideal of the scientific
historian. By long and careful study of literature and monuments and by
the exercise of a lively and well-trained imagination, the student obtains
a vision of ancient societies. Nineveh and Babylon, Thebes and Memphis,
rise from their ashes and stand before him in all their former splendour;
he walks their streets and mixes with the crowds in the market-place and
the throng of worshippers at the temple, each “in his habit as he lived.”
Rameses and Sennacherib, Ptolemy and Antiochus, all play their proper
parts in this drama of his fancy. He can not only recall their costumes
and features: he can even think their thoughts and feel their emotions; he
actually lives in the past. In _Marius the Epicurean_, in Ebers’s _Uarda_,
in Maspero’s _Sketches of Assyrian and Egyptian Life_, and in other more
serious works we have some of the fruits of this enlightened study of
antiquity, and are enabled to see the visions at second hand and in some
measure to live at once in the present and the past, to illustrate and
interpret the one by the other, to measure progress and decay, and to
understand the Divine meaning of all history. Our more recent histories
and works on life and manners and even our historical romances, especially
those of Walter Scott, have rendered a similar service to students of
English history. And yet at its very best such realisation of the past is
imperfect; the gaps in our information are unconsciously filled in from
our experience, and the ideas of the present always colour our
reproduction of ancient thought and feeling. The most accurate history is
only a rough approximation to exact truth; but, like many other rough
approximations, it is exact enough for many important practical purposes.
But scholarly familiarity with the past has its drawbacks. The scholar may
come to live so much amongst ancient memories that he loses touch with his
own present. He may gain large stores of information about ancient
Israelite life, and yet not know enough of his own generation to be able
to make them sharers of his knowledge. Their living needs and
circumstances lie outside his practical experience; he cannot explain the
past to them because he does not sympathise with their present; he cannot
apply its lessons to difficulties and dangers which he does not
understand.
Nor is the usefulness of the archæologist merely limited by his own lack
of sympathy and experience. He may have both, and yet find that there are
few of his contemporaries who can follow him in his excursions into bygone
time. These limitations and drawbacks do not seriously diminish the value
of archæology, but they have to be taken into account in discussing
teaching by anachronism, and they have an important bearing on the
practical application of archæological knowledge. We shall return to these
points later on.
The second degree of anachronism is very common. We are constantly hearing
and reading descriptions of Bible scenes and events in which the centuries
before and after Christ are most oddly blended. Here and there will be a
costume after an ancient monument, a Biblical description of Jewish
customs, a few Scriptural phrases; but these are embedded in paragraphs
which simply reproduce the social and religious ideas of the nineteenth
century. For instance, in a recent work, amidst much display of
archæological knowledge, we have the very modern ideas that Joseph and
Mary went up to Bethlehem at the census, because Joseph and perhaps Mary
also had property in Bethlehem, and that when Joseph died “he left her a
small but independent fortune.” Many modern books might be named in which
Patriarchs and Apostles hold the language and express the sentiments of
the most recent schools of devotional Christianity; and yet an air of
historical accuracy is assumed by occasional touches of archæology.
Similarly in mediæval miracle-plays characters from the Bible appeared in
the dress of the period, and uttered a grotesque mixture of Scriptural
phrases and vernacular jargon. Much of such work as this may for all
practical purposes be classed under the third degree of anachronism.
Sometimes, however, the spiritual significance of a passage or an incident
turns upon a simple explanation of some ancient custom, so that the
archæological detail makes a clear addition to its interest and
instructiveness. But in other cases a little archæology is a dangerous
thing. Scattered fragments of learned information do not enable the reader
in any way to revive the buried past; they only remove the whole subject
further from his interest and sympathy. He is not reading about his own
day, nor does he understand that the events and personages of the
narrative ever had anything in common with himself and his experience. The
antique garb, the strange custom, the unusual phrase, disguise that real
humanity which the reader shares with these ancient worthies. They are no
longer men of like passions with himself, and he finds neither warning nor
encouragement in their story. He is like a spectator of a drama played by
poor actors with a limited stock of properties. The scenery and dresses
show that the play does not belong to his own time, but they fail to
suggest that it ever belonged to any period. He has a languid interest in
the performance as a spectacle, but his feelings are not touched, and he
is never carried away by the acting.
We have laid so much stress on the drawbacks attaching to a little
archæology because they will emphasise what we have to say about the use
of pure anachronism. Our last illustration, however, reminds us that these
drawbacks detract but little from the influence of earnest men. If the
acting be good, we forget the scenery and costumes; the genius of a great
preacher more than atones for poor archæology, because, in spite of dress
and custom, he makes his hearers feel that the characters of the Bible
were instinct with rich and passionate life. We thus arrive at our third
degree of pure anachronism.
Most people read their Bible without any reference to archæology. If they
dramatise the stories, they do so in terms of their own experience. The
characters are dressed like the men and women they know: Nazareth is like
their native village, and Jerusalem is like the county town; the
conversations are carried on in the English of the Authorised Version.
This reading of Scripture is well illustrated by the description in a
recent writer of a modern prophet in Tennessee(132):—
“There was nought in the scene to suggest to a mind familiar with the
facts an Oriental landscape—nought akin to the hills of Judæa. It was
essentially of the New World, essentially of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Yet ignorance has its licence. It never occurred to Teck Jepson that his
Bible heroes had lived elsewhere. Their history had to him an intimate
personal relation, as of the story of an ancestor, in the homestead ways
and closely familiar. He brooded upon these narratives, instinct with
dramatic interest, enriched with poetic colour, and localised in his
robust imagination, till he could trace Hagar’s wild wanderings in the
fastnesses, could show where Jacob slept and piled his altar of stones,
could distinguish the bush, of all others on the ‘bald,’ that blazed with
fire from heaven when the angel of the Lord stood within it. Somehow, even
in their grotesque variation, they lost no dignity in their transmission
to the modern conditions of his fancy. Did the facts lack significance
because it was along the gullied red clay roads of Piomingo Cove that he
saw David, the smiling stripling, running and holding high in his hand the
bit of cloth cut from Saul’s garments while the king had slept in a cave
at the base of Chilhowie Mountain? And how was the splendid miracle of
translation discredited because Jepson believed that the chariot of the
Lord had rested in scarlet and purple clouds upon the towering summit of
Thunderhead, that Elijah might thence ascend into heaven?”
Another and more familiar example of “singular alterations in date and
circumstances” is the version in _Ivanhoe_ of the war between Benjamin and
the other tribes:—
“How long since in Palestine a deadly feud arose between the tribe of
Benjamin and the rest of the Israelitish nation; and how they cut to
pieces well-nigh all the chivalry of that tribe; and how they swore by our
blessed Lady that they would not permit those who remained to marry in
their lineage; and how they became grieved for their vow, and sent to
consult his Holiness the Pope how they might be absolved from it; and how,
by the advice of the Holy Father, the youth of the tribe of Benjamin
carried off from a superb tournament all the ladies who were there
present, and thus won them wives without the consent either of their
brides or their brides’ families.”
It is needless to say that the chronicler was not thus hopelessly at sea
about the circumstances of ancient Hebrew history; but he wrote in the
same simple, straightforward, childlike spirit. Israel had always been the
Israel of his own experience, and it never occurred to him that its
institutions under the kings had been other than those with which he was
familiar. He had no more hesitation in filling up the gaps in the book of
Kings from what he saw round about him than a painter would have in
putting the white clouds and blue waters of to-day into a picture of skies
and seas a thousand years ago. He attributes to the pious kings of Judah
the observance of the ritual of his own times. Their prophets use phrases
taken from post-Exilic writings. David is regarded as the author of the
existing ecclesiastical system in almost all matters that do not date back
to Moses, and especially as the organiser of the familiar music of the
Temple. David’s choristers sing the hymns of the second Temple. Amongst
the contributions of his nobles towards the building of the Temple, we
read of ten thousand darics, the daric being a coin introduced by the
Persian king Darius.
But we must be careful to recognise that the chronicler writes in perfect
good faith. These views of the monarchy were common to all educated and
thoughtful men of his time; they were embodied in current tradition, and
were probably already to be met with in writing. To charge him with
inventing them is absurd; they already existed, and did not need to be
invented. He cannot have coloured his narrative in the interests of the
Temple and the priesthood. When he lived, these interests were guaranteed
by ancient custom and by the authoritative sanction of the Pentateuchal
Law. The chronicler does not write with the strong feeling of a man who
maintains a doubtful cause; there is no hint of any alternative view which
needs to be disproved and rejected in favour of his own. He expatiates on
his favourite themes with happy, leisurely serenity, and is evidently
confident that his treatment of them will meet with general and cordial
approval.
And doubtless the author of Chronicles “served his own generation by the
will of God,” and served them in the way he intended. He made the history
of the monarchy more real and living to them, and enabled them to
understand better that the reforming kings of Judah were loyal servants of
Jehovah and had been used by Him for the furtherance of true religion. The
pictures drawn by Samuel and Kings of David and the best of his successors
would not have enabled the Jews of his time to appreciate these facts.
They had no idea of any piety that was not expressed in the current
observances of the Law, and Samuel and Kings did not ascribe such
observances to the earlier kings of Judah. But the chronicler and his
authorities were able to discern in the ancient Scriptures the genuine
piety of David and Hezekiah and other kings, and drew what seemed to them
the obvious conclusion that these pious kings observed the Law. They then
proceeded to rewrite the history in order that the true character of the
kings and their relation to Jehovah might be made intelligible to the
people. The only piety which the chronicler could conceive was combined
with observance of the Law; naturally therefore it was only thus that he
could describe piety. His work would be read with eager interest, and
would play a definite and useful part in the religious education of the
people. It would bring home to them, as the older histories could not, the
abiding presence of Jehovah with Israel and its leaders. Chronicles
interpreted history to its own generation by translating older records
into the circumstances and ideas of its own time.
And in this it remains our example. Chronicles may fall very far short of
the ideal and yet be superior to more accurate histories which fail to
make themselves intelligible to their own generation. The ideal history no
doubt would tell the story with archæological precision, and then
interpret it by modern parallels; the historian would show us what we
should actually have seen and heard if we had lived in the period he is
describing; he would also help our weak imagination by pointing us to such
modern events or persons as best illustrate those ancient times. No doubt
Chronicles fails to bring before our eyes an accurate vision of the
history of the monarchy; but, as we have said, all history fails somewhat
in this respect. It is simply impossible to fulfil the demand for history
that shall have the accuracy of an architect’s plans of a house or an
astronomer’s diagrams of the orbit of a planet. Chronicles, however, fails
more seriously than most history, and on the whole rather more than most
commentaries and sermons.
But this lack of archæological accuracy is far less serious than a failure
to make it clear that the events of ancient history were as real and as
interesting as those of modern times, and that its personages were actual
men and women, with a full equipment of body, mind, and soul. There have
been many teachers and preachers, innocent of archæology, who have yet
been able to apply Bible narratives with convincing power to the hearts
and consciences of their hearers. They may have missed some points and
misunderstood others, but they have brought out clearly the main,
practical teaching of their subject; and we must not allow amusement at
curious anachronisms to blind us to their great gifts in applying ancient
history to modern circumstances. For instance, the little captive maid in
the story of Naaman has been described by a local preacher as having
illuminated texts hung up in her bedroom, and (perambulators not being
then in use) as having constructed a go-cart for the baby out of an old
tea-chest and four cotton reels. We feel inclined to smile; but, after
all, such a picture would make children feel that the captive maid was a
girl whom they could understand and might even imitate. A more correct
version of the story, told with less human interest, might leave the
impression that she was a mere animated doll in a quaint costume, who made
impossibly pious remarks.
Enlightened and well-informed Christian teachers may still learn something
from the example of the chronicler. The uncritical character of his age
affords no excuse to them for shutting their eyes to the fuller light
which God has given to their generation. But we are reminded that
permanently significant stories have their parallels in every age. There
are always prodigal sons, and foolish virgins, importunate widows, and
good Samaritans. The ancient narratives are interesting as quaint and
picturesque stories of former times; but it is our duty as teachers to
discover the modern parallels of their eternal meaning: their lessons are
often best enforced by telling them afresh as they would have been told if
their authors had lived in our time, in other words by a frank use of
anachronism.
It may be objected that the result in the case of Chronicles is not
encouraging. Chronicles is far less interesting than Kings, and far less
useful in furnishing materials for the historian. These facts, however,
are not inconsistent with the usefulness of the book for its own age.
Teaching by anachronism simply seeks to render a service to its own
generation; its purpose is didactic, and not historical. How many people
read the sermons of eighteenth-century divines? But each generation has a
right to this special service. The first duty of the religious teacher is
for the men and women that look to him for spiritual help and guidance. He
may incidentally produce literary work of permanent value for posterity;
but a Church whose ministry sacrificed practical usefulness in the attempt
to be learned and literary would be false to its most sacred functions.
The noblest self-denial of Christian service may often lie in putting
aside all such ambition and devoting the ability which might have made a
successful author to making Divine truth intelligible and interesting to
the uncultured and the unimaginative. Authors themselves are sometimes led
to make a similar sacrifice; they write to help the many to-day when they
might have written to delight men of literary taste in all ages. Few
things are so ephemeral as popular religious literature; it is as quickly
and entirely forgotten as last year’s sunsets: but it is as necessary and
as useful as the sunshine and the clouds, which are being always spent and
always renewed. Chronicles is a specimen of this class of literature, and
its presence in the canon testifies to the duty of providing a special
application of the sacred truths of ancient history for each succeeding
generation.
BOOK III. MESSIANIC AND OTHER TYPES.
Chapter I. Teaching By Types.
A more serious charge has been brought against Chronicles than that dealt
with in the last chapter. Besides anachronisms, additions, and
alterations, the chronicler has made omissions that give an entirely new
complexion to the history. He omits, for instance, almost everything that
detracts from the character and achievements of David and Solomon; he
almost entirely ignores the reigns of Saul and Ishbosheth, and of all the
northern kings. These facts are obvious to the most casual reader, and a
moment’s reflection shows that David as we should know him if we had only
Chronicles is entirely different from the historical David of Samuel and
Kings. The latter David has noble qualities, but displays great weakness
and falls into grievous sin; the David of Chronicles is almost always an
hero and a blameless saint.
All this is unquestionably true, and yet the purpose and spirit of
Chronicles are honest and praiseworthy. Our judgment must be governed by
the relation which the chronicler intended his work to sustain towards the
older history. Did he hope that Samuel and Kings would be altogether
superseded by this new version of the history of the monarchy, and so
eventually be suppressed and forgotten? There were precedents that might
have encouraged such a hope. The Pentateuch and the books from Joshua to
Kings derived their material from older works; but the older works were
superseded by these books, and entirely disappeared. The circumstances,
however, were different when the chronicler wrote: Samuel and Kings had
been established for centuries. Moreover, the Jewish community in Babylon
still exercised great influence over the Palestinian Jews. Copies of
Samuel and Kings must have been preserved at Babylon, and their possessors
could not be eager to destroy them, and then to incur the expense of
replacing them by copies of a history written at Jerusalem from the point
of view of the priests and Levites. We may therefore put aside the theory
that Chronicles was intended altogether to supersede Samuel and Kings.
Another possible theory is that the chronicler, after the manner of
mediæval historians, composed an abstract of the history of the world from
the Creation to the Captivity as an introduction to his account in Ezra
and Nehemiah of the more recent post-Exilic period. This theory has some
truth in it, but does not explain the fact that Chronicles is
disproportionately long if it be merely such an introduction. Probably the
chronicler’s main object was to compose a text-book, which could safely
and usefully be placed in the hands of the common people. There were
obvious objections to the popular use of Samuel and Kings. In making a
selection from his material, the chronicler had no intention of falsifying
history. Scholars, he knew, would be acquainted with the older books, and
could supplement his narrative from the sources which he himself had used.
In his own work he was anxious to confine himself to the portions of the
history which had an obvious religious significance, and could readily be
used for purposes of edification. He was only applying more thoroughly a
principle that had guided his predecessors. The Pentateuch itself is the
result of a similar selection, only there and in the other earlier
histories a very human interest in dramatic narrative has sometimes
interfered with an exclusive attention to edification.
Indeed, the principles of selection adopted by the chronicler are common
to many historians. A school history does not dwell on the domestic vices
of kings or on the private failings of statesmen. It requires no great
stretch of imagination to conceive of a Royalist history of England, that
should entirely ignore the Commonwealth. Indeed, historians of Christian
missions sometimes show about the same interest in the work of other
Churches than their own that Chronicles takes in the northern kingdom. The
work of the chronicler may also be compared to monographs which confine
themselves to some special aspect of their subject. We have every reason
to be thankful that the Divine providence has preserved for us the richer
and fuller narrative of Samuel and Kings, but we cannot blame the
chronicler because he has observed some of the ordinary canons for the
composition of historical text-books.
The chronicler’s selective method, however, is carried so far that the
historical value of his work is seriously impaired; yet in this respect
also he is kept in countenance by very respectable authorities. We are
more concerned, however, to point out the positive results of the method.
Instead of historical portraits, we are presented with a gallery of
ideals, types of character which we are asked either to admire or to
condemn. On the one hand, we have David and Solomon, Jehoshaphat and
Hezekiah, and the rest of the reforming kings of Judah; on the other hand,
there are Jeroboam, and Ahab, and Ahaz, the kings of Israel, and the bad
kings of Judah. All these are very sharply defined in either white or
black. The types of Chronicles are ideals, and not studies of ordinary
human character, with its mingled motives and subtle gradations of light
and shade. The chronicler has nothing in common with the authors of modern
realistic novels or anecdotal memoirs. His subject is not human nature as
it is so much as human nature as it ought to be. There is obviously much
to be learnt from such ideal pictures, and this form of inspired teaching
is by no means the least effective; it may be roughly compared with our
Lord’s method of teaching by parables, without, however, at all putting
the two upon the same level.
Before examining these types in detail, we may devote a little space to
some general considerations upon teaching by types. For the present we
will confine ourselves to a non-theological sense of type, using the word
to mean any individual who is representative or typical of a class. But
the chronicler’s individuals do not represent classes of actual persons,
but good men as they seem to their most devoted admirers and bad men as
they seem to their worst enemies. They are ideal types. Chronicles is not
the only literature in which such ideal types are found. They occur in the
funeral sermons and obituary notices of popular favourites, and in the
pictures which politicians draw in election speeches of their opponents,
only in these there is a note of personal feeling from which the
chronicler is free.
In fact, all biography tends to idealise; human nature as it is has
generally to be looked for in the pages of fiction. When we have been
blessed with a good and brave man, we wish to think of him at his best; we
are not anxious to have thrust upon our notice the weaknesses and sins
which he regretted and for the most part controlled. Some one who loved
and honoured him is asked to write the biography, with a tacit
understanding that he is not to give us a picture of the real man in the
_déshabille_, as it were, of his own inner consciousness. He is to paint
us a portrait of the man as he strove to fashion himself after his own
high ideal. The true man, as God knows him and as his fellows should
remember him, was the man in his higher nature and nobler aspirations. The
rest, surely, was but the vanishing remnant of a repudiated self. The
biographer idealises, because he believes that the ideal best represents
the real man. This is what the chronicler, with a large faith and liberal
charity, has done for David and Solomon.
Such an ideal picture appeals to us with pathetic emphasis. It seems to
say, “In spite of temptation, and sin, and grievous falls, this is what I
ever aimed at and desired to be. Do not thou content thyself with any
lower ideal. My higher nature had its achievements as well as its
aspirations. Remember that in thy weakness thou mayest also achieve.”
“What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me;
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God....”
But we may take these ideals as types, not only in a general sense, but
also in a modification of the dogmatic meaning of the word. We are not
concerned here with the type as the mere external symbol of truth yet to
be revealed; such types are chiefly found in the ritual of the Pentateuch.
The circumstances of a man’s life may also serve as a type in the narrower
sense, but we venture to apply the theological idea of type to the
significance of the higher nature in a good man. It has been said in
reference to types in the theological sense that “a type is neither a
prophecy, nor a symbol, nor an allegory, yet it has relations with each of
these. A prophecy is a prediction in words, a type a prediction in things.
A symbol is a sensuous representation of a thing; a type is such a
representation having a distinctly predictive aspect: ... a type is an
enacted prophecy, a kind of prophecy by action.”(133) We cannot, of
course, include in our use of the term type “sensuous representation” and
some other ideas connected with “type” in a theological sense. Our type is
a prediction in persons rather than in things. But the use of the term is
justified as including the most essential point: that “a type is an
enacted prophecy, a kind of prophecy by action.” These personal types are
the most real and significant; they have no mere arbitrary or conventional
relation to their antitype. The enacted prophecy is the beginning of its
own fulfilment, the first-fruits of the greater harvest that is to be. The
better moments of the man who is hungering and thirsting after
righteousness are a type, a promise, and prophecy of his future
satisfaction. They have also a wider and deeper meaning: they show what is
possible for humanity, and give an assurance of the spiritual progress of
the world. The elect remnant of Israel were the type of the great
Christian Church; the spiritual aspirations and persistent faith of a few
believers were a prophecy that “the earth should be full of the knowledge
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “The kingdom of heaven is like
unto a grain of mustard seed, ... which is less than all seeds; but when
it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree.” When
therefore the chronicler ignores the evil in David and Solomon and only
records the good, he treats them as types. He takes what was best in them
and sets it forth as a standard and prophecy for the future, a pattern in
the mount to be realised hereafter in the structure of God’s spiritual
temple upon earth.
But the Holy Spirit guided the hopes and intuitions of the sacred writers
to a special fulfilment. We can see that their types have one antitype in
the growth of the Church and the progress of mankind; but the Old
Testament looked for their chief fulfilment in a Divine Messenger and
Deliverer: its ideals are types of the Messiah. The higher life of a good
man was a revelation of God and a promise of His highest and best
manifestation in Christ. We shall endeavour to show in subsequent chapters
how Chronicles served to develop the idea of the Messiah.
But the chronicler’s types are not all prophecies of future progress or
Messianic glory. The brighter portions of his picture are thrown into
relief by a dark background. The good in Jeroboam is as completely ignored
as the evil in David. Apart from any question of historical accuracy, the
type is unfortunately a true one. There is a leaven of the Pharisees and
of Herod, as well as a leaven of the kingdom. If the base leaven be left
to work by itself, it will leaven the whole mass; and in a final estimate
of the character of those who do evil “with both hands earnestly,” little
allowance needs to be made for redeeming features. Even if we are still
able to believe that there is a seed of goodness in things evil, we are
forced to admit that the seed has remained dead and unfertilised, has had
no growth and borne no fruit. But probably most men may sometimes be
profitably admonished by considering the typical sinner—the man in whose
nature evil has been able to subdue all things to itself.
The strange power of teaching by types has been well expressed by one who
was herself a great mistress of the art: “Ideas are often poor ghosts: our
sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour,
and cannot make themselves felt; they breathe upon us with warm breath,
they touch us with soft, responsive hands; they look at us with sad,
sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a
living human soul; ... their presence is a power.”(134)