King and kingdom were so bound up in ancient life that an ideal for the
one implied an ideal for the other; all distinction and glory possessed by
either was shared by both. The tribe and kingdom of Judah were exalted by
the fame of David and Solomon; but, on the other hand, a specially exalted
position is accorded to David in the Old Testament because he is the
representative of the people of Jehovah. David himself had been anointed
by Divine command to be king of Israel, and he thus became the founder of
the only legitimate dynasty of Hebrew kings. Saul and Ishbosheth had no
significance for the later religious history of the nation. Apparently to
the chronicler the history of true religion in Israel was a blank between
Joshua and David; the revival began when the Ark was brought to Zion, and
the first steps were taken to rear the Temple in succession to the Mosaic
tabernacle. He therefore omits the history of the Judges and Saul. But the
battle of Gilboa is given to introduce the reign of David, and incidental
condemnation is passed on Saul: “So Saul died for his trespass which he
committed against the Lord, because of the word of the Lord, which he kept
not, and also for that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit,
to inquire thereby, and inquired not of the Lord; therefore He slew him
and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.”
The reign of Saul had been an unsuccessful experiment; its only real value
had been to prepare the way for David. At the same time the portrait of
Saul is not given at full length, like those of the wicked kings, partly
perhaps because the chronicler had little interest for anything before the
time of David and the Temple, but partly, we may hope, because the record
of David’s affection for Saul kept alive a kindly feeling towards the
founder of the monarchy.
Inasmuch as Jehovah had “turned the kingdom unto David,” the reign of
Ishbosheth was evidently the intrusion of an illegitimate pretender; and
the chronicler treats it as such. If we had only Chronicles, we should
know nothing about the reign of Ishbosheth, and should suppose that, on
the death of Saul, David succeeded at once to an undisputed sovereignty
over all Israel. The interval of conflict is ignored because, according to
the chronicler’s views, David was, from the first, king _de jure_ over the
whole nation. Complete silence as to Ishbosheth was the most effective way
of expressing this fact.
The same sentiment of hereditary legitimacy, the same formal and exclusive
recognition of a _de jure_ sovereign, has been shown in modern times by
titles like Louis XVIII. and Napoleon III. For both schools of Legitimists
the absence of _de facto_ sovereignty did not prevent Louis XVII. and
Napoleon II. from having been lawful rulers of France. In Israel,
moreover, the Divine right of the one chosen dynasty had religious as well
as political importance. We have already seen that Israel claimed a
hereditary title to its special privileges; it was therefore natural that
a hereditary qualification should be thought necessary for the kings. They
represented the nation; they were the Divinely appointed guardians of its
religion; they became in time the types of the Messiah, its promised
Saviour. In all this Saul and Ishbosheth had neither part nor lot; the
promise to Israel had always descended in a direct line, and the special
promise that was given to its kings and through them to their people began
with David. There was no need to carry the history further back.
We have already noticed that, in spite of this general attitude towards
Saul, the genealogy of some of his descendants is given twice over in the
earlier chapters. No doubt the chronicler made this concession to gratify
friends or to conciliate an influential family. It is interesting to note
how personal feeling may interfere with the symmetrical development of a
theological theory. At the same time we are enabled to discern a practical
reason for rigidly ignoring the kingship of Saul and Ishbosheth. To have
recognised Saul as the Lord’s anointed, like David, would have complicated
contemporary dogmatics, and might possibly have given rise to jealousies
between the descendants of Saul and those of David. Within the narrow
limits of the Jewish community such quarrels might have been inconvenient
and even dangerous.
The reasons for denying the legitimacy of the northern kings were obvious
and conclusive. Successful rebels who had destroyed the political and
religious unity of Israel could not inherit “the sure mercies of David” or
be included in the covenant which secured the permanence of his dynasty.
The exclusive association of Messianic ideas with a single family
emphasises their antiquity, continuity, and development. The hope of
Israel had its roots deep in the history of the people; it had grown with
their growth and maintained itself through their changing fortunes. As the
hope centred in a single family, men were led to expect an individual
personal Messiah; they were being prepared to see in Christ the fulfilment
of all righteousness.
But the choice of the house of David involved the choice of the tribe of
Judah and the rejection of the kingdom of Samaria. The ten tribes, as well
as the kings of Israel, had cut themselves off both from the Temple and
the sacred dynasty, and therefore from the covenant into which Jehovah had
entered with “the man after his own heart.” Such a limitation of the
chosen people was suggested by many precedents. Chronicles, following the
Pentateuch, tells how the call came to Abraham, but only some of the
descendants of one of his sons inherited the promise. Why should not a
selection be made from among the sons of Jacob? But the twelve tribes had
been explicitly and solemnly included in the unity of Israel, largely
through David himself. The glory of David and Solomon consisted in their
sovereignty over a united people. The national recollection of this golden
age loved to dwell on the union of the twelve tribes. The Pentateuch added
legal sanction to ancient sentiment. The twelve tribes were associated
together in national lyrics, like the “Blessing of Jacob” and the
“Blessing of Moses.” The song of Deborah told how the northern tribes
“came to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” It was simply
impossible for the chronicler to absolutely repudiate the ten tribes; and
so they are formally included in the genealogies of Israel, and are
recognised in the history of David and Solomon. Then the recognition
stops. From the time of the disruption the northern kingdom is quietly but
persistently ignored. Its prophets and sanctuaries were as illegitimate as
its kings. The great struggle of Elijah and Elisha for the honour of
Jehovah is omitted, with all the rest of their history. Elijah is only
mentioned as sending a letter to Jehoram, king of Judah; Elisha is never
even named.
On the other hand, it is more than once implied that Judah, with the
Levites, and the remnants of Simeon and Benjamin, are the true Israel.
When Rehoboam “was strong he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel
with him.” After Shishak’s invasion, “the princes of Israel and the king
humbled themselves.”(135) The annals of Manasseh, king of Judah, are said
to be “written among the acts of the kings of Israel.”(136) The register
of the exiles, who returned with Zerubbabel is headed “The number of the
men of the people of Israel.”(137) The chronicler tacitly anticipates the
position of St. Paul: “They are not all Israel which are of Israel”; and
the Apostle might have appealed to Chronicles to show that the majority of
Israel might fail to recognise and accept the Divine purpose for Israel,
and that the true Israel would then be found in an elect remnant. The Jews
of the second Temple naturally and inevitably came to ignore the ten
tribes and to regard themselves as constituting this true Israel. As a
matter of history, there had been a period during which the prophets of
Samaria were of far more importance to the religion of Jehovah than the
temple at Jerusalem; but in the chronicler’s time the very existence of
the ten tribes was ancient history. Then, at any rate, it was true that
God’s Israel was to be found in the Jewish community, at and around
Jerusalem. They inherited the religious spirit of their fathers, and
received from them the sacred writings and traditions, and carried on the
sacred ritual. They preserved the truth and transmitted it from generation
to generation, till at last it was merged in the mightier stream of
Christian revelation.
The attitude of the chronicler towards the prophets of the northern
kingdom does not in any way represent the actual importance of these
prophets to the religion of Israel; but it is a very striking expression
of the fact that after the Captivity the ten tribes had long ceased to
exercise any influence upon the spiritual life of their nation.
The chronicler’s attitude is also open to criticism on another side. He is
dominated by his own surroundings, and in his references to the Judaism of
his own time there is no formal recognition of the Jewish community in
Babylon; and yet even his own casual allusions confirm what we know from
other sources, namely that the wealth and learning of the Jews in Babylon
were an important factor in Judaism until a very late date. This point
perhaps rather concerns Ezra and Nehemiah than Chronicles, but it is
closely connected with our present subject, and is most naturally treated
along with it. The chronicler might have justified himself by saying that
the true home of Israel must be in Palestine, and that a community in
Babylon could only be considered as subsidiary to the nation in its own
home and worshipping at the Temple. Such a sentiment, at any rate, would
have met with universal approval amongst Palestinian Jews. The chronicler
might also have replied that the Jews in Babylon belonged to Judah and
Benjamin and were sufficiently recognised in the general prominence give
to these tribes. In all probability some Palestinian Jews would have been
willing to class their Babylonian kinsmen with the ten tribes. Voluntary
exiles from the Temple, the Holy City, and the Land of Promise had in
great measure cut themselves off from the full privileges of the people of
Jehovah. If, however, we had a Babylonian book of Chronicles, we should
see both Jerusalem and Babylon in another light.
The chronicler was possessed and inspired by the actual living present
round about him; he was content to let the dead past bury its dead. He was
probably inclined to believe that the absent are mostly wrong, and that
the men who worked with him for the Lord and His temple were the true
Israel and the Church of God. He was enthusiastic in his own vocation and
loyal to his brethren. If his interests were somewhat narrowed by the
urgency of present circumstances, most men suffer from the same
limitations. Few Englishmen realise that the battle of Agincourt is part
of the history of the United States, and that Canterbury Cathedral is a
monument of certain stages in the growth of the religion of New England.
We are not altogether willing to admit that these voluntary exiles from
our Holy Land belong to the true Anglo-Saxon Israel.
Churches are still apt to ignore their obligations to teachers who, like
the prophets of Samaria, seem to have been associated with alien or
hostile branches of the family of God. A religious movement which fails to
secure for itself a permanent monument is usually labelled heresy. If it
has neither obtained recognition within the Church nor yet organised a
sect for itself, its services are forgotten or denied. Even the orthodoxy
of one generation is sometimes contemptuous of the older orthodoxy which
made it possible; and yet Gnostics, Arians and Athanasians, Arminians and
Calvinists, have all done something to build up the temple of faith.
The nineteenth century prides itself on a more liberal spirit. But
Romanist historians are not eager to acknowledge the debt of their Church
to the Reformers; and there are Protestant partisans who deny that we are
the heirs of the Christian life and thought of the mediæval Church and are
anxious to trace the genealogy of pure religion exclusively through a
supposed succession of obscure and half-mythical sects. Limitations like
those of the chronicler still narrow the sympathies of earnest and devout
Christians.
But it is time to return to the more positive aspects of the teaching of
Chronicles, and to see how far we have already traced its exposition of
the Messianic idea. The plan of the book implies a spiritual claim on
behalf of the Jewish community of the Restoration. Because they believed
in Jehovah, whose providence had in former times controlled the destinies
of Israel, they returned to their ancestral home that they might serve and
worship the God of their fathers. Their faith survived the ruin of Judah
and their own captivity; they recognised the power, and wisdom, and love
of God alike in the prosperity and in the misfortunes of their race. “They
believed God, and it was counted unto them for righteousness.” The great
prophet of the Restoration had regarded this new Israel as itself a
Messianic people, perhaps even “a light to the Gentiles” and “salvation
unto the ends of the earth.”(138) The chronicler’s hopes were more modest;
the new Jerusalem had been seen by the prophet as an ideal vision; the
historian knew it by experience as an imperfect human society: but he
believed none the less in its high spiritual vocation and prerogatives. He
claimed the future for those who were able to trace the hand of God in
their past.
Under the monarchy the fortunes of Jerusalem had been bound up with those
of the house of David. The chronicler brings out all that was best in the
history of the ancient kings of Judah, that this ideal picture of the
state and its rulers might encourage and inspire to future hope and
effort. The character and achievements of David and his successors were of
permanent significance. The grace and favour accorded to them symbolised
the Divine promise for the future, and this promise was to be realised
through a Son of David.