The comparative indifference with which Chronicles is regarded in
modern times by all but professional scholars seems to have been
shared by the ancient Jewish church. Though written by the same hand
as wrote Ezra-Nehemiah, and forming, together with these books, a
continuous history of Judah, it is placed after them in the Hebrew
Bible, of which it forms the concluding book; and this no doubt
points to the fact that it attained canonical distinction later than
they. Nor is this unnatural. The book of Kings had brought the history
down to the exile of Judah; and the natural desire to see the history
carried from its new starting point in the return and restoration
through post-exilic times is met by the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, to
which there was no rival, whereas Chronicles had a rival in the
existing and popular books of Samuel and Kings.
The book, whose name _Chronicles_ is borrowed by Luther from
Jerome, is very late. Ezra-Nehemiah with which Chronicles goes must
be, as we have seen,[1] as late as Alexander the Great; but the
lateness of Chronicles can be proved without going beyond the book
itself. The Hebrew text of 1 Chron. iii. 19ff. carries the date six
generations beyond Zerubbabel (520 B.C.), that is, at the earliest,
to 350 B.C., while the Greek text postulates eleven generations,
which would compel us to come as late as 250 B.C. We shall not go
far astray if we consider the date as roughly 300 B.C. It is thus
seven centuries later than the reign of David, with whose
ecclesiastical enterprises it deals so elaborately, and about two
and a-half centuries from the exile, with which it closes. The
distance of the record from the events has to be borne in mind when
estimating its religious spirit and historical value.
[Footnote: See p. 355.]
The book of Chronicles is an ecclesiastical history in a sense very
much more severe than the book of Kings; on every page it reflects
the ritual interests which were predominant when the book was
written. To it the only history worth recording is the history of
Judah. The first ten chapters are occupied with the preparation for
that history, and the rest of the book (i Chron. xi.-2 Chron.
xxxvi.) with the history itself from the coronation of David to the
exile. Israel is the apostate kingdom; she had revolted alike from
Judah and Jehovah, and had been swept for her sins into exile, from
which she never emerged again. The Chronicler makes a man of God say
to Amaziah, "Jehovah is not with Israel," 2 Chron. xxv. 7, and this
exactly represents his own attitude. He therefore all but absolutely
ignores the history of the northern kingdom, touching upon it only
where it is in some special way implicated in the history of Judah.
This practically exclusive attention of the Chronicles to Judah is
based upon her unique religious or rather ecclesiastical importance.
In Judah God made Himself known as nowhere else (cf. Ps. lxxvi. 1,
2); she was the religious metropolis of the world (Ps. lxxxvii.);
Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, and the temple was the centre of
Jerusalem. Therefore the temple and its affairs completely dwarf all
other interests. Not only is the story in Kings of its building and
dedication by Solomon repeated and expanded (2 Chron. i.-ix.), but
the story of David's reign (1 Chron. xi.-xxix.) is almost entirely
monopolized by an account of the arrangements which he made for the
temple ordinances and the material which he collected for the
building. He is said to have given Solomon a plan of the temple with
all its furniture and sundry other details, the pattern of which he
is said to have himself received from the hand of God (xxviii).
Every opportunity is taken in the course of the history to dwell
with an affectionate elaboration of detail on the temple services or
festivals; and the resultant contrast between the corresponding
accounts of the same reign in Kings and Chronicles is often very
singular--nowhere more so than in the story of Hezekiah, most of
which is devoted to an account of the great passover held in
connexion with the reformation (2 Chron. xxix., xxx.).
The Chronicler betrays, if possible, even more interest in the
Levites than in the priests. It is a Levite who is moved by the
Spirit to encourage Jehoshaphat before the battle (2 Chron. xx. 14),
and special attention is called to their enthusiasm at the
reformation of Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxix. 34). The Chronicler also
displays exceptional interest in the musical service--in his
account, e.g., of the inauguration of the temple and of the
passovers of Hezekiah and Josiah; so that it has been not
unreasonably conjectured that the author was himself a Levite and
member of one of the guilds of temple singers or musicians.
Since, then, the interests of the Chronicler are so undeniably
ecclesiastical, the question may be fairly raised how far his
narrative is strictly historical. It must be confessed, e.g., that
the impression made by his account of David is distinctly unnatural
and improbable, in the light of the graphic biography in 1 and 2
Samuel. It is not a supplementary picture, but an altogether
different one. The versatile minstrel-warrior of the earlier books
is transformed into a saint, whose supreme aim in life is the
service of religion; and this transformation is thoroughly
characteristic of the Chronicler. He deals with his literary sources
in the most sovereign fashion, and adapts them to his theories of
Providence. His omissions, e.g., are very significant. He has
nothing to say of David's adultery, nor of Solomon's idolatry, nor
of the intrigues by which he succeeded to the throne, nor of the
tribute of silver and gold which Hezekiah paid Sennaccherib (2 Kings
xviii. 14-16). It may be urged in extenuation of his silence that
his public were already familiar with these stories in the books of
Samuel and Kings; but he repeats so many sections from these books
word for word that his failure to repeat the sections which militate
against his heroes can only be regarded as part of a deliberate
policy. Especially must this be maintained in the light of his
numerous modifications or contradictions of his sources. David's
sons, he tells us, were chief about the king (1 Chron, xviii. 17);
he cannot allow that they were priests, as 2 Sam. viii. 18 says they
were. Nor can he allow that Solomon offered his dedicatory prayer
before the altar (1 Kings viii. 22)--that was the place for the
priest--so he erects for him a special platform in the midst of the
court, from which he addresses the people (2 Chron. vi. 13).
The motive of these changes is obviously respect for the priestly
law. Sometimes the motive is to glorify his heroes or to magnify
their enthusiasm or devotion. Where, e.g. in 2 Sam. xxiv. 24 David
pays Araunah fifty shekels of silver for the ground on which the
temple was afterwards built, in 1 Chron. xxi. 25 he pays 600 shekels
of gold. Similarly, in 1 Kings ix. 11 Solomon gives Hiram certain
cities in return for a loan; in 2 Chron. viii. 2 it is Hiram who
gives Solomon the cities. David accumulates 100,000 talents of gold
and 1,000,000 of silver for the building of the temple (1 Chron.
xxii.)--a fabulous and impossible sum when we remember that Solomon
himself had only 666 talents of gold yearly (1 Kings x. 14). In 2
Sam. xxi. 19 Elhanan is the hero who slays Goliath; the Chronicler
sees that this conflicts with the romantic story of David (1 Sam.
xvii.) and therefore makes Elhanan slay the brother of Goliath (1
Chron. xx. 5). In 2 Kings xxii., xxiii., the reformation of Josiah
follows very naturally upon the finding of the law in the eighteenth
year of the king, but the Chronicler represents the reformation as
taking place in his twelfth year, i.e. as soon as he came of age (2
Chrori. xxxiv. 3). He still, however, dates the finding of the law
in his eighteenth year (cf. 8), i.e. _six years after the
reformation_, and thus throws the history into an impossible
sequence, apparently for no other object than to illustrate the
youthful devotion of his hero-king. He is not even always consistent
with himself; following Kings (1 Kings xv. 14, xxii. 43) he says
that Asa and Jehoshaphat did not remove the high places (2 Chron.
xv. 17, xx. 33), and yet he had just before told us that they did (2
Chron, xiv. 5, xvii. 6) as, on his theory,--being good kings, they
should. The motive for the change is usually obvious. In 2 Sam.
xxiv. 1 Jehovah had tempted David to number the people. This is
intolerable to the more advanced theology of the Chronicler, so he
ascribes the impulse to Satan (1 Chron. xxi. 1). A similar
transformation may be seen in his notice of the doom of Saul. In 1
Sam. xxviii. 6 it is implicitly said that Saul earnestly sought to
discover the divine will; in 1 Chron. x. 14 this is roundly denied-he
did not inquire of Jehovah.
These and similar transformations, amounting sometimes to
contradictions of the original sources, are due to a religious
motive, and they appear to be made in perfectly good faith. The
Chronicler is a religious man who, unlike Job, finds no perplexities
in the moral world, but everywhere a precise and mechanical
correspondence between character and destiny. Not only is piety
rewarded by prosperity, but prosperity presupposes piety. The most
pious kings have the most soldiers. David has over a million and a
half, Jehoshaphat over a million, while Rehoboam has only 180,000.
Manasseh's long reign of fifty-five years--a stumbling-block, on the
Chronicler's theory--has to be explained by his repentance (2 Chron.
xxxiii. 11ff.). Religious explanations are everywhere assigned for
facts. Josiah's defeat and death are the penalty of his disobedience
to the word of God which came to him through the Egyptian king (2
Chron. xxxv. 21ff). So Uzziah's leprosy is the divine punishment of
his pride in presuming to offer incense despite the protests of the
priests (2 Chron. xxvi. 16ff.), The Chronicler sees the hand of God
in everything; He is the immediate arbiter of all human destiny.
That is why rewards and punishments are so swift and just and sure.
The divine control of human affairs is most conspicuously seen in
the Chronicler's account of battles, where the human warriors count
for nothing. God fights or causes a panic among the enemy; the
warriors do little more than shout and pursue (2 Chron. xiii. 15,
xx.). The battle-scenes show how little imagination the Chronicler
possessed; clearly he had never seen a battle, and he has no
conception of one (cf. Num. xxxi.). He thinks nothing of describing
a conflict between 400,000 Judeans and 800,000 Israelites, in which
half a million of the latter were slain (2 Chron. xiii.). It is all
so different from the stirring and life-like tales of the Judges or
the Maccabees.
In the face of these historical improbabilities, what are we to make
of the Chronicler's continual appeal to his sources? These are
ostensibly of two kinds: (_a_) historical, (_b)_
prophetical. (_a_) He frequently refers to the book of the
kings of Israel and Judah, the book of the kings of Judah and
Israel, the book of the kings of Israel, and the history of the
kings of Israel. No doubt one book is cited under these different
titles. The history of Manasseh, e.g., is said to be recorded in the
history of the kings of Israel (2 Chron. xxxiii. 18); clearly this
cannot be northern Israel, as Manasseh was a king of Judah. What,
then, was this book of the kings of Israel and Judah? At first we
are strongly tempted to regard it as our canonical book of Kings.
That book was already over two centuries in existence and must have
been familiar; not only are whole sections copied from it by the
Chronicler verbatim, but occasionally passages which he adopts
presuppose other passages which he has omitted; e.g. he follows 2
Sam. v. 13 in asserting that David took _more_ wives (1 Chron.
xiv. 3), though the word "more" has no meaning in his context; in
his source it points naturally enough back to 2 Sam. iii. 2-5. There
can be no doubt, then, that the canonical books of Samuel and Kings
constituted one of his sources.
Yet it is almost equally certain that that is not the book to which
he continually refers his readers. The "book of Jehu," which
recorded the history of Jehoshaphat, is said to be incorporated in
the book of the Kings of Israel (2 Chron. xx. 34); it is not,
however, in our canonical Kings. Neither is the prayer of Manasseh
(2 Chron. xxxiii. 18), nor are the genealogies referred to in 1
Chron. ix. 1. Again, for further information about Jotham the reader
is referred to the book of the kings of Israel and Judah (2 Chron.
xxvii. 7), when, as a matter of fact, the Chronicler has more to
tell about him than our book of Kings (2 Kings xv. 32-38). Clearly,
then, the book so frequently cited is not the canonical book of
Kings. What sort of production it was may be inferred from the
reference in 2 Chron. xxiv. 27 to the "_midrash_ of the book of
the Kings." Doubtless the book in question was a midrash, i.e. an
edifying commentary on the history, of the sort preserved in the
very late story of 1 Kings xiii. The tendency towards midrash, which
so powerfully affected the later Jewish mind, appears as early as
the stories of Elisha. (_b_) Prophetic sources are also
frequently cited or alluded to, e.g. the books of Samuel, Nathan,
Gad (1 Chron. xxix. 29), the prophecy of Ahijah, the book of
Shemaiah, the book of Iddo (2 Chron, xii. 15), the vision of Isaiah
(2 Chron. xxxii. 32), etc. Probably, however, these were not
independent prophetic works. The reference to the "_midrash_ of
the prophet Iddo" (2 Chron. xiii. 22) suggests that these works,
like the history of the kings, were midrashic; in all probability
they were simply extracts from the midrashic book of Kings already
alluded to. Practically all the prophets to whom books are ascribed
in Chronicles are mentioned in the canonical books, and probably
they were regarded as the authors of the sections in which their
names occur, so that the books of Samuel, Nathan and Gad would be
none other than the relevant portions of Samuel and Kings, or of the
midrash of these books. Thus the Chronicler's imposing array of
citations may be without injustice reduced to two books--the
canonical book of Kings (or Genesis to Kings) and the midrash to
those books.
These facts have led many to deny all value whatever to the
Chronicler's unsupported statements. But such a condemnation is too
sweeping. The genealogies in 1 Chron. i.-ix., though they no doubt
received many later additions, probably rest on good sources, and
there are other notices bearing, e.g., on the fortifications of
Rehoboam (2 Chron. xi.), Jotham (2 Chron. xxvii.), etc., on Uzziah's
enterprise in peace and war (2 Chron. xxvi. 5-15), on Judah's border
warfare (2 Chron. xvii. 11, xxi. 16, xxvi. 7, xxviii. 17f), etc.,
which do not display the Chronicler's characteristic tendencies and
appear to be authentic. On the whole, however, the historical value
of Chronicles must be rated low. Nor is its religious value high.
Its attitude to the problems raised by the moral order is
exceedingly mechanical, and with one noble exception (2 Chron. xxx.
18, 19), its general conception of religion is ritualistic. But it
is a valuable monument of the Judaism of the third century B.C., and
we learn from it to appreciate the daring independence of such books
as Job and Ecclesiastes.