VII.II.4. David is the first hero of Judah whom we meet with;

and he at once throws all others into the shade. His acts are

narrated to us in two detailed and connected works which are

mutually complementary. The first of these is contained in 1Samuel

xiv. 52-2 Sam viii 18, and in it we are circumstantially informed

how David rose to the throne. There follows his principal achievement

as king, the humiliation of the Philistines and the foundation of

Jerusalem, the work concluding with a short notice of other

remarkable circumstances. This narrative is preserved to us

complete, only not in the earliest form, but with many

interruptions and alterations. The second work, 2Samuel ix.-2Kings

ii. is mutilated at its commencement, but otherwise almost

completely intact, if 2Samuel xxi.-xxiv. be removed. It tells

chiefly of the occurrences at the court of Jerusalem in the later

years of the king, and carefully traces the steps by which

Solomon, whose birth, with its attendant circumstances, is

narrated at the outset, reached the throne over the heads of his

brothers Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, who stood before him. Both

works are marked by an essentially historical character. The

treatment is much more detailed, while not nearly so poetical as

in the history of Saul (1Samuel ix. seq.). There are no

exaggerations, such as xiv. 46 seq. The second is the better

work of the two, and frequently affords us a glance into the very

heart of events, showing us the natural occasions and human motives

which gave rise to the different actions. The point of view is,

however, the narrow one of Jerusalem; for example, the real

reasons of the revolt of the men of Judah under Absalom are

scarcely even hinted at. The leading sentiment of the writer,

there can be no doubt, is enthusiasm for David, but his weaknesses

are not concealed; the relations prevailing at his court, far from

edifying as they are, are faithfully reported, and the palace

intrigue which placed Solomon upon the throne is narrated with a

naivete which is almost malicious. The first work (1Samuel xvi.-

2Samuel viii.) gives a less circumstantial narrative, but follows

the thread of events not less conscientiously, and is based on

information little inferior to that of the second. The author's

partisanship is more noticeable, as he follows the style of a

biographer, and makes David the hero of the history from his very

first appearance, although king Saul is the ruling and motive power

in it. But Judaistic leanings were unavoidable, and they have

not gone so far as to transform the facts, nor indeed operated

in a different way or to a greater degree here than local

interest in the tribal hero, which is always the earliest motive

for narration, has done in other cases. This praise applies to

1Samuel xvi. seq., however, only so far as its original form goes.

It is different with the insertions, here very numerous, which

have crept into the older connection, or replaced a genuine piece

of the old story with a newer edition of it. In these the

tendency to idealise the founder of the dynasty of Judah has

worked creatively, and here we find rich materials for the history

of the tradition, in the rude style in which alone it is possible

as yet to construct that history. The beginning of the first work

especially is overgrown with later legendary formations.

David, known as a man of courage and prudence, and of a skilful

tongue, and recommended, moreover, by his skill on the harp, came

to the king's court and became his armour-bearer (xvi. 14-23).

He so approved himself in the war with the Philistines that Saul

advanced him step after step, and gave him his daughter in

marriage (xviii. 6 seq.). But the success and fame of the man of

Judah filled Saul with jealousy, and in one of his fits of frenzy

(to which x. 10 also shows him to have been subject) he threw his

javelin at David, who was seeking to drive away the evil spirit

by his playing (xix. 8-10). David agreed with Jonathan that it

was advisable for him to absent himself, but this only confirmed

the king's suspicions, which prompted him to destroy the priests

of Nob, because their head had provided David with food and

consulted the oracle for him (xxi 2-7, xxii. 6-23). The fugitive

himself Saul failed to lay hands on; he gathered round him his

own family and other desperate men, and became their leader in

the wilderness of Judah (xxii. 1-5, xxiii. 1-13, xxv. 2 seq.).

To escape the repeated persecutions of Saul, he at length passed

over to the country of the Philistines, and received the town of

Ziklag in Judah as a fief from the hands of the prince Achish

(xxvii. 1 seq.).

Such is the beginning of the history of David according to the

simple thread of the old narrative. The first accretion we

notice is the legend of the encounter of the shepherd boy with

Goliath (xvii. 1-xviii. 5), which is involved in contradiction

both with what goes before and with what follows it. According to

xvi. 14-23, David, when he first came in contact with Saul, was no

raw lad, ignorant of the arts of war, but "a mighty valiant man,

skilful in speech, and of a goodly presence;" and according to

xviii. 6 the women sang at the victorious return of the army,

"Saul has slain his thousands of the Philistines, and David his

tens of thousands," so that the latter was the leader of Israel

beside the king, and a proved and well-known man. Evidently

something of a different nature must originally have stood

between xvi. 23 and xviii. 6. Now the fate of the story of

Goliath (xvii. 1-xviii. 5) involves that of the story of the

anointing of David (xvi. 1-13), which is dependent on it

(xvi. 12, xvii. 42); and, as we have already decided that chapter

xv. is a secondary production, xiv. 52 joins on at once to xvi. 14.

In xviii. 6 seq., where we are told of the origin of Saul's

jealousy, several of the worst additions and interruptions are

wanting in the LXX, especially the first throwing of the javelin

(xviii. 9-11) and the betrothal to Merab (xviii. 17-19).

The insertions are most varied and confusing in the account of

the outbreak of the hostility of Saul and of David's flight

(chapters xix. xx). Chapter xix. 1-7, a pointless and artificial

passage, betrays its later origin by its acquaintance with chapter

xvii.; xviii. 29a (LXX) is continued at xix. 8. After Saul's

spear-cast David takes flight for the first time, but at verse 11

he is still at home, and makes his escape the second time with the

aid of feminine artifice, going to Samuel at Ramah, but to appear

in chap. xx. at Gibeah as before. The king remarks his absence

from table; Jonathan assures him of his father's favour, which,

however, David doubts, though he has no distinct evidence to the

contrary. When quite certain of the deadly hatred of the king,

David takes flight in earnest; in chapter xxi. seq. we find him

at Nob on his way to Judah, but at xxi. 10 he goes away afresh

from the face of Saul. It is evident that in reality and in the

original narrative the flight took place only once, and that it

must from the first have been directed to the place of refuge,

i.e., to Judah. This is enough to dispose of xix. 11-24: the

twentieth chapter is impossible in the connection, at least in

its present form, and in chapter xxi. verses 8-10 and 11-16 must

be left out. In the section which deals with the freebooter life

of David, chaps. xxiii-xxvii., considerable pieces have been added;

xxvii. 7-12 of course is one; but also the encounters of David with

his pursuers. There are two versions: the one, xxvi. 1-25, is

placed before chapter xxvii. on account of verse 19; the other,

xxiii. 14-xxiv. 22, is placed before chapter xxv. to avoid too near

a contact. There is a good deal of verbal coincidence between the

two, and we are entitled to regard the shorter and more pointed

version (chapter xxvi.) as the basis. But the sequence (xxvi. 25,

xxvii. 1) shows beyond a doubt that chapter xxvi. does not belong

to the original tradition. The process of inserting the additions

naturally was not completed without all sorts of editorial changes

in the older materials, e.g., xvi. 14.

Though proceeding from the same root, these offshoots are by no

means of the same nature, nor do they all belong to the same

stage of the process. Some of them are popular legends and

unconscious fictions. Of this nature is the story of Michal, who

takes the part of her husband against her father, lets him down in

the evening with a rope through the window, detains the spies for a

time by saying that David is sick, and then shows them the

household god which she has arranged on the bed and covered with

the counterpane (xix. 11-17). The scenes in which Saul and David

meet are of a somewhat different colour, yet we notice that the

conviction that the latter is the king of the future does not

interfere with the recognition of the former as the king _de facto_

and the anointed of Jehovah; Saul too appears not wicked, but

blinded. The secondary version (xxiii. 14 seq.) contains (not

to speak of the distinctly later insertion between verse 15 and

19), in addition to the touching features of the story, a

good-natured jest, telling how the two played hide-and-seek round a

hill, which took its name from the circumstance. These stories

present certain marks which serve to fix their date in the history

of the religion: one is, that the image in David's house is

spoken of quite simply; another, the expression in xxvi. 19,

"If Jehovah have stirred thee up against me, let Him accept an

offering, but if it be men, cursed be they before Jehovah,

because they have driven me out this day from the fellowship in

the land of Jehovah, and obliged me to serve other gods."

It is perhaps not by mere chance that this speech is wanting in

the parallel version, and that there is added in place of it a

formal act of recognition which Saul pays at the end to his

destined successor. As for the story of Goliath, it is also quite

artless, but its religious colouring is much more marked. The

speech with which David goes to meet the giant is characteristic on

this side (xvii. 4 seq.):

"Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, but I come unto thee

in the name of Jehovah of hosts, whom thou hast defied. This day will

He deliver thee into mine hand, that all the earth may know that there

is a God in Israel, and that this assembly (hqhl = Israel) may know that

Jehovah saveth not with sword and spear, for the battle is His."

This approaches to the religious language of the post-Deuteronomic

time. According to 2Samuel xxi. 19, Goliath of Gath, whose

spear-shaft was as thick as a weaver's beam, /1/ fought in the

-- Footnote

1. This expression occurs in I Samuel xvii., and shows this legend

to be dependent on 2Samuel xxi. xxiii., a collection of anecdotes

about heroes from the Philistine wars of David in the genuine short

popular style. Cf., on 1Chronicles xii., supra, p. 173.

-- Footnote

wars, not in Saul's time, but in that of his successor, and was

killed, not by a shepherd boy but by a warrior of Bethlehem

named Elhanan.

The theme of David and Jonathan has no doubt a historical basis,

but for us it is found only in second-hand versions. The story

of the farewell (chapter xx.) must be placed in this category.

Yet it appears to point back to an earlier basis, and the earlier

story may very possibly have belonged to the connection of the

original work. For the shooting of the arrow could only have a

meaning if it was impossible for the two friends to have an

interview. But as the story goes, they come together and speak

out freely what they have in their hearts, and so the dumb

signal is not only superfluous, but unintelligible and

meaningless. But if the most characteristic trait of the whole

story does not fit into it as it now stands, that is just saying

that the story has not come down to us in its true form.

Originally Jonathan only discharged the arrow, and called to his

boy where it lay; and David, hid in the neighbourhood of the

shooting range, heard in the call to the boy the preconcerted

signal. In calling that the arrow was nearer him or beyond him,

Jonathan was apparently telling the boy, but in reality telling

his friend, to come towards him or go farther away from him. The

latter was the case, and if so, the friends could not enter into

conversation; the tearful farewell then disappears, and the

sentimental speeches spoken before it in the same style, in which

Jonathan virtually admits that his father is right, and yet

decidedly espouses David's cause, disregarding the fact that David

will deprive him of his inheritance. /2/

-- Footnote

2. Only in one direction does he set limits to his self-denial:

he makes the future king solemnly promise to spare his family.

Here manifests itself an interest belonging to the time of the

narrator. The oriental custom according to which the new ruler

extirpates the preceding dynasty, was not systematically carried

out by David, and a special exception was made in favour of a son

left by Jonathan. "All my father's house," says Meribaal (2Samuel

xix. 28), "were dead men before my lord the king yet thou didst set

me at thy table: what right have I therefore yet to complain unto

the king (even about injustice)?" Now this son of Jonathan was the

ancestor of a Jerusalem family which flourished till after the exile.

Older traits in 1Samuel xx. are the importance attached to the new

moon, the family sacrifice at Bethlehem, perhaps the stone )BN )CL

which appears to have implied something inconsistent with later

orthodoxy, the name being in two passages so singularly corrupted.

-- Footnote

Chapter xviii. 6 seq. manifests tendency in a bad sense, even

apart from the additions of the Masoretic text. Here Saul's

enmity against David is carried back to the very beginning of

their relations together, and even his friendship is represented

as dissembled hatred. All the honours with which the king covers

his armour-bearer are interpreted as practices to get rid of him.

He makes him his son-in-law in order to expose him to deadly

danger in his efforts to procure the hundred foreskins of the

Philistines which were the price of the daughter. The connection

cannot dispense with xviii. 6 seq, but at the same time it is

beyond doubt that the venomous way of interpreting the facts is a

mark of later revision. For Saul here practices his perfidies

with the cognisance of his servants, who must therefore have been

well aware of his disposition towards David; but the old narrator

proceeds on the opposite assumption, that his hatred appeared all

at once, and that David had been held by all up to that time to

be one of the king's favourite servants: cf. xxi. 2-xxii. 14

seq., not to speak of chapter xx. And this alone agrees with the

nature of Saul as it is everywhere described to us.

It is a characteristic circumstance that the corruption of the

tradition is greatest in those narratives in which Samuel enters

into the history of David. There are two insertions of this

kind. According to xix. 18-24 David flees to the old man at

Ramah, where the school of the prophets is; Saul sends messengers

to take him, but these, when they come near Samuel and see him in

command of a troop of ecstatic enthusiasts, are seized by the

frenzy like the rest. The second set of messengers whom Saul

sends, and the third, fare no better; and Saul has at last to

come himself. But he also is drawn into the vortex, tears off his

clothes and dances before Samuel and David, the only

self-possessed spectators of the bacchantic company, till he falls

down; and he lies naked as he is a whole day and a whole night

upon the ground--whence the proverb, "Is Saul also among the

prophets?" But that David when he fled, fled in earnest and went

in the direction of Judah, instead of amusing himself by going

first towards the north, is perfectly evident, as much so as that

it is a serious abuse of the spirit of prophecy to make it serve

ends which are foreign to its nature, and turn it into a mere

instrument for the personal safety of David, who had no need

whatever to wait for Saul at Ramah to play him a trick

there. The narrative, which is unknown to the author of xv. 35,

arose out of the proverb which is quoted in it, but this receives

elsewhere (x. 12) a much more worthy interpretation. We can

scarcely avoid the suspicion that what we have before us here is

a pious caricature; the point can be nothing but Samuel's and

David's enjoyment of the disgrace of the naked king. For the

general history of the tradition the most interesting

circumstance is that Samuel has here become the head of a school

of prophets and the leader of their exercises. In the original

view of the matter (chaps. ix. x.) he appears alone and

independent, and has nothing to do with the companies of the

ecstatics, the Nebiim. He is a _Roeh_ or seer, not a _Nabi_ or

prophet. True, it is asserted in the gloss, ix. 9, that the two

words mean the same thing, that what is now called _Nabi_ was

formerly called _Roeh_. But that is scarcely quite correct. The

author of ix. x. knows the name _Nabi_ very well too, but he

never applies it to Samuel; he only uses it, in the plural, of

the troops of Jehovah--intoxicated dervishes. He gives it quite

a different meaning from _Roeh_, and also quite a different meaning

from that in which Isaiah and Jeremiah use the word _Nabi_. /1/

-- Footnote

1 As the words are used in 1Samuel i.Y., Isaiah and Jeremiah would

rather be called Roeh; and this is the justification of the

gloss, ix. 9.

-- Footnote

We cannot doubt that these distinctions rest on a historical basis,

and only gradually melted away in later times: so that Samuel

the seer need not be degraded into one of the flagellants.

David's flight to Samuel presupposes some previous relation to

him, and xix. 18 seq. seems to point back to xvi. 1-13. In

this piece David's career begins with his being anointed king in

Saul's place at Jehovah's command, when a mere shepherd boy, who

was not even counted in the family he belonged to. But in the

sequel no one knows anything about this. Even in the story of

Goliath (which in other respects harmonizes better with xvi. 1-13

than any other piece) the older brothers, here three, not seven,

know nothing of the anointing of the youngest, although they were

present and heard their own claims discussed (xvii. 28). In the

stories of David's persecution also, chapter xxiv. xxvi., Saul

alone is the sacred person, the anointed of Jehovah, not David.

A belief that David is chosen for high things by God is quite a

different matter from an anointing which has already taken place

in fact. And if consequent and antecedent be inseparable,

we must remember how, according to xv. 35, Samuel not only

withdraws himself from Saul till his death, but also feels grieved

for him till his death. It is a harsh transition from xv. 35:

"Samuel came no more to see Saul till the day of his death,

because he mourned over him," to xvi. 1:

"and Jehovah spake to him, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul,

seeing I have rejected him?"

But it appears clearly that the appointment of the successor

was connected with, and a consequence of, the deposition of the

predecessor.

The anointing of David by Samuel is at the same time the set-off

to the anointing of Saul by Samuel. This is clearly seen on

comparing x. 6, xi. 6, "and the Spirit of God leapt upon Saul,"

with xvi. 13, 14, "and the Spirit of Jehovah leapt upon David,

and it departed from Saul." In the former case the inspiration is

a momentary foaming over, in the latter (the leaping

notwithstanding) it is a permanent property; and this difference

alone leaves no doubt as to where the original is to be looked

for, and where the imitation. Saul alone, according to the old

tradition, was made king in a divine, i.e. an overpowering and

ideal manner: David was made king in a tedious human way, and

after many intermediate stages. Of Saul alone was it originally

told that the sudden outbreak of the spirit with which he,

unelected as he was, summoned the levy of Israel, placed himself

at its head, defeated the Ammonites, and became king, was quietly

prepared by an old seer, who pointed out to him his great

calling, and filled him with confidence in himself by secretly

anointing him in the name of Jehovah. All that was known of David

was how by his own energy he raised himself from a soldier to be

the leader of a band, from that to be the vassal prince, under the

Philistines, of Ziklag and Judah, and from a vassal prince to be

the independent and powerful king of Israel. He also was anointed,

not, however, beforehand by God, but after his elevation, by the

elders of Judah and Israel. But this human origin and this

inferiority in point of divine consecration to a predecessor

whose kingdom, as it turned out, Jehovah had not made to stand,

was found by a later age to be unworthy of him: he must at least

have received his anointing from Samuel as well as Saul. And this

was accordingly made good by the legend (xvi. 1-13). It is a

step further on this downward path that in the Judaistic version

(x. 17 seq.) all mention is omitted of the anointing of Saul.

We return to Samuel. The Books of Samuel take their name from

him, and he is a figure of great importance, if not for the history

itself, yet for the history of the tradition, the progress of

which may be measured by the change of view about his person.

In the views taken about him we may distinguish four stages.

Originally (ix. 1-x. 16) he is simply a seer, but at the same

time a patriotic Israelite, who feels deeply the need of his

country, and uses his authority as seer to suggest to the ear and

to the mind of one whom he recognises as fit for the purpose, his

destination to be Israel's deliverer and leader. This relation

between seer and warrior must be held fast and regarded as

historical if Samuel is to mean anything at all. Similar instances

are those of Deborah and Barak in earlier times, and later, that

of Elisha and Hazael, and still more, that of Elisha and Jehu.

Samuel's greatness consists in this, that he rouses to activity

the man who comes after him, and is greater than he: after

kindling the light which now burns in its full brightness, he

himself disappears. But his meteoric appearance and disappearance

excited wonder, and this in early times produced a story of his

youth, in which, while still a boy, he predicts the ruin of

pre-monarchical Israel (1Samuel i.-iii.). After he has done this,

darkness closes completely around him. Even in chapter iv. he

has completely disappeared, and when we meet him again he is an

old man. On the other side the circumstance that we hear nothing

more of the seer after his meeting with Saul, caused it to be

believed that a rupture very soon took place between the two.

This belief we meet with at the second stage of the tradition which

is represented by the prophetical narratives recorded in chaps.

xvi. and xxviii. It arose out of the inconsistency involved in

the fact that Jehovah did not afterwards confirm in his reign the

man whom He had chosen to be king, but overthrew his dynasty.

Thus it becomes necessary that Samuel, who anointed Saul, should

afterwards sorrowfully reject him. Even here he appears no longer

as the simple seer, but as a prophet in the style of Elijah and

Elisha who regards the Lord's anointed as his own handiwork, and

lays on him despotic commands (xv. 1), though according to x. 7

he had expressly left him to be guided by his own inspiration.

The transition from the second to the third stage is easy. Here

Samuel, after withdrawing the unction from Saul, at once transfers

it to David, and sets him up against his rejected predecessor as

being now de jure king by the grace of God. The respect with

v.hich he is regarded has meanwhile increased still further;

when he comes to Bethlehem the elders tremble at his approach

(xvi. 4 seq.); and in xix. 18 seq. he has a magical power over men.

Up to this stage, however, he has always been regarded as

intellectually the author of the monarchy. It is reserved for the

last (exilian or post-exilian) stage of the development of the

tradition to place him in the opposite position of one who resists

to the uttermost the desire of the people to have a king. Here

pre-monarchical Israel is advanced to a theocracy, and Samuel is

the head of the theocracy, which accounts for the feelings aroused

in him by their demand.

The modern judgment has been prejudiced in Saul's favour by

Samuel's curse, and to David's disadvantage by Samuel's blessing;

the picture of the one has not suffered from the blackening so

much as that of the other from the glorification. /1/

-- Footnote

1. The efforts of later writers to glorify David are at their worst

in their account of his last testament (1Kings ii. 1-12). Even

the language betrays this piece as a post-Deuteronomic insertion

(v. 2-4); the contents are borrowed from the succeeding narrative.

But in the narrative Solomon's conduct towards Adonijah, Abiathar,

Joab, and Shimei is not dictated by any means by the testament,

but by other considerations; and it is the declared object of the

narrator to show how Solomon's throne was established by the

removal of the elements of danger. Nor do the acute calculations

of the weak old king agree very well with the general impression

given of him at this time by 1Kings i. ii.

-- Footnote

Some critics, who are unencumbered either by prejudice or by

knowledge of the subject, regard Saul as the antagonist and David

as the creature of the clerical lust of rule, of which they see

the embodiment in Samuel. But this view gives Samuel a powerful

position over against the king such as he cannot have possessed

unless he had broad ground under his feet and an influence well and

extensively organised. Did he find support in the Nebiim? These

were only then rising into view out of an irregular enthusiasm

which was not yet confined to any definite circle or school; and

besides, the old tradition speaks of a close connection between

them and the king, but not between them and the seer. The belief

that the latter was the founder and president of their guild is

based on the worthless anachronistic anecdote, 1Samuel xix. 18

seq. Or was Samuel in conspiracy with the priests against Saul?

This is inferred from 1Samuel xxi.-xxii. where Abimelech of Nob

provides David with bread on his wanderings, and expiates this

offence with his own death and that of the whole race of Eli. But

in the first place these priests have no connection with Samuel.

In the second place there is nothing to make it probable that they

had an understanding with David, or were acquainted with his

ambitious plans if he had then begun to cherish them. In the third

place, it is positively certain that they represented no distinct

power in the state as against the king, but on the contrary were

entirely the creatures of his smile or frown; on the occurrence

of a faint suspicion they were put to death to a man without a dog

barking to remonstrate. The liberal view we are discussing of

Samuel's relation to Saul and David is based on the erroneous

assumption that Samuel had the hierocracy to rest on in his acts

of opposition to the monarchy. But the student who carries back the

hierocracy to these early times has still to learn the very

elements of what is necessary to a true historical appreciation of

Hebrew antiquity.

VI.III.

It is in the Book of Kings that the last revision works most

unrestrictedly. Here also chronological and religious elements

combine to the building up of the framework, and we begin with

examining the chronological system.

From the exodus from Egypt to the beginning of the building of

the temple was a period of 430 years; and from the latter to the

destruction of Jerusalem, a period, according to the numbers of

the kings of Judah, of 430 years, or reckoning the exile, of 480

years, as before. In Chronicles, the succession from Azariah ben

Ahimaaz, who was, according to the correct reading, the first to

officiate in the temple of Solomon, to Jozadak, who was carried

away in the captivity, consists of eleven high priests; thus,

reckoning the exile, we have again twelve generations of 40 years

each. The detailed figures which compose the total are here more

complicated, which is no doubt partly due to the fact that some

of them are dates which the reviser found given. Yet in this

instance also the number 40 is the basis of calculation, as we see

in the reigns of the kings of Judah. From the division of the

kingdom to the destruction of Samaria in the 6th year of Hezekiah,

the numbers are as follows: Rehoboam and Abijam, 20; Asa, 41;

Jehoshaphat, Joram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, 40; Joash, 40; Amaziah and

Uzziah, 81; Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, 38. From the destruction of

Samaria to the last date in Kings (2Kings xxv. 27), Hezekiah,

Manasseh, Amon, have 80; Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin,

79 1/4. Let him believe who can that it is a mere chance that the

figures 41 + 81 + 38 make up exactly 40 + 80 + 40.

The series of the kings of Israel is in point of chronology

dependent on the series of Judah. According to the numbers of the

latter, 393 years elapsed from the division of the kingdom to the

Babylonian captivity; and if we assume with Ezekiel (iv. 4) that

Samaria fell 150 years earlier than Judah, 243 years remain for

the duration of the northern kingdom. The figures given amount in

fact to 242 years. These 150 Israelite years, from the

destruction of Samaria to the destruction of Jerusalem, exceed, it

is true, by 17 the sum of the parallel years of Judah; and the

Israelite years from 1 Jeroboam to 9 Hosea fall short of the years

in Judah from 1 Rehoboam to 6 Hezekiah by about the same number.

This shows that no effort was made at first to synchronise the

individual reigns in the two series. The 242 years of the

northern kingdom are divided, by the epoch of 1 Jehu, into 98 and

144. If we take them at 240, the half of 480, the 98 must be

changed into 96, which then agree with the contemporary 96 Jewish

years. The deduction must be made at the reign of Baasha. Then

we get the following play of figures: Jeroboam 22, Nadab 2,

Baasha 22, Elah 2, Omri 12, Ahab 22, Ahaziah 2, Joram 12. That is

to say, the eight kings have together 96 years, the first four and

the last four 48 each. Two have the average number 12; the other

6 consists of three pairs of father and son; and the twice 12

years belonging to each pair are divided so that the father gets

12 + 10, and the son 12 - 10, obviously because the father was

considered much more important than the son. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Numbers of the kings of Judah from Solomon : 37+ 17+ 3 + 41 + 25

+ 8 + 1 + 6 + 40 + 29 + 52 + 16 + 29 + 55 + 2 + 31 + 11 + 11=430 years.

Jehoahaz and Jechoiachin are not counted; if they are included and a

year allowed for them, we must say 36 for Solomon. Numbers of the

kings of Israel from 1 Jeroboam: 22 + 2 + 24 +2+ 12 + 22 + 2+ 12 + 28 +

17 + 16 + 41 + 1 + 10 + 2 + 20 + 9. The artificial relations of the

numbers, as explained above, were communicated to me by Ernst Krey.

On the point that the synchronisms do not belong to the original

arrangement, see Jahrb. fur Deutsche Theol., 1875, p. 607 seq.

The correct view of Ezekiel iv. was first published by Bernhard Duhm

(Theol. dir Proph., p. 253). The number 390, given in the Massoretic

text in verse 5 for the duration of the captivity of the northern

Israelites, is impossible. For Ezekiel cannot mean that they have

been 350 years in exile already, and on the other hand he cannot

reckon the remaining period of their punishment at more than 40 years,

because 40 years is his calculation of the period of exile of

Judah, and the restitution of Israel and that of Judah are in his

view to take place at the same time; and indeed that of Egypt as well,

obviously because brought about by the same cause (xxix. 1 1-16),

the fall of the Chaldeans, which may be expected to take place in

40 years. The number 390 has got into verse 5 by mistake from verse 9,

where it is used of a quite different subject, not the years of the

exile, but the days of the last siege of Jerusalem. The gloss verse

13 rests on a similar confusion. The Septuagint correctly gives

for the Israelite exile the number of 150 years, or 190, according

as the last 40 years in which their punishment continued, along

with that of Judah, were included or omitted. It may be remarked

that 390 = 240 + 150. Compare further Robertson Smith, in the

Journal of Philologie, vol x., p. 209-213.

-- Footnote

The great period thus marked off and artificially divided into

subperiods, is surveyed and appraised at every important epoch in

sermon-like discourses. These are much more frequent in Kings

than in Judges and Samuel. It makes no difference whether the

writer speaks in his own person, or by the mouth of another; in

reviews of the past he speaks himself, 2Kings xvii.; in

anticipations of the future he makes another speak (1Kings viii.

ix.). A few examples must be cited to show what we mean.

The great epoch of the work is the building of the temple. On this

occasion Solomon makes a great dedicatory oration, in which he

entreats Jehovah to hear from heaven the prayer of those who shall

seek Him in this place. He concludes as follows:

"If they sin against Thee (for there is no man that sinneth not)

and Thou be angry with them and deliver them to be carried away

captive into the land of the enemy, far or near, if they then

bethink themselves and make supplication to Thee, saying, We have

sinned and have done perversely and are guilty, and so return unto

Thee with all their heart and all their soul in the land of the

enemies which led them away captive, and pray unto Thee toward

their land which Thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which

Thou hast chosen, and the house which Thou hast built for Thy name,

then hear Thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and

maintain their cause, and forgive thy people their

unfaithfulness, and give them compassion before them that carried

them away captive, that they may have compassion upon them. For

they be Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest

forth out of Egypt from the midst of the furnace of iron, and

didst separate them to Thyself from among all the people of the

earth, as Thou spakest by Moses thy servant."

What Jehovah answered to this we learn in chapter ix.

"I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication which thou hast made

before me; I have hallowed this house, to put my name there for ever,

and mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. If thou wilt

walk before me, as did David thy father, in integrity of heart

and in uprightness, to do all that I have commanded thee, and wilt

keep my statutes and my judgments, I will establish the throne of

thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father,

saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel.

But if YE or YOUR CHILDREN turn away from me, and will not keep

my statutes and my judgments which I have set before you, but

worship other gods, then will I cut off Israel out of the land

which I have given them, and this house which I have hallowed for

my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel shall be a

proverb and a byword among all people, and this house a ruin.

And when they ask: Why hath Jehovah done thus to this land and

to this house? the answer shall be: Because they forsook Jehovah

their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of

Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped

them and served them."

The division of the kingdom is also a very marked era in the

history. It is introduced by a prophecy of Abijah to the first

Jeroboam.

"Behold, I rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will

give ten tribes to thee; but he shall have one tribe for my servant

David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen;

because he has forsaken me, and worshipped Astarte of Sidon, and

Chemosh of Moab, and Milcom of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways

to do that which is right in my eyes, my statutes, and my judgments,

like David his father. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto

all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do what is

right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments as David

my servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house

as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee. And I will

for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever."

We pass over a series of prophecies in a similar strain which occur

regularly at the changes of dynasty in the northern kingdom, and

cite only the concluding words which accompany the fall of the

kingdom of the ten tribes (2Kings xvii.). This fall came about

"because the children of Israel sinned against Jehovah their God,

which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and feared other

gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom they had

driven out, and in the innovations of the kings of Israel; and

because the children of Israel imputed to Jehovah their God things

which are not so, and built them high places in all their cities,

from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; and they set up

pillars and Asheras on every high hill and under every green tree,

and there they sacrificed in all the high places, as did the people

whom Jehovah had driven out before them: and wrought wicked things

to provoke Jehovah to anger, and served the abominations which

Jehovah had forbidden. Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the

prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep

my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which

I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants

the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks

like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their

God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He

made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned

them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after

the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah

had charged them that they should not do like them. And they

left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them

molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of

heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass

through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold

themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to

anger. And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them

out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only.

But they of Judah also kept not the commandment of their God, but

walked in the manner of Israel: and Jehovah rejected the whole

race of Israel, and humbled them, and delivered them unto the hand

of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight."

No special concluding discourse is given for Judah, but that for

Israel applies to Judah as well. This we see both directly from

the last words of the passage cited, and from the circumstance

that two very characteristic abominations in the foregoing catalogue,

the worship of the host of heaven and the sacrifice of children,

were introduced, according to the testimony of the prophets, which

alone can determine the point, not in the eighth but only in the

seventh century, under Manasseh, and accordingly are not

chargeable on Israel, but only on Judah.

The water accumulates, so to speak, at these gathering places of

the more important historical epochs: but from these reservoirs

it finds its way in smaller channels on all sides. /1/ The first

-- Footnote

1. Such additions as MCWT YHWH, 1Kings xviii. 18 [LXX has

correctly YHWH, without MCWT] (ZBW BRYTK [LXX correctly (ZBW

without BRYTK] and more extensive ones, as 1Kings xviii. 31, 32a;

2Samuel vii. 2b [)#R NQR) WGW''] <error! read vi. 2b> ) I do not

reckon because they proceed from various periods, and are mostly

younger than the Deuteronomic revision, and belong rather to textual

than to literary criticism. It is certainly in itself very important

to detect and remove these re-touchings. The whole old tradition

is covered with them.

-- Footnote

question asked with regard to each ruler is, what position he took

up to the pure religion--whether he did what was right or what was

evil in the sight of Jehovah. Even in the case of those who only

reigned a week, this question receives an answer. In general it

has to be stated that they did evil. All except David and Hezekiah

and Josiah, were defective, says Jesus Sirach (xlix. 4),--not quite

accurately perhaps, but yet truly in so far as there is always some

objection even to the good kings. But the sin here reproved is no

longer, at least not principally, the worship of strange gods; it

is the perverted worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and

therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason

of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah

has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to

His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular

the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2).

That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period,

a sin widespread and persistent. It is aggravated by the fact,

that with the bamoth all kinds of unlawful abuses crept into the

worship of Jehovah, Maccebas and Asheras, evergreen trees, and

prostitutes of both sexes. Israel, continually compared with Judah

in the matter, is further charged with a second great sin, the sin

of Jeroboam, i.e., the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. The

religious estimate combines with the chronological facts to form

that scheme in which every single reign of the kings of Israel

and Judah is uniformly framed. Sometimes the frame is well filled

in with interesting matter, but in not a few cases historical matter

is almost entirely absent. The scheme appears most nakedly in such

chapters as 1Kings xv. xvi., 2Kings xiii. xiv. xv.

That this redaction of our book is essentially uniform with that

of the two historical books which precede it, requires no proof.

Only it has here a warmer and more lively tone, and a much

closer relation to the facts. In consequence of this we find it

much easier to determine the point of view from which it proceeds.

The mere fact that the narrative extends to the destruction of

Jerusalem, nay, to the death of the captive king Jehoiachin, shows

that we must place the date of the work not earlier than the

Babylonian exile, and, indeed, the second part of the exile.

The chronology reckons the exile in the period of 480 years, giving

50 years to it; and this would bring us still lower down; but it

is open to us to assume that this is a later modification, which

has not further affected the general character of the work. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Krey surmises that the last date mentioned, the liberation from

prison of, Jehoiachin in the 37th year after his accession to the

throne, was originally intended to form the lower limit of the

chronology, especially as the periods of 40 years under which, as

we have seen, the Jewish figures naturally fall, come exactly to

this date. But if this be the case, we cannot regard the 4th or

5th year of Solomon as the era started from, for then there is no

room for the 36 or 37 remaining years of Solomon's reign. But such

a starting-point is entirely unnatural; Solomon's 40 years

cannot be torn up in this way: if we are to make a division at

all in that period, it must be at the disruption of the monarchy,

the natural point of departure for the series of kings of Israel

and of Judah. It deserves remark, that the 37 years of Jehoiachin,

at the close of the older mode of calculation, which perhaps only

tried to bring out generations of 40 years, but also perhaps a

period of 500 years from David (40+40+20+ 41+40+40+81 + 38+ 80 + 79

1/4), answer to the 37 years of Solomon at the beginning of the

method now carried through. That a process of alteration and

improvement of the chronology was busily carried on in later

times, we see from the added svnchronisms of the kings of Israel

and Judah, from the uncertain statements in the Book of Judges,

some of them parallel with each other (e.g., the interregna and

minor judges, and the threefold counting of the time of the

Philistines) and even from the variants of the LXX.

-- Footnote

The writer looks back on the time of the kings as a period past

and closed, on which judgment has already been declared. Even at

the consecration of the temple the thought of its destruction is

not to be restrained; and throughout the book the ruin of the nation

and its two kingdoms is present to the writer's mind. This is the

light in which the work is to be read; it shows why the catastrophe

was unavoidable. It was so because of unfaithfulness to Jehovah,

because of the utterly perverted tendency obstinately followed

by the people in spite of the Torah of Jehovah and His prophets.

The narrative becomes, as it were, a great confession--of sins of

the exiled nation looking back on its history. Not only the

existing generation, but the whole previous historical development

is condemned--a fashion which we meet with first in Jeremiah (ii.

1 seq., iv. 3), who was actually confronted with the question as

to the cause of the calamity. /2/

-- Footnote

1. The fall of Samaria suggested similar reflections to the earlier

prophets with reference to the northern kingdom, but their views

are, as a rule (Amos v., Isaiah ix.), not nearly so radical nor so

far-fetched. Hosea does certainly trace the guilt of the present

up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah,

chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for

the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey

it from so high a point of view. In this also he is a precursor of

later writers, that he regards the human monarchy as one of the

great evils of Israel: he certainly had very great occasion for

this in the circumstances of the time he lived in.

-- Footnote

Ezekiel carried out this negative criticism of the past to greater

lengths, with particular reference to the abominations of the older

worship (chapter xvi., xx., xxiii.); and it is also to be found in

Isaiah xl.-xlvi. (xlii. 24, xliii. 27), though here it is

supplemented by a positive and greatly more suggestive view;

we find it also in Deuteronomy xxviii.-xxx., and in Leviticus xxvi.

The whole of the past is regarded as one enormous sin, which is to

be expiated in the exile (Jeremiah xxxii. 30; Ezekiel xviii. 2,

xxxiii. 10; Isaiah xl. 1); the duration of the punishment is even

calculated from that of the sin (Leviticus xxvi. 34). The same

attitude towards old times is continued after the return

(Zechariah viii. 13 seq., ix. 7 seq.; Nehemiah ix. 7 seq.).

The treatment is naturally from a Judaean point of view. Outside

of Jerusalem the worship of Jehovah is heretical, so that the

political revolt of the Northern Israelites was at the same time

an ecclesiastical schism. Yet they are not excluded in

consequence from community with the people of God, as in the

Chronicles: the old traditions are not thrown so completely

overboard as yet: only after the destruction of Samaria by the

Assyrians does Judah continue the history alone. Almost the same

reverence is paid to David and his house as to the city and the

temple. His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with

regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of

Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance,

with the liberation from prison of the Davidide Jehoiachin; this

is the earnest of greater things yet in store. In the words of

Abijah to Jeroboam, also, when he says that the humiliation of

the house of David and the revolt from it of the ten tribes will

not last for ever, we see the Messianic hope appear, which, as we

learn from Haggai and Zechariah, largely occupied the minds of

the Jews at the time of the exile and after it.

In the case of the books of Judges and Samuel it is not perhaps

possible to decide with perfect certainty what was the norm

applied by the last reviser in forming his estimates of the past.

In the Books of Kings there can be no doubt on this point. The

writer deals not only in indefinite references to the will of

Jehovah, which Israel ought to obey, but resists; he speaks now

and again (1Kings ii. 3, 2Kings xiv. 6, xvii. 37) of the written

Torah in which the judgments and statutes of Jehovah are contained,

a difference which indicates, one must allow, a historical feeling.

Now the code which is implicitly regarded as the standard is that

the discovery of which under Josiah is circumstantially narrated

in 2Kings xxii. xxiii., viz., Deuteronomy. We are led to this

conclusion, it is allowed on all hands, both by the phraseology

of the reviser and by the spirit of his judgments. He condemns

those sins specially against which Deuteronomy and the reformation

of King Josiah were directed. And the one verbal quotation made

from the book of the Torah is from Deuteronomy (2Kings xiv. 6;

Deuteronomy xxiv. 16). On the other hand, there are clear signs

that the author of the revision was not acquainted with the

Priestly Code. Nowhere is any distinction drawn between priests

and Levites; the sons of Aaron are never mentioned. The idea of

a central sanctuary before Solomon is contradicted by 1Kings iii.

2. In one section only, a section which has been greatly exposed

to corrections and interpolations of all kinds, namely, the

description of the temple and its consecration, 1Kings vi.-viii.,

do we meet with signs of the influence of the Priestly Code,

especially in the Massoretic text; in the Septuagint this is not

so much the case. The most important example of this has already

been investigated, p. 43, 44.

If, accordingly, we are fully justified in calling the revision

Deuteronomistic, this means no more than that it came into

existence under the influence of Deuteronomy, which pervaded the

whole century of the exile. The difference between

Deuteronomistic and Deuteronomic is one not of time only but of

matter as well: /1/ Deuteronomy itself has not yet come to regard

-- Footnote

1. Post-deuteronomic, but still from the time of the kings, are

1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii, 1 seq.; 2Kings xviii. 13, 17

seq., xix. 1 seq.; chaps. xi. xii. xxi. xxiii.

-- Footnote

the cultus in this way as the chief end of Israel, and is much

closer to the realism of the actual life of the people. A

difference in detail which allows of easy demonstration is

connected with the mode of dating. The last reviser distinguishes

the months not by their old Hebrew names, Zif, Bul, Ethanim, but

by numbers, commencing with spring as the beginning of the year.

In this he differs not only from his older sources (1Kings vi.

37, 38, viii. 2), but also from Deuteronomy.

VII.III.2. This revision is, as we expect to find, alien to the

materials it found to work on, so that it does violence to them.

They have been altered in particular by a very one-sided selection,

which is determined by certain religious views. In these views an

interest in the prophets mingles with the interest in worship. It

is not meant that the selection is due entirely to the last

reviser, though it is thoroughly according to his taste; others

had probably worked before him in this direction. But for us it

is neither possible nor important to distinguish the different

steps in the process of sifting through which the traditions of

the time of the kings had to pass.

The culminating point of the whole book is the building of the

temple; almost all that is told about Solomon has reference to

it. This at once indicates to us the point of view; it is one

which dominates all Judaistic history: the history is that of

the temple rather than of the kingdom. The fortunes of the

sanctuary and its treasures, the institution and arrangements of

the kings with reference to worship--we are kept _au courant_ about

these, but about hardly anything else. The few detailed

narratives given (2Kings xi seq. xvi. xxii. seq.) have the

temple for their scene, and turn on the temple. Only in

<2Kings?> xviii. seq. does the prophetical interest

predominate.

As for the kingdom of Israel, the statements about the cultus of

that state are very scanty and for the most part rather vague.

Here the prophetical narratives come to the front, generally such

as are told from the prophetic point of view, or at least tell of

the public appearances and acts of the prophets. Here and there

we are told of occasions on which the Northern kingdom came in

contact with Judah; here the Jewish feeling appears which dictated

the selection. What is merely historical, purely secular, is

communicated only in the scantiest measure: often there is

nothing but the names and succession of the kings. We learn

hardly anything about King Omri, the founder of the town of

Samaria and re-founder of the kingdom, who seems to have reduced

Judah also to the position of a dependent ally, nor do we learn

more about Jeroboam II., the last great ruler of Israel; while

the conflict with the Assyrians and the fall of Samaria are

despatched in a couple of verses which tell us scarcely anything

at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night

(2Kings ix. x.), but after it we grope in the dark again. Only

so much of the old tradition has been preserved as those of a

later age held to be of religious value: it has lost its original

centre of gravity, and assumed an attitude which it certainly had

not at first. It may have been the case in Judah that the temple

was of more importance than the kingdom, but there can be no

doubt that the history of Israel was not entirely, not even

principally, the history of prophecy. The losses we have to

deplore must have affected the Israelitish tradition most

seriously.

The damage done by the revision by its _positive_ meddling with

the materials as found in the sources, is not so irreparable; yet

it is considerable enough. The change of colour which was effected

may be best seen and characterised in the far-reaching

observations which introduce the Israelite series of kings;

"Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the

house of David; if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house

of Jehovah at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn

again to their rightful lord, and they will kill me, and become

subject again to Rehoboam king of Judah. Whereupon the king took

counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, Cease to

go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought

thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel

and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; for the

people went as one man, even unto Dan. And he made temples of

high places, and took priests from the midst of the people which

were not of the house of Levi; whomsoever he would he installed

as priest of the high places " (1Kings xii. 26-30, xiii. 33).

The perversion is scarcely so great as in Chronicles, but the

anachronism is sufficiently glaring in the mode of view

discernible in these reflections of Jeroboam, who appears to feel

that the Ephraimite kingdom was illegitimate in its origin and

could only be kept separate from the south by artificial means.

The blessing of Jacob and the blessing of Moses show us what the

sentiment of Northern Israel actually was. In the former Joseph

is called the crowned of his brethren, in the second we read

"His first-born bullock, full of majesty (the king), has the horns

of a buffalo, with which he thrusts down the peoples; these are the

ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh."

Whence came the charm of the name of Ephraim but from its being the

royal tribe, and the most distinguished representative of the proud

name of Israel? Of Judah we read in the same chapter, "Hear,

Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him back to his people."

There can be no doubt what the people is to which Judah belongs:

we cannot but agree with Graf, that this tribe is here regarded as

the alienated member, and its reunion with the greater kingdom

spoken of as the desire of Judah itself, and this is not so

remarkable when we reflect that the part belongs to the whole

and not the whole to the part. Only by long experience did Judah

learn the blessing of a settled dynasty, and Ephraim the curse of

perpetual changes on the throne.

Judah's power of attraction for the inhabitants of the Northern

Kingdom is thought to lie in the cultus of the Solomonic temple;

and Jeroboam is said to have tried to meet this by creating new

sanctuaries, a new form of the worship of Jehovah, and a new order

of priesthood. The features in which the Samaritan worship

differed from the Jewish pattern are represented as intentional

innovations of the first king, in whose sin posterity persisted.

But in making Bethel and Dan temples of the kingdom--that he set up

high places, is a statement which need not be considered--Jeroboam

did nothing more than Solomon had done before him; only he had

firmer ground under his feet than Solomon, Bethel and Dan being

old sanctuaries, which Jerusalem was not. The golden calves,

again, which he set up, differed in their gold but not in their

object from the ephods and idols of other kinds which were

everywhere to be found in the older "houses of God"; e.g. from

the brazen serpent at Jerusalem. /l/

-- Footnote

1. "Although Jeroboam had lived in Egypt, it would he wrong to say

that he brought animal worship with him from that country, as

wrong as to regard Aaron's golden calf as a copy of Apis. The

peculiarity of the animal-worship of Egypt, and of its

bull-worship in particular, was that sanctity was attributed to

_living_ animals." Vatke, p. 398. Egyptian gods cannot help

against Egypt, Exodus xxxii. 4; 1Kings xii. 28.

-- Footnote

Even Eichhorn remarked with force and point, that though Elijah

and Elisha protested against the imported worship of Baal of Tyre,

they were the actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan,

and did not think of protesting against His pictorial

representation; even Amos makes no such protest, Hosea is the

first who does so. As for the non-Levitical priests whom the king

is said to have installed, all that is necessary has been said on

this subject above (p. 138 seq.).

A remarkable criticism on this estimate of the Samaritan worship

follows immediately afterwards in the avowal that that of Judah

was not different at the time, at any rate not better. In the

report of Rehoboam's reign we read (1Kings xiv. 22 seq.):

"They of Judah also set up high places and pillars on every high

hill, and under every green tree, and whoredom at sacred places

was practiced in the land."

This state of things continued to exist, with some fluctuations,

till near the time of the exile. If then the standard according

to which Samaria is judged never attained to reality in Judah

either, it never existed in ancient Israel at all. We know the

standard is the book of the law of Josiah: but we see how the

facts were not merely judged, but also framed, in accordance

with it.

One more instance is worthy of mention in this connection. King

Solomon, we are told, had, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, many

foreign wives, from Moab, Ammon, and other peoples, intermarriage

with whom Jehovah had forbidden (Deuteronomy xvii 17). And when he was

old, they seduced him to the worship of their gods, and he

erected on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem high places for

Chemosh of Moab, and for Milcom of Ammon, and for the gods of his

other wives. As a punishment for this Jehovah announced to him

that his kingdom should be torn from him after his death and given

to his servant, and also raised up adversaries to him, in Hadad

the Edomite, who freed Edom, and in the Syrian Rezon teen Eliadah,

who made Damascus independent. And by the prophet Abijah of

Shiloh, he caused the Ephraimite Jeroboam, who then had the

supervision of the forced labour of the house of Joseph in the

fortification of the city of David, to be nominated as the future

king of the ten tribes. So we read in 1Kings xi. But Edom, and,

as it appears, Damascus as well, broke away from the kingdom of

David immediately after his death (xi. 2I seq., 25); and the

fortification of the citadel, in which Jeroboam was employed when

incited to revolt by Abijah, though it falls somewhat later, yet

belongs to the first half of Solomon's reign, since it is

connected with the rest of his buildings (ix. 15, 24). Now

Solomon cannot have been punished by anticipation, in his youth,

for an offence which he only committed in his old age, and the

moral connected with these events is contradicted by chronology

and cannot possibly be ascribed to the original narrator. The

Deuteronomistic revision betrays itself, in fact, in every word

of xi. 1-13. To the original tradition belongs only the mention

of the many wives--without the reprobation attached to it,--and

the statement about the building of the altars of Chemosh and

Milcom and perhaps Astarte, on the Mount of Olives, where they

stood till the time of Josiah (2Kings xxiii. 13). The connection

of the two events, in the relation of cause and effect, belongs to

the last editor, as well as the general statement that the king

erected altars of the gods of all the nationalities represented by

his wives.

In the Books of Kings, it is true, the tradition is not

systematically translated into the mode of view of the Law, as

is the case in Chronicles. What reminds us most strongly of

Chronicles is the introduction from time to time of a prophet who

expresses himself in the spirit of Deuteronomy and in the

language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then disappears. /l/

-- Footnote

1. Cf. Kuenen, Profeten onder Israel (1875), ii. p. 143; English

translation (1877), p 398. One of these Deuteronomistic prophecies

is cited above, p. 275. They are in part anonymous, e.g, 2Kings

x. 30, xxi. 10 seq, in part connected with old names, e.g 1Kings

xvi. 1 seq. In many instances no doubt the reviser found

flints in his sources and worked them out in his own style; thus,

1Kings xiv. 7 seq., xxi 21 seq. 2Kings ix. 7 seq. In these

passages the Deuteronomistic ideas and the phraseology of

Jeremiah and Ezekiel are distinctly present [ HNNY MBY) R(h ], but

detached expressions of an original type also occur,--which, it is

true, are then constantly repeated, e.g. (CWN W(ZWB. Names,

too, like Jehu ben Hanani, are certainly not fictitious: we are

not so far advanced as in Chronicles. Cf. 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.;

2Samuel vii. 1 seq.

-- Footnote

In this way the Law is introduced into the history in a living

way; the prophets keep it effective and see it applied, according

to the principle stated, 2Kings xvii. 13, which is founded on

Jeremiah vii. 25; Deuteronomy xviii. 18:

"Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers saying,

Turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,

according to all the Torah which I commanded your fathers and which

I sent unto you by my servants the prophets."

The most unblushing example of this kind, a piece which, for historical

worthlessness may compare with Judges xix.-xxi. or 1Samuel vii. seq.,

or even stands a step lower, is 1Kings xiii. A man of God from Judah

here denounces the altar of Bethel, at which King Jeroboam is in the

act of offering sacrifice, in these terms:

"O altar, altar, behold a son shall be born to the house of David,

Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the

high places, that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be

burned upon thee."

And to guarantee the truth of this prophecy, to be fulfilled three

hundred years afterwards, he gives the sign that the altar shall

burst asunder, and the ashes of the sacrifice upon it be poured

out--which at once takes place. This legend, however, does not

really belong to the Deuteronomist, but is a still later

addition, as is easily to be seen from the fact that the sentence

xii. 31 is only completed at xiii. 34. It deserves remark that

in the two verses which introduce the thirteenth chapter, xii. 32

seq., the feast of tabernacles is fixed, in accordance with the

Priestly Code, as the 15th of the 7th month.

VII.III.3. In this case also we are able to discern considerable

shades and gradations in the sources the reviser had at command.

In the Books of Kings for the first time we meet with a series of

short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are

in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness

of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In

spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis

of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious

chronological framework is regularly filled in with them (e.g.

1Kings xiv.-xvi.); their loose connection and neutral tone made

it specially easy for later editors to interweave with them

additions of their own, as has actually been done to no small

extent. /1/

-- Footnote

1. The passage discussed above, 1Kings xi. 1 seq., gives a good

example of this; we at once pick out the terse )z ybnh wgw'' from

the barren diffuseness surrounding it.

-- Footnote

These valuable notes commence even with Solomon, though here they

are largely mixed with anecdotic chaff. They are afterwards found

principally, almost exclusively, in the series of Judah. Several

precise dates point to something of the nature of annals, /2/

-- Footnote

2. 5th of Rehoboam (1Kings xiv. 25); 23rd of Jehoash (2Kings xii,

6); 14th of Hezekiah (2Kings xviii. 13); 18th of Josiah (2Kings

xxii. 3); 4th and 5th of Solomon (1Kings vi. 37, 38). These

dates occur, it is true, partly in circumstantial Jewish

narratives, but these are intimately related to the brief notices

spoken of above, and appear to be based on them. It may be

surmised that such definite numbers, existing at one time in much

greater abundance, afforded the data for an approximate

calculation of the figures on which the systematic chronology is

built up. These single dates at any rate are not themselves

parts of the system. The same is true of the statements of the

age of the Jewish kings when they ascended the throne. These

also perhaps go back to the "Annals." The )Z is found 1Kings iii.

16, viii. 1, 12, ix. 11, xi. 7, xvi. 21, xxii. 50; 2Kings

viii. 22, xii. 18, xiv. 8, xv. 16, xvi. 5.

-- Footnote

and with these the characteristic then might be thought to be

connected, which frequently introduces the short sentences, and

as it now stands is generally meaningless. In what circles these

records were made, we can scarcely even surmise. Could we be

certain that the reference to the royal temple of Judah, which is

a prevailing feature of them, is due not to selection at a later

time but to the interest of the first hands, we should be led to

think of the priesthood at Jerusalem. The loyalist, perfectly

official tone would agree very well with this theory, for the

sons of Zadok were, down to Josiah's time, nothing else than the

obedient servants of the successors of David, and regarded the

unconditional authority claimed by these kings over their

sanctuary as a matter of course (2Kings xvi. TO seq., xii. 18).

These notices, however, as we have them, are not drawn from the

documents themselves, but from a secondary compilation, perhaps

from the two sets of chronicles cited at the end of each reign of the

kings of Israel and those of Judah, from which at all events the

succession of the rulers appears to the drawn. These chronicles

are not to be identified, it is clear, with the original annals.

The _book_ of the annals must be distinguished from the Dibre-hajamim

themselves. Whether the chronicle of Israel_-hardly anything out

of which is communicated to us--was composed much earlier than the

chronicle of Judah (which seems to close with Jehoiachim), and

whether it and the chronicle of Solomon (1Kings xi. 41) are a

quite independent work, I am inclined to consider doubtful.

The excerpts from the annals are interrupted by more extensive

episodes which are interwoven with them, and are also embraced in

the Deuteronomistic scheme. Of these the Jewish ones are the

minority, the greater part are Samaritan, but they all belong to

a very limited period of time. I select the miraculous history

of Elijah as an example of these, to show the sentiment and the

change of sentiment in this instance also.

The prophet Elijah, from Tishbeh in Gilead, appears before King

Ahab of Samaria, and says,

"By the life of Jehovah the God of Israel, whom I serve, there

shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word."

The story begins abruptly; we require to know that Ahab, stirred

up by Jezebel, has been propagating in Israel the worship of the

Tyrian Baal, and has killed the prophets of Jehovah by hundreds:

this is the reason of the punishment which comes on him and his

land (xviii. 13, 22). Elijah vanishes as suddenly as he appeared.

We find him again at the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan;

then in the land of Baal with a widow at Zarepta; while following

his fortunes we are made to feel in a simple and beautiful way

the severity of the famine. Ahab in the meantime had sent out

messengers to take him, and had required of every state to which

the vain search had extended, an oath that he was not to be found

there. Now, however, necessity obliged him to think of other

things; he had to go out himself with his minister Obadiah to

seek fodder for the still remaining war-horses (Amos vii. 1). In

this humiliating situation he all at once met the banished man.

He did not believe his eyes. "Is it thou, O troubler of Israel?"

"I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house!"

After this greeting Elijah challenged the king to institute a

contest between the 450 prophets of Baal, and him, the only

prophet of Jehovah left remaining. A trial by sacrifice took

place on Mount Carmel before the whole people. Each party was to

prepare a bullock and lay it on the altar without setting fire to

the wood; and the divinity who should answer by fire was the

true God. The prophets of Baal came first and sought after their

own manner to influence their deity. They shouted and leapt

wildly, wounded themselves with swords and lances till they were

covered with blood, and kept up their raving ecstasy from morning

till mid-day, and from mid-day till evening. During this time

Elijah looked at them and mocked them, saying, "Cry louder, for he

is a god; either he is talking, or he is somehow engaged, or he

is asleep and must be awaked." At last his turn came; he repaired

the altar of Jehovah, which was broken down, spread the pieces of

the sacrifice upon it, and, to make the miracle still more

miraculous, caused them to be flooded two or three times with

water. Then he prayed to Jehovah, and fire fell from heaven, and

consumed the sacrifice. The people, up to this point divided in

their mind, now took the side of the zealot for Jehovah, laid hold

of the prophets of Baal, and slaughtered them down below at the

brook. A great storm of rain at once came to refresh the land.

This triumph of Elijah was only a prelude. When Jezebel heard

what had happened she swore vengeance against him, and he fled for

his life to Beersheba in Judah, the sanctuary of Isaac. Wearied

to death he lay down under a juniper-bush in the wilderness, and

with the prayer, It is enough: now, O Jehovah, take away my

life, he fell asleep. Then he was strengthened with miraculous

food by a heavenly messenger, and bidden to go to Horeb, the

mount of God. He arrived there after a long journey, and withdrew

into a cave; a rushing wind sweeps past; the wind and the

earthquake and the lightning are the forerunners of Jehovah; and

after them He comes Himself in the low whispering that follows the

storm. His head covered, Elijah steps out of the cave and hears a

voice ask what ails him. Having poured out his heart, he receives

the divine consolation that his cause is by no means lost; that

the direst vengeance, the instruments of which he is himself to

summon to their task, is to go forth on all the worshippers of

Baal, and that those 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal

shall gain the day--"Thou shalt anoint Hazael to be King over

Damascus, and Jehu ben Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be

iiing over Israel, and Elisha ben Shaphat to be prophet in thy

room; and him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay,

and him that escapeth the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay."

The account of the execution of these commands by Elijah is at

present wanting; we shall soon see why it was omitted. The

conclusion of chapter xix. only tells us that he called Elisha

from the plough to follow him. Of the account of the judgment

which overtook the worshippers of Baal, this group of

narratives contains only the beginning, in chapter xxi. Ahab

wanted to have a vineyard which was situated beside his palace in

Jezreel, his favourite residence: but Naboth, the owner, was

unwilling to enter on a sale or an exchange. The king was angry,

yet thought he could do no more in the matter; but Jezebel of

Tyre had other notions of might and right and said to him,

"Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? be of good courage;

I will get thee the vineyard."

She wrote a letter to the authorities of the town, and got Naboth

put out of the way by means of corrupt judges. As Ahab was just

going to take possession of the vineyard which had fallen into his

hands, his enemy came upon him. The prophet Elijah, always on the

spot at the right moment, hurled the word at him,

"Hast thou killed and also taken possession? Behold, in the place

where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood also."

Here this story breaks off. What follows is not the true continuation.

The thread of the narrative xvii.-xix. xxi. is also broken off

here, without reaching its proper conclusion. The victory of

Jehovah over Baal, of the prophet over the king, is wanting; the

story of Naboth is, as we said, only the introduction to it. We

are sufficiently informed about the facts, but in form the

narratives do not answer to the announcement in chapter xix. and

xxi.; they are drawn from other sources. According to xix. 1 7

the Syrian wars ought to result in vengeance on the worshippers of

Baal, and specially on the idolatrous royal house; but in the

narrative of the wars (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings vii. ix. )

this point of view does not prevail. On the contrary, Ahab and

Joram there maintain themselves in a manly and honourable way

against the superior power of Damascus it is ONLY AFTER the

extirpation of Baal worship under Jehu that affairs took an

unfortunate turn, and Hazael, who brought about this change, was

not anointed by Elijah but by Elisha (2Kings viii. 7 seq.) /.l/

-- Footnote

1. The same applies to Jehu (2Kings ix. 1 seq.). This is the

reason of the above remarked omission after 1Kings xix. 21: cf.

Thenius's commentary.

-- Footnote

The massacre at Jezreel, too, which is predicted in the threat of

1Kings xxi. 19, would need to be told otherwise than in 2Kings ix.

x., to form a proper literary sequel to the story of Naboth.

According to 1Kings xxi. 19 the blood of Ahab is to be shed at

Jezreel; according to 2Kings ix. 25 his son's blood was shed there,

to avenge Naboth. It is true, the explanation is appended in xxi.

27-29, that, as the king took to heart the threats of Elijah,

Jehovah made a supplementary communication to the prophet that

the threat against Ahab's house would only be fulfilled in the

days of his son; but who does not see in this an attempt to

harmonise conflicting narratives? /2/ A whole series of

-- Footnote

2 In spite of xxi. 27-29, an attempt is made at xxii. 38 to show

that the threat was fulfilled in Ahab himself. We are told that

Ahab was shot in his chariot and that his servants brought his

body from Ramoth-Gilead to bury it there. Then we read xxii. 38

"and they washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs

licked up his blood, and the harlots bathed in it, according to

the word of Jehovah."

Thus it is explained how the dogs were able to lick his blood in

Samaria, though it had had plenty of time to dry up after the

battle! The fact was unfortunately over-looked that according

to xxi. 19 the dogs were to lick the blood of Ahab not at Samaria

but at Jezreel, the place of Naboth. The verse xxii. 38 is an

interpolation which does credit to Jewish acuteness.

-- Footnote

subordinate discrepancies might be mentioned, which prove that

2Kings ix. x. does not look back to the story of the murder of

Naboth as told in 1Kings xxi. According to ix. 25, 26, the dispute

was not about the vineyard, but about the field of Naboth, which

lay some distance from the town. His family was put to death

along with him, and on the following day, when Ahab rode out IN

COMPANY WITH JEHU and Ben Deker to take possession of the field,

the word of the prophet (not framed so specially against him

personally) met him: "Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of

Naboth and of his sons, and I will requite it in this plat."

With the help of these other accounts, among which there is a

considerable group of uniform character (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings

iii. vi. 24-xii. 20. ix. 1-x. 27) favourably distinguished

from the rest, we are placed in a position to criticise the history

of Elijah, and to reach a result which is very instructive for

the history of the tradition, namely that the influence of the

mighty prophet on his age has after all been appraised much too

highly. His reputation could not be what it is but for the wide

diffusion of Baal worship in Israel: and this is not a little

exaggerated. Anything like a suppression of the national religion

at the time of Elijah is quite out of the question, and there is

no truth in the statement that the prophets of Jehovah were entirely

extirpated at the time and Elijah alone left surviving. The

prophetic guilds at Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal continued without

any interruption. In the Syrian wars prophets of Jehovah stand by

the side of Ahab; before his last campaign there are four hundred

of them collected in his capital, one of them at least long known

to the king as a prophet of evil, but left alive before and left

alive now, though he persisted in his disagreeable practices. Of

the sons whom Jezebel bore him, Ahab called one Ahaziah, i.e.

Jehovah holds, and another Jehoram, i.e. Jehovah is exalted: he

adhered to Jehovah as the god of Israel, though to please his wife

he founded at Samaria a temple and a cultus of the Syrian goddess.

This being so, Elijah's contest with Baal cannot have possessed

the importance attributed to it from the point of view of a later time.

In the group of popular narratives above referred to, there is no

trace of a religious commotion that tore Israel asunder: the whole

strength of the people is absorbed in the Syrian wars. The kings

are the prominent figures, and do well and according to their office

in battle: Elijah stands in the background. From several indications,

though from no direct statements, we learn of the high esteem which

Ahab enjoyed from friend and foe alike (xx. 3I, xxii. 32-34 seq.).

Joram also, and even Jezebel, are drawn not without sympathy (2Kings

vi. 30, ix. 31). We can scarcely say the same of Jehu, the murderer,

instigated by the prophets, of the house of Ahab (2Kings ix. 10).

It is the fact, certainly, that the prophets' hatred of Baal

succeeded at last in overturning the dynasty of Omri. But in

what manner was this done? At a time when King Joram was

prevented by a wound he had received from being with his army in

the field, a messenger of Elisha went to the camp, called the

captain apart from a banquet at which he found him, to a secret

interview, and anointed him king. When Jehu returned to his

comrades at their wine, they asked him what that mad fellow had

wanted, and, his evasive answers failing to satisfy them, he told

them the truth. They at once raised him on an improvised throne,

and caused the trumpets to proclaim him king: they were quite

ready for such an exploit, not that they cared in the least for

"that mad fellow." Jehu justified their confidence by his

astounding mastery in treachery and bloodshed, but he placed his

reliance entirely on the resources of his own talent for murder.

He was not borne along by any general movement against the dynasty;

the people, which he despised (x. 9), stood motionless and horrified

at the sight of the crimes which came so quickly one after another;

even a hundred years afterwards the horror at the massacre of Jezreel

still lived (Hosea i. 4). The crown once gained, the reckless

player showed his gratitude to the fanatics, and sent the priests

and worshippers of Baal after the priests of Jehovah whom he had

slaughtered along with all belonging to the royal house (x. 11).

The manner in which he led them into the snare (x. 18 seq.) shows

that no one had thought before this of regarding him as the

champion of Jehovah; and even at this time his zeal was manifestly

only ostensible: he was not fighting for an idea (x. 15.

seq.). Thus we see that Baal did not bring about the fall of

the house of Ahab, but common treason; the zealots employed for

their purposes a most unholy instrument, which employed them in

turn as a holy instrument for its purposes; they did not

succeed in rousing the people to a storm against Baal, far from it.

The execution of Naboth seems to have excited greater indignation:

it was a crime against morals, not against religion. Even in the

history of Elijah the admission is made that this struggle

against Baal, in spite of his sacrificial victory on Carmel, was

in the end without result, and that only the judicial murder of

Naboth brought about a change in the popular sentiment. But

according to 2Kings ix. 25, this murder proved a momentous event,

not because it led, as we should expect, to a popular agitation,

but from the fortuitous circumstance that Jehu was a witness of the

never-to-be-forgotten scene between Ahab and Elijah, and seemed

therefore to the prophets to be a fit person to carry out his

threatenings.

It is certainly the case that the grand figure of Elijah could not

have been drawn as we have it except from the impression produced

by a real character. /1/ But it is too much torn away from the

-- Footnote

1. The distance of the narrator is not so very great in point of

time from the events he deals with. He is a North-Israelite, as

the )#R LYHWDH of xix. 3 shows: this may also be gathered from

xix. 8 compared with Deuteronomy i. 2. A man of Judah could not

easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though

we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of

Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been

accustomed to assume. Another sign of antiquity is the way in

which Elijah is represented as combating Baal in Israel, and in

the land of Sidon associating with the worshippers of Baal on the

most friendly terms (Luke iv. 25 seq.).

-- Footnote

historical position it belongs to, and is thereby magnified to

colossal proportions. It may be said of this class of narratives

generally, that the prophets are brought too much into the foreground

in them, as if they had been even in their lifetime the principal

force of Israelite history, and as if the influence which moved

them had ruled and pervaded their age as well. That was not the case;

in the eyes of their contemporaries they were completely overshadowed

by the kings; only to later generations did they become the principal

personages. They were important ideally, and influenced the future

rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible

importance is attributed to them. In the time of Ahab and Jehu the

Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own,

but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable

fellows, who ate out of the king's hand and were treated with disdain

by members of the leading classes. Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true,

belonged to a younger generation, felt it an insult to be counted

one of them. Elijah and Elisha rose certainly above the level of

their order; but the first, whose hands remained pure, while he no

doubt produced a great impression at the time by his fearless words,

effected nothing against the king, and quite failed to draw the

people over to his side: while Elisha, who did effect something,

made use of means which could not bear the light, and which attest

rather the weakness than the strength of prophecy in Israel.

VII.III.4. Let us conclude by summing up the results to which we

have been led by our eclectic pilgrimage through the historical

books. What in the common view appears to be the specific character

of Israelite history, and has chiefly led to its being called sacred

history, rests for the most part on a later re-painting of the

original picture. The discolouring influences begin early. I do

not reckon among these the entrance of mythical elements, such as

are not wanting even in the first beginnings to which we can trace

the course of the tradition, nor the inevitable local colour,

which is quite a different thing from tendency. I think only of

that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded

history exclusively from the point of view of their own

principles. Here we observe first a religious influence, which in

the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical

one. The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets

that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole. The song,

Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old

Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it

were actually composed by Deborah, the seer stands in no connection

with the prophets. Least of all can the colleges of the B'ne Nebiim

at Gilgal and other places be regarded as nurseries of historic

tradition: the products which are to be traced to these circles

betray a somewhat narrow field of vision (2Kings ii., iv. 1-6, 23).

The prophets did not form the tradition at first, but came after,

shedding upon it their peculiar light. Their interest in history

was not so great that they felt it necessary to write it down;

they only infused their own spirit into it subsequently.

But the systematic recoining of the tradition was only effected

when a firmer stamp had become available than the free ideas of

the prophets, the will of God having been formulated in writing.

When this point was reached, no one could fail to see the

discrepancy between the ideal commencement, which was now sought

to be restored as it stood in the book, and the succeeding

development. The old books of the people, which spoke in the most

innocent way of the most objectionable practices and

institutions, had to be thoroughly remodelled according to the

Mosaic form, in order to make them valuable, digestible, and

edifying, for the new generation. A continuous revision of them

was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the

Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in

the Babylonian exile. The style of the latter revision differed

from that of the former. In Chronicles the past is remodelled on

the basis of the law: transgressions take place now and then, but

as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and

Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from

the law is not disputed. In these works also the past is in some

cases remodelled on the basis of the ideal, but as a rule it is

simply condemned. That is one difference; another has to be

added which is of far greater importance. In the Chronicles the

pattern according to which the history of ancient Israel is

represented is the Pentateuch, i.e. the Priestly Code. In the

source of Chronicles, in the older historical books, the revision

does not proceed upon the basis of the Priestly Code, which indeed

is completely unknown to them, but on the basis of Deuteronomy.

Thus in the question of the order of sequence of the two great

bodies of laws, the history of the tradition leads us to the same

conclusion as the history of the cultus.