Bible Book of the Month: II Chronicles

The Second Book of Chronicles has no real independent existence. It was the translators of the Septuagint who devided the original Book of Chronicles into two to make it more easily adaptable to the standard papyrus scrolls of the time. They did the same to Samuel and Kings. That their action was a wise one is shown by the Jewish adoption of their division when the Hebrew Old Testament was printed. In fact it is probable that even earlier, though for a different reason, Palestinian scribes had detached Ezra-Nehemiah (one book in Hebrew) from the end of Chronicles. It follows that anyone wishing to understand II Chronicles must grasp the main concepts running right through from I Chronicles to Nehemiah.

The Former Prophets, that is, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, have shown us how God revealed himself in Israel’s history. These books exist primarily for the revelation they give of God and not for satisfying our curiosity about Israel’s history. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Chronicles can tell us much that is not in Samuel and Kings, or that archaeology has discovered facts not mentioned at all in the Bible, for example, Ahab’s part in the battle of Qarqar against Shalmaneser III, and Jehu’s submission to the same king (cf. Wiseman: Illustrations from Biblical Archaeology, p. 56).

After the Babylonian exile, the Jewish community centered on Jerusalem, had ceased to be a nation in the full sense of the word and was rather a religious community with a fair amount of local autonomy, a position that continued until the Maccabean priest-kings achieved political freedom in the later years of the second century B.C. The book of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah was intended to make this community understand its role better. Chronicles was designed to show that the real meaning of Israel’s history, once the period of the Judges was over, was to be found in the Davidic monarchy and the Jerusalem temple. It was meant less as a revelation of God’s character and more of the part to be played in his purposes by the institutions of his creating. The post-exilic community had been shorn of all the pomp and glory of the monarchy, but the restoration of the Temple and the purification of worship and national life (the chief topic of Ezra-Nehemiah) guaranteed that it was still the people of God, and thus the community had courage to carry out its task until the Messianic king should restore the monarchy once again. To the Church, the temple of God on earth, which awaits the coming of her Lord and King in glory, Chronicles has many messages to give.

There seems little to be gained in inquiring after the identity of the author of Chronicles. The Holy Spirit has left us as much in the dark as he has with the authors of the Former Prophets. Strong but not conclusive arguments have been brought forward in favor of Ezra. Jewish traditions, which have been quoted in his favor, may, even if they are reliable, mean no more than that he was responsible for the genealogies in I Chronicles. There seems little doubt, however, that if it was not written by Ezra, then some younger contemporary of his wrote it. Perhaps it is best to leave it at that and respect the silence of the Holy Spirit.

There is a strong tendency among moderns to belittle Chronicles as history, though there has been a reaction from the somewhat earlier tendency to regard everything peculiar in Chronicles as the invention of its author. Here again archaeology has tended to restrain undue scepticism. The usual reasons advanced today for belittling Chronicles are that in various ways it gives a false conception of the history of Israel. No one should doubt that the picture given by Chronicles is often markedly different to that presented by Samuel and Kings, but this in itself means little. Two works on history dealing with the same period are often very different because of differing approach and purpose. If we can show that the author of Chronicles did not want to contradict Samuel and Kings but to draw a different set of lessons from the same historical material, the usual liberal accusation of distortion falls to the ground.

The Chronicler has obviously used Samuel and Kings; this is doubted by none. In addition he has mentioned 20 other sources (14 in II Chronicles) from which he has derived information. (It seems certain that some of these are alternative titles for the same work.) We cannot know whether he had access to them all, or whether in some cases he was using a larger work into which some of the sources had already been incorporated. In any case he had a considerable number of sources at his disposal, but all of them he rewrote in his own marked style. How different was his use of Samuel and Kings! Though he has not hesitated to make occasional abbreviations and expansions or explanations, he has normally followed the canonical works with closest accuracy so that the modern textual critic is constantly appealing to Chronicles when scribal errors are suspected in earlier books. This can be explained in only one way. The Chronicler obviously regarded the Former Prophets as authoritative and probably canonical, and by his marked difference in his use of sources he was inviting his readers to study his work in the light of the earlier books. This does away with grounds for the charge of distortion. Most of the others are not based on Chronicles but on that reinterpretation of Old Testament history generally associated with the name of Wellhausen. In fact the increasing respect being shown today by many for Chronicles is one of the influences undermining the reputation of the Wellhausen theory.

The main differences between II Chronicles and Kings are of the same type as those between I Chronicles and Samuel. They will be best understood if we look at them in order.

In the story of Solomon (chaps. 1–9) the incident of Adonijah and the fate of Joab, Abiathar, and Shimei linked with it (1 Kings 1; 2), and also the account of Solomon’s sin and troubles (1 Kings 11) have completely vanished, though knowledge of the former is revealed by 1 Chronicles 29:22. These omissions may be compared with the silence on David’s sin and Absalom’s rebellion in I Chronicles. We are more concerned with the Davidic monarchy as a God-established institution than with the kings as individuals. As a result both the intrigue to prevent the true king from coming to the throne and the story of his later failure remain unmentioned.

There are also considerable abbreviations in the account of Solomon’s secular glory and in that of the Temple, though there are some small additions here as well. The former calls for no comment, but the latter is instructive. For the most part the abbreviations in the account of the Temple concern its ornamentation and other details which were not represented in Zerubbabel’s temple. This latter, however lowly, when compared with the glories of Solomon’s building, was Jehovah’s temple in which he would glorify himself (cf. Hag. 2:9). Hence the Chronicler omits these essentially secondary details lest his readers should belittle the house in which they worshiped.

When we pass on to the history of the divided kingdoms, we immediately meet the most striking feature in II Chronicles, namely, its silence about the Northern Kingdom except where the history of Judah is directly impinged. Not even the fall of Samaria is mentioned. Jeroboam had rejected not merely the Davidic monarchy, for which there was some justification, but also the Jerusalem temple, for which there was none. By so doing he had cut himself and his kingdom off from the main stream of God’s purposes. God continued to show his grace to Israel until there was no hope left, but this had no place in the working out of his purposes of redemption for the world; and so in II Chronicles the Northern Kingdom has no place except as some of its members from time to time link up with God’s people in the south. A fascinating example of the working out of this principle is given by a comparison of 2 Kings 8:25–9:28 with 2 Chronicles 22:1–9. These omissions are balanced by various additional information.

There are three stories of outstanding deliverances (13:3–20; 14:9–15; 20:1–30). They are often treated as stories of outstanding faith, but their true significance lies in their stress on the inviolability of God’s people whenever they put their assurance completely in him.

There is no suggestion that the inviolability is automatic, and so we have a number of other additions which enlarge on the sufferings of Judah and its kings when they forsook the Lord. These were Rehoboam (12:1–12), Jehoram (21:4–20), Joash (24:17–22), Uzziah (26:16–21), Ahaz (28:5–19), and Manasseh (33:11–13). The addition in the case of Ahaz should be specially noted. The main disaster, we are told, was caused by apostate Israel, yet there were in Israel people with a truer understanding of God’s demands than that possessed by most of the people of Judah. The same stress on conditional inviolability is found in chapter 36:11–21 where the reasons for the destruction of the Temple and the exile are given in unsparing terms. There is no nationalistic chauvinism in Chronicles. Judah is not exalted above Israel; the one difference is the electing grace of God.

Another group of additions is connected with the great religious reformations in Judah, namely Asa’s (15:1–15), Jehoshaphat’s (17:1–9; 19:1–11), Hezekiah’s (29:2–31:21), and Josiah’s (35:1–19). Except for Josiah’s reformation, these are only briefly mentioned in Kings because the prophetic writer saw their essentially external character. In this regard we note also Isaiah’s silence about Hezekiah’s reformation, and Jeremiah’s almost complete ignoring of Josiah’s. The purpose of Chronicles is a description of externals rather than a judgment on inner motives, and so much fuller descriptions are given.

Many have found some of the large numbers recorded in Chronicles a stumbling block. An example like that in chapter 14:9 with its “three hundred chariots” shows that we have not to do with mere exaggeration or phantasy. Some of the largest, like the million men of the same verse, arc to be understood merely as meaning a very large number. In other cases, for example in Jehoshaphat’s army (17:14–18), there are signs of scribal corruption. Until we know more of the history of writing numbers in the Inter-Testamental period, it would be dangerous to build any theory on an occasional difficult group of figures.

Modern commentaries are normally at their poorest when dealing with a book like Chronicles, except for linguistic technicalities. There has been little of value written from the conservative standpoint since Keil’s and Zöckler’s in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Wallington, Surrey, England

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