But, even assuming that the divergence of practice from the legal statute actually does go back to the time of Ezra, what would follow from that against the post-exilic origin of the Priestly Code? For this is what the question comes to, not to Ezra's authorship, which is made the main point by a mere piece of transparent controversial tactics. The demands of the Priestly Code, which demonstrably were neither laid down, nor in any sense acted on before the exile, attained the force of law one hundred years after the return from Babylon (Nehemiah x.); the whole taxation system of Judaism ever afterwards rested upon it;- - shall this be held to have no meaning as against the trifling circumstance that the tithe also was indeed paid to the clergy, in full accordance with the Priestly Code, and inconsistently with ancient custom, but paid to the higher, and not to the lower order?

In point of fact any other difference whatever between Jewish practice and the Law might better have been adduced against the thesis of Graf,—for example, the absence of Urim and Thummim (Nehemiah vii. 65), or of the forty-eight Levitical cities, the church of the returned exiles instead of that of the twelve tribes of Israel, the second temple instead of the tabernacle, Ezra instead of Moses, the sons of Zadok instead of the sons of Aaron, the absence of the other marks of Mosaicity. For the position of the Levites is the Achilles heel of the Priestly Code. If the Levites at a later date were still further lowered beneath the priests, and put into a worse position in favour of these, this nevertheless presupposes the distinction between the two; let it first then be shown that the distinction is known to the genuine Old Testament, and that, in particular, it is introduced by Ezekiel not as a new thing, but as of immemorial antiquity. Or is the primary fact that the separation between priests and Levites was set up only in the Priestly Code and in Judaism, and that its genesis can be traced with confidence from the time of Josiah downwards, a fact of less importance than the secondary one that the distinction extended itself somewhat further still in the subsequent development of Judaism ?



B. HISTORY OF TRADITION.

PLEON (HMISU PANTOS— Hesiod



CHAPTER VI. CHRONICLES

Under the influence of the spirit of each successive age, traditions originally derived from one source were very variously apprehended and shaped; one way in the ninth and eighth centuries, another way in the seventh and sixth, and yet another in the fifth and fourth. Now, the strata of the tradition show the same arrangement as do those of the legislation. And here it makes no difference whether the tradition be legendary or historical, whether it relates to pre-historic or to historic times; the change in the prevailing ideas shows itself equally in either case. To show the truth of this in the case of the Hexateuch is of course our primary object, but we make our commencement rather with the properly historical books. For on various grounds we are here able with greater certainty to assert: Such was the aspect of history at this period and such at that; such were the influences that had the ascendancy at one time, and such those which prevailed at another.

We begin the inquiry where the matter is clearest—namely, with the Book of Chronicles. Chronicles, which properly speaking forms but a single book along with Ezra and Nehemiah, is a second history running parallel with the Books of Samuel and Kings, and we are here in the favourable position of starting with the objects of comparison distinctly defined, instead of having as usual to begin by a critical separation of sources of various age combined in one document. And, what is more, we can also date the rival histories with tolerable certainty. The Books of Samuel and of Kings were edited in the Babylonian exile; Chronicles, on the other hand, was composed fully three hundred years later, after the downfall of the Persian empire, out of the very midst of fully developed Judaism. We shall now proceed to show that the mere difference of date fully accounts for the varying ways in which the two histories represent the same facts and events, and the difference of spirit arises from the influence of the Priestly Code which came into existence in the interval. De Wette's "Critical Essay on the Credibility of the Books of Chronicles" (Beitraege, i.; 1806), is throughout taken as the basis of the discussion: that essay has not been improved on by Graf (Gesch. Bucher d. A. T. p. 114 seq.), for here the difficulty, better grappled with by the former, is not to collect the details of evidence, but so to shape the superabundant material as to convey a right total impression.

VI.I.

VI.I.1. After Jehovah had slain Saul (so begins the narrative of Chronicles), He turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse. All Israel gathered themselves unto David to Hebron and anointed him king over Israel, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel (I Chronicles x. 1.-xi. 3). How simply and smoothly and wholly without human intervention according to this version did the thing come to pass! Quite otherwise is it in the narrative of the Book of Samuel. This also indeed has the statement of Chronicles word for word, but it has something over and above which gives a quite different aspect to the matter. Here David, on the lowest step to the throne, is the guerilla leader in the wilderness of Judah who finally is compelled by Saul's persecutions to pass over to Philistine territory, there under the protection of the enemies of his nation, carrying on his freebooter life. After the battle of Gilboa he avails himself of the dissolution of the kingdom to set up a separate principality in the south as a vassal of the Philistines; he is not chosen, but comes with a following six hundred strong, and offers himself to the elders of Judah, whom he has already at an earlier period laid under obligations to him by various favours and gifts. In the meantime Saul's cousin Abner takes over what of the kingdom there is, not for himself but for the legitimate heir Ishbaal; from Gilead, whither the government had been transferred after the great catastrophe, he gradually reconquers the territory west of Jordan, and is scheming how to recover also the lost Judah. Thus it comes to protracted struggles between Abner and David, in which fortune is most on the side of the latter; yet he does not leave the defensive or gain the sovereignty over Israel. That falls into his hands rather by treachery. Abner himself, indignant at the ingratitude of his royal nephew, offers the crown to his rival, and enters into negotiations with him about it; but as he immediately afterwards falls a victim to blood revenge, nothing comes of the matter until Ishbaal is privily murdered in his sleep by two of his captains; then at last the elders of Israel come to Hebron, and David becomes king in succession to Saul. What a length of time these affairs demand, how natural is their development, how many human elements mingle in their course,—cunning, and treachery, and battle, and murder! Chronicles indeed knows them all well enough, as is clear from incidental expressions in chaps. xi. and xii., but they are passed over in silence. Immediately after his predecessor's death the son of Jesse is freely chosen by all Israel to be king, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel. The sequence of x. 13, 14, xi. 1 does not admit of being understood in any other way, nor is it in point of fact otherwise understood, for it has actually been successful, at least to this extent, that the kingship of Ishbaal has virtually dropped out of traditional Bible history; after Saul came David is what is said. We have before us a deliberate and in its motives a very transparent mutilation of the original narrative as preserved for us in the Book of Samuel.

As all Israel has made David the successor of Saul, and all Israel gone out with him to the conquest of Jerusalem (xi. 4),—in 2Samuel v. 6 we hear only of David's following,—so now immediately afterwards, the noblest representatives of all the tribes of Israel, who even before he had attained the throne were in sympathy and indeed already on his side, are enumerated by name and numbers in three lists (xi. 10-xii. 40), which are introduced between what is said in 2Samuel v. 1-1110 and in 2Samuel v. 11 seq. The first (xi. 10-47: "these are the mighty men who took part with him with all Israel to make him king") is the list of 2Samuel xxiii., which the Chronicler, as he betrays in chaps. xx., xxi., was acquainted with as it stood in that place, and here gives much too early, for it is for the most part warriors of David's later campaigns who are enumerated. /1/ The second list (xii.

************************************** 1. The division into a group of three and another of thirty heroes, obscured in 2Samuel xxiii. by corruption of the text (Text der BB. Sam. p. 213-216), has not been understood by the Chronicler, and thus been made quite unrecognisable. In this way he has been able to bring in at the end (xi. 42-47) a string of additional names exceeding the number of thirty. In ver. 42 his style unmistakably betrays itself, wherever it may be that he met with the elements. ****************************************

1-22: "these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul") is not taken from the Book of Samuel, but one also observes this difference: along with old and genuine there are extremely common names, and hardly one that occurs here only; the notes of ancestry carefully given in chap. xi. are almost always wanting; and instead of performing before our eyes such deeds as the rescue of a field of barley from the enemy, the purchase of a draught of water with blood, the slaying of a lion in a pit, the heroes receive all sorts of epitheta ornantia (xii. 1-3) and titles of honour (xii. 14, 20), and ordinarily talk a highly spiritual language (xii. 17, 18). And as for the historical situation, how impossible that a great Israelite army should have been gathered around David as the feudatory of the Philistines in Ziklag (xii. 2 2), with a crowd of captains of hundreds and thousands! Plainly the banished fugitive is according to this representation the splendid king and illustrious ancestor of the established dynasty; hence also the naive remark of ver. 29. No better is it with the third list (xii. 23-40: "these are the numbers of the bands, ready armed for the war, who came to David to Hebron"). Observe the regular enumeration of the twelve tribes, which nowhere occurs in the older historical books, and is quite artificial; then the vast numbers, which are not matters of indifference here, but the principal thing and make up the entire contents; finally, the 4600 Levites and 3700 priests, who also take their place in the martial train, and constitute the proper guard of the king; to Chronicles the distinction between secular and spiritual soldiers is not altogether clear. There are but a few details of a special kind; the remark in xii. 32 is perhaps connected with 2Samuel xx. 18; Jehoiada the prince of the house of Aaron, i.e., the high priest, alongside of the historically certain series,—Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahiah (Ahimelech ), Abiathar,—an utterly impossible person, is a reflection of the Jehoiada of 2Kings xi., xii., and the allegation that Zadok at that time joined David at the head of twenty-two chief priests is a hardly credible substitute for what is stated in Samuel, according to which Abiathar, whose older claims were disagreeable to the B'ne Zadok and those who came later, was the priest who from the beginning held with David; the twenty-two chief priests appear to correspond to the heads of the twenty-two post-exilian priestly families (Nehemiah xii. 1-7, 12-21, x. 3-9; 1Chronicles xxiv. 7-18). Yet it is hardly necessary to go so minutely into the contents of the above lists, for the purpose with which they are given is stated without circumlocution at the close (2Chronicles xii. 38, 39): "All these men of war, in order of battle, came with a perfect heart to Hebron to make David king over all Israel, and all the rest of Israel also were of one heart to make David king. And they were there with David three days, eating and drinking, for there was joy in Israel."

After the explication of the idea "all Israel" thus inappropriately interpolated, the narrative proceeds to reproduce the contents of 2 Samuel v.-vii. David's first deed, after the conquest of the stronghold of Jebus, is in Chronicles to make it the holy city by transferring the ark of Jehovah thither (xiii. 1 seq.). It seems as if the building of a palace and the Philistine war (2Samuel v. 11-25) were to be omitted; but after the narrative in 2Samuel vi. 1 seq. has been given down to the place "and the ark of Jehovah abode in the house of Obed-edom three months " (1Chronicles xiii. 14 = 2Samuel vi. 11), the pause of a quarter of a year is utilised for the purpose of overtaking what had been left out (xiv. 1-17 = 2Samuel v. 11-25), and then the history of the ark is completed. This indeed is to separate things mutually connected, but at the same time the secular business which, according to the older narrative, is the nearest and most pressing, is reduced to the level of a mere episode in the midst of the sacred. That there is no room for the building of a house and a Philistine war within the three months which offer themselves so conveniently for the interpolation is a subordinate affair.

As regards the sacred business, the transference of the ark to Zion, almost everything that is said in 2Samuel vi. is repeated word for word in Chronicles also (xiii., xv., xvi., xvii. 1). Two traits only are absent in Chronicles, and in neither case is the omission helpful to the connection David's wife Michal, it is said in 2Samuel vi. 16, 20-23, when she saw the king dancing and leaping in the procession, despised him in her heart; afterwards when he came home she told him what she thought of his unworthy conduct. The first of these two statements is found in Chronicles also (xv. 29), but the second is (all but the introductory notice, xvi. 43 = 2Samuel vi. 20, here torn from its connection) omitted, although it contains the principal fact, for the historical event was the expression of her contempt, not its psychological origin; a woman—such is the idea—must not say a thing like that to David. The other case is quite similar. On account of the calamity by which those who were bringing up the ark were overtaken, David does not at first venture to receive it into his citadel, but deposits it in the house of Obed-edom, one of his captains; but when Jehovah blesses the house of Obed-edom, he takes courage to bring the ark to his own home (2Samuel vi. 10-12). Chronicles also tells that Jehovah blessed the house of Obed-edom (xiii. 14), but mentions no consequent result; again the cause is given without the effect. Another explanation is substituted; David perceived that the disaster connected with the removal of the ark was due to the fact of its not having been carried by the Levites in accordance with the Law; the Levites accordingly were made to bear it and no harm ensued (xv. 2, 13-15). This is in complete and manifest contradiction to the older narrative, and as Chronicles (chapter xiii.) copies that narrative, it also contradicts itself (xiii. 10), and that all the more strikingly as by the addition in xiii. 2 it represents the accompanying clergy as tacitly approving the carrying of the ark on the ox-cart. Then due participation in the sacred procession having been thus once secured them, 1Chronicles xv. positively revels in priests and Levites, of whom not a sing]e word is to be found in 2 Samuel vi., and moreover a sort of musical service is instituted by David himself before the ark, and a festal cantata made up by him out of post-exilian psalms is quoted (chapter xvi.). In this way, out of the original narrative, the scattered fragments of which now show themselves very strangely in the new connection, something quite different has grown. "In the former everything is free, simply the affair of king and people, here all is priestly ceremonial; there the people with their king shout and dance with joy before the ark,, here the levites are the musicians and singers in formal order. To seek to combine the two versions is wholly against the laws of historical interpretation. If the first were curt and condensed the unification of the two might perhaps be possible, but no story could be more particular or graphic, and could it have been that the Levites alone should be passed over in silence if they had played so very important a part? The author of Chronicles was able to introduce them only by distorting and mutilating his original and landing himself in contradiction after all. He cannot allow anything to happen without Levites; and was the ark of the covenant to be fetched to Jerusalem without them? was the Law to be even a second time broken under the pious king David? This seemed to him impossible. That Uzzah perished in the first attempt to fetch the ark, and that on the second occasion—when only a quite short journey is spoken of—the ark was carried, ~2Samuel vi. 13, may have been the suggestions by which he was led. Fertile in combinations, he profited by the hint." So, justly, De Wette (Beitraege, i. 88-91).

The narrative of 2Samuel vi. having been broken off at the first half of ver. 19 (1Chronicles xvi. 3), the second half of the verse and the beginning of the next are reproduced (xvi. 43) after the interpolation of xvi. 4-42, and then 2Samuel vii. is appended word for word (1Chronicles xvii.),—the resolution of David to build a house for the ark, and what Jehovah said to him about the subject through Nathan. The point of the prophet's address turns on the antithesis (2Samuel vii.). "Thou wilt build a house FOR ME? rather will I build a house FOR THEE;" the house of David is of course the Davidic dynasty. But an interpolation has already crept into the text of Samuel (vii. 13), which apprehends the antithesis thus: "THOU wilt build a house for me? Nay, THY SON shall build a house for me." Now Chronicles, for which David comes into consideration merely as the proper founder of the Solomonic temple, takes up the narrative of 2 Samuel vii. precisely on account of this interpolation, as is clear from xxii. 9, 10— increases the misunderstanding by going back to it in an addition (xvii. 14)—and at the outset destroys the original antithesis by the innocent alteration, "Thou shalt not build THE HOUSE for me" instead of "Wilt thou build A house for me? "The house can here mean only that imperatively needed one, long kept in view alike by God and men, which must by all means he built, only not by David but by Solomon; it is without any ambiguity the temple, and does not, like a house, contain that possibility of a double meaning on which the original point depends. It is interesting also to compare 2Samuel vii. 14 with 1Chronicles xvii. 13: "I will be to thy seed a father, and he shall be to me a son. If he commit iniquity, then I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him." The words in italics are wanting in Chronicles; the meaning, that Jehovah will not withdraw His grace from the dynasty of Judah altogether, even though some of its members should deserve punishment, is thereby destroyed and volatilised into an abstract idealism, which shows that to the writer the Davidic kingly family is known only as a dissolving view, and not by historical experience as it is to the author of 2Samuel vii.

In chaps xviii.-xx., Chronicles seems to refresh itself with a little variety, relating as it does the foreign wars of David after the order of 2Samuel, viii., x., xi. 1, xii. 30, 30, xxi. 18-22. But in this it still keeps in view its purpose, which is directed towards David as founder of the Jerusalem worship; those wars brought him the wealth that was required for the building of the temple. On the other hand, everything so fully and beautifully told in the Book of Samuel about the home occurrences of that period is omitted, for after all it does not contribute much to the glorification of the king. So the story of Meribaal and Ziba (chap. ix.), of Bathsheba and Uriah (xi., xii.), of Tamar and Amnon (xiii., xiv.), of Absalom's rebellion (xv.-xx.), and of the delivering-up of the sons of Saul (xxi. 1-14). The rude and mechanical manner in which statements about foreign wars are torn from the connection with domestic events in which they stand in the older narrative is shown in 1Chronicles xx. 1, 2, as compared with 2Samuel xi. 1, xii. 30. In 2Samuel xi. the mention of the fact that David remained in Jerusalem when the army set out against Rabbah, prepares for the story of his adultery with the wife of a captain engaged in active service in the field; but 1Chronicles xx. 1 is meaningless, and involves a contradiction with ver. 2. according to which David appears after all in the camp at Rabbah, although the connection,—namely, that he followed the army—and all the intermediate occurrences relating to Bathsheba and Uriah, are left out (De Wette, pp. 19, 20, 60). To what extent the veil is drawn over the scandalous falls of saints may be judged also from the fact that from the list of David's foreign encounters also, which are otherwise fully given, a single one is omitted which he is supposed not to have come through with absolute honour, that with the giant Ishbi-benob (2Samuel xxi. 15-17). Lastly, the alteration made in 1Chronicles xx. 5 is remarkable. Elhanan the son of Jair of Bethlehem, we read in 2Samuel xxi. 19, was he who slew Goliath of Gath, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam. But on the other hand, had not David of Bethlehem according to 1Samuel xvii. vanquished Goliath the giant, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam? In Chronicles accordingly Elhanan smites the brother of the veritable Goliath.

2. The closing chapters of 2Samuel (xxi.-xxiv.) are, admittedly, an appendix of very peculiar structure. The thread of xxi. 1-14 is continued in xxiv. 1-25, but in the interval between the two passages occurs xxi. 15-xxiii. 39, in a very irrational manner, perhaps wholly due to chance. In this interposed passage itself, again, the quite similar lists xxi. 15-22 and xxiii. 8-39 are very closely connected; and the two songs, xxii. 1-51, xxiii. 1-7, are thus an interpolation within an interpolation. This want of order is imitated by the author of Chronicles also, who takes 2Samuel xxiii. 8-39 as separated from xxi. 15-22, and gives 2Samuel xxiv. last, a position which does not belong to it from any material considerations, but merely because it had originally been tagged on as an appendix, and besides had been separated from its connection with xxi. 1-14 by a large interpolation.

1Chronicles xxi. (the pestilence as punishment of David's sin in numbering the people, and the theophany as occasioning the building of an altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah) is on the whole a copy of 2Samuel xxiv., but with omission of the precise and interesting geographical details of ver. 5 seq, and with introduction of a variety of improving touches. Thus (xxi. 1): "And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David;" instead of: "And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David." Similarly (xxi. 6): "Levi and Benjamin Joab counted not among them; for the king's word was abominable to him,"— an addition which finds its explanation on the one hand in Numbers i. 49, and on the other in the circumstance that the holy city lay within the territory of Benjamin. Again (xxi. 16, 27): "David saw the angel of Jehovah standing between heaven and earth, and his sword drawn in his hand and stretched out towards Jerusalem;" compare this with Sam xxiv. 16 (1Chronicles xxi. t5): "The angel stretched out his hand to Jerusalem to destroy it, and he was by the threshing floor of Araunah;" according to the older view, angels have no wings (Genesis xxviii.). Further (xxi. 25): "David gave to Araunah for his threshing-floor 600 shekels of gold ;" compare with 2Samuel xxiv. 24, 50 shekels of silver; to make the king pay right royally costs the Chronicler nothing. But lastly, his most significant addition is the fire from heaven which consumes the burnt-offering (xxi. 26); by this means the altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah, in other words, that of the sanctuary of Jerusalem, is intended to be put on a level with that of the tabernacle, its predecessor, the fire on which was also kindled from heaven (Leviticus ix. 24). Whoever has understood the narratives of altar-buildings by the Patriarchs, by Joshua, Gideon, and Manoah, will grant that the author of Chronicles has quite correctly understood the intention of 2Samuel xxiv., in accordance with which he here proposes to relate the divine inauguration of the place of worship at Jerusalem; but what in that passage, as in similar older legends about the indication of consecrated places by means of a theophany, is only hinted at for contemporaries who understood the idea conveyed, he requires to retouch strongly in order that a later generation may notice it; and yet he has half spoiled the point by making the angel not stand by the threshing-floor of Araunah on the sacred spot, but hover aloft in the air.

2Samuel xxiv. = 1Chronicles xxi. serves further as a starting point for the free construction of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. The circumstance that in the last chapter of the Book of Samuel David builds the altar at Jerusalem is expanded into the statement that in the last year of his reign he prepared beforehand the building of the temple of Solomon in all its parts down to the minutest detail. Unhampered by historical tradition, the author here expatiates with absolute freedom in his proper element. All that has hitherto been said about the king on the basis of the older source is by means of additions and omissions fashioned into what shall serve as a mere prologue to the proper work of his life, which is now described thoroughly con amore. He himself unfortunately has not been allowed to build the house, having shed much blood and carried on great wars (xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), but he yet in the last year of his reign forestalls from his successor the whole merit of the business (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1). My son Solomon, he says, is young and tender, but the house to be built for Jehovah must be great and glorious; I will therefore prepare it for him (xxii. 5). Accordingly he gets ready beforehand the workmen and artificers, in particular bringing into requisition the non-Israelitic population; he provides the material, stone and wood and brass and iron, and gold and silver and jewels without number; he also gives the plan or rather receives it direct from Jehovah, and that in black and white (xxviii. 19), while Moses built the tabernacle only according to his recollection of the heavenly pattern which had been shown to him on Sinai. But before all he appoints the personnel for the temple service,—priests, Levites, porters, singers,-divides their thousands into classes, and assigns to them their functions by lot. In doing so he interests himself, naturally, with special preference, in the music, being the designer of the instruments (xxiii. 5), and himself acting as principal conductor (xxv. 2, 6). And as he is still king after all, he at the close takes an inventory also of his secular state, after having duly ordered the spiritual. All this he does for the future, for his son and successor; not in reality, but only in plan, are the door-keepers, for example, assigned to their posts (xxvi. 12 seq.), but none the less with strictest specification and designation of the localities of the temple,—and that too the second temple! His preparations concluded, David calls a great assembly of prelates and notables (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1), has Solomon anointed as king, and Zadok as priest (xxix. 22), and in a long discourse hands over to the former along with the kingdom the task of his reign, namely, the execution of what he himself has prepared and appointed; on this occasion yet more precious stones and noble metals—among them gold of Ophir and Persian darics—are presented by David and the princes for the sacred building. The whole section 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. is a startling instance of that statistical phantasy of the Jews which revels in vast sums of money on paper (xxii. 14), in artificial marshallings of names and numbers (xxiii.-xxvii.), in the enumeration of mere subjects without predicates, which simply stand on parade and neither signify nor do anything. The monotony is occasionally broken only by unctuous phrases, but without refreshing the reader. Let the experiment of reading the chapters through be tried.

According to 1Kings i., ii., King David in his closing days was sick and feeble in body and mind, and very far from being in a condition thus to make preparations on behalf of his successor shortly before his own death, or to prepare his bread for him so far that nothing remained but to put it into the oven. His purpose of building a house to Jehovah is indeed spoken of in 2 Samuel vii. in connection with vi. 17, but it is definitively abandoned in consequence of Jehovah's refusal, on the ground that it is not man's part to build a house for God, but God's to build a house for man. In strange contrast with this explanation is that of Chronicles that David is a man of war and has shed much blood, and therefore dare not set up the temple; that he had waged the wars of Jehovah, that Jehovah had given victory by his hand, would in the older warlike time have seemed no reason against but rather an argument establishing his fitness for such a work. But the worst discrepancy is that between the solemn installation of Solomon as king and of Zadok as priest with all the forms of law and publicity as related in 1Chronicles xxviii., xxix. (comp. xxii., xxiii. 1) and the older narrative of 1Kings i., ii. According to the latter it was much more an ordinary palace intrigue, by means of which one party at court succeeded in obtaining from the old king, enfeebled with age, his sanction for Solomon's succession. Until then Adonijah had been regarded as heir-apparent to the throne, by David himself, by all Israel, and the great officers of the kingdom, Joab and Abiathar; what above all things turned the scale in favour of Solomon was the weight of Benaiah's six hundred praetorians, a formidable force in the circumstances of the period. The author of Chronicles naively supposes he has successfully evaded all difficulties by giving out the coronation of Solomon related by himself to be the second (xxix. 22),—an advertence to 1Kings i., ii. which does not remove but only betrays the contradiction.

Yet this is as nothing over against the disharmony of the total impression. See what Chronicles has made out of David! The founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and the public worship, the king and hero at the head of his companions in arms has become the singer and master of ceremonies at the head of a swarm of priests and Levites; his clearly cut figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of incense. It is obviously vain to try to combine the fundamentally different portraits into one stereoscopic image; it is only the tradition of the older source that possesses historical value. In Chronicles this is clericalised in the taste of the post-exilian time, which had no feeling longer for anything but cultus and torah, which accordingly treated as alien the old history (which, nevertheless, was bound to be a sacred history), if it did not conform with its ideas and metamorphose itself into church history. Just as the law framed by Ezra as the foundation of Judaism was regarded as having been the work of Moses, so what upon this basis had been developed after Moses—particularly the music of the sanctuary and the ordering of the temple personnel—-was carried back to King David, the sweet singer of Israel, who had now to place his music at the service of the cultus, and write psalms along with Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, the Levitical singing families.

VI.I.3. With regard to Solomon, Chronicles (2Chronicles i.-ix.) nowhere departs very far from the lines of the Book of Kings. As the story of 1Kings i., ii., which is not an edifying one, and mercilessly assails that of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix., required to be omitted, the narrative accordingly begins with 1Kings iii., with Solomon's accession, sacrifices on the great altar at Gibeon, and the revelation of Jehovah, which was thereupon communicated to him in a dream. This last is transcribed with slight alterations, but at the outset a characteristic divergence is found. "Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places (because there was no house built unto the name of Jehovah until those days). And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place; a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar, and Jehovah appeared unto him in a dream: Ask what I shall give thee." So 1Kings iii. 2 seq. Chronicles, after its manner, first surrounds the king with a great assemblage of captains of hundreds and thousands, of judges and princes and heads of houses, and purely Pentateuchal dignities, and then proceeds: "And Solomon and all the congregation with him went to the high place in Gibeon, for there was God's tent of meeting, which Moses, the servant of God, had made in the wilderness. But the ark of God had David brought up from Kirjath-jearim, where he had prepared for it; for he had pitched a tent for it at Jerusalem. But the brazen altar that Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, stood there, before the tabernacle of Jehovah, and Solomon and the congregation sought unto it. And Solomon offered there, upon the brazen altar, before Jehovah, by the tent of meeting, he offered a thousand burnt-offerings, and God appeared to him in a dream, saying, Ask what I shall give thee" (2Chronicles i. 3 seq.). In the older narrative there is nothing about the tabernacle, it being assumed that no apology would be either necessary or possible for Solomon having sacrificed on a high place. Chronicles, dominated in its views of antiquity by the Priestly Code, has missed the presence of the tabernacle and supplied the want in accordance with that norm; the young and pious king could not possibly have made his solemn inaugural sacrifice, for which he had expressly left Jerusalem, anywhere else than at the legally prescribed place; and still less could Jehovah otherwise have bestowed on him His blessing. It betokens the narrowness, and at the same time the boldness of the author, that he retains the expression high place used in 1Kings iii. 3, and co-ordinates it with tabernacle, although the one means precisely the opposite of the other. But it is instructive to notice how, on other occasions, he is hampered by his Mosaic central sanctuary, which he has introduced ad hoc into the history. According to 1Chronicles xvi. David is in the best position to institute also a sacrificial service beside the ark of Jehovah, which he has transferred to Zion; but he dare not, for the Mosaic altar stands at Gibeon, and he must content himself with a musical surrogate (vers. 37-42). The narrative of 1Chronicles xxi., that David was led by the theophany at the threshing-floor of Araunah to build an altar there, and present upon it an offering that was accepted by heaven, is at its close maimed and spoiled in a similar way by the remark, with anticipatory reference to 2Chronicles i., that the Mosaic tabernacle and altar of burnt offering were indeed at that time in the high place at Gibeon, but that the king had not the strength to go before it to inquire of Jehovah, being so smitten with fear of the angel with the drawn sword. So also must the sacrifice which Solomon should have offered on his return from Gibeon before the ark at Jerusalem be similarly ignored (2Chronicles i. 13), because it uould destroy the force of the previous explanation of the high place at Gibeon. Thus the shadow takes the air from the body. In other places the tabernacle is significantly confounded with the temple of Jerusalem (Graf, p. 56), but on the whole it remains a tolerably inert conception, only made use of in the passage before us (2Chronicles i.) in an ex machina manner in order to clear Solomon of a heavy reproach.

Upon the last solemn act of worship at the Mosaic sanctuary immediately follows the building of the temple (i. 18 [ii.1]-vii. 11), 1Kings iii. 10-v. 14 [AV. 34] being passed over. A few little touches are however brought in to show the wealth of Solomon (i. 14-17); they do not occur in Kings until chap. x. (vers. 26-29), and are also repeated in Chronicles (ix. 25 seq.) in this much more appropriate connection (comp. 1Kings iii., LXX). Strictly speaking indeed, David has taken the preparations for the sacred building out of the hands of his successor, but the latter appears not to be satisfied with these (ii. 16 [17]) and looks after them once more (i. 18-ii. 17 [ii. 1-18]). A comparison with Ezra iii. (preparation of the second temple) shows that the story is an elaboration of the author, although suggested by 1Kings v. 16 [2] seq., and with preservation of many verbal reminiscences. While Hiram and Solomon according to the older record are on a footing of equality and make a contract based on reciprocity of service, the Tyrian king is here the vassal of the Israelite, and renders to him what he requires as tribute; instead of as there explaining himself by word of mouth, he here writes a letter in which he not only openly avows his faith in Jehovah the God of Israel, the maker of heaven and earth, but also betrays an extraordinary acquaintance with the Pentateuchal Priestly Code. The brassfounder whom Solomon brings from Tyre (1Kings vii. 13, 14) is (ii. 13) described as a very Daedalus and prodigy of artistic skill, like Bezaleel (Exodus xxxi. 2 seq.); his being made the son of a woman of Dan and not of a widow of Naphtali supplies interpreters with the materials for the construction of a little family romance, /1/

****************************************** 1. She was by birth a woman of Dan, married into the tribe of Napthali, lost her husband, and as widow out of the tribe of Naphtali became the wife of the Tyrian. So Bertheau in loc. ***************************************

but has no more real value than the idea that sandalwood is obtained from Lebanon. The statement of 1Kings v. 27 [13] (xi. 28, xii. 4) that Israel was requisitioned in large numbers to render forced service to the king has substituted for it by the Chronicler that which occurs in another place (1Kings ix. 2I), that only the Canaanite serfs were employed for this purpose; at the same time, he reckons their number from the figures supplied in 1Kings v. 29 [15] seq. Lastly, the manner in which Solomon (ii. 2 [3] ) assures Hiram that he will arrange the divine service in the new house in a thoroughly correct manner according to the ordinance of the Priestly Code, is also characteristic; similar remarks, from which the uninterrupted practice of the Mosaic cultus according to the rules of the Law is made to appear, are afterwards repeated from time to time (viii. 12-16, xiii. 11).

In chaps. iii., iv. the author repeats the description of the temple in 1Kings vi., vii., with the omission of what relates to profane buildings. Perhaps in one passage (1Kings vii. 23) he found the now very corrupt text in a better state; otherwise he has excerpted from it in a wretchedly careless style or word for word transcribed it, adding merely a few extravagances or appointments of later date (e.g., the specification of the gold in iii. 4 seq. 8, 9, of the ten golden tables and hundred golden basins in iv. 8, of the brass-covered doors of the outer gateway in iv. 9, of the court of the priests in iv. 9, of the curtain between the holy place and the holy of holies in iii. 14; compare Vatke, pp. 332, 333, 340, 341). To deny that the original (to which reference must in many places be made in order that the meaning may be understood) exists in 1Kings vi., vii., requires an exercise of courage which might be much better employed, all the more because in 2Chronicles iv. 11-v. 1, the summary list follows the description of details precisely as in 1Kings vii. 40 - 51.

While the concrete and material details of 1Kings vi., vii. are reproduced only in an imperfect and cursory manner, the act of consecration on the other hand, and the discourse delivered by Solomon on the occasion, is accurately and fully given (v. 2-vii. 10) in accordance with 1Kings viii.; such additions and omissions as occur are all deliberate. In 1Kings viii. the priests and Levites on an occasion which so closely concerned their interests do not play any adequate part, and in particular give none of the music which nevertheless is quite indispensable at any such solemnity. Accordingly, the Chronicler at the word "priests" inserts between the violently separated clauses of 1Kings viii. 10, 11, the following: "For all the priests present had sanctified themselves without distinction of classes, and the Levites, the singers, all stood in white linen with cymbals and psalteries and harps at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets. And it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when the music began with trumpets, and cymbals, and instruments, and the song of praise, Praise ye Jehovah, for He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever, then the house was filled with a cloud" (v. 11-13). Proceeding, the narrative of 1Kings viii. 22 that Solomon came in front of the altar and there prayed is indeed in the first instance copied (vi. 12), but forthwith authoritatively interpreted in the sense that the king did not really and actually stand before the altar (which was lawful for the priests alone), but upon an improvised pulpit in the inner court upon a propped-up caldron of brass (vi. 13), an excellent idea, which has met with the due commendation of expositors. The close of Solomon's prayer (1Kings viii. 49-53) is abridged (vi. 39, 40)—perhaps in order to get rid of viii. 50—and there is substituted for it an original epilogue (vi. 41, 42) recalling post-exilian psalms. Then comes a larger omission, that of 1Kings viii. 54-61, explained by the difficulty involved in the king's here kneeling, not upon the caldron, but before the altar, then standing up and blessing like a priest; in place of this it is told (vii. 1-3) how the altar was consecrated by fire from heaven, which indeed had already descended upon it (1Chronicles xxi.26), but as it appears had unaccountably gone out. In vii. 4 the author again returns to his original at 1Kings viii. 62 seq., but tricks it out, wherever it appears to him too bare, with trumpeting priests and singing Levites (vii. 6), and finally dismisses the people, not on the eighth day of the feast of tabernacles (1Kings viii. 66), but on the ninth (vii. to), in accordance with the enactment in Numbers xxix. 35.

The rest of Solomon's history (vii. 11-ix. 28) is taken over from 1Kings ix., x. In doing so what is said in 1Kings ix. 10-IO, to the effect that Solomon handed over to Hiram twenty Galilaean cities, is changed into the opposite—that Hiram ceded the cities to Solomon, who settled them with Israelites (viii. 1, 2); and similarly the already observed statement of 1Kings ix. 24 about the removal of Solomon's Egyptian wife out of the city of David into his new palace /1/ is altered and put in quite a

**************************************** 1. Even in the text of Kings this statement has been obscured; Comp. 1Kings iii. 1. In ix. 24 we must at least say betho asher bana lo, but this perhaps is not enough. ****************************************

false light: "Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he had built for her; for he said, No woman shall dwell in the house of David, for the place is holy whereunto the ark of Jehovah hath come" (viii. 11). There is no further need to speak of viii. 12-16 (1Kings ix. 25); more indifferent in their character are the addition in vii. 12-15, a mere compilation of reminiscences, the embellishment in viii. 3-6, derived from 1Kings ix. 17-19, and the variations in viii. 17 seq., ix. 2I, misunderstood from 1Kings ix. 26 seq., x. 22. The concluding chapter on Solomon's reign (1Kings xi.), in which the king does not appear in his most glorious aspect, is passed over in silence, for the same motives as those which dictated the omission of the two chapters at the beginning.

The history of the son is treated after the same plan and by the same means as that of the father, only the subject accommodates itself more readily to the purpose of the change. The old picture is retouched in such wise that all dark and repulsive features are removed, and their place taken by new and brilliant bits of colour not in the style of the original but in the taste of the author's period,—priests and Levites and fire from heaven, and the fulfilment of all righteousness of the law, and much music, and all sorts of harmless legendary anachronisms and exaggerations besides. The material of tradition seems broken up in an extraneous medium, the spirit of post-exilian Judaism.

VI.II.

VI.II.1. After Solomon's death the history of Israel in Chronicles is traced only through Jehovah's kingdom in the hand of the sons of David, and all that relates to the ten tribes is put aside. For according to the notions of the Judaistic period Israel is the congregation of true worship, and this last is connected with the temple at Jerusalem, in which of course the Samaritans have no part. Abijah of Judah makes this point of view clear to Jeroboam I. and his army in a speech delivered from Mount Zemaraim before the battle. "Think ye to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah in the hand of the sons of David, because ye are a great multitude, and with you are the golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods ? Have ye not cast out the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests after the manner of the Gentiles? so that whosoever cometh to fill his hands with a young bullock and seven rams, even he may become a priest for the false gods? But as for us, we have not forsaken Jehovah our God, and our priests minister to Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites in the service; and they burn unto Jehovah every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shewbread also is upon the pure table; for we have maintained the service of Jehovah our God, but ye have forsaken Him. And behold, God Himself is with us at our head, and His priests, and the loud-sounding trumpets to cry an alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against Jehovah the God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper" (2Chronicles xiii. 8-12; comp. xi. 13-17).

The kingdom which bore the name of Israel was actually in point of fact in the olden time the proper Israel, and Judah was merely a kind of appendage to it. When Amaziah of Judah after the conquest of the Edomites challenged to battle King Jehoash of Samaria, whose territory had at that time suffered to the utmost under the continual wars with the Syrians, the latter bid say to him: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife;—then passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thy heart hath lifted thee up. Enjoy thy glory, but tarry at home." (2Kings xiv. 9, 10). And as the other would not listen, he punished him as if he had been a naughty boy and then let him go. Religiously the relative importance of the two corresponded pretty nearly to what it was politically and historically. Israel was the cradle of prophecy; Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha exercised their activity there; what contemporary figure from Judah is there to place alongside of these? Assuredly the author of the Book of Kings would not have forgotten them had any such there been, for he is a Judaean with all his heart, yet is compelled purely by the nature of the case to interest himself chiefly about the northern kingdom. And yet again at the very close it was the impending fall of Samaria that called into life a new phase of prophecy; he who inaugurated it, the Judaean Amos of Tekoah, was sent not to Judah but to Israel, the history of which had the first and fullest sympathy of his inmost soul as that of the people of Jehovah. Isaiah was the first who placed Jerusalem in the centre of his field of vision and turned away from Israel; for at the time of his first public appearance war was raging between the sister nations, and when his activity was at its acme all was over with the northern kingdom and all hope had to cling to the remnant,— the fallen tabernacle of David. As regards the cultus, certainly, matters may have been somewhat less satisfactory in Israel than in Judah, at least in the last century before the Assyrian captivity, but at the outset there was no essential difference. On all hands Jehovah was worshipped as the peculiar divinity of the nation at numerous fanes, in the service at the high places there were wanting neither in the one nor in the other sacred trees, posts, and stones, images of silver and gold (Isaiah ii. 8 seq., xvii. 8, xxxi. 22; Micah v. 12). It is a question whether in the time before Hezekiah the cultus of the kingdom at Jerusalem had so much to distinguish it above that at Bethel or at Dan; against Jeroboam's golden calves must be set the brazen serpent of Moses, and the ark of Jehovah itself—which in ancient times was an idol (1Samuel iv.-vi.) and did not become idealised into an ark of the covenant, ie., of the law, until probably it had actually disappeared. As for the prophetic reaction against the popular cultus, the instance of Hosea shows that it came into activity as early and as powerfully in Israel as in Judah. Even after Josiah's reformation Jeremiah complains that the sister who hitherto had been spared is in no respect better than the other who a hundred years before had fallen a victim to the Assyrians (iii. 6-1O); and though in principle the author of the Book of Kings, taking his stand upon Deuteronomy, prefers Judah and Jerusalem, yet he does not out of deference to this judgment alter the facts which show that old Israel was not further than old Judah from compliance with the Deuteronomic precepts. Chronicles, on the other hand, not only takes the Law—the Pentachal Law as a whole, but more particularly the Priestly Code therein preponderating—as its rule of judgment on the past; but also idealises the facts in accordance with that norm, and figures to itself the old Hebrew people as in exact conformity with the pattern of the later Jewish community,—as a monarchically graded hierocracy with a strictly centralised cultus of rigidly prescribed form at the holy place of Jerusalem. When, accordingly, the ten tribes fail to exhibit all the marks of the kingdom of God, this is taken to mean their falling away from the true Israel; they have made goats and calves their gods, driven away the priests and Levites, and in a word broken quite away from the institutions which shaped themselves in Judah during the period subsequent to Josiah and received their finishing-touches from Ezra. /1/

*************************************** 1. The Chronicler indeed is unable, even in the case of these schismatics, to divest himself of his legal notions, as appears almost comically in the circumstance that the priests of Jeroboam set about their heretical practices quite in accordance with the prescriptions of the Priestly Code, and procure their consecration by means of a great sacrifice (2 Chron xiii. 9). ****************************************

Like other heathen, therefore, they are taken account of by the sacred history only in so far as they stood in relations of friendship or hostility with the people of Jehovah properly so called, the Israel in the land of Judah (2Chronicles xxiii. 2), and in all references to them the most sedulous and undisguised partisanship on behalf of Judah is manifested, even by the inhabitants of the northern kingdom itself. /2/ If one seriously

*********************************** 2. Compare xi. 16, xv. 9, xix. 2, xx. 35 seq.. xxv 7, xxviii. 9 seq., xxx. 6. ***********************************

takes the Pentateuch as Mosaic law, this exclusion of the ten tribes is, in point of fact, an inevitable consequence, for the mere fact of their belonging to the people of Jehovah destroys the fundamental pre-supposition of that document, the unity and legitimacy of the worship as basis of the theocracy, the priests and Levites as its most important organs, "the sinews and muscles of the body politic, which keep the organism together as a living and moving whole."

VI.II.2. The reverse side is, of course, the idealisation of Judah from the point of view of the legitimate worship,—a process which the reader can imagine from the specimens already given with reference to David and Solomon. The priests and Levites who migrated from Israel are represented as having strengthened the southern kingdom (xi. 17), and here constitute the truly dominant element in the history. It is for their sake that kings exist as protectors and guardians of the cultus, with the internal arrangements of which, however, they dare not intermeddle (xxvi. 16 seq.); to deliver discourses and ordain spiritual solemnities (which figure as the culminating points in the narrative) are among the leading duties of their reign. /1/

************************************** 1. xiii. 7 seq., xv. 10 seq., xx. 6 seq., xxix. 5 seq., xxx. 1 seq., xxxv. 1 seq. **************************************

Those among them who are good apprehend their task and are inseparable from the holy servants of Jehovah,—so, in particular, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Of the first mentioned we are told that in the third year of his reign he appointed a royal commission of notables, priests, and Levites, to go about with the Book of the Law, and teach in the cities of Judah (xvii. 7-9); in the larger places, in the strongholds, he further instituted colleges of justice, and over them a supreme tribunal at Jerusalem, also consisting of priests, Levites, and notables, under the presidency of the high priest for spiritual, and of the Prince of the house of Judah for secular affairs (xix. 5-11). There is nothing about this in the Book of Kings, although what is of less importance is noticed (1Kings xxii. 47); the Chronicler makes the statement in his own language, which is unmistakable, especially in the pious speeches. Probably it is the organisation of justice as existing in his own day that he here carries back to Jehoshaphat, so that here most likely we have the oldest testimony to the synedrium of Jerusalem as a court of highest instance over the provincial synedria, as also to its composition and presidency. The impossibility of such a judiciary system in antiquity is clear from its presupposing the Book of the Law as its basis, from its co-ordination of priests and Levites, and also from its actual inconsistency with incidental notices, particularly in Isaiah and the older prophets (down to Jeremiah xxvi.), in which it everywhere is taken for granted as a thing of course that the rulers are also at the same time the natural judges. Moreover, Chronicles already tells us about David something similar to what it says about Jehoshaphat (1Chronicles xxiii. 4, xxvi. 29-32); the reason why the latter is selected by preference for this work lies simply in his name " Jehovah is Judge," as he himself is made to indicate in various ways (xix. 5-11; compare Joel iv. 12). But the king of Judah is strengthened by the priests and Levites, not only in these domestic affairs, but also for war. As the trumpets of the priests give to Abijah courage and the victory against Jeroboam of Israel, so do the Levites also to Jehoshaphat against Moab and Ammon. Having fasted, and received, while praying, the comfortable assurance of the singer Jahaziel ("See God"), he advances next morning, with his army, against the enemy, having in the van the Levites, who march in sacred attire in front of the armed men and sing: "Praise ye the Lord, for His mercy endureth for ever." He then finds that the fighting has already been done by the enemy themselves, who, at the sound of that song of praise, have fallen upon and annihilated one another. Three days are spent in dividing the spoil, and then he returns as he came, the Levitical music leading the van, with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets to the house of Jehovah (2Chronicles xx. 1-28). Hezekiah is glorified in a similar manner. Of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem and the memorable relief, comparatively little is made (xxxii. 1 seq.; comp. De Wette, i. 75); according to Chronicles, his master-work is that, as soon as he has mounted the throne, in the first month of the year, and of his reign (Exodus xl. 2; Leviticus ix. 1). he institutes by means of the priests and Levites, whom he addresses quite paternally as his children (xxix. 11), a great feast of consecration of the temple, alleged to have been closed and wasted by Ahaz; thereupon in the second month to celebrate the passover in the most sumptuous manner; and finally, from the third to the seventh month to concern himself about the accurate rendering of their dues to the clergy. All is described in the accustomed style, in the course of three long chapters, which tell us nothing indeed about the time of Hezekiah, but are full of information for the period in which the writer lived, particularly with reference to the method then followed in offering the sacred dues (xxix. 1-xxxi. 21). In the case of Josiah also the account of his epoch-making reformation of the worship is, on the whole, reproduced in Chronicles only in a mutilated manner, but the short notice of 2Kings xxiii. 21-23 is amplified into a very minute description of a splendid passover feast, in which, as always, the priests and above all the Levites figure as the leading personalities. In this last connection one little trait worth noticing remains, namely, that the great assembly in which the king causes the Book of the Law to be sworn to, is, in every other respect, made up in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 29 seq. exactly as it is in 2Kings xxiii. 1, , except that instead of "the priests and prophets" we find "the priests and Levites." The significance of this is best seen from the Targum, where "the priests and prophets" are translated into "the priests and scribes."

By this projection of the legitimate cultus prescribed in the Law and realised in Judaism, the Chronicler is brought however into a peculiar conflict with the statements of his authority, which show that the said cultus was not a mature thing which preceded all history, but came gradually into being in the course of history; he makes his escape as well as he can, but yet not without a strange vacillation between the timeless manner of looking at things which is natural to him, and the historical tradition which he uses and appropriates. The verses in 1Kings (xiv. 22, 23): Judah (not Rehoboam merely) did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah and provoked Him to jealousy by their sins which they sinned, above all that their fathers had done; and they set up for themselves high places, macceboth and asherim, &c., which in the passage where they occur are, like the parallel statement regarding Israel (xii. 25 seq.), of primary importance, and cancel by one bold stroke the alleged difference of worship between the Levitical and non-Levitical kingdom, are omitted as quite too impossible, although the whole remaining context is preserved (2Chronicles xii. 1-16). In the same way the unfavourable judgment upon Rehoboam's successor Abijah (1Kings xv. 3-5) is dropped, because the first kings of Judah, inasmuch as they maintain the true religion against those of Israel who have fallen away from it, must of necessity have been good. But though the Chronicler is silent about what is bad, for the sake of Judah's honour, he cannot venture to pass over the improvement which, according to 1Kings xv. 12 seq., was introduced in Asa's day, although one does not in the least know what need there was for it, everything already having been in the best possible state. Nay, he even exaggerates this improvement, and makes of Asa another Josiah (2Chronicles xv. 1-15), represents him also (xiv. 3) as abolishing the high places, and yet after all (xv. 1 7) repeats the statement of 1Kings xv. 14 that the high places were not removed. So also of Jehoshaphat, we are told in the first place that he walked in the first ways of his father Asa and abolished the high places in Judah (2Chronicles xvii. 3, 6, xix. 3), a false generalisation from 1Kings (xxii. 43, 47); and then afterwards we learn (xx. 32, 33) that the high places still remained, word for word according to 1Kings xxii. 43, 44. To thc author it seems on the one hand an impossibility that the worship of the high places, which in spite of xxxiii.17 is to him fundamentally idolatry, should not have been repressed even by pious, i.e., law-observing kings, and yet on the other hand he mechanically transcribes his copy.

In the case of the notoriously wicked rulers his resort is to make them simply heathen and persecutors of the covenant religion, for to him they are inconceivable within the limits of Jehovism, which always in his view has had the Law for its norm, and is one and the same with the exclusive Mosaism cf Judaism. So first, in the case of Joram: he makes high places on the hills of Judah and seduces the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and Judah to apostatise (xxi. 11), and moreover slays all his brethren with the sword (ver. 4)—the one follows from the other. His widow Athaliah breaks up the house of Jehovah by the hand of her sons (who had been murdered, but for this purpose are revived), and makes images of Baal out of the dedicated things (xxiv. 7); none the less on that account does the public worship of Jehovah go on uninterrupted under Jehoiada the priest. Most unsparing is the treatment that Ahaz receives. According to 2Kings xvi. 10 seq., be saw at Damascus an altar which took his fancy, and he caused a similar one to be set up at Jerusalem after its pattern, while Solomon's brazen altar was probably sent to the melting-pot; it was Urijah the priest who carried out the orders of the king. One observes no sign of autonomy, or of the inviolable divine right of the sanctuary; the king commands and the priest obeys. To the Chronicler the story so told is quite incomprehensible; what does he make of it? Ahaz introduced the idolatrous worship of Damascus, abolished the worship of Jehovah, and shut up the temple (2Chronicles xxviii. 23 seq.). He regards not the person of a man, the inflexible unity of the Mosaic cultus is everything to the Chronicler, and its historical identity would be destroyed if an orthodox priest, a friend of the prophet Isaiah, had lent a helping hand to set up a foreign altar. To make idolaters pure and simple of Manasseh and Amon any heightening of what is said in 2Kings xxi. was hardly necessary; and besides, there were here special reasons against drawing the picture in too dark colours. It is wonderful also to see how the people, which is always animated with alacrity and zeal for the Law, and rewards its pious rulers for their fidelity to the covenant (xv. 15, xvii. 5, xxiv. 10, xxxi. 10), marks its censure of these wicked kings by withholding from them, or impairing, the honour of royal burial (xxi. 19, 20, xxviii. 27, xxxiii. 10),—in spite of 2Kings ix. 28, xvi. 20, xxi. 1 8.

The periodically recurring invasions of heathenism help, at the same time, to an understanding of the consequent reforms, which otherwise surpass the comprehension of the Jewish scribe. According to the Books of Kings, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah hit upon praiseworthy innovations in the temple cultus, set aside deeply rooted and immemorial customs, and reformed the public worship of Jehovah. These advances WITHIN Jehovism, which, of course, are quite incompatible with its Mosaic fixity, are made by the Chronicler to be simple restorations of the pure religion following upon its temporary violent suspension. It is in Hezekiah's case that this is done in the most thoroughgoing manner. After his predecessor has shut the doors of the house of Jehovah, put out the lights, and brought the service to an end, he sets all in operation again by means of the resuscitated priests and Levites; the first and most important act of his reign is the consecration of the temple (2Chronicles xxix.), with which is connected (xxx., xxx).) the restoration of the passover and the restitution of the temporalia to the clergy, who, as it seems, have hitherto been deprived of them. That 2Kings xviii. 1-7, although very different, has supplied the basis for all these extravagances, is seen by comparing 2Chronicles xxix. 1, 2, xxxi. 1, 20, 21, xxxii. 22 only, that the king destroyed the brazen serpent Nehushtan (2Kings xviii. 4) is passed over in silence, as if it were incredible that such an image should have been worshipped down to that date in the belief that it had come down from the time of Moses; the not less offensive statement, on the other hand, that he took away the Asherah (by which only that of the temple altar can be understood; comp. Deuteronomy xvi. 21) is got over by charging the singular into the plural; he took away the Asherahs (xxx). 1 ), which occurred here and there throughout Judah, of course at heathen altars.

In the cases of Joash and Josiah the free flight of the Chronicler's law-crazed fancy is hampered by the copy to which he is tied, and which gives not the results merely, but the details of the proceedings themselves (2Chronicles xxii., xxiii.; 2Kings xi., xii.). It is precisely such histories as these, almost the only circumstantially told ones relating to Judah in the Book of Kings, which though in their nature most akin to our author's preference for cultus, bring him into the greatest embarrassment, by introducing details which to his notions are wholly against the Law, and yet must not be represented otherwise than in the most favourable light.

It cannot be doubted that the sections about Joash in 2Kings (xi. 1-xii. 17 [16]), having their scene end subject laid in the temple, are at bottom identical with 2Chronicles xxii. 10-xxiv. 14. In the case of 2Kings xi., to begin with, the beginning and the close, vers. 1-3, vers. 13-20, recur verbatim in 2Chronicles xxii. 10-12, xxiii. 12-21, if trifling alterations be left out of account. But in the central portion also there occur passages which are taken over into 2Chronicles without any change. Only here they are inappropriate, while in the original connection they are intelligible. For the meaning and colour of the whole is entirely altered in Chronicles, as the following comparison in the main passage will show; to understand it one must bear in mind that the regent Athaliah has put to death all the members of the house of David who had escaped the massacre of Jehu, with the exception of the child Joash, who, with the knowledge of Jehoiada, the priest, has found hiding and protection in the temple.

2 KINGS xi 2CHRONICLES xxiii.

4. In the seventh year Jehoiada 1. In the seventh year Jehoiada sent and took the captains of sent and took the captains of the Carians and runners, strengthened himself and took the captains, Azariah the son of Jeroham, and Ishmael the son of Jehohanan, and Azariah the son of Obed, and Maaseiah the son of Adaiah, and Elishaphat the son of Zichri, into covenant with him.

2. And they went about in Judah and gathered the Levites out of all the cities in Judah, and the chiefs of the fathers of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem.

and brought them to him into 3. And the whole congregation the house of Jehovah, and made a made a covenant in the house of covenant with them, and took God with the king. And he said an oath of them in the house of unto them, Behold, the king's Jehovah, and showed them the son shall reign, as Jehovah said king's son; concerning the sons of David.

5. And commanded them, saying, 4. This is the thing that ye shall This is the thing that ye shall do: the third part of you, which do; the third part of you which enter on the Sabbath, of the enter on the Sabbath and keep the priests and of the Levites, watch of the king's house, shall keep the doors.

[6. And the third part in the 5. And the third part of you shall gate of Jesod, and the third be in the house of the king, and part in the gate behind the the third part in the gate Jesod; and runners, and ye shall keep all the people shall be in the courts the watch in the house...]: of the house of Jehovah.

7. And the two other third parts of you, those who go 6. And no one shall come into the forth on the Sabbath and house of Jehovah save the priests keep the watch in the house and they of the Levites that minister; of Jehovah about the king. but all the people shall keep the ordinance of Jehovah.

8. Ye shall encompass the king 7. And the Levites shall compass round about, every man with the king round about, every man his weapons in his hand, with his weapons in his hands, and and whosoever cometh within whosoever cometh into the house, the ranks, shall be put to shall be put to death; and they shall death, and ye shall be with be with the king whithersoever he the king whithersoever he goeth. goeth.

9. And the captains did according 8. And the Levites and all Judah to all that Jehoiada the priest did according to all that Jehoiada had commanded, and took each his the priest had commanded, and took men, those that were to come in each his men, those that were to come on the Sabbath with those that in on the Sabbath with those that were to go out on the Sabbath, were to go out on the Sabbath, for and came to Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the divisions.

10. And to the captains the 9. And Jehoiada the priest delivered priest gave King David's to the captains of hundreds the spears spears and shields that were and the bucklers and the shields that in the house of Jehovah. King David had, which were in the house of God.

11. And the runners stood, every 10. And he set all the people, every man with his weapons in his hand, man having his weapon in his hand, from the south side of the house from the south side of the house to to the north side, along by the north side, along by the altar the altar and the house, and the house, round about the king. round about the king.

12. And he brought forth the 11. And they brought out the king's king's son and put upon him son and put upon him the crown and the crown and the bracelet, the bracelet and they made him king, and they made him king and and Jehoiada and his sons anointed anointed him, and they clapped him and said: their hands and said: Long live the king. Long live the king.

Can the enthronement of Joash, as on a former occasion that of Solomon, possibly have been accomplished by the agency of the bodyguard of the kings of Judah? Is it possible that the high priest should have made a covenant with the captains within the house of Jehovah, and himself have held out the inducement to those half-pagan mercenaries to penetrate into the temple precincts? That were indeed an outrage upon the Law not lightly to be imputed to so holy a man! Why then did not Jehoiada make use of his own guard, the myriads of Levites who were at his command? Such a course was the only right one, and therefore that which was followed. "No one shall come into the house of Jehovah save the priests and they of the Levites that minister:" in accordance with this fundamental principle stated by himself (xxiii. 6; comp ver. 7 INTO THE HOUSE instead of WITHIN THE RANKS), our pious historian substitutes his priests and Levites for the Carians and runners. Hereby also Jehoiada comes into the place that belongs to him as sovereign of the sanctuary and of the congregation. He therefore needs no longer to set on foot in secret a conspiracy with the chiefs of the body-guard, but through his own spiritual officers calls together the Levites and heads of houses from all the cities of Judah into the temple, and causes the whole assemblage there to enter into a covenant with the young king. The glaring inconsistencies inevitably produced by the new colouring thus given to individual parts of the old picture must simply be taken as part of the bargain. If Jehoiada has unrestricted sway over such a force and sets about his revolution with the utmost publicity, then it is he and not Athaliah who has the substance of power; why then all this trouble about the deposition of the tyrant? Out of mere delight in Levitical pomp and high solemnities? What moreover is to be done with the captains who are retained in xxiii. 1, 9, and in ver. 14 are even called officers of the host as in 2Kings xi 15, after their soldiers have been taken from them or metamorphosed? Had the Levites a military organisation, and, divided into three companies, did they change places every week in the temple service? The commentators are inclined to call in to their aid such inventive assumptions, with which, however, they may go on for ever without attaining their end, for the error multiplies itself. As a specially striking instance of the manner in which the procedure of Chronicles avenges itself may be mentioned chapter xxiii. 8: "and they took each his men," &c. The words are taken from 2Kings xi. 9, but there refer to the captains, while here the antecedents are the Levites and all the men of Judah—as if each one of these last had a company of his own which entered upon service, or left it, every Sabbath day.

The comparison of 2Chronicles xxiv. 4-14 with 2Kings xii. 5-17 [4-16] is not much less instructive. According to 2Kings xii. Joash enjoined that all the money dues payable to the temple should in future fall to the priests, who in turn were to be under obligation to maintain the building in good repair. But they took the money and neglected the other side of the bargain, and when they and Jehoiada in particular were blamed by the king on that account, they gave up the dues so as not to be liable to the burden. Thereupon the king set up a kind of sacred treasury, a chest with a hole in the lid, near the altar, "on the right hand as one goes into the temple," into which the priests were to cast the money which came in, with the exception of the sin and trespass moneys, which still belonged to them. And as often as the chest became full, the king's scribes and the chief priest removed the money, weighed it, and handed it over to the contractors for payment of the workmen; that none of it was to be employed for sacred vessels is expressly said (ver. 14). This arrangement by King Joash was a lasting one, and still subsisted in Josiah's time (2Kings . . xxii. 3 seq.).

The arbitrary proceeding of Joash did not well suit the ideas of an autonomous hierocracy. According to the Law the current money dues fell to the priests; no king had the right to take them away and dispose of them at his pleasure. How was it possible that Jehoiada should waive his divine right and suffer such a sacrilegious invasion of sacred privileges? how was it possible that he should be blamed for his (at first) passive resistance of the illegal invasion; how was it possible at all that the priest in his own proper department should be called to account by the king? Chronicles knows better than that. The wicked Athaliah had wasted and plundered the temple; Joash determined to restore it, and for this purpose to cause money to be collected throughout all Israel by the agency of the Levites. But as these last were in no hurry, he made a chest and set it outside in the doorway of the sanctuary; there the people streamed past, and gentle and simple with joyful heart cast in their gifts until the chest was full. This being announced by the keepers of the door, the king's scribe and the delegate of the high priest came to remove the money; with it the king and the high priest paid the workmen, and what remained over was made into costly vessels (2Chronicles xxiv. 5-14). According to this account Joash makes no arrangement whatever about the sacred dues, but sets on foot an extraordinary collection, as had once been done by Moses for the building of the tabernacle (xxiv. 6, 9); following upon this, everything else also which in 2Kings xii. is a permanent arrangement, here figures as an isolated occurrence; instead of necessary repairs of the temple constantly recurring, only one extraordinary restoration of it is mentioned, and for this occasional purpose only is the treasure chest set up,— not, however, beside the altar, but only at the doorway (xxiv. 8; comp. 2Kings xii. 10). The clergy, the Levites, are charged only with making the collection, not with maintaining the building out of the sacred revenues; consequently they are not reproached with keeping the money to themselves, but only with not being heartily enough disposed towards the collection. It appears, however, that they were perfectly justified in this backwardness, for the king has only to set up the "treasury of God," when forthwith it overflows with the voluntary offerings of the people who flock to it, so that out of the proceeds something remains over (ver. 14) for certain other purposes—which according to 2Kings xii. 14 [13] were expressly excluded. Joash imposes no demands at all upon the priests, and Jehoiada in particular stands over against him as invested with perfectly equal rights; if the king sends his scribe, the high priest also does not appear personally, but causes himself to be represented by a delegate (xxiv. 11; comp. 2Kings xii. 11 [10]). Here also many a new piece does not come well into the old garment, as De Wette (i. 10O) shows. Chronicles itself tacitly gives the honour to the older narrative by making Joash at last apostatise from Mosaism and refuse the grateful deference which he owed to the high priest; this is the consequence of the unpleasant impression, derived not from its own story, but from that of the Book of Kings, with regard to the undue interference of the otherwise pious king in the affairs of the sanctuary and of the priests.

Chronicles reaps the fruits of its perversion of 2Kings xii. in its reproduction of the nearly related and closely connected section 2Kings xxii. 3-IO. It is worth while once more to bring the passages together.

2Kings xxii. 2Chronicles xxxiv.

3. And in the eighteenth year 8. And in the eighteenth year of king Josiah the king sent of his reign, to cleanse the Shaphan the son of Azaliah, land and the house, he sent the son of Meshullam, the scribe, Shaphan the son of Azaliah, to the house of Jehovah, saying, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of 4. Go up to Hilkiah the high Joahaz the recorder, to repair priest, that he may empty the the house of Jehovah his God. money which hath been brought into the house of Jehovah 9. And they came to Hilkiah which the keepers of the the high priest, and they threshold have gathered of delivered the money that had the people. been brought into the house of God which the Levites that 5. And let them deliver it into kept the threshold had gathered the hand of the doers of the from Ephraim and Manasseh and work that have the oversight all the remnant of Israel and of the house of Jehovah, and from all Judah and Benjamin, let them give it to the doers and had returned therewith of the work who are in the to Jerusalem. house of Jehovah to repair the breaches of the house. 10. And they gave it into the hand of the workmen that had the 6. Unto carpenters, and builders, oversight of the house of Jehovah, and masons, and to buy timber and of the workmen that wrought in and hewn stones to repair the the house of Jehovah to repair house. and amend the house.

7. But let no reckoning be 11. They gave it to the artificers made with them as to the money and to the builders to buy that is delivered into their hewn stone and timber for roofs hand, because they deal faithfully. and beams of the houses which the kings of Judah had destroyed.

12. And the men did the work faithfully. And the overseers of them were Jahath and Obadiah, the Levites, of the sons of Merari; and Zechariah and Meshullam, of the Kohathites, to preside; and all the Levites that had skill in instruments of music

13. Were over the bearers of burdens and overseers of all that wrought the work in any manner of service; and others of the Levites were scribes and officers and porters.

14. And when they brought out the money that had been brought into the house of Jehovah, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses.

8. And Hilkiah the high priest 15. And Hilkiah answered and said unto Shaphan the scribe: said to Shaphan the scribe: I have found the book of the I have found the book of the law law in the house of Jehovah. in the house of Jehovah. And And Hilkiah gave the book to Hilkiah delivered the book Shaphan, and he read it. to Shaphan.

9. And Shaphan the scribe came 16. And Shaphan carried the book to the king and brought the king to the king, and besides brought word again, and said: Thy word back to the king, saying: servants have emptied out the All that was committed to thy money that was found in the servants they are doing. house and have delivered it into the hand of them that 17. And they have emptied out do the work, that have the the money that was found in the oversight of the house of house of Jehovah, and have Jehovah. delivered it into the hand of the overseers and into 10. And Shaphan the scribe the hand of the workmen. told the king, saying: Hilkiah the priest hath delivered 18. And Shaphan the scribe to me a book. And Shaphan told the king, saying: Hilkiah read it before the king. the priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read out of it before the king.

The occasion on which the priest introduces the Book of the Law to the notice of Shaphan has presuppositions in the arrangement made by Joash which Chronicles has destroyed, substituting others in its place,—that the temple had been destroyed under the predecessors of Josiah, but that under the latter money was raised by the agency of peripatetic Levites throughout all Israel for the restoration, and in the first instance deposited in the treasure-chest. At the emptying of this chest the priest is then alleged to have found the book (ver. 14, after Deuteronomy xxxi. 26), notwithstanding that on this occasion Shaphan also and the two accountants added in ver. 8 were present, and ought therefore to have had a share in the discovery which, however, is excluded by ver. 15 (= 2Kings xxii. 8). There are other misunderstandings besides; in particular, the superintendents of the works (muphkadim), to whom, according to the original narrative, the money is handed over for payment, are degraded to the rank of simple workmen, from whom, nevertheless, they are again afterwards distinguished; and while in 2Kings xxii. 7 they are represented as dealing faithfully in paying out the money, in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 12 they deal faithfully in their work. Perhaps, however, this is no mere misunderstanding, but is connected with the endeavour to keep profane hands as far off as possible from that which is holy, and, in particular, to give the management of the work to the Levites (vers. 12,13). To what length the anxiety of later ages went in this matter is seen in the statement of Josephus (Ant., xv. 11, 2), that Herod caused one thousand priests to be trained as masons and carpenters for the building of his temple. The two most interesting alterations in Chronicles are easily overlooked. In ver. 1 8 the words: "He read the book to the king," are changed into "He read out of the book to the king;" and after "Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan" (ver. 15) the words "and he read it" are omitted. In 2Kings the book appears as of very moderate size, but the author of Chronicles figures to himself the whole Pentateuch under that name.

In the sequel 2Kings xxii. 11-xxiii.3 is indeed repeated verbatim in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 19-32, but the incomparably more important section connected with it (xxiii. 4-10), giving a detailed account of Josiah's vigorous reformation, is omitted, and its place taken by the meagre remark that the king removed all abominations out of Israel (xxxiv. 33); in compensation his passover feast is described all the more fully (chap. xxxv.). In recording also the finding and publication of the Law, Chronicles fails to realise that this document begins now for the first time to be historically operative, and acquires its great importance quite suddenly. On the contrary, it had been from the days of Moses the basis on which the community rested, and had been in force and validity at all normal times; only temporarily could this life-principle of the theocracy be repressed by wicked kings, forthwith to become vigorous and active again as soon as the pressure was removed. As soon as Ahaz has closed his eyes, Hezekiah, in the first month of his first year, again restores the Mosaic cultus; and as soon as Josiah reaches years of discretion he makes good the sins of his fathers. Being at his accession still too young, the eighth year of his reign is, as a tribute to propriety, selected instead of the eighth year of his life, and the great reformation assigned to that period which in point of fact he undertook at a much later date (xxxiv. 3-7 = 2Kings xxiii. 4-20> Thus the movement happily becomes separated from its historical occasion, and in character the innovation appears rather as a simple recovery of the spring after the pressure on it has been removed. The mist disappears before the sun of the Law, which appears in its old strength; its light passes through no phases, but shines from the beginning with uniform brightness. What Josiah did had also been done before him already by Asa, then by Jehoshaphat, then by Hezekiah; the reforms are not steps in a progressive development, but have all the same unchanging contents. Such is the influence upon historical vision of that transcendental Mosaism raised far above all growth and process of becoming, which can be traced even in the Book of Kings, but is so much more palpable in the Book of Chronicles.

VI.II.3. Apart from the fact that it represents the abiding tradition of the legitimate cultus at Jerusalem, the history of Judah in the Book of Chronicles has yet another instructive purpose. In the kingdom of Judah it is not a natural and human, but a divine pragmatism that is operative. To give expression to this is what the prophets exist for in unbroken succession side by side with high priests and kings; they connect the deeds of men with the events of the course of the world, and utilise the sacred history as a theme for their preaching, as a collection of examples illustrative of the promptest operation of the righteousness of Jehovah. In doing so they do not preach what is new or free, but have at their command, like Jehovah Himself, only the Law of Moses, setting before their hearers prosperity and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern, just as the law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune occurs is guilt wanting.

In the fifth year of Rehoboam Judah and Jerusalem were ravaged by Pharaoh Shishak (1Kings xiv. 25). The explanation is that three years they walked in the ways of David and Solomon, because for three years they were strengthened and reinforced by the priests and Levites and other pious persons who had immigrated from the northern kingdom (2Chronicles xi. 17); but thereafter in the fourth year, after the kingdom of Rehoboam had been strengthened and confirmed, he forsook the Law and all Israel with him (xii. 1)— and in the fifth year followed the invasion of Shishak. A prophet announces this, and in consequence the king humbles himself along with his people and escapes with comparatively trifling punishment, being thought worthy to reign yet other twelve years.

Asa in his old age was diseased in his feet (1Kings xv. 23). According to 2Chronicles xvi. 12, he died of this illness, which is described as extremely dangerous, in the forty-first year of his reign, after having already been otherwise unfortunate in his later years. And why? He had invoked foreign aid, instead of the divine, against Baasha of Israel. Now, as Baasha survived only to the twenty-sixth year of Asa, the wickedness must have been perpetrated before that date. But in that case its connection with the punishment which overtook the king only towards the close of his life would not be clear. Baasha's expedition against Jerusalem, accordingly, and the Syrian invasion of Israel occasioned by Asa on that account are brought down in Chronicles to the thirty-sixth year of the latter (xvi. 1). It has been properly observed that Baasha was at that date long dead, and the proposal has accordingly been made to change the number thirty-six into sixteen,—without considering that the first half of the reign of Asa is expressly characterised as having been prosperous, that the thirty-fifth year is already reached in chap. xv. 19, and that the correction destroys the connection of the passage with what follows (xvi. 7 seq.). For it is in connection with that flagitious appeal for aid to the Syrians that the usual prophet makes his appearance (xvi. 7), and makes the usual announcement of impending punishment. It is Hanani, a man of Northern Israel (1Kings xvi. 7), but Asa treats him as if he were one of his own subjects, handles him severely, and shuts him in prison. By this he hastens and increases his punishment, under which he falls in the forty-first year of his reign.

Jehoshaphat, the pious king, according to 1Kings xxii., took part in the expedition of the godless Ahab of Israel against the Damascenes. Chronicles cannot allow this to pass unrebuked, and accordingly when the king returns in peace, the same Hanani announces his punishment, albeit a gracious one (2Chronicles xix. I-3). And gracious indeed it is; the Moabites and Ammonites invade the land, but Jehoshaphat without any effort on his part wins a glorious victory, and inexhaustible plunder (xx. 1 seq.). One cannot blame him, therefore, for once more entering into an alliance with Ahab's successor for a naval expedition to be undertaken in common, which is to sail from a port of the Red Sea, probably round Africa, to Tarshish (Spain, 2Chronicles ix. 21). But this time he is punished more seriously as Eliezer the son of Dodavah had prophesied, the ships are wrecked. Compare on the other hand 1Kings xxii. 48, 49: "Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold, but they went not, for the ships were wrecked in the harbour on the Red Sea. At that time Ahaziah the son of Ahab had said to Jehoshaphat: Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships; but Jehoshaphat would not." So the original statement. But in Chronicles a moral ground must be found for the misfortune, and Jehoshaphat therefore makes with the king of Samaria a sinful alliance, which in point of fact he had declined, not indeed from religious motives.

Joram, the son of Jehoshaphat, conducted himself very ill, it is said in 2Kings viii. 18; Chronicles enhances his offence, and above all adds the merited reward (xxi. 4, seq.). Elijah, although he had quitted this earth long before (2Kings iii. 11 seq.), must write to the offender a letter, the threats of which are duly put into execution by Jehovah. The Philistines and Arabians having previously pressed him hard, he falls into an incurable sickness of the bowels, which afflicts him for years, and finally brings him to his end in a most frightful manner (xxi. 12, seq.). In concurrence with the judgment of God, the people withhold from the dead king the honours of royalty, and he is not buried beside his fathers, notwithstanding 2Kings viii. 24.