adam c welch - the work of the chronicler

8/12/2019 Adam C Welch - The Work of the Chronicler

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THE WORKOF THE HRONI LER

ITS PURPOS A ND ITS D TE

BY

ADAM C WELCH D.D.Emeritus Professor of Hebrewand Old Testament Literature

New College Edinburgh

THE SCHWEICH LECTURESOF THE BRITISH ACADEMY1938

LONDONPUBLISHED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMYBY HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

AMEN HOUSE E.C.1939


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PREF CEHEauthoracknowledges the honourwhich theSchweichTrustees have conferred upon him by inviting him tobecome their lecturer. He acknowledges even more warmlythe opportunity they have put within his reach ofpublishinga study on a somewhat neglected book, which, without theirhelp, would never have seen the light. The chance to con-tribute something to the elucidation of a literature to whichmost of his working life has been devoted s more to thewriter than any personal honour, high and highly valuedthough that is.

The lectures have been entirely recast in their new form.The time at the lecturer s disposal as well as the character ofthe audience made it necessary to present in the lectures nomore than the author s results. In the present volume hehas offered in full the evidence on which those results arebased. Without the evidence the results would have beennegligible to his fellow students.

It only remains to add that, after the Introduction, thesymbols C and K are generally used for the Chronicler andfor the author of Kings respectively; and that the Biblicalreferences follow the numbering which appears in theHebrew text.


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CONTENTSINTRODUCTION .I. DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES

II. THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECY .III. THE CHRONICLER AND THE LEVITES

A. The Levites as Singers .B The Levites and the ArkC. Other Functions assigned to the Levites .Excursus on II Ohr. 24: 4-14

IV. ANALYSIS OF I OHR. CHAPTERS 23 6V. HEZEKIAH S REFORM

VI. THE CHRONICLER AND DEUTERONOMYVII. CONCLUSION

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGESGENERAL INDEX .

1 g

42 5455 8056 6364 73

73 778 8081 g6

97 121122 48149 60


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INTRODUCTIONI N an earlier series of lectures, delivered under the BairdTrust in Glasgow, the writer advanced the opinion thatthe nine chapters at the beginning of the books ofChroniclesand the two verses which form their conclusion have nointegral relation to the rest of the material, and have beenadded later. 1 The work of the Chronicler, therefore, whichs the subject ofthe present study, s to be found in I Chr. 1o: III Chr. 36: 21 and, when the alien elements have beenremoved, can be seen to present a definite unity. It dealtwith the period of the kingdom inJudah from the time of itsfoundation by David to that of its collapse under Zedekiah.Thus to define the scope of the Chronicler s work bringsinto the foreground the fact that his book covered the same

ground which had already been traversed in part of Samueland in the two books ofKings, except that the author ignoredthe existence of the northern kingdom. This inevitablyraises the question of the reason which led a writer, living ageneration or more later, to return to the history of theDavidic kingdom and to rewrite its record with such fullnessof detail. A duplication of two narratives, which showsprecisely the same features as here, s unexampled in theOld Testament. We are familiar with the phenomenon ofparallel accounts in Scripture. There were once in circulation two accounts of the patriarchal period, which told howIsrael came to be, and which ended with the event of theExodus which gave the nation its distinctive character andits national consciousness. 2

1 The reasons for this judgement are to be found in my Post-ExilicJudaism pp. 185 ff

2 This is written in full recognition of the value of the work of Volzand Rudolph Der Elohist als Er;:/i.hler - ein I weg der Pentateuch-Kritikwhich has recently thrown doubt on this conclusion. The authors haveshown good cause for questioning whether it is legitimate to pronouncewith confidence that theJ and E documents can be separated with the

B


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2 INTRODUCTIONThose records told how the people possessed of commontraditions about their past and sharing an experience whichset them apart from the world were prepared to meet thefuture. Again what we can only infer about the patriarchalnarratives is no matter of inference as to the history of thekingdom for the compiler of the books of Kings has referredto the sources on which he drew and has stated that he usedmaterial from the North Israelite andJudean archives. Butthese two cases of duplication differ in important aspectsfrom that which engages our attention. Thus it is not hardto understand why in the period when both branches werequickened into vigour and national consciousness by theinstitution of the kingdom the desire was awakened to tellthe story of how Israel came to be and to commemorate themen who helped to make it. Each produced its own versionwhich reproduced its peculiar traditions and glorified its ownheroes. s naturally each of the rival kingdoms preservedthe records of its past in the Chronicles of the kings of Israeland Judah. In both instances however these separate nar-ratives were combined in the form which we now possess;and as it was possible to find a reason for their separateexistence it s equally possible to account for their amalgamation. With the disappearance of the northern kingdomJudah became the only representative of Israel and as itmaintained all the hope for the future so it inherited allexactness which has been claimed for the process. They have alsoshown that too much reliance has been placed on differences oflanguage and even at times on the existence of narratives which weresupposed to be duplicates. The criteria employed by criticism in itswork of dissection have been too narrow in their character and wereoften too uncertain to bear out all the conclusions which have beenbased on them. The superstructure s top-heavy and is crumblingbecause of the inadequacy of its foundations. But in my judgementtheir work has not succeeded in overturning the broad conclusion thatthere were once two parallel documents. The prooffor this theory mayhave been inadequately stated and at times has been overstrained; butthe theory itself meets too many difficulties and accounts for too manyfacts to be lightly discarded.


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INTRODUCTION 3the traditions of the past. The men of that generation wereseeking to restore the lost unity of Israel and were using thebond of their common religion and of their common past toserve this end. They recognized that the continued existenceof separate records of that past was worse than useless sincethese brought a constant reminder of the old schism thememory of which they were anxious to obliterate. Theblending into one of the records of the two branches of thepeople was a part of that process of centralization whichbegan after the fall of Samaria and which s too narrowlyconstrued when it s thought of as no more than the cen-tralization of sacrificial worship at the temple. The singlerecord of the past meant a reassertion of the unity of Israel.The situation however s different when we turn to the workof the Chronicler. Here we have an author who belonged tothe reunited nation and who was writing in and for the samecommunity as that for which the author of Kings producedhis book. Yet he rewrote the history of the kingdom and wasso conscious of the importance of what he did that he madehis account as long as that of his predecessor. Also thoughhe added a good deal which dealt with the temple and therelation of the kings to the sanctuary he did not put thisinto an appendix to Kings but gave it a more appropriatesetting in his own narrative as though it could only be fullyappreciated in its new connexion. Nor was any effort evermade to amalgamate the two records. It might appear asthough men were conscious of a difference between the twowhich made such a step impracticable.This feature of the book has not received much attentionfrom those who have issued commentaries on Chronicles.Kittel in his commentary was largely dominated by hisinterest as a historian. While it would be ungrateful toignore the value ofhis notes on the chapters which deal withthe temple and its arrangements it remains true that hischief interest lay in determining the relative value of Kingsand Chronicles as sources for providing material to the

1 Handkommentar tum A T : Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht


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INTRODU TIONinto agreement with the outlook and needs of a later time.There must have been some element in the Chronicler streatment of his subject, which not only excited the interest,but roused the criticism of his contemporaries. What madethis conclusion more sure was that the annotations weremost frequent in the passages which were peculiar to theChronicler, and were fewer and less important in thematerial which was common to him and the author ofKings.

This brief resume of some recent work on Chronicles doesnot pretend to sum up all the contributions made to itsinterpretation, or to deal adequately with the special contribution of the two scholars cited. The present writer haschosen the two modern commentaries which best representtwo leading lines of approach to the study of the book, andhas indicated the results which in his view they have proved.But these results have left unanswered two questions relatingto the book, which to him appear of primary importance-the reason which prompted the Chronicler to duplicate thehistory of the kingdom, and the reason for this accounthaving received so much attention from revisers. Thisfeeling ofsomething which has not yet found an answer mayform the excuse, ifone be needed, for approaching the wholequestion along a different line. It s possible to ignore thedemerits of the Chronicler as a historian, a subject whichhas been already dealt with by Kittel, and to concentrateattention on what the author had to say, and through thestudy ofwhat he did say discover, ifpossible, the purpose hehad in writing his book. In order to do this, it s necessary tobring an open mind and rigorously to refuse to determinebeforehand what ought to have been in a history of Israel skingdom, or to ignore anything which has been includedthere. Only after his narrative has been passed in review, sit legitimate to conclude his purpose in writing it.

For the sake of bringing some order into the study, itseemed advisable to group the material round certain largesubjects. The first of these must be the life-work of David,were it only because the Chronicler devoted twenty chapters


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INTRODUCTION 7to the king s reign. But here the aim must be to discoverthe estimate he made of the character and work of the firstking oflsrael and the place he assigned him in the life of thenation, and to recognize whether it differed from the picturewhich emerges in Kings. f any difference does emerge, itwill be necessary to try to measure its significance. Anyquestion of difference on historical matters between thetwo sources will only be of interest, so far as it has a bearingon the attitude which s assumed to David. The later writermay have departed from the course of events in Kings inorder to make it bring out his peculiar view. The study ofDavid will be followed by another on the series of prophetswho are said in the second book to have appeared beforecertain kings to warn or to encourage them in the exerciseof their functions. Because these incidents are supported byno other historical source, and are sometimes irreconcilablewith the course of events in Kings, and because in them-selves they are very difficult to accept as a record of events,they have been generally ignored. For this study they areof peculiar interest, even if they must be set down as acreation of the Chronicler. For they introduce the studentdirectly to the author s mind and to his thought on such largequestions as the function of prophecy and its relation to thekingdom. Above all, they throw light on his attitude to thekingdom and to the Davidic dynasty. Where the author ofKings judged the successive kings by whether they sup-pressed or maintained the high places, the Chronicler intro-duced a different standard, and measured their allegiance toYahweh by their obedience to the divine message throughthe prophets.Again, Chronicles s distinguished from Kings by theattention which its author devoted to the temple, its cult,and its clergy. He made David the real originator of thesanctuary, and reduced Solomon s share in the work to nomore than the faithful carrying out ofhis father s plans. Hefurther credited David with having organized the templeservices and allotted their duties to the temple personnel.


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8 INTRODUCTIONIn is description of these arrangements he brought intospecial prominence the levites, a body of clergy who areignored in any reference which the author of Kings made tothe temple. Two chapters have been devoted to thissubject. The first deals directly with the major question ofthe status which is given to the levites throughout the book.The second is more limited in its character, for it is devotedto an analysis of a block of material which occupies theclosing chapters in I Chronicles, and which purports tocontain the instructions as to the arrangements in the futuretemple which David delivered to Solomon immediatelybefore his death. These two chapters introduce, to a greaterextent than before, the difficult and involved problem of theextent of the revision which the book has received and of thecharacter of this revision. Cognate to this is the followingdiscussion of Hezekiah s reform. Here, again, it may benecessary to insist that no attention need be given to thequestion s to whether the account of this reform is historic-ally reliable. Even i t should be held that it s a free creationon the part of the Chronicler, the fact remains that he madeHezekiah, not Josiah, the originator of the great reform ofreligion which took place some time before the disappear-ance of the kingdom. The three chapters, therefore, inwhich he described this reform, present his idea of the lineson which such a reform ought to have been carried out andhis conception of the conduct which befitted a reformingking. The closing chapter is occupied with a discussion ofthe relation between the Chronicler and Deuteronomy,which falls a little out of line with what has preceded. Itcannot, however, be omitted in any study on the book, wereit only for the light t casts on the question of its date.

The line of approach to Chronicles which has thus beenindicated may supplement the work ofKittel and Rothstein.On the one hand it will bring into the foreground theelements in the book which Kittel was inclined to brushaside, and, by giving them a due place, may suggest that itsauthor had another purpose in view than that of writing


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INTRODUCTIONhistory. On the other hand it will concentrate attention onthe different attitude which emerges in the original narrativeand in the annotations and so may suggest a reason forChronicles having received an amount of revision which sabsent from Kings.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLEST HE importance of the role which C assigned to Davidappears from the fact that twenty chapters out of thefifty-six of which his book s composed were devoted to thelife of the king. Of these twenty chapters, also, more thanhalf are peculiar to the later record, and have no parallel inthe Book ofSamuel or that ofKings. We are thus exceptionally well supplied with information on the position whichwas given to David there. For we are not dependent onconclusions drawn from the passages which C omitted orfrom the changes he made in those which he included. Thesemight mislead a student, since he must in both cases supplyhis own reasons for the departure from the original, and, inso doing, might follow his own ideas and go widely astray.But the chapters which have been added represent C sindependent point ofview, and give his reasons for attachingso much importance to the early reign. A student s thussupplied with a clue which may guide him n his attempt todetermine the reason which prompted both the omissionsand the alterations which were made in the earlier narrative.C then began his narrative with the accession ofDavid asKing over united Israel. He prefaced the account by thestory of Saul s defeat on Mt. Gilboa, I Chr. c. 10 which hebased on I Sam. c. 31. But the changes which he introducedand the new setting in which he placed the story gave thewhole a different aspect.

The author of Samuel set the defeat at Gilboa in itshistorical perspective. On the one hand, he made t thefinal incident in Saul s lifelong struggle with the Philistines.On the other hand, he made it no more than the first stagen the accession of the new king. David must settle withSaul s house in the person of Ishbaal, and only after thecollapse of that ill-starred kinglet was he able to transform


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12 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLEShis kingdom over Judah at Hebron into one over all Israelat Jerusalem. After Ishbaal s death the elders of Israeltransferred their allegiance to the new king. But to the endof his reign David must reckon with the fact that the olderline had its supporters in the kingdom. The Rizpah incidentand the attitude of Shimei and Meribaal at the time ofAbsalom s rebellion proved that there was a party in Israelwhich counted him a usurper.

The attitude of C to the defeat at Gilboa appears in thetwoverseswhichheadded to the story, vv. 13f. Thatdisasterwas no mere incident in the war with the Philistines: in itthe divinejudgement was pronounced on the early kingdom.Saul died for his trespass against the word of the Lord.Therefore the Lord slew him, and brought his dynasty aswell as himself to an end. There could be no successor to thedoomed house, for, when Saul died with his three sons, allhis house died together, v 6 Accordingly, C omitted allmention ofthe kingdom oflshbaal and ofDavid s temporaryreign at Hebron. He was equally silent about the incidentsin David s reign which proved the existence of a constantand formidable opposition in the interest of Saul s house.2Instead ofmaking the elders of Israel wait until Ishbaal wasdead before they came to Hebron with the offer of thecrown, he made their act immediately follow Gilboa. Themen recognized in that debacle the divine decision, for theydid not merely anoint David to be king as in Samuel, theyanointed him according to the word of the Lord by the handof Samuel, 11 : 3. The new king did not come to the throne,because the leaders oflsrael recognized in him the only manwho was competent to meet the situation in which their

1 Incidentally, it may be noted that the inclusion of a genealogy ofSaul at I Chr 8: 33-40, since it contradicts the statement here, is anadditional proof that the early nine chapters were no integral partof the work of C.

2 The only place at which occurs a reference to the Hebron kingdomis I Chr 29: 27, which is a verbatim copy of the summary of the reignfrom K It is not surprising that this casual reference was overlooked.


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14 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESstatement, which both gave his reason for inserting it wherehe did, and dwelt on the quality which marked all themen, whatever might be the special distinction of individualsamong them. These men showed themselves strong withhim in his kingdom, together with all Israel, to make himking, according to the word of the Lord concerning Israel ,11: 10. The representatives of the nation and its bravest hadcombined in supporting the king, and, indoing so acquiescedin a greater purpose than their own.This list was followed by another series of names andnumbers of a similar character in chap. I 2. The additionallist falls naturally into two sections, vv. 1-22 and vv. 23-40which differ in one particular. The earlier verses state thatcontingents from certain tribes joined David during theperiod which preceded his accession: the later profess to givethe numbers of those who came from the several tribes inorder to take part in his election to the throne. The source ofthese passages is quite uncertain; indeed it is an open ques-tion whether the Chronicler drew on any original, or gavefree rein to his own imagination. It has always appearedto me more probable that much of the material in vv. 1 23derives from earlier sources. Evidently the period of David sflight before Saul appealed very strongly to the imaginationof the early Hebrews, as the number ofsuch folk tales collectedby the author of Samuel is enough to prove. Stories aboutthe hunted fugitive who rose to high honour have alwaysexercised a romantic appeal; and when the hero not onlybecame king but succeeded in restoring the unity andindependence of his kingdom, they have a long life. Thevividness of the two incidents which are related about theGadites and about Amasai suggests a very different type ofmind from that of C, who had a rather heavy hand when heattempted to restore the past. He may have selected materialfrom an unknown source to complete his picture of David.

1 Curtis e.g., in the l.C.C. Commentary has no hesitation in declaring most of the material to be a free creation which may be dated atthe period of the Return.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 15Then it becomes legitimate to note that the two incidentswhich are most unlike his own style served his purpose.For he thus brought out clearly that the men who came over-to David in his early years were offine quality and character.Again when the young leader naturally showed some suspicion at the appearance of men from Benjamin the tribe ofSaul their head claimed to be guided by divine inspiration.The men who supported the future king in his early yearswere not the broken men whom the author of Samueldescribed I Sam. 22: 1-2. Nor were they so few in numberas the 400 of I Sam. 22: 2 or the 600 of 27: 2: even beforeis accession David was at the head of a great host like thehost of God. Already also some of them and among those

men from Benjamin were able and willing to acknowledgehis divinely guided destiny.The later section vv. 24ff is different in character. It isso confused that it does not seem to be homogeneous; it alsobears more evident signs of the style ofC. It may thereforebe a very free reconstruction on his part. But however this

may be its general aim is unmistakable. The contingentswhich came to Hebron were drawn from all the tribes ofIsrael and they were so numerous as to prove the unanimityof the nation in the nomination of the new king.Immediately after the capture ofJerusalem David set onfoot the transference of the ark from the house of Obed-Edom. The new capital must become the religious centre ofthe nation. Here as Kittel has remarked C has departedfrom the order ofevents in the book ofSamuel. In the earlierrecord the capture of erusalem was followed by the buildingof a palace by a record of the royal family and by theaccount of certain wars with the Philistines. Only then didthe king find time to turn his attention to the ark. In C theconquest of the new capital was immediately followed by the effort to bring the sacred emblem into its shrine there. Sopious an act could not have been delayed.

The story of the abortive attempt to bring up the ark inchap. 13 is so far as the later part vv. 6 ff. is concerned


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6 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESparallel to II Sam. 6: 1-11 but it s prefaced by a shortintroduction which s peculiar to C. The author of Samuelmade the king summon 30 000 leading men in Israel, atwhose head he went down to the house of Obed-Edom.In C, on the other hand, when David convoked the captainsof thousands and the captains ofhundreds, he did so in orderto lay before them the proposal that all Israel should bebrought together that they might take part in the solemnact. In particular, he proposed to send messages to all ourbrethren who are left in all the lands of Israel . The resultwas that the entire nation from the brook of Egypt to theentering in of Hamath was assembled. Accordingly, whilethe author of Samuel said that David went and all thepeople who were with him, C changed this into Davidand all Israel. The ark, which was to become the centrefor the worship of Israel, must be brought to its shrine inJerusalem by the united nation. It had been ignoredduring the reign of the king whom God had rejected: oneof the earliest acts of the king whom God had chosen wasto give it fitting reverence, and to set it in its place at thenational shrine.

In these respects the passage continues the leading motifwhich dominated C s conception of David and his work.Under him Israel became a united kingdom, and now underhim it became one through the possession of a commonsanctuary. But the form of the proposal for effecting thiswhich the king is said to have brought before his leadingmen is very peculiar in its character. It is already singularto find him feeling the need specially to notify Israel proper of the event: it is more singular to recognize the terms inwhich this was to be done. The men are called our brethren;they are described as those who are left in the lands oflsrael;they are said to have among them the priests and levites,where all the LXX MSS. omit the w w and read thelevitical priests . Now the expression t:l 1N1Vlil, those whoare left in the l nds of Israel , is peculiar to the post-exilicliterature, and s employed there to describe the men of the


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 7North who survived the divine judgement in the exile underSargon. 1 The natural explanation for the use of suchlanguage in David s time is to suppose that the author lapsedper incuri m into the phraseology of his own time. Was it amere lapse? It remains a remarkable fact that the sameauthor ascribed to Hezekiah and Josiah, the two laterreforming kings who restored the conditions which prevailedunder David, an equal anxiety that the same men, theremanent Israelites, should take part in the passover celebra-tion at the restored temple. From him we learn of themessages Hezekiah dispatched for this purpose into theNorth. C was writing in view of the situation which pre-vailed in his own time. ~ chose the language which he didand put it into the mouth of David in order to express hisconviction. Israel had an equal right with Judah in theworship at the temple. The king who instituted the nationalshrine at Jerusalem had deliberately included the men ofthe North in the initial act which made that shrine national.He had put the matter before the leaders of the people, andthey had acquiesced in the proposal. For the remanentIsraelites were the brethren of the men ofJudah and weretreated as such.This interpretation throws light upon another phrase inthe proposal. As the sentence reads in the MT the remarkthat the Israelites possessed priests and levites has no veryappropriate meaning in itself and has no relation to thematter in hand. There is no obvious connexion between thestatement that the Israelites had these two classes of clergyand David s desire to invite them to the ceremony of thetransference of the ark. The meaning becomes much clearer,i we follow the unanimous Septuagint reading and under-stand a reference to the levitical priests. For that is the titleapplied to the priests ofnorth Israel in Deuteronomy. WhenC put into David s mouth a reference to the priests oflsraeland when he connected this with an urgent request that theIsraelites should take part in the inauguration of the temple,

1 C my Post-Exilic Judaism pp. 59 ffD


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8 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLEShe expressed his attitude to one of the burning questions ofthe time of the Return. The remanent Israelites had theprivilege of sharing in the national worship on an equalfooting with their Judean brethren , and their priests hada similar place in the cult-practice.After the unsuccessful effort to transfer the ark, David,according to C, made careful arrangements in order toprevent a repetition. He prepared a i p ~ or shrine for thereception of the sacred emblem, and set up a tent in which it was to be lodged, 15 : 1. Pronouncing that only the leviteswere competent to act as its porters, he instructed the headsof fathers houses ofLevi to prepare themselves and to carryout the task, 15 : 2, 12. When these measures proved successful and the ark was safely lodged with due honour in its newposition, the king appointed certain levites to minister beforeit, 16: 4. This ministration implied more than the chantingof psalms at the new shrine, though a psalm, which wasjudged suitable for the occasion, has been included. For, atthe first stage of its journey from the house of Obed Edom,sacrifices were offered before the emblem, 15 : 25 f 1 Again,when David gave his final charge to Solomon as to thebuilding of the temple, he commanded him to build thesanctuary of the Lord in order to bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and the holy vessels ofGod, into the housethat is to be built to the name of the Lord , I Chr. 22 :19.Now these vessels were more than musical instruments; theywere employed for the cult. Accordingly, it is stated that,as soon as Solomon had fulfilled this command, and lodgedthe ark in its final resting-place, sacrifices were offeredbefore it, II Chr. 5: 6. The ark was thus the centre of aregular cult, so that, according to C, the first shrine in

1 The statement there does not necess rily imply that these sacrificeswere offered by the levites. They were offered in recognition of thedivine approval of the undertaking-when the Lord helped the leviteswho bare the ark of the covenant. But, when the verse continues

i n n ~ i or then they sacrificed , the verb may be used in the impersonalsense and may imply no more than that sacrifices were offered.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 19Jerusalem was that oflsrael s ancient and revered palladiumwith ~ levites acting as its ministers.

The account of David s desire to build the temple withits rejection by Nathan appears in almost identical terms inthe two sources. 1 The author of Samuel may have shown acertain dislike on the part of the prophet to the idea of anytemple, since he dwelt on the fact that no such building hadexisted n Israel during the years in the wilderness or duringthe period of the judges. While C retained the historicalreferences, he softened the refusal by changing the first clauseof his predecessor, shalt thou build a house for me to dwell in into not thou shalt build . The earlier narrative took theedge off absolute rejection by inserting the later statementthat Solomon was to fulfil the plan of his father; the laterwent a little further and included this assurance in the actualterms ofthe rejection. But the leading themes of he pericopewere identical in the two historians. On the one hand, thefounder of the future temple in purpose, if not in fact, wasDavid. His design was to provide for the ark a more fittingshrine than the one which he had prepared for it at first.He desired to place it in surroundings which were moreworthy ofits position in the national life and ofHim who wasworshipped there. The temple was to take the place of thetent which had hitherto housed the ark. On the other hand,no less important was the other theme that, while Davidwas forbidden to build a house for Yahweh, Yahweh pur-posed to build a house for David. The new king, who hadcome to the throne through the divine election, was to bethe founder ofa dynasty which equally owed its being to thedivine will. f t realized the purpose to which it thus owedits existence, it would be made secure and enduring.2

1 I Chr. c. 17, and II Sam. c. 72 The point would be made even more clear, if a slight emendation

were made in 17 : 1o. In its present form the text is more than awkward,since it implies a confused transition between Yahweh and the prophetas speakers. Rothstein has adopted an older suggestion that the divinename at the end of the verse is due to the error of the copyist, who read


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2 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESThe three following chapters, chaps. 18-20, which containthe account of David s wars, are largely extracted from the

much longer record in the book of Samuel. The questionswhich they raise deal rather with points of detail and arenot very relevant to the present study. Some are textual,others areconcerned with the extent to which the Chroniclerwas dependent on other sources than those appearing inSamuel. The leading feature in the narrative of C, how-ever, is the extent to which he has cut down the materialwhich was at his command. s has been already stated, itis possible to suggest reasons for several of his omissions.He ignored David s dealings with Meribaal and his sur-render of some of Saul s descendants to the Gibeonites,since all the house of Saul, according to his view, had fallenat Gilboa. He equally ignored the record of Absalom srebellion, because it did not conform with his picture of theunity of the nation under its first king. His omission of thebetrayal and murder of Uriah may have had a doublemotive. Not only did the story cast an ugly shadow on the fairfame ofDavid, but it offered a singularly unfitting prelude tohis representation ofSolomon s accession. All the palace in-trigues which brought Solomon to the throne disappearedfrom his account. In its place came a gathering of the lead-ing men in Israel, to whom the old king presented hissuccessor in the character of the one whom God had chosen.David had received the promise that his dynasty was sureof the divine blessing and support. It was not easy to bringthis conception of the kingdom oflsrael into agreement withthe fact that David s successor was born in adultery.Tni1 instead of the i1 :-ti at the beginning of v 1 1. This blunder broughtabout the change of an original ill:::J N I will build into i1l:::J \ He, i.e.Yahweh, will build. I suggest that we should further read with theLXX ; J ' ( 1 l ~ in place of 97 i ~ t ' 1 , and translate the sentence-' willsubdue all thine enemies and will make thee great and I will build theea house . The effect of the change will be, not merely to remove the con-fusion between the speakers, but to make the contrast clearer. As Godhad given no command to the people in the past about a temple, buthad appointed a place for Israel, so will He deal with David.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 21But all these omissions on the part of the Chronicler,whether it is possible or not to be sure as to the motives which

prompted them, make one fact clear. They must be weighedalong with the other fact of the additions which he intro-duced. He included everything from his source which boreupon the king s service to the nation in founding andstrengthening the outward institutions of religion in Israel,and everything which he added went to prove that he wasthe originator of the temple and of the cult which waspractised there. But he cut down severely the details ofthe royal wars and of all the means by which David builtup a powerful kingdom.Accordingly, after his brief mention of the wars in whichDavid was engaged, the historian turned back to his favouritetheme. Though the king had been forbidden personally tobuild the temple, he was to all intents and purposes itsoriginator, for he collected materials for the purpose,arranged as to the workmen, designed the actual building,and determined the functions of the clergy who carried outthe cult in it. These matters fill the remaining chaptersof the first book of Chronicles. s the last thoughts andenergies of the king were devoted to this great purpose ofhis life, so the last scene, when he was old and full ofyears,revealed him gathering the notables of the kingdom roundhim. He announced Solomon as his successor, and, as soonas his son was anointed, solemnly charged the new king andhis people to carry out the work which he had begun. Theleaders accepted their new ruler and showed their willing-ness to undertake the responsibility which had been laidupon them by contributing liberally to the preparations forthe temple. As David s first task after his accession andconquest of Jerusalem had been to bring the ark into itsshrine in the capital, so his dying charge to his successor wasto guarantee the completion of the task by building thetemple and bringing the ark and its vessels into it.Most of this material, chaps. 22-g is peculiar to theChronicler, and with slight exceptions, finds no parallel in


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22 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESSamuel. But C prefaced it by the account of David snumbering of the people with the resultant pestilence, andthe building of the altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah.This, is chap. 21 he took from II Sam. c. 24 followingvery closely is original. Yet he gave it an entirely newmeaning through the position in which he set it, and throughthe slight changes he introduced into its terms.

In Samuel the story has been relegated to an appendixand appears among some other varied material which belonged to David s reign: it s not prominent in that reign,nor is t integrallyrelated to the king s activity. Thusitopenswith the statement that again the anger of the Lord waskindled against Israel, and He moved David to number thepeople. Evidently then the story was originally connectedwith another passage which related a previous outbreakof the divine anger. In my judgement it was so connectedwith the famine of chap. 21 which led to the deliveranceof a number of Saul s descendants to the Gibeonites. Whenthe men whom Saul had wronged had sacrificed thosevictims before the Lord, the rain which fell on Rizpahduring her dreadfulwatch intimated that the atonement hadbeen sufficient. Again the wrath of the Lord was kindledagainst Israel, but this time the offender was David himself.To stay the pestilence which resulted from the numberingof the people an altar was built on Mt. Zion and a sacrificeafter the use of Israel was offered on it. The effect in bothcases was the same: at Gibeon God was entreated for theland at Mt. Zion the Lord was entreated for the land andthe plague was stayed from Israel. It s possible that onereason for setting the two incidents in such close relationwas to underline the different methods of atonement whichwere employed in Gibeon and in Israel, and so to counterthe dangerous theological suggestion in the earlier story.t s even possible that this explains the different divinenames which appear in the two accounts. God might be

entreated by the methods which were followed by the seinipagan remnant of the Amorites: Yahweh was entreated by


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 3a sacrifice which was after His mind. But, however this maybe, the altar on Mt. Zion, according to the author ofSamuel,had no permanent place in the national life. It had beenerected to serve a special purpose, and when that purposewas fulfilled, it need never have been used again.C changed the entire character of the account, when hebrought it out of the appendix to which his predecessor hadrelegated it, and set it in the main stream ofhis record of thereign. t was thus placed in integral relation to the leadingpurpose of David s life, instead of being connected witha similar visitation which had befallen the nation. For itfollowed the divine promise that though David was forbidden to build the temple, his son was to be granted thatprivilege, and it preceded the ample preparations whichwere made to that end. How closely the succession of theseevents was linked together in his mind C made clear by thenew conclusion which he added to his version of the storyin 22: I After the descent of the divine fire at the threshingfloor, which manifested the divine approval of the offeringmade on its altar, he put into David s mouth the solemndeclaration: this is the house of the Lord God, and this thealtar ofburnt-offering for Israel. The altar on Mt. Zion wasno temporary place ofsacrifice, which served its purpose andceased to have any further place in the national life: it hadreceived a permanent consecration. Before the king madeany preparations for the future temple, he received a divinerevelation as to the site of the altar before which it must bebuilt. C transformed the story which had told ofDavid s sinin numbering his people, of its chastisement, of the king srepentance, and his atoning sacrifice: he made it into thelepbs Myos of the temple.

The minor changes which appear in the chapter bear thecharacteristic marks of C s style, and help to bring out hispurpose. Inv. David numbered Israel, in Samuel Judahand Israel; the total reported in v. 5a was for all Israel, in

Verse 5b which is absent from the LXX is recognized to be agloss by Rothstein and even by Curtis.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 25to complete the temple, the fact that in his wars he had shedmuch blood. He returned to the same theme at 28: 3. Onthe other hand where he followed his original more closely inthe story of the prophet Nathan at chap. r7, he gave no suchreason. Here, again, he may be borrowing from and expanding the work of his predecessor. For, in his account ofSolomon, K referred to David s wars having interfered withthe other sacred task, I Kings 5: I 7; but as Kittel recognized,this implied no more than that the constant wars did notleave the king leisure to undertake the task. As C supplemented Kon this point, he also corrected him on another.K made Solomon raise his labour-levy for the work on thetemple from all Israel, I Kings 5: 27 ff According to C,David laid the corvee on the C j ~ or strangers, cf II Chr.2:r6. Now these men, according to him, were the descendantsof the original inhabitants of Palestine, II Chr. 8: 7 ff 1

The final charge, however, which David laid upon hisson in connexion with the future temple is most significantas to the attitude of C. s soon as the temple was complete,Solomon must bring into it the ark of the covenant ofthe Lord and the sacred vessels of God. As to these sacredvessels, even Rothstein, though he referred to I Kings 8: 4,recognized their obvious association with the ark and itssanctuary. The new sanctuary must fulfil David s intention,when he desired a more worthy resting-place for the arkthan the curtains of its tent. The temple was a substitute forthat tent, and Solomon s first act, when the house of Godwas complete,-must be to lodge in it the ark with the sacredvessels employed in its cult. 2

1 The later view of the situation has been introduced into thenarrative ofK as I Kings g: 20 2 .2 David s address to Solomon is followed by five chapters, 23-7.This block of material is the most confused and difficult section tounravel, even in the book of Chronicles. It is also very plainly nothomogeneous in character; at least two writers, probably more, canbe traced in its composition. The subject with which it chiefly dealsis the way in which David determined the functions and the coursesof the clergy in the future temple. I propose. to deal with that large

E


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6 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESThe private charge of David to his son was followed by apublic assembly in which the old king resigned his throne

and presented Solomon as his successor. He then remindedthe notables of Israel that the chief task which lay upon thenew king was that of building the Temple. After deliveringto Solomon the n l::ln or plan which he himself hadprepared for the sanctuary and the treasures which he hadaccumulated he reminded the leaders that their king wouldneed all the help which they could give him in such a weightyundertaking and called upon them to show their interestin t by contributing to meet the cost. When they gave aready response to his appeal he offered a humble thanksgiving to God and besought the divine blessing on the workwhich had been denied to him.

The relation between the two speeches has given occasionfor a good deal ofdiscussion. Rothstein and Benzinger wereof opinion that chap. 8 was originally connected with23: f. and that the speech was delivered to that assemblyof the leaders of Israel. With this judgement I agree andmerely add that the lengthy and pompous introduction in28: was added after chaps. 23-7 had been brought intotheir present position. Then the two speeches may bothbe retained since one was addressed to Solomon in privatebefore his accession and the other was delivered in publicand was followed by the anointing of the new king. Kittelhowever judged it necessary to telescope the two speecheswhich hethen redivided and referred to two separate authors.It is unnecessary to give the details of the division here andit maybe enough to say that byit the more precise descriptionof the Temple its furniture and its officials was assigned toone writer while the hortatory passages were allotted toanother. Yet the two subjects are too closely interwoventopic at a later stage and therefore pass over it here. When it comes tobe reviewed it will be necessary to attempt to decide how much ofthe contents of those chapters may be assigned to the ChroniclerMeantime all that can be assumed about them is that they prove C tohave ascribed to David a judgement as to those clergy.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 7both in the text and in the thought, to admit of this dissection. A writer, who believed that the plan of the templeand its arrangements had been divinely revealed to David,must have counted the king s eagerness to commit this to hissuccessor an evidence ofspiritual fervour. Further whoeverthis writer may have been, he lived during the time whichfollowed the Return and so belonged to a generation whichjudged the maintenance of the temple and its cult to be amatter oflife and death for the religion of heir nation.

The objection which Kittel and some other students haveshown to accepting two speeches of very similar character,as having been put into the mouth ofDavid at the end ofhisreign by the same writer, fails also to recognize one featurewhich marks the public address. For the speech to theleaders of Israel served two purposes. So far as it dwelt onthe supreme duty of building the temple, it covered muchthe same ground as the private charge given by the king tohis son. But it was also intended to give C s view of theaccession of Solomon. We must read the account in itsrelation to the discreditable version in Kings of the methodby which the new king succeeded in reaching the throne.Then and only then, does it become clear why, in addressingthe notables, David began by dwelling on two themes. Hespoke of the divine promise as to his dynasty in Israel, andhe put forward Solomon as his divinely elected successor.In view of these commanding facts, the new king was atonce accepted by the leaders of the nation, and his accessionto the throne followed without opposition and as a matter ofcourse. As Israel elected David, because God had alreadychosen him, so Israel elected his son.

The final charges delivered by David to his successor andto his people contain an epitome of the Chronicler s judge-ment on the life-work of the first king of Israel. David hadunited the nation under his authority and maintained thatunity throughout his reign. He had also been the founderof he dynasty, which continued so long as the independenceof the nation lasted. He was able to accomplish these things


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28 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESbecause in them he was the servant ofa greater purpose thanhis own. God had chosen him and had rejected Saul; Godhad promised to grant him a house; God had chosen fromamong his many sons the one who was to succeed him. Butthe dynasty had failed to fulfil the divine purpose which hadbrought it into being, 1 and had therefore come to an in-glorious end. A like failure, however, had not attended theother side of the first king s service to Israel. For he had laidthe foundations for the temple, which was to be the centreof worship of Israel, and was to make Mt. Zion a praise tothe ends of the earth. He set up the first sanctuary in Jeru-salem when he brought up the ark and made it the centreof a cult. He conceived the purpose of building the templewhich was to be its fitting shrine instead of its curtains.He planned the lines for its future buildings, and appointedthe men who were to conduct its cult. David was, in every-thing except the actual physical labour, the originator of hetemple; and in all he undertook for its future glory he wasguided by God who had chosen him to be king. The site forthe temple was indicated by a theophany, and the firstsacrifice on its altar was consumed by a fire from heaven.The plan for the future buildings and for the officials therewas given in writing from the hand of the Lord, 28: gTherefore he delivered it to the leaders of the nation, as thepattern for their future work. But he also charged Solomonto bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and its sacredvessels into the completed temple, 22: g, and he remindedthe leaders of the nation that his design from the beginninghad been to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenantof the Lord, 28: 2 Unless that sacred emblem with thevessels which belonged to its cult was housed in the newsanctuary, his purpose would be left incomplete. Becausethe king was thus the originator of the temple, it is said of thelater kings who reformed the religion of the nation that theyrestored the conditions which had been laid down by David.

From this sketch of the Chronicler s account of David s1 On this subject c the later chapter on G s attitude to prophecy


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 29life, it s evident that he was not writing history in the sensein which we conceive that history ought to be written. Hewas using the records of his nation in order to conveycertain theological teaching and to insist on certain eccle-siastical convictions. His work may be compared with thatof the man or men who produced the account of Israel sorigin, which dealt with the lives of the patriarchs. Incertain respects G s work does not bear comparison with thatofhis predecessor. The two records have nothing in commonwhen they are thought ofas literature. The Chronicler hadnot the same imagination, the power ofsketching character,the ability to make the past live. All that in these respects canbe set down in his favour s that he probably reproducedwith greater accuracy the facts with which he dealt in hisnarrative. He was not so free in his reproduction of thenational past. But the aim of both writers was the same.They were using the material which they borrowed in orderto impress certain great convictions on the mind of theircontemporaries. Through C s account of David s life wecan hear an authentic voice speaking from the period afterthe Return What he had it in his heart to say was thatDavid gave Israel two great gifts, the kingdom and thetemple, the two institutions which dominated and colouredthe national life in Palestine. The one had gone down thewind and could never return It was conditioned by faith-fulness on the part of its kings to the purpose which broughtit into being. When the kings failed to obey God s voicethrough His prophets, the kingdom was doomed. ButDavid s other gift of the temple remained, and in it and itsworship was the hope for the future of Israel.

The temple, however, which David had planned, was, ashas been pointed out, the substitute for the tent in whichthe ark had been housed. Even before it was built there hadbeen a sanctuary of the Lord in Jerusalem, and a cult hadbeen practised there which was valid for Israel. Thathad been the king s first care after the capture of his newcapital. His last care had been that Solomon must transfer


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30 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESthat cult to the temple when it was completed. Now incontrast with this leading theme which appears in eachsuccessive stage ofDavid s conduct in relation to the nationalworship, it must be noted that there appears a differentattitude in the course of the book. It must also be noted thatthe evidence of this different attitude emerges at the criticalstages of the story. Thus at the timewhen David brought theark to Jerusalem and instituted a cult before it, appears thestatement that Zadok the priest and his brethren the priestswere before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place atGibeon to offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord upon thealtar of burnt-offering continually morning and evening,

6: 39 f The statement is not woven into the passage ofwhich it forms part but is abruptly interjected, having noconnexion with what precedes or with what follows.It is easy to understand why David honoured the ark,which had played a part in the wilderness journeys and hadalready been the centre of a cult at Shiloh. t is not easy toexplain why the tabernacle, which was a dominant feature

in those journeys, disappeared from the life of the nationafter they reached Palestine, and why, when it suddenlyreappears, it was situated at a high place in the territoryof the semi-heathen Gibeonites. As hard is it to explain howark and tabernacle came to be separated. In the wildernessthe ark occupied a very subordinate position, for it appearsin a list of the furniture and the vessels which were employedin the cult at the Tabernacle. Yet here it has not onlybecome independent, but has become the centre of a cultof its own. Finally, it is at least remarkable to discoverZadok, whom Solomon made high priest in the Temple,already consecrated and officiating in a sanctuary whichexisted before the time of his father. To the writer whointroduced this note, the cult of the ark at David s shrine inJerusalem was not the first centre ofworship inJudah. Therewas a sanctuary which owed its origin to the law of the Lord,in which the altar was served by a priesthood which did notowe its consecration to any king.


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 31Again, when David consulted God about his desire tosubstitute for the curtains round the ark a more worthyresting-place, there appears a curious clumsiness in theprophet s reply in both versions. When he described the conditions in early Israel, the author of Samuel made theprophet state that God had never dwelt in a house, but hadhitherto been walking in a tent and in a tabernacle. InI Chr. 17: 5 God s said to have replied to Nathan s inquirythat He had been from a tent to a tent and from a tabernacle. 1 Neither reading can be called satisfactory. Kittel hasproposed to improve the hopeless reading in Chronicles byadding to a tabernacle after from a tabernacle , but mustadd a query to his proposal, since his only authority for theaddition s the Latin version. Even if the emendation wereaccepted, it would fail to remove the radical difficulty whichs common to both passages. God s represented as havingbeen in both a tent and a tabernacle since the day that Hebrought the children of Israel out of Egypt. During thewilderness journey and throughout the period ofthejudges,therefore, both tent and tabernacle had been in existence,and each of them had been accounted the divine abode.The tabernacle has been introduced into the narrative,perhaps in a marginal note which has been incorporatedinto the text, by the same reviser who added it in chap. 16.He practically wrote-N.B. by the tent here s meant thetabernacle-for to him the temple took the place of theoriginal tabernacle. As before, however, he failed to saywhat became of it during the period of the Judges.Finally, on the occasion of the theophany at the threshingfloor of Araunah, it s stated that, when David received thedivine response, he sacrificed there, 21 : 28. Obviously thiscan only refer to the king s further use of the altar on whichthe fire from heaven had fallen. A site which had receivedso august an approval could not be deserted: this was indeedthe house of the Lord and this the altar of burnt-offering

1 The above is a literal version of the Hebrew, which the LXX hashelped out by reading: but I was in a tent and in a tabernacle.


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3 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESfor Israel, 22 : 1. The close connexion of these verses isbroken by the statement which separates them: for thetabernacle of the Lord which Moses made in the wildernessand the altar of burnt-offering were at that time in thehigh place at Gibeon, but David was afraid to employ thataltar because of he sword of he angel. The statement aboutthe Araunah threshing-floor being the house of the Lord isthus made to apply to the tabernacle with its altar. But theverses, besides breaking the original connexion, contradictthe terms of the theophany, since the command to the kingto build the altar came directly from the angel. After hisorder had been obeyed, and after the divine fire haddescended in approval of the sacrifice, the angel put up hissword into its sheath. We have a third addition from thesame hand as in the two former cases. Again he intervenedwith the reminder that before an altar was built inJerusalemIsrael was possessed of a sanctuary and a cult which couldclaim the authority of Moses himself. Anything whichDavid could provide for worship in the city was either subordinate, as in the case of the ark with its tent, or a meremakeshift, like the altar, due to temporary conditions. Thetemple took the place of the tabernacle, and its altar wasthe one which Bezalel made in the wilderness. 1

When once we have recognized the leading themes of thenarrator and the peculiar attitude which dominated thenarrator s story ofDavid, t is possible to trace how he dealtwith his material, omitting here, supplementing there, andmaking the changes which he did. The other material hasbeen added to this original narrative, and does not professto be an independent record. t simply supplements that towhich t has been added, by supplying certain caveats inthe interest ofanother view of the course ofevents.There is one other reference to the tabernacle in David slifetime, I Chr. 23 :26, but, since the verse occurs in a passage

1 Kittel has already recognized v. 9 f to be an addition. Since,however, he did not go farther and seek for the reason which hadprompted such an addition, he included v. 28.


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34 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESs concerned, there s little difference between the two. Therecord n Chronicles s somewhat shorter than the other, andhas made the message take the form of a direct revelation,instead of an appearance in a dream. It s the setting inwhich the incident s placed which shows the divergentpoint of view. The later author made Solomon s visit toGibeon a public, instead of a private act. To him Solomonhad been solemnly put forward by David as his divinelychosen successor and had been accepted by all the leadersof Israel. He, therefore, needed no confirmation of hisauthority. Nor was the sanctuary at Gibeon an ordinaryhigh place, which was suspect like the similar shrines inIsrael, for it contained the tabernacle which Moses the manofGod made in the wilderness, and possessed the altar whichBezalel the son ofUri had made. Since it was endowed withsuch authority, there was no need for any explanation ofthe king s act in visiting it: K s introductory apology forthe royal visit disappeared. In the same way the king paidno personal visit to the shrine: before he went he convenedthe leaders of Israel, and when he went he was attended bythe OR. or community. The first official act ofthe new reignwas to recognize the supreme authority of the sanctuary,which his father had been prevented from acknowledging inthe day when he was afraid because of the sword of theangel of the Lord. Accordingly the king s return to the citywas followed by no sacrifice before the ark and no feast tothe people: the communal sacrifice had already taken placebefore the tabernacle. The ark received no notice in thenarrative except that it was where David had placed it inits tent: and there the writer avoided the use of the word

C i j . ~ or shrine, though its omission made bad Hebrew.Equally did the story of the royal judgement disappear:Solomon s authority needed no confirmation, since thenation had already acquiesced in the divine election of itsnew king.This versionof he incident so clearly contradicts in certainsignificant points the earlier account that the aim of the


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 5writer must have been to supersede the story in Kings. Theonly question which can arise is to determine whether tderived from the original in Chronicles, or was the work ofthe annotator. In my judgement it must be referred to thesecond hand. What he had previously suggested by a notehere and another there, he now stated at length, and placed,before the description of Solomon s work on the temple,his conviction that the temple was no novelty in Israel, buthad been an integral part of the national religion, since thetime when Moses received the law at Horeb. Whether hesubstituted his version for a simpler original, or whetherthe whole was his own work, it is impossible to determine.Yet it ought to be acknowledged that, since the material hasnothing with which it can be compared, the above conclusion is more uncertain than in the other cases, wherea note can be recognized through its disturbance of the context. Its acceptance must depend on the general conclusion astudent draws from the other evidence on the annotations.When the temple was completed, Solomon summoned theleading men in Israel to bring up the ark of the covenant outof the city of David. In the presence of these men duringIsrael s holy week the levites, according to Chronicles, thepriests, according to Kings, took up the ark. What theybrought up to the temple, however, was not merely the ark,but also the tent ofmeeting and all the holy vessels that werein the tent. 1 The appearance of the tabernacle in this connexion is, to say the least, surprising. The men have beenconvened in order to bring up the ark, its porters have beenappointed and have taken up their burden. The scene is atthe sanctuary in David s city. But suddenly we are transported to the other sanctuary at Gibeon, where another setofporters take up the tabernacle and its sacred vessels. Arewe to suppose that the assembled representatives of thenation went first to the city of David and then proceeded toGibeon, or were there two contingents, one of which wentdown to the lower city and the other to the high place, after

1 II Ohr. 5: 2 5; I Kings 8: 1-4.


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6 DAVID IN THE OOK OF CHRONICLESwhich, each carrying its sacred burden, they converged atthe temple? To note this awkward situation brings forwardanother feature n the description. When Solomon con-vened the people for the purpose of bringing the ark intothe temple, he was fulfilling the charge laid upon him byhis father at the time ofhis accession: and, when the levitesdeposited the ark with the vessels that were in its tent, heand the national leaders exactly carried out the orders issuedto them. Naturally they left the tent of the ark behind, sincethe temple had taken its place. On the other hand, whenthe porters brought up the tabernacle, they were acknow-ledging the sacredness of the sanctuary which Solomon hadhonoured in the first official sacrifice ofhis reign, but whichhis father was never reported to have visited. He could nothave ignored the sacred emblems, tabernacle and altar,which bore the great name of Moses. Again, i f the sud-den emergence of the tabernacle raises these difficulties,its entire disappearance remains unaccountable. For theaccount continues with the deposition of the ark in thetemple, after which the glory of the Lord filled the house.David s purpose, when he planned the new house of God,was completed. But what place had the tabernacle in thissequence of events? t was not mentioned, when the kingconvened the national leaders, and nothing was said as toits ultimate destination. When C described the transferenceof the ark with the vessels in its tent, he ignored the tentitself, since the temple took its place. When the annotatorintroduced the transference of the tabernacle, he forgot that,when that which is perfect is come, then that which is inpart must be done away.2

1 To notice this connexion between the removal of the tabernacleand the royal visit, in Chronicles, thrusts intomore glaring prominencehow unsuitable is the mention of the tabernacle in Kings. For thatbook said nothing of the presence of this sanctuary in Gibeon, madeSolomon s visit to the high place unofficial, and even felt it necessaryto apologize for it.

a It is interesting to compare Bertheau s note, because it shows him


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 37The services on the occasion served a double purpose, the

i l ~ ~ l or dedication of the temple and the celebration of thefestival ofBooths. The hanukkah came first, I Kings 8: 63,II Chr. 7: 5. As for the festival, there are two interestingpoints ofdivergence between the records in I Kings 8: 64-6and II Chr. 7: 7-10. The earlier writer called the altar,which was found too small for the sacrifices at the festival,simply the altar which was before the Lord: the later calledit the altar which Solomon had made, and, when he referredto the hanukkah, named that the dedication of the altar,not of the temple. Again, the writer in Kings made thecelebration of the festival last only a week, for in his accountthe worshippers returned to their homes on the eighth day.He may even have made the two ceremonies run concurrently and together last no more than a week, for theclause at the close ofhis v. 65, according to which they lastedfourteen days, is absent from the LXX. In Chronicles, onthe other hand, an additional day or l ~ ~ was added tothe festival, and so the use ofJerusalem at Booths was madeto conform from the beginning with the practice prescribedn the later law, Lev. 23: 36; Num. 29: 35When, however, we turn to the description of the dedication service in Chronicles, the situation is much moreperplexing and involved. Thus there are two series ofsacrifices at 5: 6 and at 7: I One of these preceded, the otherfollowed Solomon s prayer. Twice also the glory of the Lordis said to have filled the temple, so that the priests wereunable to continue their duties in it, 5: 14, 7: f In thelatter case it is added that fire descended from heaven andconsumed the offerings. Kittel is ofopinion that the sacrificewhich followed Solomon s prayer was a personal offeringto have had a suspicion of the real situation. There is a minor, but notwhollynegligible,difficultyinthephrase, the ark and the tent ofmeetingand the holy vessels that were in the tent . According to the law inNumbers the ark was one of those holy vessels of the tabernacle.Yet here it has not only escaped from that subordinate position, buti mentioned first.


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38 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESon the part of the king, which in turn was succeeded by theofferings of king and people in v. 4. This is an impossibleinterpretation, for the sacrifice which followed the royalprayer was attended both by the descent of the divine fireand the appearance of the divine glory. Now the descentof the fire from heaven was meant to imply that the sacrificewhich t consumed was accepted and the altar on which itcame down was legitimate. The theophany which filledthe temple implied that the dedication was complete. Theconnexion between the two acts of sacrifice here is that fora time the altar, which had received its consecration, wasinaccessible to the priests because of the divine glory. Assoon, however, as this had abated, the altar was employedfor the celebration of the festival ofBooths. The altar whichwas thus consecrated was the one which Solomon had made,v. 7 and so significant was its consecration that the writerhere called the whole ceremony the dedication of the altar,v. 9The course of events after Solomon s prayer appearsstraightforward enough. The real difficulty is to reconcilethis with the events which preceded the prayer, for therewe read of a similar public and communal sacrifice, whichwas followed by the descent of the cloud to indicate thatthe dedication of the temple was complete. The sacrificesin this case were offered before the ark, which is prominenthere, but of which nothing is said after the prayer: on theother hand there is no mention of the descent of the divinefire, nor of an altar Solomon made, on which the fire fell.How prominent a position was given to the ark appearsfrom four features of the earlier account. As soon as it wasdeposited in the Temple, sacrifices were offered before it.t s added that there it remains to this day, 5: gc. 1 When the

1 There is no need to alter the MT here, which reads : - r i in order tobring it into agreement with the plural reading in Kings. This change,commonly accepted though it is, fails to explain the peculiar reading inChronicles, and makes the sentence pointless. What according to thenew text, is said to remain to this day s the protruding staves of the


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40 DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLESTherefore he made Solomon bring up the tabernacle, for thetemple was built to take its place. Because he had madeDavid s altar at the time of the pestilence into a mere make-shift, due to the king s inability to reach Gibeon with itsaltar, Solomon must construct a new altar, on which, sinceit required the divine approval, the fire from heavendescended. So essential was this to the efficacy of thesacrifices which were to be offered there that he could callthe whole ceremony the dedication of the altar. His accountdovetails into his previous notes, as C s account dovetailsinto his earlier material.But the annotator was not content to supply a parallelversion of the dedication of the temple. 1 He inserted at leasttwo paragraphs into C s narrative, the purpose of which its possible to recognize. After the levites had brought theark into the temple and after the sacrifices before it, he madethe priests carry it into the holy ofholies and deposit it there.In that inner shrine it disappeared from the sight of theworshippers, so that no more sacrifices could be offered beforeit. After that, he could continue with C s conclusion-andthere it remains to this day, since now the sentence meantthat the emblem was relegated to the background. Therewas no need for it to be prominent in connexion with thecult, since it was nothing but a receptacle for the stonetablets which formed the memorial of the divine covenantwith Israel.2 Again, when the priests returned from theinner sanctuary, the ceremony continued. But only thepriests were permitted to surround the altar: the levites,who had carried up the ark and who had been its ministersin its tent, were not now allowed to advance beyond the

1 The same method s followed in the account of Hezekiah s reform.There are two versions of his hanukkah c pp. 105 ff

a For another mention of this employment of the ark, and for theevidence that it implied a quiet degradation of the emblem from itsoriginal position, c my Deuteronomy the Framework to the Code p. 64 fFor a similar proof of the desire to dismiss the ark into the backgroundc my Post-Exilic Judaism p. 23


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DAVID IN THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES 41east end of the altar. At that careful distance they wereentrusted with the musical accompaniment of the rite,though the use ofthe trumpets was committed to the priests. 1After the ark had been thus consigned to its fitting restingplace in the hidden shrine, and after the officiating clergyhad been arranged with due regard to their ecclesiasticaldignity, the glory of the Lord filled the house. The theophany was removed from its dangerously suggestive neighbourhood to the sacrifices before the ark.

In all this the annotator showed his knowledge of the laterlaw and a scrupulous regard for its observance. When thepriests carried the ark into the inner sanctuary, they wereacting according to the law in Num. 4: 5 ff When an extraday was added to the week of the festival of Booths, theregulations for the festal occasions in Num. cc. 28 f wereobserved. The procedure followed after Solomon s prayerclosely resembled that which attended the completion of thetabernacle in Lev. g: 22-4. There Moses and Aaron cameout to the front of the tabernacle and blessed the people.Thereupon the glory of the Lord appeared to the congregation, the fire from heaven consumed the offerings, and thepeople prostrated themselves. In the temple they prostratedthemselves on the i ~ = ? or pavement, an expression whichis peculiar to this passage and to Ezek. 42 : 3, 40: 7 f1 Kittel pronounced 5: 11b to 13a to be an addition, but he saw in ita desire to assert the dignity of the levites by giving them a due share inthe ceremonial through their connexion with the musical service. Hefailed, however, to recognize the context in which these singersappeared On the one side was the statement that the levites were notpermitted to advance beyond the east side of the altar: on the other,the trumpets were reserved to the priests, so that the levites had notfull control even over the musical service. The musical service is here asign of the lower status of the levitical order and is contrasted with thefunction of the priests who alone officiated at the altar.

G


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IITHE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECYAFEATURE in the Chronicler s narrative is the pro-minent position he gave to prophecy n relation to thekingdom. When all Israel came to Hebron and electedDavid to be their king, they were fulfilling the divine pur-pose, for their act was according to the word ofGod through

Samuel. Prophecy did more than accept the kingdom, ithad been a controlling factor in its foundation; the newinstitution owed its existence to the will of God revealedthrough His servants. Similarly, when Jerusalem fell beforeNebuchadrezzar, the catastrophe was not wholly due toZedekiah s breach of his oath of fealty to his suzerain, butwas also due to the king s failure to humble himself beforeJeremiah theprophetfrom themouthoftheLord II. 36: 12.The neglect of prophecy had been a leading factor in theoverthrow of the kingdom which t had helped to found.These are the two foci round which all C s thoughts aboutthe kingdom in Israel turned. But he did not leave the twojudgements isolated, one at the beginning, the other at theend, of is story. He linked them together by a thread whichruns through his record ofthe successive kings. When Davidreceived the promise that God meant to make him the firstofa dynasty, he also received the reminder that the promisewas conditional. The kingdom in Israel depended on thefaithfulness of his successors in keeping the divine law andobeying the divine word. The needed divine direction wasto be found by them, not merely in the precepts of the law:it was continually revealed through the living voice ofprophecy. For C introduced into his narrative a series ofprophets who appeared before the successive kings in orderto warn them of the policy they ought to follow or to rebukethem for their failure in fulfilling the divine will. Howfundamental these stories were to G s thoughts about the


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THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECY 43kingdom is clear from the fact that they are all peculiar tohis account. Only in one instance did he borrow a propheticmessage from his predecessor, when he reproduced almostverbatim the appearance of Micaiah hen Imlah beforeJehoshaphat and Ahab at the opening of the campaignagainst Ramoth Gilead. The chief interest in the one prophetic story which he copied is to be found, as will appearlater, in the contrast between its inimitable power and theaccounts which derive from his own pen. According to the

. Chronicler, prophecy, which made the kingdom possible andcondemned it in the end, accompanied the institution throughout its course.The first case occurs at the time of Shishak s invasion ofPalestine during the reign of Rehoboam. 1 Here C introduced a prophet Shemaiah who pronounced the invasion, to be the divine penalty for the sin ofthe nation in that it had

forsaken its God. When the people repented, the prophetdeclared that the calamity would not result in their ruin,though it must bring a severe chastisement for their transgression. The divine anger was averted because of thisrepentance and because some good things were found inIsrael; but the kingdom was maintained when king andpeople obeyed the warning voice of the prophet.In the reign ofAsa Zerah the Ethiopian advanced againstJudah with an overwhelming army. The king betook himself to prayer and closed with the petition: We rely on Thee

and in Thy name are we come against this multitude.Lord, Thou art our God; let not man prevail against Thee.The result was that God Himself smote the Ethiopians,leaving to Asa and his army no other task than that ofpursuing the broken army, II. 14: 9-14. Thereupon aprophet Azariah hen Oded met the returning conquerorsand drove home the appropriate lesson, l 5: l 7. He fortifiedis sermon by appealing in somewhat puzzling terms to thepast experience of the nation, but his main theme was tostress the devotion of the king to the divine will and to

1 II Chr. c. 12, cf. I Kings 14: 21-31.


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44 THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECYencourage him to maintain a similar attitude by the assurance thatsuch conduct could never fail to receive its reward.Apparently the propP,et approved in Asa more than hisabsolute dependence on the divine help, for it is said thatthe king had already removed the foreign altars and highplaces, had broken the mazzeboth and cut down theasherim, and had commanded Judah to keep the law andthe commandment, 14: f The prophecy was intended toencourage him to proceed in the same direction, 15: 8.When, however, Asa was attacked by Baasha of Israel, hetook a different course, for he bribed the king of Damascusto come to his help. At once Hanani the seer denounced hispolicy along the same lines as had led Azariah to commendhis previous conduct, and declared that the result must becontinuous war. The king s act in appealing to Syria wascondemned, not because he had allied himself with a heathenpower, but because he had sought human help at all. Heought to have trusted his kingdom to the divine support,16: 1-g. 1

WhenJehoshaphat returned from the disastrous campaignagainst Ramoth Gilead, J ehu ben Hanani met him anddeclared that the catastrophe was due to the divine angerbecause of the help which he had given to the wicked Ahab.1 In the interests of his theory C here departed entirely from thechronology of Kings. While he followed K somewhat closely in

the account of the campaign between Judah and Israel, he made theIsraelite attack Judah in the 36th year of Asa: K, on the other hand,made the war between the kings last all their days. Besides, the 36thyear of Asa as the date for the outbreak of the war hopelessly conflictswith K s statement that Baasha died in the 26th year ofAsa. The usualexplanation of the discrepancy is to suppose that here C was followinga different source. In my judgement it is more simply accounted foron the view that C adapted his chronology in order to suit his theory.The great deliverance from Zerah, which he alone reported, and whichit is very difficult to accept as literal history, must have been followedby a period of peace which was the reward for Asa s trust in God, justas the continuous war and the king s disease in his feet resulted fromhis faithlessness. Room must be found, even at the cost of upsettingthe chronology, for these successive events.


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46 THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECYthe result that lie received the promise ofhis ruin, vv. 3-16.The incident forms in Chronicles the introduction to thedisastrous war against Israel.

This series of incidents s not exactly parallel to anotherseries which might be collated, in which a king s defeatwas traced to his failure to maintain loyal adherence to thenational religion. Outwardly, the special features in theevents which have been brought together are that they areall peculiar to the Chronicler and that they are all attendedby the appearance ofa prophet. But inwardly they are alsopeculiar in that they introduce a novel standard for theconduct of the kings and of their court. K s customa_ryjudgement on the successive kings was based on whetherthey maintained strict loyalty to Y ahwism, with a specialattention to whether they observed the law of the singlesanctuary. C did not fail to recognize that standard, thoughit deserves to be noted that he did not always reproduce thestrictures of K about the abolition or non-abolition of thehigh places. But it s significant to discover that he extendedthe principle of absolute allegiance to Yahweh, and madeit cover more than loyalty to the national cult and the law.In everything which concerned the maintenance of hiskingdom, a king ofJudah must be wholly dependent on thedivine help. Even to rely too much on the nation s ownstrength was to show insufficient trust in God and to enterinto alliance with a foreign power, even if that power werethe sister-nation, was to forfeit the divine support. Thekingdom which owed its origin to the divine interventionneeded no more for its continuance. To seek other help wasto question the divine sufficiency to maintain what God hadbrought into being. When, therefore, C introduced into hisnarrative the series of prophets who all enforced the sameprinciple, he acknowledged the source from which he derivedthe new standard which he applied to the kingdom and toits kings. It did not come from the law of Israel, but in hisjudgement it had formed the burden of prophecy. To himthis dogma represented the leading conviction of the pro-


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THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECY 47phets in relation to the kingdom, and he did not hesitate tomake the course of the history of the kingdom and the fatewhich befell the successive kings conform to it. The wordswhich he put into the mouth of Jehoshaphat were theepitome of his attitude on the subject: believe in the Lordyour God, so shall ye be established, believe His prophets,so shall ye prosper, 20: 20 Since the earlier half of thesaying is the positive form of an oracle which appears in itsnegative form at Isa. 7: g it is evident that he believed him-self to be reproducing the prophetic attitude on the question.If he misinterpreted the Isaianic message, it must be addedthat he did so in numerous company. His view was that ofthe court prophets who urged Zedekiah into rebellion,because Yahweh must protect His city and the temple withinit; and it is still that of all the moderns who believe thatIsaiah taught the inviolability of Jerusalem, because itstemple was the place which Yahweh had chosen for Hisabode, and who believe that the prophet saw in the tempo-rary defeat of Assyria the vindication of his dogma.

The series of prophets, however, all of whom rebuke orhearten the kings of Israel, throws light on the Chronicler sidea of the kingdom as well as on his idea of the burden ofprophecy. It brings sharply into view how strictly in hisjudgement the continuance of the kingdom was conditionedby the policy of the royal court. There are expressionsemployed in the promise of God to raise up and maintain aDavidic dynasty which have led several careful students tobelieve that a certain Messianic dignity was attached to thehouse of David. We are not concerned with the generalquestion here, but merely with the particular question asto whether the Chronicler shared that opinion. Von Radcollated the evidence on the subject, 1 and pointed out thatthe promise to the Davidic king was always conditional onthe loyalty of the successive kings to the divine command-ments. Writing after Von Rad and recognizing his carefulsifting of the relative passages, I agreed with his conclusions

1 In his Geschichtsbild des chronistischen Werkes


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48 THE CHRONICLER AND PROPHECYand stated that the figure of the Davidic king never escapedfrom the limits of time or even from those of human frailty;he like all his subjects was under the torah. 1 But neither ofus realized the force of this series of prophetic utteranceswhich prove that to the Chronicler prophecy had alwaysattended the kingdom and that one of its leading functionshad been to guide the kings in the only policy which couldguarantee to them the divine protection and support. TheDavidic kings were not merely like all their subjects underthe torah: they were also controlled by the authentic voiceof God uttered by the prophets. Only i they obeyed thatvoice could they expect the divine furtherance. Wheneverone of the royal line ignored the divine counsel he broughthis kingdom into danger and even to the verge of ruin.Whenever he repented of his disobedience he received thedeliverance which only God could bring him in his straits.When on the other hand he followed the counsel of theprophet no enemy however overwhelming his host mightbe had been able to prevail against Israel. The interventionof God had been of such a character in these circumstancesthat it was impossible to mistake its source for Israel hadrequired to do nothing but stand still and see the deliverancewhich God wrought. The continuance of the kingdom hadbeen always conditioned on the obedience of the kings tothe word of prophecy which had brought the kingdom intoexistence. The condition was s absolute in its characterthat when the last king ignoring the lessons of the pastdespised the message ofa prophet his kingdom fell.

The important place which the Chronicler thus gave toprophecy in the national life makes it natural to ask howhe conceived of the institution in itself. He retained a senseof the charismatic character which had belonged to it.For on one occasion he told how the Spirit of the Lord cameupon a levite who d

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