THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES.

THE Chronicles are a duplicate history of part of the events recorded in the previous books.

Originally and properly united as one book instead of two, they are called in the Hebrew, Words of the Days, or Day-records; etymologically speaking, they are "Diaries." In the Greek version and the Vulgate, they are less appropriately called Paraleipomena, or Supplements; for they are not supplements to the history, but abstracts, extracts and parallel passages. An Arabic translation calls them the Book of Adam, because they go up to Adam, and his name is the first word. Jerome first designated them "a Chronicle of the whole sacred history." But they do not, properly speaking, embrace the whole sacred history. Beginning, indeed, with Adam, they give mere genealogical tables of names (not always corresponding, nor easy to harmonize, with the parallel histories) of the antediluvians, the patriarchs, and the Jewish tribes and families. But this is done as a sort of introduction to the history of king David and his successors on the throne of Judah, which constitutes the substance of the books of Chronicles.

These genealogical tables are thus divided in Dr. Geddes's translation:

CHAP.

1. Genealogy from Adam to Jacob, or Israel.. i.

2.

from Jacob to David

........

ii. 1-17.

3. Other Judahite genealogies through Hezron ii. 17-55. 4. Genealogy from David through thirty gene

rations...

5. Other genealogies from Judah

iii.

iv. 1-23.

6. Genealogy from Simeon, Jacob's second son iv. 24—43.

8. Genealogy from Levi, through the line of

high-priests down to the captivity

V.

vi. 1—15.

12. Genealogy from Manasseh and from Ephraim vii. 14—29. from Asher

13.

14. Another genealogy from Benjamin

vii. 30-40. viii.

The families of Dan and Zebulun, it will be observed, are most unaccountably omitted from these tables, or more probably have been lost through the chances of ancient documents.

"So all Israel," it is added, "were reckoned by genealogies, and behold they (these names, that is) were written in the book (the register) of the kings of Israel . and Judah, when they were carried away to Babylon for their transgression" (ix. 1).

"The first inhabitants that dwelt in their possessions in their cities" after the captivity, are next enumerated in the ninth chapter; after which, the chronicler most abruptly plunges into the Philistine war, just to narrate the death of Saul, on which he thus comments: "So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD, even against the word of the LORD which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it; and inquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse."

The reign of David, thus introduced, occupies the rest of the first book of Chronicles.

The second book opens with the reign of Solomon, and contains the history of his successors also on the throne of Judah, omitting all mention of the kingdom of Israel except as necessarily connected, from time to time, with the history of Judah, down to the Babylonish

captivity. The last two verses of the book, indeed, mention the decree of Cyrus permitting the return to Judea; but they seem to have been copied from the beginning of Ezra, where they stand word for word the same.

The books of Chronicles are thus virtually a history of the kingdom of Judah from David to the Babylonish captivity, with genealogical tables, national and universal, prefixed. Why the affairs of the kingdom of Israel are passed by, and why this history of the kingdom of Judah is not made to begin with Saul's accession to the throne, are obvious questions to ask, but difficult to answer satisfactorily.

In this history of the kingdom of Judah, it is further observable, on comparing it with the parallel history in the books of Samuel and Kings, that the most unfavourable passages in the lives and characters of the Judahite monarchs are passed over in silence or palliated; and a general impression is given of a more prevailing obedience to the Law of Moses, and of less frequent idolatries, than is represented in the books of Samuel and Kings to have been the case even in the kingdom of Judah. Thus David's sin and shame is unmentioned. Solomon's lapse into idolatry is unmentioned. Of king Abijah, or Abijam, the condemning record is suppressed which is given against him in 1 Kings xv. 3, that “he walked in all the sins of his father (Rehoboam), and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father (ancestor)." And when, to the record of the more religious kings, that they "did right in the sight of the LORD," the qualifying circumstance is so often candidly added in the Kings, "nevertheless the high-places were not removed," this drawback does not, except very rarely, appear in the Chronicles. By the limitation of the history to the kingdom of Judah, the lives and actions of Elijah and Elisha, which give

the strongest religious interest to the books of Kings, are altogether omitted from the books of Chronicles. The spirit of the historian, or historians, of Samuel and Kings is, it must be confessed, far more impartial. Equal justice is, in those books, dealt to the sins and the obedience of both the rival kingdoms.

Whatever may have been the special reasons of the chronicler for thus limiting his history to the kingdom of Judah, it is pretty plain that his work could only have been produced when the kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist, and when that of Judah was in some degree prosperous or at least hopeful; and the return from the captivity is not improbably the true date. It is customary to ascribe the authorship to Ezra, but without any sufficient certainty.

That the Chronicles are of later date than the books of Samuel and Kings, is equally plain from general, and from more particular, observations. They may seem as if, in part at least, extracted from the others; but those others could never be thought to have been enlarged from these. Parallel passages shew that the writer of the Chronicles must have been acquainted with the others. While some passages are verbally altered, though evidently founded upon the other histories, some passages are word for word the same; as, in particular, the finely-imagined vision of Micaiah, and the scene with the 400 prophets of Israel. (Compare 1 Kings xxii. 4--35, with 2 Chron. xviii. 3-34.) More minute criticism observes a later Hebrew style in the Chronicles; and the introduction of the Persian daric (translated "drams," 1 Chron. xxix. 7) in reckoning the treasures of David, of course can only bespeak a writer during or after the captivity, probably one who had been a captive. A later theological idea also appears in the Chronicles (1 Chron. xxi. 1), where Satan is said to have provoked

David to number Israel; while in the parallel place (2 Sam. xxiv. 1) it is said, that "the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." Now this is the first time, thus far in the Bible, that the name Satan occurs; and the idea was certainly of comparatively late growth among the Jews. Satan appears, indeed, in the book of Job, which is by many considered a very ancient book; but the age of the book of Job is very doubtful, and the functions of the Satan there are also somewhat different, being those of Inspector-general or Overseer of the dominions of Almighty Providence. (See Job i. and ii.)

The disposition to interpret minutely all the outward events of the Jewish history as providential rewards or punishments for obedience or disobedience to the Law of Moses, which we have already found to prevail so as often to distort some of the facts and warp the historian's judgment, in the earlier books of Jewish history, attains its height in the books of the Chronicles. The writer thinks it necessary to expound everything in strict accordance with this idea, to such a degree as we involuntarily feel to be inconsistent with our own knowledge of the general order of Providence. And when it seems impossible for the chronicler himself to reconcile this doctrine to the stubborn facts of the case, then the merits of David, the founder of the royal house, are appealed to, in explanation of the comparative prosperity of a king whose personal demerits would have led the historian himself to look for different results. Thus, in relating the history of Jehoram, who "walked in the way of the kings of Israel, like as did the house of Ahab (for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife, and he wrought that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD)," the historian adds, as a well-known fact palpably inconsistent