W. A. L. Elmslie

“ The Blessing of David.
10Wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation: and David said, Blessed be thou, O Lord, the God of Israel our father, for ever and ever. 11Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. 12Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou rulest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. ”

“ No one can afford to despise a man who was prepared to walk by the light of such a faith amid the difficulties and the perils which surrounded the enfeebled Jerusalem of that age. As Curtis says, “it was under the tutelage of men like the Chronicler that the Maccabees were nourished and the heroic age of Judaism began.” We must not allow any distaste for legalism in religion to blind us to the virtues of the post-exilic Jews. The very rigidity of the ritual and the doctrine was essential to the preservation of the nobler elements in the faith. ”

“ Even if it be thought that this picture represents rather the ideals of the Levites than the actual attainments of the community, it is still important that such a standard of worship was conceived by the priests and set before the people. One recalls the words of the great prophet of exilic or post-exilic times who wrote: “for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah lvi. 7) . His was a vision of the Temple as the centre of the whole world’s worship. To the Chronicler it had at least become a true “house of prayer” for Israel. ”

“ Thus it was quite impossible in the Chronicler’s time to represent the age of David and Solomon as great and glorious unless the moderate figures given in Kings were altered to correspond with the ideas of men accustomed to think of the mighty armies of the Persian monarchs or of Alexander the Great. As Kuenen says, “In ancient times, and specifically in Israel, the sense of historic continuity could only be preserved by the constant compliance on the part of the past with the requirements of the present, that is to say by the constant renovation and transformation of the past. ”

“ Israel sends back the Jewish Captives.
The tale of the intervention of Oded, his appeal, the response of the people and the army to the call of conscience, with the consequent outburst of pity for the unhappy captives, who are first tended and then restored to their kinsfolk in Judah, is something far better than literal history: it is the product of a moral and religious conviction worthy of high admiration. ”

“ In Israel, at least, there was a tendency to suppose that the cherished system and organisations of the present had sprung into existence, as it were, full-grown at some great moment of the past. For example, by the Chronicler’s time, the whole body of law and ritual embodied in the final form of the Pentateuch had come to be ascribed in its entirety to Moses, whereas historical and literary evidence demonstrates beyond all question that the system of Jewish worship and law was a gradual growth of which the stages can be traced with considerable clearness. ”

“ Whatever its imperfections, the Temple at Jerusalem in his time was performing a great religious work in keeping alive zeal for Jehovah and His Law in the face of much degenerate heathenism. Moreover it is an unfair and a false assumption to suppose that his manifest devotion to the ritual necessarily or probably meant that his religion was mere formalism or his creed poorly conceived. Behind the parade of the formalities of worship burns a living faith. ”

“ None the less, there is virtue, and even great virtue, in Chronicles, and failure to perceive it only argues lack of insight on our part.
In the first place, if Temple ritual and observance of the precepts of the Law bulk too largely in the Chronicler’s conception of the religious life, he had much excuse for his attitude. In his day and generation, faithfulness to Jehovah and to that moral and spiritual interpretation of life for which the worship of Jehovah stood, inevitably involved participation in the organised services which centred in the Temple. ”

“ Obedience and faith in Jehovah were more effective instruments in the hands of Israel’s kings than powerful armies and strong alliances.” It is easy to smile at the Chronicler’s belief that piety is necessarily rewarded by worldly prosperity, and sin by worldly misfortune. But, if the life and teaching of Jesus Christ have led us to a deeper interpretation of life, that does not lessen the virtue of the Chronicler in maintaining his faith in God’s justice and vigilance, despite all the cruel evidences of the prosperity of the wicked. ”

“ See 1 Chronicles xiv. 1 = 2 Samuel v. 11.
4Behold, I build an house for the name of the Lord my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him incense of sweet spices, and for the continual shewbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the set feasts of the Lord our God. This is an ordinance for ever to Israel. 5And the house which I build is great; for great is our God above all gods. ”

“ The scorn in Micaiah’s voice was noticed by the king.
16And he said, I saw all Israel scattered upon the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd: and the Lord said, These have no master; let them return every man to his house in peace. 17And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? ”

“ In Samuel David is leader of a small band of his own immediate friends, augmented by adventurers and desperate men, and numbering in all some six hundred. In Chronicles one gathers that his followers were the choice spirits of Israel and Judah, who rallied to his support until he had “a great host like the host of God.” Beyond question the picture in Samuel is true to fact, that in Chronicles being part of the idealisation of David as the perfect king, which the Chronicler (doubtless in full accord with the temper of his age) consistently presents. ”

“ The glorious reign now reaches a fitting climax. David summons the assembly of all the princes and commanders of Israel, and, in the presence of the heir to the throne, addresses them in a final oration. He recounts his Divine election and rule over Israel and the promise that the same Divine Power will be with Solomon his son (xxviii. 1‒10) . Then, handing over to Solomon the inspired plans for the Temple (11‒21) , and briefly describing the treasures he has amassed for its enrichment (xxix. 1‒5) he appeals to the liberality of the people and is met by a magnificent response (6‒9) . ”

“ The Chronicler was passionately convinced that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. He believed in a God supremely just yet merciful, One who rules directly and personally in human life, destroying evil, guiding and fostering all that is true and good. ”

“ Samuel And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee (but read before me) . The reading in Samuel is no doubt the original. The change made in Chronicles neatly expresses the Chronicler’s conviction that the kingdom of Israel was not a human but a Divine institution, its true ruler being God Himself. ”

“ But it ought also to teach us that history is something more than the record of occurrences. Facts are fundamental, but of profound importance also is the attitude in which we approach them.
To sum up the whole matter of this section. Compared with Samuel‒Kings, Chronicles is of little or no value as a record of the history of the Judean kingdom. Where it differs from those books, in almost all cases the earlier account is the more accurate and trustworthy. In what Chronicles adds, there may sometimes be found traditional developments of genuine historical facts. ”

“ The second divergence, “ships to Tarshish,” is only an error of ignorance, but the first is important. Without, however, denying that the Chronicler has been careful to point the moral of his tale, it may be urged that his version is not obtained simply by an arbitrary alteration of Kings, but rather reflects an independent account of the affair, perhaps more reliable than that in Kings. Almost certainly Jehoshaphat was still virtually subject to Israel, and the Chronicler’s tradition may be true to fact in representing him as partner with Ahaziah from the start of the enterprise. ”

“ Thus it is related that the victory was gained without any need for Jehoshaphat’s grande armée of 1,160,000 men! Turn from the tale to the circumstances of the post-exilic Jewish community, and the heroism of such teaching leaps to light. It is when we are surrounded by unscrupulous and powerful foes and have not 1000 soldiers, far less 1,000,000, that the reality of our trust in God and goodness is put to the test. “Aye,” says the Chronicler, “but, if like Jehoshaphat you had 1,000,000, it is still the supreme duty of man to rely on God.” ”

“ Loss—because the continual adaptation of old tradition has sometimes produced changes so great that it is difficult or even impossible to discover now what was the actual course of events. By the exercise of care and by the diligent application of the principles of literary research the loss thus occasioned can be greatly diminished, particularly where different accounts of the same period have survived—e.g. in the parallel history of Judah in Samuel‒Kings and in Chronicles. ”

“ It may be definitely asserted therefore that for all the passages which are common to Chronicles and other canonical works the Chronicler was indebted solely to the text of the canonical books as it appeared in his time.
As for the divergences, real and apparent, between Chronicles and other canonical Scriptures, it is now recognised that, whilst they are properly a subject for historical investigation, they do not involve a religious problem. The old “religious” difficulty is answered by a deeper comprehension of the nature of Inspiration. ”

“ Finally, in a prayer of fine humility and faith (10‒20) , he commends his son and his people to the eternal and all-powerful God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. How immense the contrast between this and the pathetically real picture of the closing days of David portrayed in 1 Kings i., ii. 1‒11! There the dying monarch is seen, exhausted in mind and body, surrounded by the intrigues of an Eastern palace. With a last flicker of his strength, he rouses himself to secure the succession of Solomon by firm but ruthless orders against the leaders of the opposing faction. ”

“ Characteristics of Ancient Historical Writings Until recent times the study of the historical records of Israel and of other nations of antiquity has suffered from insufficient recognition of the principles and procedure of ancient historians. It is obvious that a great contrast exists between any modern historical work and those books of the Old Testament which relate the fortunes of Israel ”

“ Fierce but undisciplined invaders, advancing from the desert through the difficult country of south Judah, a land of cliffs ravines and caves, might be sorely harassed by the guerilla attacks of the shepherd population of that region, and finally broken up by the outbreak of internal dissensions, before the main Judean army from Jerusalem had arrived to oppose their advance in force. Such an event would quickly fade from the military recollections of Jerusalem, but might be long perpetuated as a local tradition among the shepherd class of the district where the victory was won. ”

“ We now know that there was an important Jewish Temple at Elephantine in Egypt, which the Jewish community there was eager to maintain. But far more serious was the Samaritan schism and the Temple to Jehovah erected by them on Mt Gerizim. We can well imagine that a rival Temple on Palestinian soil claiming, no doubt with some show of justice, that there were true Levitical families among its priests, that its ritual was correct and its observance of the Law every whit as sound as that in Jerusalem, was a matter of vital importance to the ecclesiastical orders at Jerusalem. ”

“ One other feature of the ancient writers, at least of the chroniclers of Israel, is of singular interest, and deserves special attention: it might be described as a feature of their temperament or of their mental environment. The idea of growth has become familiar to us, and we recognise that there has been a process of development in our religious and social institutions. We are content to trace the seeds of the present in the past. ”

“ After verse 19 “In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept,” 1 Esdras i. 23, 24 has a remarkable addition as follows: “And the works of Josias were upright before his Lord with a heart full of godliness. Moreover the things that came to pass in his days [or ‘the things concerning him’] have been written in times past concerning ... those that sinned and did wickedly against the Lord above every people and kingdom, and how they grieved him exceedingly, so that the words of the Lord were confirmed against Israel.” ”

“ Thus it is probable that some features of the narratives in Chronicles may originate with the Chronicler: that is only what we should expect from a man able to plan and carry through a work so clearly intentioned and on such a large scale as Chronicles‒Ezra‒Nehemiah. ”