The Expositor’s Bible

                         The Books of Chronicles

                                    By

                          William Henry Bennett

   Professor of Old Testament Languages and Literature, Mackney and New
        Colleges; Sometime Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge

                            Hodder & Stoughton

                                 New York

                         George H, Doran Company





CONTENTS


Preface
Book I. Introduction.
   Chapter I. Date And Authorship.
   Chapter II. Historical Setting.
   Chapter III. Sources And Mode Of Composition.
   Chapter IV. The Importance of Chronicles.
Book II. Genealogies.
   Chapter I. Names. 1 Chron. i-ix.
   Chapter II. Heredity. 1 Chron. i.-ix.
   Chapter III. Statistics.
   Chapter IV. Family Traditions. 1 Chron. i. 10, 19, 46; ii. 3, 7, 34;
   iv. 9, 10, 18, 22, 27, 34-43; v. 10, 18-22; vii. 21-23; viii. 13.
   Chapter V. The Jewish Community In The Time Of The Chronicler.
   Chapter VI. Teaching By Anachronism. 1 Chron. ix. (cf. xv., xvi.,
   xxiii.-xxvii., etc.).
Book III. Messianic And Other Types.
   Chapter I. Teaching By Types.
   Chapter II. David—I. His Tribe And Dynasty.
   Chapter III. David—II. His Personal History.
   Chapter IV. David—III. His Official Dignity.
   Chapter V. Solomon.
   Chapter VI. Solomon (continued).
   Chapter VII. The Wicked Kings. 2 Chron. xxviii., etc.
   Chapter VIII. The Priests.
   Chapter IX. The Prophets.
   Chapter X. Satan. 1 Chron. xxi.-xxii. 1.
   Chapter XI. Conclusion.
Book IV. The Interpretation Of History.
   Chapter I. The Last Prayer Of David. 1 Chron. xxix. 10-19.
   Chapter II. Rehoboam And Abijah: The Importance Of Ritual. 2 Chron.
   x.-xiii.
   Chapter III. Asa: Divine Retribution. 2 Chron. xiv.-xvi.
   Chapter IV. Jehoshaphat—The Doctrine Of Non-Resistance. 2 Chron.
   xvii.-xx.
   Chapter V. Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah: The Consequences of a
   Foreign Marriage. 2 Chron. xxi.-xxiii.
   Chapter VI. Joash and Amaziah. 2 Chron. xxiv.-xxv.
   Chapter VII. Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz. 2 Chron. xxvi.-xxviii.
   Chapter VIII. Hezekiah: The Religious Value Of Music. 2 Chron.
   xxix.-xxxii.
   Chapter IX. Manasseh: Repentance And Forgiveness. 2 Chron. xxxiii.
   Chapter X. The Last Kings Of Judah. 2 Chron. xxxiv.-xxxvi.
Footnotes






PREFACE


To expound Chronicles in a series which has dealt with Samuel, Kings,
Ezra, and Nehemiah is to glean scattered ears from a field already
harvested. Sections common to Chronicles with the older histories have
therefore been treated as briefly as is consistent with preserving the
continuity of the narrative. Moreover, an exposition of Chronicles does
not demand or warrant an attempt to write the history of Judah. To
recombine with Chronicles matter which its author deliberately omitted
would only obscure the characteristic teaching he intended to convey. On
the one hand, his selection of material has a religious significance,
which must be ascertained by careful comparison with Samuel and Kings; on
the other hand, we can only do justice to the chronicler as we ourselves
adopt, for the time being, his own attitude towards the history of Hebrew
politics, literature, and religion. In the more strictly expository parts
of this volume I have sought to confine myself to the carrying out of
these principles.

Amongst other obligations to friends, I must specially mention my
indebtedness to the Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A., for a careful reading of the
proof-sheets and many very valuable suggestions.

One object I have had in view has been to attempt to show the fresh force
and clearness with which modern methods of Biblical study have emphasised
the spiritual teaching of Chronicles.





BOOK I. INTRODUCTION.




Chapter I. Date And Authorship.


Chronicles is a curious literary torso. A comparison with Ezra and
Nehemiah shows that the three originally formed a single whole. They are
written in the same peculiar late Hebrew style; they use their sources in
the same mechanical way; they are all saturated with the ecclesiastical
spirit; and their Church order and doctrine rest upon the complete
Pentateuch, and especially upon the Priestly Code. They take the same keen
interest in genealogies, statistics, building operations, Temple ritual,
priests and Levites, and most of all in the Levitical doorkeepers and
singers. Ezra and Nehemiah form an obvious continuation of Chronicles; the
latter work breaks off in the middle of a paragraph intended to introduce
the account of the return from the Captivity; Ezra repeats the beginning
of the paragraph and gives its conclusion. Similarly the register of the
high-priests is begun in 1 Chron. vi. 4-15 and completed in Neh. xii. 10,
11.

We may compare the whole work to the image in Daniel’s vision whose head
was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs
of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Ezra
and Nehemiah preserve some of the finest historical material in the Old
Testament, and are our only authority for a most important crisis in the
religion of Israel. The torso that remains when these two books are
removed is of very mixed character, partly borrowed from the older
historical books, partly taken down from late tradition, and partly
constructed according to the current philosophy of history.

The date(1) of this work lies somewhere between the conquest of the
Persian empire by Alexander and the revolt of the Maccabees, _i.e._,
between B.C. 332 and B.C. 166. The register in Neh. xii. 10, 11, closes
with Jaddua, the well-known high-priest of Alexander’s time; the genealogy
of the house of David in 1 Chron. iii. extends to about the same date, or,
according to the ancient versions, even down to about B.C. 200. The
ecclesiastical system of the priestly code, established by Ezra and
Nehemiah B.C. 444, was of such old standing to the author of Chronicles
that he introduces it as a matter of course into his descriptions of the
worship of the monarchy. Another feature which even more clearly indicates
a late date is the use of the term “king of Persia” instead of simply “the
King” or “the Great King.” The latter were the customary designations of
the Persian kings while the empire lasted; after its fall, the title
needed to be qualified by the name “Persia.” These facts, together with
the style and language, would be best accounted for by a date somewhere
between B.C. 300 and B.C. 250. On the other hand, the Maccabæan struggle
revolutionised the national and ecclesiastical system which Chronicles
everywhere takes for granted, and the silence of the author as to this
revolution is conclusive proof that he wrote before it began.

There is no evidence whatever as to the name of the author; but his
intense interest in the Levites and in the musical service of the Temple,
with its orchestra and choir, renders it extremely probable that he was a
Levite and a Temple-singer or musician. We might compare the Temple, with
its extensive buildings and numerous priesthood, to an English cathedral
establishment, and the author of Chronicles to some vicar-choral, or,
perhaps better, to the more dignified precentor. He would be enthusiastic
over his music, a cleric of studious habits and scholarly tastes, not a
man of the world, but absorbed in the affairs of the Temple, as a monk in
the life of his convent or a minor canon in the politics and society of
the minster close. The times were uncritical, and so our author was
occasionally somewhat easy of belief as to the enormous magnitude of
ancient Hebrew armies and the splendour and wealth of ancient Hebrew
kings; the narrow range of his interests and experience gave him an
appetite for innocent gossip, professional or otherwise. But his sterling
religious character is shown by the earnest piety and serene faith which
pervade his work. If we venture to turn to English fiction for a rough
illustration of the position and history of our chronicler, the name that
at once suggests itself is that of Mr. Harding, the precentor in
_Barchester Towers_. We must however remember that there is very little to
distinguish the chronicler from his later authorities; and the term
“chronicler” is often used for “the chronicler or one of his
predecessors.”




Chapter II. Historical Setting.


In the previous chapter it has been necessary to deal with the chronicler
as the author of the whole work of which Chronicles is only a part, and to
go over again ground already covered in the volume on Ezra and Nehemiah;
but from this point we can confine our attention to Chronicles and treat
it as a separate book. Such a course is not merely justified, it is
necessitated, by the different relations of the chronicler to his subject
in Ezra and Nehemiah on the one hand and in Chronicles on the other. In
the former case he is writing the history of the social and ecclesiastical
order to which he himself belonged, but he is separated by a deep and wide
gulf from the period of the kingdom of Judah. About three hundred years
intervened between the chronicler and the death of the last king of Judah.
A similar interval separates us from Queen Elizabeth; but the course of
these three centuries of English life has been an almost unbroken
continuity compared with the changing fortunes of the Jewish people from
the fall of the monarchy to the early years of the Greek empire. This
interval included the Babylonian captivity and the return, the
establishment of the Law, the use of the Persian empire, and the conquests
of Alexander.

The first three of these events were revolutions of supreme importance to
the internal development of Judaism; the last two rank in the history of
the world with the fall of the Roman empire and the French Revolution. Let
us consider them briefly in detail. The Captivity, the rise of the Persian
empire, and the Return are closely connected, and can only be treated as
features of one great social, political, and religious convulsion, an
upheaval which broke the continuity of all the strata, of Eastern life and
opened an impassable gulf between the old order and the new. For a time,
men who had lived through these revolutions were still able to carry
across this gulf the loosely twisted strands of memory, but when they died
the threads snapped; only here and there a lingering tradition
supplemented the written records. Hebrew slowly ceased to be the
vernacular language, and was supplanted by Aramaic; the ancient history
only reached the people by means of an oral translation. Under this new
dispensation the ideas of ancient Israel were no longer intelligible; its
circumstances could not be realised by those who lived under entirely
different conditions. Various causes contributed to bring about this
change. First, there was an interval of fifty years, during which
Jerusalem lay a heap of ruins. After the recapture of Rome by Totila the
Visigoth in A.D. 546 the city was abandoned during forty days to desolate
and dreary solitude. Even this temporary depopulation of the Eternal City
is emphasised by historians as full of dramatic interest, but the fifty
years’ desolation of Jerusalem involved important practical results. Most
of the returning exiles must have either been born in Babylon or else have
spent all their earliest years in exile. Very few can have been old enough
to have grasped the meaning or drunk in the spirit of the older national
life. When the restored community set to work to rebuild their city and
their temple, few of them had any adequate knowledge of the old Jerusalem,
with its manners, customs, and traditions. “The ancient men, that had seen
the first house, wept with a loud voice”(2) when the foundation of the
second Temple was laid before their eyes. In their critical and
disparaging attitude towards the new building, we may see an early trace
of the tendency to glorify and idealise the monarchical period, which
culminated in Chronicles. The breach with the past was widened by the
novel and striking surroundings of the exiles in Babylon. For the first
time since the Exodus, the Jews as a nation found themselves in close
contact and intimate relations with the culture of an ancient civilisation
and the life of a great city.

Nearly a century and a half elapsed between the first captivity under
Jehoiachin (B.C. 598) and the mission of Ezra (B.C. 458); no doubt in the
succeeding period Jews still continued to return from Babylon to Judæa,
and thus the new community at Jerusalem, amongst whom the chronicler grew
up, counted Babylonian Jews amongst their ancestors for two or even for
many generations. A Zulu tribe exhibited for a year in London could not
return and build their kraal afresh and take up the old African life at
the point where they had left it. If a community of Russian Jews went to
their old home after a few years’ sojourn in Whitechapel, the old life
resumed would be very different from what it was before their migration.
Now the Babylonian Jews were neither uncivilised African savages nor
stupefied Russian helots; they were not shut up in an exhibition or in a
ghetto; they settled in Babylon, not for a year or two, but for half a
century or even a century; and they did not return to a population of
their own race, living the old life, but to empty homes and a ruined city.
They had tasted the tree of new knowledge, and they could no more live and
think as their fathers had done than Adam and Eve could find their way
back into paradise. A large and prosperous colony of Jews still remained
at Babylon, and maintained close and constant relations with the
settlement in Judæa. The influence of Babylon, begun during the Exile,
continued permanently in this indirect form. Later still the Jews felt the
influence of a great Greek city, through their colony at Alexandria.

Besides these external changes, the Captivity was a period of important
and many-sided development of Jewish literature and religion. Men had
leisure to study the prophecies of Jeremiah and the legislation of
Deuteronomy; their attention was claimed for Ezekiel’s suggestions as to
ritual, and for the new theology, variously expounded by Ezekiel, the
later Isaiah, the book of Job, and the psalmists. The Deuteronomic school
systematised and interpreted the records of the national history. In its
wealth of Divine revelation the period from Josiah to Ezra is only second
to the apostolic age.

Thus the restored Jewish community was a new creation, baptised into a new
spirit; the restored city was as much a new Jerusalem as that which St.
John beheld descending out of heaven; and, in the words of the prophet of
the Restoration, the Jews returned to a “new heaven and a new earth.”(3)
The rise of the Persian empire changed the whole international system of
Western Asia and Egypt. The robber monarchies of Nineveh and Babylon,
whose energies had been chiefly devoted to the systematic plunder of their
neighbours, were replaced by a great empire, that stretched out one hand
to Greece and the other to India. The organisation of this great empire
was the most successful attempt at government on a large scale that the
world had yet seen. Both through the Persians themselves and through their
dealings with the Greeks, Aryan philosophy and religion began to leaven
Asiatic thought; old things were passing away: all things were becoming
new.

The establishment of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah was the triumph of a
school whose most important and effective work had been done at Babylon,
though not necessarily within the half-century specially called the
Captivity. Their triumph was retrospective: it not only established a
rigid and elaborate system unknown to the monarchy, but, by identifying
this system with the law traditionally ascribed to Moses, it led men very
widely astray as to the ancient history of Israel. A later generation
naturally assumed that the good kings must have kept this law, and that
the sin of the bad kings was their failure to observe its ordinances.

The events of the century and a half or thereabouts between Ezra and the
chronicler have only a minor importance for us. The change of language
from Hebrew to Aramaic, the Samaritan schism, the few political incidents
of which any account has survived, are all trivial compared to the
literature and history crowded into the century after the fall of the
monarchy. Even the far-reaching results of the conquests of Alexander do
not materially concern us here. Josephus indeed tells us that the Jews
served in large numbers in the Macedonian army, and gives a very dramatic
account of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem; but the historical value of
these stories is very doubtful, and in any case it is clear that between
B.C. 333 and B.C. 250 Jerusalem was very little affected by Greek
influences, and that, especially for the Temple community to which the
chronicler belonged, the change from Darius to the Ptolemies was merely a
change from one foreign dominion to another.

Nor need much be said of the relation of the chronicler to the later
Jewish literature of the Apocalypses and Wisdom. If the spirit of this
literature were already stirring in some Jewish circles, the chronicler
himself was not moved by it. Ecclesiastes, as far as he could have
understood it, would have pained and shocked him. But his work lay in that
direct line of subtle rabbinic teaching which, beginning with Ezra,
reached its climax in the Talmud. Chronicles is really an anthology
gleaned from ancient historic sources and supplemented by early specimens
of Midrash and Hagada.

In order to understand the book of Chronicles, we have to keep two or
three simple facts constantly and clearly in mind. In the first place, the
chronicler was separated from the monarchy by an aggregate of changes
which involved a complete breach of continuity between the old and the new
order: instead of a nation there was a Church; instead of a king there
were a high-priest and a foreign governor. Secondly, the effects of these
changes had been at work for two or three hundred years, effacing all
trustworthy recollection of the ancient order and schooling men to regard
the Levitical dispensation as their one original and antique
ecclesiastical system. Lastly, the chronicler himself belonged to the
Temple community, which was the very incarnation of the spirit of the new
order. With such antecedents and surroundings, he set to work to revise
the national history recorded in Samuel and Kings. A monk in a Norman
monastery would have worked under similar but less serious disadvantages
if he had undertaken to rewrite the _Ecclesiastical History_ of the
Venerable Bede.




Chapter III. Sources And Mode Of Composition.


Our impressions as to the sources of Chronicles are derived from the
general character of its contents, from a comparison with other books of
the Old Testament, and from the actual statements of Chronicles itself. To
take the last first: there are numerous references to authorities in
Chronicles which at first sight seem to indicate a dependence on rich and
varied sources. To begin with, there are “The Book of the Kings of Judah
and Israel,”(4) “The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,”(5) and “The
Acts of the Kings of Israel.”(6) These, however, are obviously different
forms of the title of the same work.

Other titles furnish us with an imposing array of prophetic authorities.
There are “The _Words_” of Samuel the Seer(7), of Nathan the Prophet,(8)
of Gad the Seer,(9) of Shemaiah the Prophet and of Iddo the Seer,(10) of
Jehu the son of Hanani,(11) and of the Seers(12); “The _Vision_” of Iddo
the Seer(13) and of Isaiah the Prophet(14); “The _Midrash_” of the Book of
Kings(15) and of the Prophet Iddo(16); “The _Acts_ of Uzziah,” written by
Isaiah the Prophet(17); and “The _Prophecy_” of Ahijah the Shilonite.(18)
There are also less formal allusions to other works.

Further examination, however, soon discloses the fact that these prophetic
titles merely indicate different sections of “The Book of the Kings of
Israel and Judah.” On turning to our book of Kings, we find that from
Rehoboam onwards each of the references in Chronicles corresponds to a
reference by the book of Kings to the “Chronicles(19) of the Kings of
Judah.” In the case of Ahaziah, Athaliah, and Amon, the reference to an
authority is omitted both in the books of Kings and Chronicles. This close
correspondence suggests that both our canonical books are referring to the
same authority or authorities. Kings refers to the “Chronicles of the
Kings of Judah” for Judah, and to the “Chronicles of the Kings of Israel”
for the northern kingdom; Chronicles, though only dealing with Judah,
combines these two titles in one: “The Book of the Kings of Israel and
Judah.”

In two instances Chronicles clearly states that its prophetic authorities
were found as sections of the larger work. “The Words of Jehu the son of
Hanani” were “inserted in the Book of the Kings of Israel,”(20) and “The
Vision of Isaiah the Prophet, the son of Amoz,” is in the Book of the
Kings of Judah and Israel.(21) It is a natural inference that the other
“Words” and “Visions” were also found as sections of this same “Book of
Kings.”

These conclusions may be illustrated and supported by what we know of the
arrangement of the contents of ancient books. Our convenient modern
subdivisions of chapter and verse did not exist, but the Jews were not
without some means of indicating the particular section of a book to which
they wished to refer. Instead of numbers they used names, derived from the
subject of a section or from the most important person mentioned in it.
For the history of the monarchy the prophets were the most important
personages, and each section of the history is named after its leading
prophet or prophets. This nomenclature naturally encouraged the belief
that the history had been originally written by these prophets. Instances
of the use of such nomenclature are found in the New Testament, _e.g._,
Rom. xi. 2: “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith in Elijah”(22)—_i.e._, in
the section about Elijah—and Mark xii. 26: “Have ye not read in the book
of Moses in the place concerning the bush?”(23)

While, however, most of the references to “Words,” “Visions,” etc., are to
sections of the larger work, we need not at once conclude that _all_
references to authorities in Chronicles are to this same book. The
genealogical register in 1 Chron. v. 17 and the “lamentations” of 2 Chron.
xxxv. 25 may very well be independent works. Having recognised the fact
that the numerous authorities referred to by Chronicles were for the most
part contained in one comprehensive “Book of Kings,” a new problem
presents itself: What are the respective relations of our Kings and
Chronicles to the “Chronicles” and “Kings” cited by them? What are the
relations of these original authorities to each other? What are the
relations of our Kings to our Chronicles? Our present nomenclature is
about as confusing as it well could be; and we are obliged to keep clearly
in mind, first, that the “Chronicles” mentioned in Kings is not our
Chronicles, and then that the “Kings” referred to by Chronicles is not our
Kings. The first fact is obvious; the second is shown by the terms of the
references, which state that information not furnished in Chronicles may
be found in the “Book of Kings,” but the information in question is often
not given in the canonical Kings.(24) And yet the connection between Kings
and Chronicles is very close and extensive. A large amount of material
occurs either identically or with very slight variations in both books. It
is clear that either Chronicles uses Kings, or Chronicles uses a work
which used Kings, or both Chronicles and Kings use the same source or
sources. Each of these three views has been held by important authorities,
and they are also capable of various combinations and modifications.

Reserving for a moment the view which specially commends itself to us, we
may note two main tendencies of opinion. First, it is maintained that
Chronicles either goes back directly to the actual sources of Kings,
citing them, for the sake of brevity, under a combined title, or is based
upon a combination of the main sources of Kings made at a very early date.
In either case Chronicles as compared with Kings would be an independent
and parallel authority on the contents of these early sources, and to that
extent would rank with Kings as first-class history. This view, however,
is shown to be untenable by the numerous traces of a later age which are
almost invariably present wherever Chronicles supplements or modifies
Kings.

The second view is that either Chronicles used Kings, or that the “Book of
the Kings of Israel and Judah” used by Chronicles was a post-Exilic work,
incorporating statistical matter and dealing with the history of the two
kingdoms in a spirit congenial to the temper and interests of the restored
community. This “post-Exilic” predecessor of Chronicles is supposed to
have been based upon Kings itself, or upon the sources of Kings, or upon
both; but in any case it was not much earlier than Chronicles and was
written under the same influences and in a similar spirit. Being virtually
an earlier edition of Chronicles, it could claim no higher authority, and
would scarcely deserve either recognition or treatment as a separate work.
Chronicles would still rest substantially on the authority of Kings.

It is possible to accept a somewhat simpler view, and to dispense with
this shadowy and ineffectual first edition of Chronicles. In the first
place, the chronicler does not appeal to the “Words” and “Visions” and the
rest of his “Book of Kings” as authorities for his own statements; he
merely refers his reader to them for further information which he himself
does not furnish. This “Book of Kings” so often mentioned is therefore
neither a source nor an authority of Chronicles. There is nothing to prove
that the chronicler himself was actually acquainted with the book. Again,
the close correspondence already noted between these references in
Chronicles and the parallel notes in Kings suggests that the former are
simply expanded and modified from the latter, and the chronicler had never
seen the book he referred to. The Books of Kings had stated where
additional information could be found, and Chronicles simply repeated the
reference without verifying it. As some sections of Kings had come to be
known by the names of certain prophets, the chronicler transferred these
names back to the corresponding sections of the sources used by Kings. In
these cases he felt he could give his readers not merely the somewhat
vague reference to the original work as a whole, but the more definite and
convenient citation of a particular paragraph. His descriptions of the
additional subjects dealt with in the original authority may possibly,
like other of his statements, have been constructed in accordance with his
ideas of what that authority should contain; or more probably they refer
to this authority the floating traditions of later times and writers.
Possibly these references and notes of Chronicles are copied from the
glosses which some scribe had written in the margin of his copy of Kings.
If this be so, we can understand why we find references to the Midrash of
Iddo and the Midrash of the book of Kings.(25)

In any case, whether directly or through the medium of a preliminary
edition, called “The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah,” our book of
Kings was used by the chronicler. The supposition that the original
sources of Kings were used by the chronicler or this immediate predecessor
is fairly supported both by evidence and authority, but on the whole it
seems an unnecessary complication.

Thus we fail to find in these various references to the “Book of Kings,”
etc., any clear indication of the origin of matter peculiar to Chronicles;
nevertheless it is not difficult to determine the nature of the sources
from which this material was derived. Doubtless some of it was still
current in the form of oral tradition when the chronicler wrote, and owed
to him its permanent record. Some he borrowed from manuscripts, which
formed part of the scanty and fragmentary literature of the later period
of the Restoration. His genealogies and statistics suggest the use of
public and ecclesiastical archives, as well as of family records, in which
ancient legend and anecdote lay embedded among lists of forgotten
ancestors. Apparently the chronicler harvested pretty freely from that
literary aftermath that sprang up when the Pentateuch and the earlier
historical books had taken final shape.

But it is to these earlier books that the chronicler owes most. His work
is very largely a mosaic of paragraphs and phrases taken from the older
books. His chief sources are Samuel and Kings; he also lays the
Pentateuch, Joshua, and Ruth under contribution. Much is taken over
without even verbal alteration, and the greater part is unaltered in
substance; yet, as is the custom in ancient literature, no acknowledgment
is made. The literary conscience was not yet aware of the sin of
plagiarism. Indeed, neither an author nor his friends took any pains to
secure the permanent association of his name with his work, and no great
guilt can attach to the plagiarism of one anonymous writer from another.
This absence of acknowledgment where the chronicler is plainly borrowing
from elder scribes is another reason why his references to the “Book of
the Kings of Israel and Judah” are clearly not statements of sources to
which he is indebted, but simply what they profess to be: indications of
the possible sources of further information.

Chronicles, however, illustrates ancient methods of historical
composition, not only by its free appropriation of the actual form and
substance of older works, but also by its curious blending of identical
reproduction with large additions of quite heterogeneous matter, or with a
series of minute but significant alterations. The primitive ideas and
classical style of paragraphs from Samuel and Kings are broken in upon by
the ritualistic fervour and late Hebrew of the chronicler’s additions. The
vivid and picturesque narrative of the bringing of the Ark to Zion is
interpolated with uninteresting statistics of the names, numbers, and
musical instruments of the Levites.(26) Much of the chronicler’s account
of the revolution which overthrew Athaliah and placed Joash on the throne
is taken word for word from the book of Kings; but it is adapted to the
Temple order of the Pentateuch by a series of alterations which substitute
Levites for foreign mercenaries, and otherwise guard the sanctity of the
Temple from the intrusion, not only of foreigners, but even of the common
people.(27) A careful comparison of Chronicles with Samuel and Kings is a
striking object lesson in ancient historical composition. It is an almost
indispensable introduction to the criticism of the Pentateuch and the
older historical books. The “redactor” of these works becomes no mere
shadowy and hypothetical personage when we have watched his successor the
chronicler piecing together things new and old and adapting ancient
narratives to modern ideas by adding a word in one place and changing a
phrase in another.




Chapter IV. The Importance of Chronicles.


Before attempting to expound in detail the religious significance of
Chronicles, we may conclude our introduction by a brief general statement
of the leading features which render the book interesting and valuable to
the Christian student.

The material of Chronicles may be divided into three parts: the matter
taken directly from the older historical books; material derived from
traditions and writings of the chronicler’s own age; the various additions
and modifications which are the chronicler’s own work.(28) Each of these
divisions has its special value, and important lessons may be learnt from
the way in which the author has selected and combined these materials.

The excerpts from the older histories are, of course, by far the best
material in the book for the period of the monarchy. If Samuel and Kings
had perished, we should have been under great obligations to the
chronicler for preserving to us large portions of their ancient records.
As it is, the chronicler has rendered invaluable service to the textual
criticism of the Old Testament by providing us with an additional witness
to the text of large portions of Samuel and Kings. The very fact that the
character and history of Chronicles are so different from those of the
older books enhances the value of its evidence as to their text. The two
texts, Samuel and Kings on the one hand and Chronicles on the other, have
been modified under different influences; they have not always been
altered in the same way, so that where one has been corrupted the other
has often preserved the correct reading. Probably because Chronicles is
less interesting and picturesque, its text has been subject to less
alteration than that of Samuel and Kings. The more interested scribes or
readers become, the more likely they are to make corrections and add
glosses to the narrative. We may note, for example, that the name
“Meribbaal” given by Chronicles for one of Saul’s sons is more likely to
be correct than “Mephibosheth,” the form given by Samuel.(29)

The material derived from traditions and writings of the chronicler’s own
age is of uncertain historical value, and cannot be clearly discriminated
from the author’s free composition. Much of it was the natural product of
the thought and feeling of the late Persian and early Greek period, and
shares the importance which attaches to the chronicler’s own work. This
material, however, includes a certain amount of neutral matter:
genealogies, family histories and anecdotes, and notes on ancient life and
custom. We have no parallel authorities to test this material, we cannot
prove the antiquity of the sources from which it is derived, and yet it
may contain fragments of very ancient tradition. Some of the notes and
narratives have an archaic flavour which can scarcely be artificial; their
very lack of importance is an argument for their authenticity, and
illustrates the strange tenacity with which local and domestic tradition
perpetuates the most insignificant episodes.(30)

But naturally the most characteristic, and therefore the most important,
section of the contents of Chronicles is that made up of the additions and
modifications which are the work of the chronicler or his immediate
predecessors. It is unnecessary to point out that these do not add much to
our knowledge of the history of the monarchy; their significance consists
in the light that they throw upon the period towards whose close the
chronicler lived: the period between the final establishment of
Pentateuchal Judaism and the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to stamp it
out of existence; the period between Ezra and Judas Maccabæus. The
chronicler is no exceptional and epoch-making writer, has little personal
importance, and is therefore all the more important as a typical
representative of the current ideas of his class and generation. He
translates the history of the past into the ideas and circumstances of his
own age, and thus gives us almost as much information about the civil and
religious institutions he lived under as if he had actually described
them. Moreover, in stating its estimate of past history, each generation
pronounces unconscious judgment upon itself. The chronicler’s
interpretation and philosophy of history mark the level of his moral and
spiritual ideas. He betrays these quite as much by his attitude towards
earlier authorities as in the paragraphs which are his own composition; we
have seen how his use of materials illustrates the ancient, and for that
matter the modern, Eastern methods of historical composition, and we have
shown the immense importance of Chronicles to Old Testament criticism. But
the way in which the chronicler uses his older sources also indicates his
relation towards the ancient morality, ritual, and theology of Israel. His
methods of selection are most instructive as to the ideas and interests of
his time. We see what was thought worthy to be included in this final and
most modern edition of the religious history of Israel. But in truth the
omissions are among the most significant features of Chronicles; its
silence is constantly more eloquent than its speech, and we measure the
spiritual progress of Judaism by the paragraphs of Kings which Chronicles
leaves out. In subsequent chapters we shall seek to illustrate the various
ways in which Chronicles illuminates the period preceding the Maccabees.
Any gleams of light on the Hebrew monarchy are most welcome, but we cannot
be less grateful for information about those obscure centuries which
fostered the quiet growth of Israel’s character and faith and prepared the
way for the splendid heroism and religious devotion of the Maccabæan
struggle.





BOOK II. GENEALOGIES.




Chapter I. Names. 1 Chron. i-ix.


The first nine chapters of Chronicles form, with a few slight exceptions,
a continuous list of names. It is the largest extant collection of Hebrew
names. Hence these chapters may be used as a text for the exposition of
any spiritual significance to be derived from Hebrew names either
individually or collectively. Old Testament genealogies have often
exercised the ingenuity of the preacher, and the student of homiletics
will readily recollect the methods of extracting a moral from what at
first sight seems a barren theme. For instance, those names of which
little or nothing is recorded are held up as awful examples of wasted
lives. We are asked to take warning from Mahalalel and Methuselah, who
spent their long centuries so ineffectually that there was nothing to
record except that they begat sons and daughters and died. Such teaching
is not fairly derived from its text. The sacred writers implied no
reflection upon the Patriarchs of whom they gave so short and conventional
an account. Least of all could such teaching be based upon the lists in
Chronicles, because the men who are there merely mentioned by name include
Adam, Noah, Abraham, and other heroes of sacred story. Moreover, such
teaching is unnecessary and not altogether wholesome. Very few men who are
at all capable of obtaining a permanent place in history need to be
spurred on by sermons; and for most people the suggestion that a man’s
life is a failure unless he secures posthumous fame is false and
mischievous. The Lamb’s book of life is the only record of the vast
majority of honourable and useful lives; and the tendency to
self-advertisement is sufficiently wide-spread and spontaneous already: it
needs no pulpit stimulus. We do not think any worse of a man because his
tombstone simply states his name and age, or any better because it
catalogues his virtues and mentions that he attained the dignity of
alderman or author.

The significance of these lists of names is rather to be looked for in an
opposite direction. It is not that a name and one or two commonplace
incidents mean so little, but that they suggest so much. A mere parish
register is not in itself attractive, but if we consider even such a list,
the very names interest us and kindle our imagination. It is almost
impossible to linger in a country churchyard, reading the half-effaced
inscriptions upon the headstones, without forming some dim picture of the
character and history and even the outward semblance of the men and women
who once bore the names.


    “For though a name is neither
    ... hand, nor foot,
    Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
    Belonging to a man,”


yet, to use a somewhat technical phrase, it _connotes_ a man. A name
implies the existence of a distinct personality, with a peculiar and
unique history, and yet, on the other hand, a being with whom we are
linked in close sympathy by a thousand ties of common human nature and
everyday experience. In its lists of what are now mere names, the Bible
seems to recognise the dignity and sacredness of bare human life.

But the names in these nine chapters have also a collective significance:
they stand for more than their individual owners. They are typical and
representative, the names of kings, and priests, and captains; they sum up
the tribes of Israel, both as a Church and a nation, down all the
generations of its history. The inclusion of these names in the sacred
record, as the express introduction to the annals of the Temple, and the
sacred city, and the elect house of David, is the formal recognition of
the sanctity of the nation and of national life. We are entirely in the
spirit of the Bible when we see this same sanctity in all organised
societies: in the parish, the municipality, and the state; when we attach
a Divine significance to registers of electors and census returns, and
claim all such lists as symbols of religious privilege and responsibility.

But names do not merely suggest individuals and communities: the meanings
of the names reveal the ideas of the people who used them. It has been
well said that “the names of every nation are an important monument of
national spirit and manners, and thus the Hebrew names bear important
testimony to the peculiar vocation of this nation. No nation of antiquity
has such a proportion of names of religious import.”(31) Amongst ourselves
indeed the religious meaning of names has almost wholly faded away;
“Christian name” is a mere phrase, and children are named after relations,
or according to prevailing fashion, or after the characters of popular
novels. But the religious motive can still be traced in some modern names;
in certain districts of Germany the name “Ursula” or “Apollonia” is a sure
indication that a girl is a Roman Catholic and has been named after a
popular saint.(32) The Bible constantly insists upon this religious
significance, which would frequently be in the mind of the devout
Israelite in giving names to his children. The Old Testament contains more
than a hundred etymologies(33) of personal names, most of which attach a
religious meaning to the words explained. The etymologies of the
patriarchal names—“Abraham,” father of a multitude of nations; “Isaac,”
laughter; “Jacob,” supplanter; “Israel,” prince with God—are specially
familiar. The Biblical interest in edifying etymologies was maintained and
developed by early commentators. Their philology was far from accurate,
and very often they were merely playing upon the forms of words. But the
allegorising tendencies of Jewish and Christian expositors found special
opportunities in proper names. On the narrow foundation of an etymology
mostly doubtful and often impossible, Philo, and Origen, and Jerome loved
to erect an elaborate structure theological or philosophical doctrine.
Philo has only one quotation from our author: “Manasseh had sons, whom his
Syrian concubine bare to him, Machir; and Machir begat Gilead.”(34) He
quotes this verse to show that recollection is associated in a subordinate
capacity with memory. The connection is not very clearly made out, but
rests in some way on the meaning of Manasseh, the root of which means to
forget. As forgetfulness with recollection restores our knowledge, so
Manasseh with his Syrian concubine begets Machir. Recollection therefore
is a concubine, an inferior and secondary quality.(35) This ingenious
trifling has a certain charm in spite of its extravagance, but in less
dexterous hands the method becomes clumsy as well as extravagant. It has,
however, the advantage of readily adapting itself to all tastes and
opinions, so that we are not surprised when an eighteenth-century author
discovers in Old Testament etymology a compendium of Trinitarian
theology.(36) _Ahiah_(37) is derived from _’ehad_, one, and _yah_,
Jehovah, and is thus an assertion of the Divine unity; _Reuel_(38) is
resolved into a plural verb with a singular Divine name for its subject:
this is an indication of trinity in unity; _Ahilud_(39) is derived from
_’ehad_, one, and _galud_, begotten, and signifies that the Son is
_only-begotten_.

Modern scholarship is more rational in its methods, but attaches no less
importance to these ancient names, and finds in them weighty evidence on
problems of criticism and theology; and before proceeding to more serious
matters, we may note a few somewhat exceptional names. As pointed in the
present Hebrew text, _Hazarmaveth_(40) and _Azmaveth_(41) have a certain
grim suggestiveness. _Hazarmaveth_, court of death, is given as the name
of a descendant of Shem. It is, however, probably the name of a place
transferred to an eponymous ancestor, and has been identified with
_Hadramawt_, a district in the south of Arabia. As, however, _Hadramawt_,
is a fertile district of Arabia Felix, the name does not seem very
appropriate. On the other hand _Azmaveth_, “strength of death,” would be
very suitable for some strong, death-dealing soldier. _Azubah_,(42)
“forsaken,” the name of Caleb’s wife, is capable of a variety of romantic
explanations. _Hazelelponi_(43) is remarkable in its mere form; and
Ewald’s interpretation, “Give shade, Thou who turnest to me Thy
countenance,” seems rather a cumbrous signification for the name of a
daughter of the house of Judah. _Jushab-hesed_,(44) “Mercy will be
renewed,” as the name of a son of Zerubbabel, doubtless expresses the
gratitude and hope of the Jews on their return from Babylon.(45)
_Jashubi-lehem_,(46) however, is curious and perplexing. The name has been
interpreted “giving bread” or “turning back to Bethlehem,” but the text is
certainly corrupt, and the passage is one of many into which either the
carelessness of scribes or the obscurity of the chronicler’s sources has
introduced hopeless confusion. But the most remarkable set of names is
found in 1 Chron. xxv. 4, where _Giddalti_ and _Romantiezer_,
_Joshbekashah_, _Mallothi_, _Hothir_, _Mahazioth_, are simply a Hebrew
sentence meaning, “I have magnified and exalted help; sitting in
distress,(47) I have spoken(48) visions in abundance.” We may at once set
aside the cynical suggestion that the author lacked names to complete a
genealogy and, to save the trouble of inventing them separately, took the
first sentence that came to hand and cut it up into suitable lengths, nor
is it likely that a father would spread the same process over several
years and adopt it for his family. This remarkable combination of names is
probably due to some misunderstanding of his sources on the part of the
chronicler. His parchment rolls must often have been torn and fragmentary,
the writing blurred and half illegible; and his attempts to piece together
obscure and ragged manuscripts naturally resulted at times in mistakes and
confusion.

These examples of interesting etymologies might easily be multiplied; they
serve, at any rate, to indicate a rich mine of suggestive teaching. It
must, however, be remembered that a name is not necessarily a personal
name because it occurs in a genealogy; cities, districts, and tribes
mingle freely with persons in these lists. In the same connection we note
that the female names are few and far between, and that of those which do
occur the “sisters” probably stand for allied and related families, and
not for individuals.

As regards Old Testament theology, we may first notice the light thrown by
personal names on the relation of the religion of Israel to that of other
Semitic peoples. Of the names in these chapters and elsewhere, a large
proportion are compounded of one or other of the Divine names. _El_ is the
first element in _Elishama_, _Eliphelet_, _Eliada_, etc.; it is the second
in _Othniel_, _Jehaleleel_, _Asareel_, etc. Similarly _Jehovah_ is
represented by the initial _Jeho-_ in _Jehoshaphat_, _Jehoiakim_,
_Jehoram_, etc., by the final _-iah_ in _Amaziah_, _Azariah_, _Hezekiah_,
etc. It has been calculated that there are a hundred and ninety names(49)
beginning or ending with the equivalent of Jehovah, including most of the
kings of Judah and many of the kings of Israel. Moreover, some names which
have not these prefixes and affixes in their extant form are contractions
of older forms which began or ended with a Divine name. Ahaz, for
instance, is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as Jahuhazi—_i.e._,
Jehoahaz—and Nathan is probably a contracted form of Nethaniah.

There are also numerous compounds of other Divine names. _Zur_, rock, is
found in _Pedahzur_,(50) _Shaddai_, A.V. Almighty, in _Ammishaddai_(51);
the two are combined in _Zurishaddai_.(52) _Melech_ is a Divine name in
_Malchi-ram_ and _Malchi-shua_. _Baal_ occurs as a Divine name in
_Eshbaal_ and _Meribbaal_. _Abi_, father, is a Divine name in _Abiram_,
_Abinadab_, etc., and probably also _Ahi_ in _Ahiram_ and _Ammi_ in
_Amminadab_.(53) Possibly, too, the apparently simple names _Melech_,
_Zur_, _Baal_, are contractions of longer forms in which these Divine
names were prefixes or affixes.

This use of Divine names is capable of very varied illustration. Modern
languages have Christian and Christopher, Emmanuel, Theodosius, Theodora,
etc.; names like Hermogenes and Heliogabalus are found in the classical
languages. But the practice is specially characteristic of Semitic
languages. Mohammedan princes are still called _Abdurrahman_, servant of
the Merciful, and _Abdallah_, servant of God; ancient Phœnician kings were
named _Ethbaal_ and _Abdalonim_, where _alonim_ is a plural Divine name,
and the _bal_ in Hannibal and Hasdrubal = _baal_. The Assyrian and
Chaldæan kings were named after the gods Sin, Nebo, Assur, Merodach,
_e.g._, _Sin-akki-irib_ (Sennacherib); _Nebuchadnezzar_; _Assur-bani-pal_;
_Merodach-baladan_.

Of these Divine names El and Baal are common to Israel and other Semitic
peoples, and it has been held that the Hebrew personal names preserve
traces of polytheism. In any case, however, the Baal-names are
comparatively few, and do not necessarily indicate that Israelites
worshipped a Baal distinct from Jehovah; they may be relics of a time when
Baal (Lord) was a title or equivalent of Jehovah, like the later Adonai.
Other possible traces of polytheism are few and doubtful. In Baanah and
Resheph we may perhaps find the obscure(54) Phœnician deities Anath and
Reshaph. On the whole, Hebrew names as compared, for instance, with
Assyrian afford little or no evidence of the prevalence of polytheism.

Another question concerns the origin and use of the name Jehovah. Our
lists conclusively prove its free use during the monarchy and its
existence under the judges. On the other hand, its apparent presence in
Jochebed, the name of the mother of Moses, seems to carry it back beyond
Moses. Possibly it was a Divine name peculiar to his family or clan. Its
occurrence in _Yahubidi_, a king of Hamath, in the time of Sargon may be
due to direct Israelite influence. Hamath had frequent relations with
Israel and Judah.

Turning to matters of practical religion, how far do these names help us
to understand the spiritual life of ancient Israel? The Israelites made
constant use of El and Jehovah in their names, and we have no parallel
practice. Were they then so much more religious than we are? Probably in a
sense they were. It is true that the etymology and even the original
significance of a name in common use are for all practical purposes
quickly and entirely forgotten. A man may go through a life-time bearing
the name of Christopher and never know its etymological meaning. At
Cambridge and Oxford sacred names like “Jesus” and “Trinity” are used
constantly and familiarly without suggesting anything beyond the colleges
so called. The edifying phrase, “God encompasseth us,” is altogether lost
in the grotesque tavern sign “The Goat and Compasses.” Nor can we suppose
that the Israelite or the Assyrian often dwelt on the religious
significance of the _Jeho-_ or _-iah_, the _Nebo_, _Sin_, or _Merodach_,
of current proper names. As we have seen, the sense of _-iah_, _-el_, or
_Jeho-_ was often so little present to men’s minds that contractions were
formed by omitting them. Possibly because these prefixes and affixes were
so common, they came to be taken for granted; it was scarcely necessary to
write them, because in any case they would be understood. Probably in
historic times _Abi-_, _Ahi-_, and _Ammi-_ were no longer recognised as
Divine names or titles; and yet the names which could still be recognised
as compounded of El and Jehovah must have had their influence on popular
feeling. They were part of the religiousness, so to speak, of the ancient
East; they symbolised the constant intertwining of religious acts, and
words, and thoughts with all the concerns of life. The quality of this
ancient religion was very inferior to that of a devout and intelligent
modern Christian; it was perhaps inferior to that of Russian peasants
belonging to the Greek Church; but ancient religion pervaded life and
society more consciously than modern Christianity does; it touched all
classes and occasions more directly, if also more mechanically. And,
again, these names were not the fossil relics of obsolete habits of
thought and feeling, like the names of our churches and colleges; they
were the memorials of comparatively recent acts of faith. The name
“Elijah” commemorated the solemn occasion on which a father professed his
own faith and consecrated a new-born child to the true God by naming his
boy “Jehovah is my God.” This name-giving was also a prayer: the child was
placed under the protection of the deity whose name it bore. The practice
might be tainted with superstition; the name would often be regarded as a
kind of amulet; and yet we may believe that it could also serve to express
a parent’s earnest and simple-minded faith. Modern Englishmen have
developed a habit of almost complete reticence and reserve on religious
matters, and this habit is illustrated by our choice of proper names.
Mary, and Thomas, and James are so familiar that their Scriptural origin
is forgotten, and therefore they are tolerated; but the use of
distinctively Scriptural Christian names is virtually regarded as bad
taste. This reticence is not merely due to increased delicacy of spiritual
feeling: it is partly the result of the growth of science and of literary
and historical criticism. We have become absorbed in the wonderful
revelations of methods and processes; we are fascinated by the ingenious
mechanism of nature and society. We have no leisure to detach our thoughts
from the machinery and carry them further on to its Maker and Director.
Indeed, because there is so much mechanism and because it is so wonderful,
we are sometimes asked to believe that the machine made itself. But this
is a mere phase in the religious growth of mankind: humanity will tire of
some of its new toys, and will become familiar with the rest; deeper needs
and instincts will reassert themselves; and men will find themselves
nearer in sentiment than they supposed to the ancient people who named
their children after their God. In this and other matters the East to-day
is the same as of old; the permanence of its custom is no inapt symbol of
the permanence of Divine truth, which revolution and conquest are
powerless to change.


    “The East bowed low before the blast
      In patient, deep disdain;
    She let the legions thunder past,
      And plunged in thought again.”


But the Christian Church is mistress of a more compelling magic than even
Eastern patience and tenacity: out of the storms that threaten her, she
draws new energies for service, and learns a more expressive language in
which to declare the glory of God.

Let us glance for a moment at the meanings of the group of Divine names
given above. We have said that, in addition to _Melech_ in _Malchi-_,
_Abi_, _Ahi_, and _Ammi_ are to be regarded as Divine names. One reason
for this is that their use as prefixes is strictly analogous to that of
_El_ and _Jeho-_. We have _Abijah_ and _Ahijah_ as well as _Elijah_,
_Abiel_ and _Ammiel_ as well as _Eliel_, _Abiram_ and _Ahiram_ as well as
_Jehoram_; _Ammishaddai_ compares with _Zurishaddai_, and _Ammizabad_ with
_Jehozabad_, nor would it be difficult to add many other examples. If this
view be correct, _Ammi_ will have nothing to do with the Hebrew word for
“people,” but will rather be connected with the corresponding Arabic word
for “uncle.”(55) As the use of such terms as “brother” and “uncle” for
Divine names is not consonant with Hebrew theology in its historic period,
the names which contain these prefixes must have come down from earlier
ages, and were used in later times without any consciousness of their
original sense. Probably they were explained by new etymologies more in
harmony with the spirit of the times; compare the etymology “father of a
multitude of nations” given to Abraham. Even _Abi-_, father, in the early
times to which its use as a prefix must be referred, cannot have had the
full spiritual meaning which now attaches to it as a Divine title. It
probably only signified the ultimate source of life. The disappearance of
these religious terms from the common vocabulary and their use in names
long after their significance had been forgotten are ordinary phenomena in
the development of language and religion. How many of the millions who use
our English names for the days of the week ever give a thought to Thor or
Freya? Such phenomena have more than an antiquarian interest. They remind
us that religious terms, and phrases, and formulæ derive their influence
and value from their adaptation to the age which accepts them; and
therefore many of them will become unintelligible or even misleading to
later generations. Language varies continuously, circumstances change,
experience widens, and every age has a right to demand that Divine truth
shall be presented in the words and metaphors that give it the clearest
and most forcible expression. Many of the simple truths that are most
essential to salvation admit of being stated once for all; but dogmatic
theology fossilises fast, and the bread of one generation may become a
stone to the next.

The history of these names illustrates yet another phenomenon. In some
narrow and imperfect sense the early Semitic peoples seem to have called
God “Father” and “Brother.” Because the terms were limited to a narrow
sense, the Israelites grew to a level of religious truth at which they
could no longer use them; but as they made yet further progress they came
to know more of what was meant by fatherhood and brotherhood, and gained
also a deeper knowledge of God. At length the Church resumed these ancient
Semitic terms; and Christians call God “Abba, Father,” and speak of the
Eternal Son as their elder Brother. And thus sometimes, but not always, an
antique phrase may for a time seem unsuitable and misleading, and then
again may prove to be the best expression for the newest and fullest
truth. Our criticism of a religious formula may simply reveal our failure
to grasp the wealth of meaning which its words and symbols can contain.

Turning from these obsolete names to those in common use—_El_; _Jehovah_;
_Shaddai_; _Zur_; _Melech_—probably the prevailing idea popularly
associated with them all was that of strength: _El_, strength in the
abstract; _Jehovah_, strength shown in permanence and independence;
_Shaddai_, the strength that causes terror, the Almighty from whom cometh
destruction(56); _Zur_, rock, the material symbol of strength, _Melech_,
king, the possessor of authority. In early times the first and most
essential attribute of Deity is power, but with this idea of strength a
certain attribute of beneficence is soon associated. The strong God is the
Ally of His people; His permanence is the guarantee of their national
existence; He destroys their enemies. The rock is a place of refuge; and,
again, Jehovah’s people may rejoice in the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land. The King leads them to battle, and gives them their enemies
for a spoil.

We must not, however, suppose that pious Israelites would consciously and
systematically discriminate between these names, any more than ordinary
Christians do between God, Lord, Father, Christ, Saviour, Jesus. Their
usage would be governed by changing currents of sentiment very difficult
to understand and explain after the lapse of thousands of years. In the
year A.D. 3000, for instance, it will be difficult for the historian of
dogmatics to explain accurately why some nineteenth-century Christians
preferred to speak of “dear Jesus” and others of “the Christ.”

But the simple Divine names reveal comparatively little; much more may be
learnt from the numerous compounds they help to form. Some of the more
curious have already been noticed, but the real significance of this
nomenclature is to be looked for in the more ordinary and natural names.
Here, as before, we can only select from the long and varied list. Let us
take some of the favourite names and some of the roots most often used,
almost always, be it remembered, in combination with Divine names. The
different varieties of these sacred names rendered it possible to
construct various personal names embodying the same idea. Also the same
Divine name might be used either as prefix or affix. For instance, the
idea that “God knows” is equally well expressed in the names _Eliada_
(El-yada’), _Jediael_ (Yada’-el), _Jehoiada_ (Jeho-yada’), and _Jedaiah_
(Yada’-yah). “God remembers” is expressed alike by _Zachariah_ and
_Jozachar_; “God hears” by _Elishama_ (El-shama’), _Samuel_ (if for
Shama’-el), _Ishmael_ (also from Shama’-el), _Shemaiah_, and _Ishmaiah_
(_both from_ Shama’ _and_ Yah); “God gives” by _Elnathan_, _Nethaneel_,
_Jonathan_, and _Nethaniah_; “God helps” by _Eliezer_, _Azareel_,
_Joezer_, and _Azariah_; “God is gracious” by _Elhanan_, _Hananeel_,
_Johanan_, _Hananiah_, _Baal-hanan_, and, for a Carthaginian, _Hannibal_,
giving us a curious connection between the Apostle of love, John
(Johanan), and the deadly enemy of Rome.

The way in which the changes are rung upon these ideas shows how the
ancient Israelites loved to dwell upon them. Nestle reckons that in the
Old Testament sixty-one persons have names formed from the root _nathan_,
to give; fifty-seven from _shama_, to hear; fifty-six from _’azar_, to
help; forty-five from _hanan_, to be gracious; forty-four from _zakhar_,
to remember. Many persons, too, bear names from the root _yada’_, to know.
The favourite name is _Zechariah_, which is borne by twenty-five different
persons.

Hence, according to the testimony of names, the Israelites’ favourite
ideas about God were that He heard, and knew, and remembered; that He was
gracious, and helped men, and gave them gifts: but they loved best to
think of Him as God the Giver. Their nomenclature recognises many other
attributes, but these take the first place. The value of this testimony is
enhanced by its utter unconsciousness and naturalness; it brings us nearer
to the average man in his religious moments than any psalm or prophetic
utterance. Men’s chief interest in God was as the Giver. The idea has
proved very permanent; St. James amplifies it: God is the Giver of every
good and perfect gift. It lies latent in names: Theodosius, Theodore,
Theodora, and Dorothea. The other favourite ideas are all related to this.
God hears men’s prayers, and knows their needs, and remembers them; He is
gracious, and helps them by His gifts. Could anything be more pathetic
than this artless self-revelation? Men’s minds have little leisure for sin
and salvation; they are kept down by the constant necessity of preserving
and providing for a bare existence. Their cry to God is like the prayer of
Jacob, “If Thou wilt give me bread to eat and raiment to put on!” The very
confidence and gratitude that the names express imply periods of doubt and
fear, when they said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” times
when it seemed to them impossible that God could have heard their prayer
or that He knew their misery, else why was there no deliverance? Had God
forgotten to be gracious? Did He indeed remember? The names come to us as
answers of faith to these suggestions of despair.

Possibly these old-world saints were not more preoccupied with their
material needs than most modern Christians. Perhaps it is necessary to
believe in a God who rules on earth before we can understand the Father
who is in heaven. Does a man really trust in God for eternal life if he
cannot trust Him for daily bread? But in any case these names provide us
with very comprehensive formulæ, which we are at liberty to apply as
freely as we please: the God who knows, and hears, and remembers, who is
gracious, and helps men, and gives them gifts. To begin with, note how in
a great array of Old Testament names God is the Subject, Actor, and
Worker; the supreme facts of life are God and God’s doings, not man and
man’s doings, what God is to man, not what man is to God. This is a
foreshadowing of the Christian doctrines of grace and of the Divine
sovereignty. And again we are left to fill in the objects of the sentences
for ourselves: God hears, and remembers, and gives—what? All that we have
to say to Him and all that we are capable of receiving from Him.




Chapter II. Heredity. 1 Chron. i.-ix.


It has been said that Religion is the great discoverer of truth, while
Science follows her slowly and after a long interval. Heredity, so much
discussed just now, is sometimes treated as if its principles were a great
discovery of the present century. Popular science is apt to ignore history
and to mistake a fresh nomenclature for an entirely new system of truth,
and yet the immense and far-reaching importance of heredity has been one
of the commonplaces of thought ever since history began. Science has been
anticipated, not merely by religious feeling, but by a universal instinct.
In the old world political and social systems have been based upon the
recognition of the principle of heredity, and religion has sanctioned such
recognition. Caste in India is a religious even more than a social
institution; and we use the term figuratively in reference to ancient and
modern life, even when the institution has not formally existed. Without
the aid of definite civil or religious law the force of sentiment and
circumstances suffices to establish an informal system of caste. Thus the
feudal aristocracy and guilds of the Middle Ages were not without their
rough counterparts in the Old Testament. Moreover, the local divisions of
the Hebrew kingdoms corresponded in theory, at any rate, to blood
relationships; and the tribe, the clan, and the family had even more
fixity and importance than now belong to the parish or the municipality. A
man’s family history or genealogy was the ruling factor in determining his
home, his occupation, and his social position. In the chronicler’s time
this was especially the case with the official ministers of religion, the
Temple establishment to which he himself belonged. The priests, the
Levites, the singers, and doorkeepers formed castes in the strict sense of
the word. A man’s birth definitely assigned him to one of these classes,
to which none but the members of certain families could belong.

But the genealogies had a deeper significance. Israel was Jehovah’s chosen
people, His son, to whom special privileges were guaranteed by solemn
covenant. A man’s claim to share in this covenant depended on his genuine
Israelite descent, and the proof of such descent was an authentic
genealogy. In these chapters the chronicler has taken infinite pains to
collect pedigrees from all available sources and to construct a complete
set of genealogies exhibiting the lines of descent of the families of
Israel. His interest in this research was not merely antiquarian: he was
investigating matters of the greatest social and religious importance to
all the members of the Jewish community, and especially to his colleagues
and friends in the Temple service. These chapters, which seem to us so dry
and useless, were probably regarded by the chronicler’s contemporaries as
the most important part of his work. The preservation or discovery of a
genealogy was almost a matter of life and death. Witness the episode in
Ezra and Nehemiah(57): “And of the priests: the children of Hobaiah, the
children of Hakkoz, the children of Barzillai, which took a wife of the
daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name.
These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy,
but it was not found; therefore they were deemed polluted and put from the
priesthood. And the governor said unto them that they should not eat of
the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.”
Cases like these would stimulate our author’s enthusiasm. As he turned
over dusty receptacles, and unrolled frayed parchments, and painfully
deciphered crabbed and faded script, he would be excited by the hope of
discovering some mislaid genealogy that would restore outcasts to their
full status and privileges as Israelites and priests. Doubtless he had
already acquired in some measure the subtle exegesis and minute casuistry
that were the glory of later Rabbinism. Ingenious interpretation of
obscure writing or the happy emendation of half-obliterated words might
lend opportune aid in the recovery of a genealogy. On the other hand,
there were vested interests ready to protest against the too easy
acceptance of new claims. The priestly families of undoubted descent from
Aaron would not thank a chronicler for reviving lapsed rights to a share
in the offices and revenues of the Temple. This part of our author’s task
was as delicate as it was important.

We will now briefly consider the genealogies in these chapters in the
order in which they are given. Chap. i. contains genealogies of the
patriarchal period selected from Genesis. The existing races of the world
are all traced back through Shem, Ham, and Japheth to Noah, and through
him to Adam. The chronicler thus accepts and repeats the doctrine of
Genesis that God made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the
face of the earth.(58) All mankind, “Greek and Jew, circumcision and
uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman,”(59) were alike
descended from Noah, who was saved from the Flood by the special care of
God; from Enoch, who walked with God; from Adam, who was created by God in
His own image and likeness. The Israelites did not claim, like certain
Greek clans, to be the descendants of a special god of their own, or, like
the Athenians, to have sprung miraculously from sacred soil. Their
genealogies testified that not merely Israelite nature, but human nature,
is moulded on a Divine pattern. These apparently barren lists of names
enshrine the great principles of the universal brotherhood of men and the
universal Fatherhood of God. The chronicler wrote when the broad
universalism of the prophets was being replaced by the hard exclusiveness
of Judaism; and yet, perhaps unconsciously, he reproduces the genealogies
which were to be one weapon of St. Paul in his struggle with that
exclusiveness. The opening chapters of Genesis and Chronicles are among
the foundations of the catholicity of the Church of Christ.

For the antediluvian period only the Sethite genealogy is given. The
chronicler’s object was simply to give the origin of existing races; and
the descendants of Cain were omitted, as entirely destroyed by the Flood.
Following the example of Genesis, the chronicler gives the genealogies of
other races at the points at which they diverged from the ancestral line
of Israel, and then continues the family history of the chosen race. In
this way the descendants of Japheth and Ham, the non-Abrahamic Semites,
the Ishmaelites, the sons of Keturah, and the Edomites are successively
mentioned.

The relations of Israel with Edom were always close and mostly hostile.
The Edomites had taken advantage of the overthrow of the southern kingdom
to appropriate the south of Judah, and still continued to occupy it. The
keen interest felt by the chronicler in Edom is shown by the large space
devoted to the Edomites. The close contiguity of the Jews and Idumæans
tended to promote mutual intercourse between them, and even threatened an
eventual fusion of the two peoples. As a matter of fact, the Idumæan
Herods became rulers of Judæa. To guard against such dangers to the
separateness of the Jewish people, the chronicler emphasises the
historical distinction of race between them and the Edomites.

From the beginning of the second chapter onwards the genealogies are
wholly occupied with Israelites. The author’s special interest in Judah is
at once manifested. After giving the list of the twelve Patriarchs he
devotes two and a half chapters to the families of Judah. Here again the
materials have been mostly obtained from the earlier historical books.
They are, however, combined with more recent traditions, so that in this
chapter matter from different sources is pieced together in a very
confusing fashion. One source of this confusion was the principle that the
Jewish community could only consist of families of genuine Israelite
descent. Now a large number of the returned exiles traced their descent to
two brothers, Caleb and Jerahmeel; but in the older narratives Caleb and
Jerahmeel are not Israelites. Caleb is a Kenizzite,(60) and his
descendants and those of Jerahmeel appear in close connection with the
Kenites.(61) Even in this chapter certain of the Calebites are called
Kenites and connected in some strange way with the Rechabites.(62) Though
at the close of the monarchy the Calebites and Jerahmeelites had become an
integral part of the tribe of Judah, their separate origin had not been
forgotten, and Caleb and Jerahmeel had not been included in the Israelite
genealogies. But after the Exile men came to feel more and more strongly
that a common faith implied unity of race. Moreover, the practical unity
of the Jews with these Kenizzites overbore the dim and fading memory of
ancient tribal distinctions. Jews and Kenizzites had shared the Captivity,
the Exile, and the Return; they worked, and fought, and worshipped side by
side; and they were to all intents and purposes one nation, alike the
people of Jehovah. This obvious and important practical truth was
expressed as such truths were then wont to be expressed. The children of
Caleb and Jerahmeel were finally and formally adopted into the chosen
race. Caleb and Jerahmeel are no longer the sons of Jephunneh the
Kenizzite; they are the sons of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of
Judah.(63) A new genealogy was formed as a recognition rather than an
explanation of accomplished facts.

Of the section containing the genealogies of Judah, the lion’s share is
naturally given to the house of David, to which a part of the second
chapter and the whole of the third are devoted.

Next follow genealogies of the remaining tribes, those of Levi and
Benjamin being by far the most complete. Chap. vi., which is devoted to
Levi, affords evidence of the use by the chronicler of independent and
sometimes inconsistent sources, and also illustrates his special interest
in the priesthood and the Temple choir. A list of high-priests from Aaron
to Ahimaaz is given twice over (vv. 4-8 and 49-53), but only one line of
high-priests is recognised, the house of Zadok, whom Josiah’s reforms had
made the one priestly family in Israel. Their ancient rivals the
high-priests of the house of Eli are as entirely ignored as the
antediluvian Cainites. The existing high-priestly dynasty had been so long
established that these other priests of Saul and David seemed no longer to
have any significance for the religion of Israel.

The pedigree of the three Levitical families of Gershom, Kohath, and
Merari is also given twice over: in vv. 16-30 and 31-49. The former
pedigree begins with the sons of Levi, and proceeds to their descendants;
the latter begins with the founders of the guilds of singers, Heman,
Asaph, and Ethan, and traces back their genealogies to Kohath, Gershom,
and Merari respectively. But the pedigrees do not agree; compare, for
instance, the lists of the Kohathites:—

22-24.            36-38.
Kohath            Kohath
_Amminadab_       _Izhar_
Korah             Korah
_Assir_
_Elkanah_
Ebiasaph          Ebiasaph
Assir             Assir
Tahath            Tahath
_Uriel_           _Zephaniah_
_Uzziah_          _Azariah_
_Shaul_           etc.

We have here one of many illustrations of the fact that the chronicler
used materials of very different value. To attempt to prove the absolute
consistency of all his genealogies would be mere waste of time. It is by
no means certain that he himself supposed them to be consistent. The frank
juxtaposition of varying lists of ancestors rather suggests that he was
prompted by a scholarly desire to preserve for his readers all available
evidence of every kind.

In reading the genealogies of the tribe of Benjamin, it is specially
interesting to find that in the Jewish community of the Restoration there
were families tracing their descent through Mephibosheth and Jonathan to
Saul.(64) Apparently the chronicler and his contemporaries shared this
special interest in the fortunes of a fallen dynasty, for the genealogy is
given twice over. These circumstances are the more striking because in the
actual history of Chronicles Saul is all but ignored.

The rest of the ninth chapter deals with the inhabitants of Jerusalem and
the ministry of the Temple after the return from the Captivity, and is
partly identical with sections of Ezra and Nehemiah. It closes the family
history, as it were, of Israel, and its position indicates the standpoint
and ruling interests of the chronicler.

Thus the nine opening chapters of genealogies and kindred matter strike
the key-notes of the whole book. Some are personal and professional; some
are religious. On the one hand, we have the origin of existing families
and institutions; on the other hand, we have the election of the tribe of
Judah and the house of David, of the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron.

Let us consider first the hereditary character of the Jewish religion and
priesthood. Here, as elsewhere, the formal doctrine only recognised and
accepted actual facts. The conditions which received the sanction of
religion were first imposed by the force of circumstances. In primitive
times, if there was to be any religion at all, it had to be national; if
God was to be worshipped at all, His worship was necessarily national, and
He became in some measure a national God. Sympathies are limited by
knowledge and by common interest. The ordinary Israelite knew very little
of any other people than his own. There was little international comity in
primitive times, and nations were slow to recognise that they had common
interests. It was difficult for an Israelite to believe that his beloved
Jehovah, in whom he had been taught to trust, was also the God of the
Arabs and Syrians, who periodically raided his crops, and cattle, and
slaves, and sometimes carried off his children, or of the Chaldæans, who
made deliberate and complete arrangements for plundering the whole
country, rasing its cities to the ground, and carrying away the population
into distant exile. By a supreme act of faith, the prophets claimed the
enemies and oppressors of Israel as instruments of the will of Jehovah,
and the chronicler’s genealogies show that he shared this faith; but it
was still inevitable that the Jews should look out upon the world at large
from the standpoint of their own national interests and experience.
Jehovah was God of heaven and earth; but Israelites knew Him through the
deliverance He had wrought for Israel, the punishments He had inflicted on
her sins, and the messages He had entrusted to her prophets. As far as
their knowledge and practical experience went, they knew Him as the God of
Israel. The course of events since the fall of Samaria narrowed still
further the local associations of Hebrew worship.


    “God was wroth,
    And greatly abhorred Israel,
    So that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh,
    The tent which He placed among men;

    He refused the tent of Joseph,
    And chose not the tribe of Ephraim,
    But chose the tribe of Judah,
    The Mount Zion which He loved:
    And He built His sanctuary like the heights,
    Like the earth, which He hath established for ever.”(65)


We are doubtless right in criticising those Jews whose limitations led
them to regard Jehovah as a kind of personal possession, the inheritance
of their own nation, and not of other peoples. But even here we can only
blame their negations. Jehovah _was_ their inheritance and personal
possession; but then He was also the inheritance of other nations. This
Jewish heresy is by no means extinct: white men do not always believe that
their God is equally the God of the negro; Englishmen are inclined to
think that God is the God of England in a more especial way than He is the
God of France. When we discourse concerning God in history, we mostly mean
our own history. We can see the hand of Providence in the wreck of the
Armada and the overthrow of Napoleon; but we are not so ready to recognise
in the same Napoleon the Divine instrument that created a new Europe by
relieving her peoples from cruel and degrading tyranny. We scarcely
realise that God cares as much for the Continent as He does for our
island.

We have great and perhaps sufficient excuses, but we must let the Jews
have the benefit of them. God is as much the God of one nation as of
another; but He fulfils Himself to different nations in different ways, by
a various providential discipline. Each people is bound to believe that
God has specially adapted His dealings to its needs, nor can we be
surprised if men forget or fail to observe that God has done no less for
their neighbours. Each nation rightly regards its religious ideas, and
life, and literature as a precious inheritance peculiarly its own; and it
should not be too severely blamed for being ignorant that other nations
have their inheritance also. Such considerations largely justify the
interest in heredity shown by the chronicler’s genealogies. On the
positive, practical side, religion _is_ largely a matter of heredity, and
ought to be. The Christian sacrament of baptism is a continual profession
of this truth: our children are “clean”; they are within the covenant of
grace; we claim for them the privileges of the Church to which we belong.
That was also part of the meaning of the genealogies.

In the broad field of social and religious life the problems of heredity
are in some ways less complicated than in the more exact discussions of
physical science. Practical effects can be considered without attempting
an accurate analysis of causes. Family history not only determines
physical constitution, mental gifts, and moral character, but also fixes
for the most part country, home, education, circumstances, and social
position. All these were a man’s inheritance more peculiarly in Israel
than with us; and in many cases in Israel a man was often trained to
inherit a family profession. Apart from the ministry of the Temple, we
read of a family of craftsmen, of other families that were potters, of
others who dwelt with the king for his work, and of the families of the
house of them that wrought fine linen.(66) Religion is largely involved in
the manifold inheritance which a man receives from his fathers. His birth
determines his religious education, the examples of religious life set
before him, the forms of worship in which as a child he takes part. Most
men live and die in the religion of their childhood; they worship the God
of their fathers; Romanist remains Romanist: Protestant remains
Protestant. They may fail to grasp any living faith, or may lose all
interest in religion; but such religion as most men have is part of their
inheritance. In the Israel of the chronicler faith and devotion to God
were almost always and entirely inherited. They were part of the great
debt which a man owed to his fathers.

The recognition of these facts should tend to foster our humility and
reverence, to encourage patriotism and philanthropy. We are the creatures
and debtors of the past, though we are slow to own our obligations. We
have nothing that we have not received; but we are apt to consider
ourselves self-made men, the architects and builders of our own fortunes,
who have the right to be self-satisfied, self-assertive, and selfish. The
heir of all the ages, in the full vigour of youth, takes his place in the
foremost ranks of time, and marches on in the happy consciousness of
profound and multifarious wisdom, immense resources, and magnificent
opportunity. He forgets or even despises the generations of labour and
anguish that have built up for him his great inheritance. The genealogies
are a silent protest against such insolent ingratitude. They remind us
that in bygone days a man derived his gifts and received his opportunities
from his ancestors; they show us men as the links in a chain, tenants for
life, as it were, of our estate, called upon to pay back with interest to
the future the debt which they have incurred to the past. We see that the
chain is a long one, with many links; and the slight estimate we are
inclined to put upon the work of individuals in each generation recoils
upon our own pride. We also are but individuals of a generation that is
only one of the thousands needed to work out the Divine purpose for
mankind. We are taught the humility that springs from a sense of
obligation and responsibility.

We learn reverence for the workers and achievements of the past, and most
of all for God. We are reminded of the scale of the Divine working:—


    “A thousand years in Thy sight
    Are but as yesterday when it is past
    And as a watch in the night.”


A genealogy is a brief and pointed reminder that God has been working
through all the countless generations behind us. The bare series of names
is an expressive diagram of His mighty process. Each name in the earlier
lists stands for a generation or even for several generations. The
genealogies go back into dim, prehistoric periods; they suggest a past too
remote for our imagining. And yet they take us back to Adam, to the very
beginning of human life. From that beginning, however many thousands or
tens of thousands of years ago, the life of man has been sacred, the
object of the Divine care and love, the instrument of the Divine purpose.

Later on we see the pedigree of our race dividing into countless branches,
all of which are represented in this sacred diagram of humanity. The
Divine working not only extends over all time, but also embraces all the
complicated circumstances and relationships of the families of mankind.
These genealogies suggest a lesson probably not intended by the
chronicler. We recognise the unique character of the history of Israel,
but in some measure we discern in this one full and detailed narrative of
the chosen people a type of the history of every race. Others had not the
election of Israel, but each had its own vocation. God’s power, and
wisdom, and love are manifested in the history of one chosen people on a
scale commensurate with our limited faculties, so that we may gain some
faint idea of the marvellous providence in _all_ history of the Father
from whom _every_ family in heaven and on earth is named.

Another principle closely allied to heredity and also discussed in modern
times is the solidarity of the race. Humanity is supposed to possess
something akin to a common consciousness, personality, or individuality.
Such a quality evidently becomes more intense as we narrow its scope from
the race to the nation, the clan, and the family; it has its roots in
family relationships. Tribal, national, humanitarian feelings indicate
that the larger societies have taken upon themselves something of the
character of the family. Thus the common feelings and mutual sympathies of
mankind are due ultimately to blood relationship. The genealogies that set
forth family histories are the symbols of this brotherhood or solidarity
of our race. The chart of converging lines of ancestors in Israel carried
men’s minds back from the separate families to their common ancestor;
again, the ancestry of ancestors led back to a still earlier common
origin, and the process continued till all the lines met in Noah. Each
stage of the process enlarged the range of every man’s kinship, and
broadened the natural area of mutual help and affection. It is true that
the Jews failed to learn this larger lesson from their genealogies, but
within their own community they felt intensely the bond of kinship and
brotherhood. Modern patriotism reproduces the strong Jewish national
feeling, and our humanitarianism is beginning to extend it to the whole
world. By this time the facts of heredity have been more carefully studied
and are better understood. If we drew up typical genealogies now, they
would more fully and accurately represent the mutual relationships of our
people. As far as they go, the chronicler’s genealogies form a clear and
instructive diagram of the mutual dependence of man on man and family on
family. The value of the diagram does not require the accuracy of the
actual names any more than the validity of Euclid requires the actual
existence of triangles called A B C, D E F. These genealogies are in any
case a true symbol of the facts of family relations; but they are drawn,
so to speak, in one dimension only, backwards and forwards in time. Yet
the real family life exists in three dimensions. There are numerous
cross-relations, cousinship of all degrees, as well as sonship and
brotherhood. A man has not merely his male ancestors in the directly
ascending line—father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.—but he has
female ancestors as well. By going back three or four generations a man is
connected with an immense number of cousins; and if the complete network
of ten or fifteen generations could be worked out, it would probably show
some blood bond throughout a whole nation. Thus the ancestral roots of a
man’s life and character have wide ramifications in the former generations
of his people. The further we go back the larger is the element of
ancestry common to the different individuals of the same community. The
chronicler’s genealogies only show us individuals as links in a set of
chains. The more complete genealogical scheme would be better illustrated
by the ganglia of the nervous system, each of which is connected by
numerous nerve fibres with the other ganglia. The Church has been compared
to the body, “which is one, and hath many members, and all the members of
the body, being many, are one body.” Humanity, by its natural kinship, is
also such a body; the nation is still more truly “one body.” Patriotism
and humanity are instincts as natural and as binding as those of the
family; and the genealogies express or symbolise the wider family ties,
that they may commend the virtues and enforce the duties that arise out of
these ties.

Before closing this chapter something may be said on one or two special
points. Women are virtually ignored in these genealogies, a fact that
rather indicates a failure to recognise their influence than the absence
of such influence. Here and there a woman is mentioned for some special
reason. For instance, the names of Zeruiah and Abigail are inserted in
order to show that Joab, Abishai, and Asahel, together with Amasa, were
all cousins of David. The same keen interest in David leads the chronicler
to record the names of his wives. It is noteworthy that of the four women
who are mentioned in St. Matthew’s genealogy of our Lord only two—Tamar
and Bath-shua (_i.e._, Bath-sheba)—are mentioned here. Probably St.
Matthew was careful to complete the list because Rahab and Ruth, like
Tamar and possibly Bath-sheba, were foreigners, and their names in the
genealogy indicated a connection between Christ and the Gentiles, and
served to emphasise His mission to be the Saviour of the world.

Again, much caution is necessary in applying any principle of heredity. A
genealogy, as we have seen, suggests our dependence in many ways upon our
ancestry. But a man’s relations to his kindred are many and complicated; a
quality, for instance, may be latent for one or more generations and then
reappear, so that to all appearance a man inherits from his grandfather or
from a more remote ancestor rather than from his father or mother.
Conversely the presence of certain traits of character in a child does not
show that any corresponding tendency has necessarily been active in the
life of either parent. Neither must the influence of circumstances be
confounded with that of heredity. Moreover, very large allowance must be
made for our ignorance of the laws that govern the human will, an
ignorance that will often baffle our attempts to find in heredity any
simple explanation of men’s characters and actions. Thomas Fuller has a
quaint “Scripture observation” that gives an important practical
application of these principles:—

“Lord, I find the genealogy of my Saviour strangely chequered with four
remarkable changes in four immediate generations:

“1. ‘Rehoboam begat Abiam’; that is, a bad father begat a bad son.

“2. ‘Abiam begat Asa’; that is, a bad father a good son.

“3. ‘Asa begat Jehosaphat’; that is, a good father a good son.

“4. ‘Jehosaphat begat Joram’; that is, a good father a bad son.

“I see, Lord, from hence that my father’s piety cannot be entailed; that
is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always
hereditary; that is good news for my son.”




Chapter III. Statistics.


Statistics play an important part in Chronicles and in the Old Testament
generally. To begin with, there are the genealogies and other lists of
names, such as the lists of David’s counsellors and the roll of honour of
his mighty men. The chronicler specially delights in lists of names, and
most of all in lists of Levitical choristers. He gives us lists of the
orchestras and choirs who performed when the Ark was brought to Zion(67)
and at Hezekiah’s passover,(68) also a list of Levites whom Jehoshaphat
sent out to teach in Judah.(69) No doubt family pride was gratified when
the chronicler’s contemporaries and friends read the names of their
ancestors in connection with great events in the history of their
religion. Possibly they supplied him with the information from which these
lists were compiled. An incidental result of the celibacy of the Romanist
clergy has been to render ancient ecclesiastical genealogies impossible;
modern clergymen cannot trace their descent to the monks who landed with
Augustine. Our genealogies might enable a historian to construct lists of
the combatants at Agincourt and Hastings; but the Crusades are the only
wars of the Church militant for which modern pedigrees could furnish a
muster-roll.

We find also in the Old Testament the specifications and
subscription-lists for the Tabernacle and for Solomon’s temple.(70) These
statistics, however, are not furnished for the second Temple, probably for
the same reason that in modern subscription-lists the donors of shillings
and half-crowns are to be indicated by initials, or described as “friends”
and “sympathisers,” or massed together under the heading “smaller sums.”

The Old Testament is also rich in census returns and statements as to the
numbers of armies and of the divisions of which they were composed. There
are the returns of the census taken twice in the wilderness and accounts
of the numbers of the different families who came from Babylon with
Zerubbabel and later on with Ezra; there is a census of the Levites in
David’s time according to their several families(71); there are the
numbers of the tribal contingents that came to Hebron to make David
king,(72) and much similar information.

Statistics therefore occupy a conspicuous position in the inspired record
of Divine revelation, and yet we often hesitate to connect such terms as
“inspiration” and “revelation” with numbers, and names, and details of
civil and ecclesiastical organisation. We are afraid lest any stress laid
on purely accidental details should distract men’s attention from the
eternal essence of the Gospel, lest any suggestion that the certainty of
Christian truth is dependent on the accuracy of these statistics should
become a stumbling-block and destroy the faith of some. Concerning such
matters there have been many foolish questions of genealogies, profane and
vain babblings, which have increased unto more ungodliness. Quite apart
from these, even in the Old Testament a sanctity attaches to the number
seven, but there is no warrant for any considerable expenditure of time
and thought upon mystical arithmetic. A symbolism runs through the details
of the building, furniture, and ritual alike of the Tabernacle and the
Temple, and this symbolism possesses a legitimate religious significance;
but its exposition is not specially suggested by the book of Chronicles.
The exposition of such symbolism is not always sufficiently governed by a
sense of proportion. Ingenuity in supplying subtle interpretations of
minute details often conceals the great truths which the symbols are
really intended to enforce. Moreover, the sacred writers did not give
statistics merely to furnish materials for Cabbala and Gematria or even to
serve as theological types and symbols. Sometimes their purpose was more
simple and practical. If we knew all the history of the Tabernacle and
Temple subscription-lists, we should doubtless find that they had been
used to stimulate generous gifts towards the erection of the second
Temple. Preachers for building funds can find abundance of suitable texts
in Exodus, Kings, and Chronicles.

But Biblical statistics are also examples in accuracy and thoroughness of
information, and recognitions of the more obscure and prosaic
manifestations of the higher life. Indeed, in these and other ways the
Bible gives an anticipatory sanction to the exact sciences.

The mention of accuracy in connection with Chronicles may be received by
some readers with a contemptuous smile. But we are indebted to the
chronicler for exact and full information about the Jews who returned from
Babylon; and in spite of the extremely severe judgment passed upon
Chronicles by many critics, we may still venture to believe that the
chronicler’s statistics are as accurate as his knowledge and critical
training rendered possible. He may sometimes give figures obtained by
calculation from uncertain data, but such a practice is quite consistent
with honesty and a desire to supply the best available information. Modern
scholars are quite ready to present us with figures as to the membership
of the Christian Church under Antoninus Pius or Constantine; and some of
these figures are not much more probable than the most doubtful in
Chronicles. All that is necessary to make the chronicler’s statistics an
example to us is that they should be the monument of a conscientious
attempt to tell the truth, and this they undoubtedly are.

This Biblical example is the more useful because statistics are often evil
spoken of, and they have no outward attractiveness to shield them from
popular prejudice. We are told that “nothing is so false as statistics,”
and that “figures will prove anything”; and the polemic is sustained by
works like _Hard Times_ and the awful example of Mr. Gradgrind. Properly
understood, these proverbs illustrate the very general impatience of any
demand for exact thought and expression. If “figures” will prove anything,
so will texts.

Though this popular prejudice cannot be altogether ignored, yet it need
not be taken too seriously. The opposite principle, when stated, will at
once be seen to be a truism. For it amounts to this: exact and
comprehensive knowledge is the basis of a right understanding of history,
and is a necessary condition of right action. This principle is often
neglected because it is obvious. Yet, to illustrate it from our author, a
knowledge of the size and plan of the Temple greatly adds to the vividness
of our pictures of Hebrew religion. We apprehend later Jewish life much
more clearly with the aid of the statistics as to the numbers, families,
and settlements of the returning exiles; and similarly the account-books
of the bailiff of an English estate in the fourteenth century are worth
several hundred pages of contemporary theology. These considerations may
encourage those who perform the thankless task of compiling the
statistics, subscription-lists, and balance-sheets of missionary and
philanthropic societies. The zealous and intelligent historian of
Christian life and service will need these dry records to enable him to
understand his subject, and the highest literary gifts may be employed in
the eloquent exposition of these apparently uninteresting facts and
figures. Moreover, upon the accuracy of these records depends the
possibility of determining a true course for the future. Neither societies
nor individuals, for instance, can afford to live beyond their income
without knowing it.

Statistics, too, are the only form in which many acts of service can be
recognised and recorded. Literature can only deal with typical instances,
and naturally it selects the more dramatic. The missionary report can only
tell the story of a few striking conversions; it may give the history of
the exceptional self-denial involved in one or two of its subscriptions;
for the rest we must be content with tables and subscription-lists. But
these dry statistics represent an infinitude of patience and self-denial,
of work and prayer, of Divine grace and blessing. The city missionary may
narrate his experiences with a few inquirers and penitents, but the great
bulk of his work can only be recorded in the statement of visits paid and
services conducted. We are tempted sometimes to disparage these
statements, to ask how many of the visits and services had any result; we
are impatient sometimes because Christian work is estimated by any such
numerical line and measure. No doubt the method has many defects, and must
not be used too mechanically; but we cannot give it up without ignoring
altogether much earnest and successful labour.

Our chronicler’s interest in statistics lays healthy emphasis on the
practical character of religion. There is a danger of identifying
spiritual force with literary and rhetorical gifts; to recognise the
religious value of statistics is the most forcible protest against such
identification. The permanent contribution of any age to religious thought
will naturally take a literary form, and the higher the literary qualities
of religious writing, the more likely it is to survive. Shakespeare,
Milton, and Bunyan have probably exercised a more powerful direct
religious influence on subsequent generations than all the theologians of
the seventeenth century. But the supreme service of the Church in any age
is its influence on its own generation, by which it moulds the generation
immediately following. That influence can only be estimated by a careful
study of all possible information, and especially of statistics. We cannot
assign mathematical values to spiritual effects and tabulate them like
Board of Trade returns; but real spiritual movements will before long have
practical issues, that can be heard, and seen, and felt, and even admit of
being put into tables. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it
goeth”(73); and yet the boughs and the corn bend before the wind, and the
ships are carried across the sea to their desired haven. Tables may be
drawn up of the tonnage and the rate of sailing. So is every one that is
born of the Spirit. You cannot tell when and how God breathes upon the
soul; but if the Divine Spirit be indeed at work in any society, there
will be fewer crimes and quarrels, less scandal, and more deeds of
charity. We may justly suspect a revival which has no effect upon the
statistical records of national life. Subscription-lists are very
imperfect tests of enthusiasm, but any widespread Christian fervour would
be worth little if it did not swell subscription-lists.

Chronicles is not the most important witness to a sympathetic relationship
between the Bible and exact science. The first chapter of Genesis is the
classic example of the appropriation by an inspired writer of the
scientific spirit and method. Some chapters in Job show a distinctly
scientific interest in natural phenomena. Moreover, the direct concern of
Chronicles is in the religious aspects of social science. And yet there is
a patient accumulation of data with no obvious dramatic value: names,
dates, numbers, specifications, and ritual which do not improve the
literary character of the narrative. This conscientious recording of dry
facts, this noting down of anything and everything that connects with the
subject, is closely akin to the initial processes of the inductive
sciences. True, the chronicler’s interests are in some directions narrowed
by personal and professional feeling; but within these limits he is
anxious to make a complete record, which, as we have seen, sometimes leads
to repetition. Now inductive science is based on unlimited statistics. The
astronomer and biologist share the chronicler’s appetite for this kind of
mental food. The lists in Chronicles are few and meagre compared to the
records of Greenwich Observatory or the volumes which contain the data of
biology or sociology; but the chronicler becomes in a certain sense the
forerunner of Darwin, Spencer, and Galton. The differences are indeed
immense. The interval of two thousand odd years between the ancient
annalist and the modern scientists has not been thrown away. In estimating
the value of evidence and interpreting its significance, the chronicler
was a mere child compared with his modern successors. His aims and
interests were entirely different from theirs. But yet he was moved by a
spirit which they may be said to inherit. His careful collection of facts,
even his tendency to read the ideas and institutions of his own time into
ancient history, are indications of a reverence for the past and of an
anxiety to base ideas and action upon a knowledge of that past. This
foreshadows the reverence of modern science for experience, its anxiety to
base its laws and theories upon observation of what has actually occurred.
The principle that the past determines and interprets the present and the
future lies at the root of the theological attitude of the most
conservative minds and the scientific work of the most advanced thinkers.
The conservative spirit, like the chronicler, is apt to suffer its
inherited prepossessions and personal interests to hinder a true
observation and understanding of the past. But the chronicler’s
opportunities and experience were narrow indeed compared with those of
theological students to-day; and we have every right to lay stress on the
progress which he had achieved and the onward path that it indicated
rather than on the yet more advanced stages which still lay beyond his
horizon.




Chapter IV. Family Traditions. 1 Chron. i. 10, 19, 46; ii. 3, 7, 34; iv.
9, 10, 18, 22, 27, 34-43; v. 10, 18-22; vii. 21-23; viii. 13.


Chronicles is a miniature Old Testament, and may have been meant as a
handbook for ordinary people, who had no access to the whole library of
sacred writings. It contains nothing corresponding to the books of Wisdom
or the apocalyptic literature; but all the other types of Old Testament
literature are represented. There are genealogies, statistics, ritual,
history, psalms, and prophecies. The interest shown by Chronicles in
family traditions harmonises with the stress laid by the Hebrew Scriptures
upon family life. The other historical books are largely occupied with the
family history of the Patriarchs, of Moses, of Jephthah, Gideon, Samson,
Saul, and David. The chronicler intersperses his genealogies with short
anecdotes about the different families and tribes. Some of these are
borrowed from the older books; but others are peculiar to our author, and
were doubtless obtained by him from the family records and traditions of
his contemporaries. The statements that “Nimrod began to be mighty upon
the earth”(74); that “the name of one” of Eber’s sons “was Peleg, because
in his days the earth was divided”(75); and that Hadad “smote Moab in the
field of Midian,”(76) are borrowed from Genesis. As he omits events much
more important and more closely connected with the history of Israel, and
gives no account of Babel, or of Abraham, or of the conquest of Canaan,
these little notes are probably retained by accident, because at times the
chronicler copied his authorities somewhat mechanically. It was less
trouble to take the genealogies as they stood than to exercise great care
in weeding out everything but the bare names.

In one instance,(77) however, the chronicler has erased a curious note to
a genealogy in Genesis. A certain Anah is mentioned both in Genesis and
Chronicles among the Horites, who inhabited Mount Seir before it was
conquered by Edom. Most of us, in reading the Authorised Version, have
wondered what historical or religious interest secured a permanent record
for the fact that “Anah found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the
asses of Zibeon his father.” A possible solution seemed to be that this
note was preserved as the earliest reference to the existence of mules,
which animals played an important part in the social life of Palestine;
but the Revised Version sets aside this explanation by substituting “hot
springs” for “mules,” as these hot springs are only mentioned here, the
passage becomes a greater puzzle than ever. The chronicler could hardly
overlook this curious piece of information, but he naturally felt that
this obscure archæological note about the aboriginal Horites did not fall
within the scope of his work. On the other hand, the tragic fates of Er
and Achar(78) had a direct genealogical significance. They are referred to
in order to explain why the lists contain no descendants of these members
of the tribe of Judah. The notes to these names illustrate the more
depressing aspects of history. The men who lived happy, honourable lives
can be mentioned one after another without any comment; but even the
compiler of pedigrees pauses to note the crimes and misfortunes that broke
the natural order of life. The annals of old families dwell with
melancholy pride on murders, and fatal duels, and suicides. History, like
an ancient mansion, is haunted with unhappy ghosts. Yet our interest in
tragedy is a testimony to the blessedness of life; comfort and enjoyment
are too monotonously common to be worth recording, but we are attracted
and excited by exceptional instances of suffering and sin.

Let us turn to the episodes of family life only found in Chronicles. They
may mostly be arranged in little groups of two or three, and some of the
groups present us with an interesting contrast.

We learn from ii. 34-41 and iv. 18 that two Jewish families traced their
descent from Egyptian ancestors. Sheshan, according to Chronicles, was
eighth in descent from Judah and fifth from Jerahmeel, the brother of
Caleb. Having daughters but no son, he gave one of his daughters in
marriage to an Egyptian slave named Jarha. The descendants of this union
are traced for thirteen generations. Genealogies, however, are not always
complete; and our other data do not suffice to determine even
approximately the date of this marriage. But the five generations between
Jerahmeel and Sheshan indicate a period long after the Exodus; and as
Egypt plays no recorded part in the history of Israel between the Exodus
and the reign of Solomon, the marriage may have taken place under the
monarchy. The story is a curious parallel to that of Joseph, with the
parts of Israelite and Egyptian reversed. God is no respecter of persons;
it is not only when the desolate and afflicted in strange lands belong to
the chosen people that Jehovah relieves and delivers them. It is true of
the Egyptian, as well as of the Israelite, that “the Lord maketh poor and
maketh rich.”


    “He bringeth low, He also lifteth up;
    He raiseth up the poor out of the dust:
    He lifteth up the needy from the dunghill,
    To make them sit with princes
    And inherit the throne of glory.”(79)


This song might have been sung at Jarha’s wedding as well as at Joseph’s.

Both these marriages throw a sidelight upon the character of Eastern
slavery. They show how sharply and deeply it was divided from the hopeless
degradation of negro slavery in America. Israelites did not recognise
distinctions of race and colour between themselves and their bondsmen so
as to treat them as worse than pariahs and regard them with physical
loathing. An American considers himself disgraced by a slight taint of
negro blood in his ancestry, but a noble Jewish family was proud to trace
its descent from an Egyptian slave.

The other story is somewhat different, and rests upon an obscure and
corrupt passage in iv. 18. The confusion makes it impossible to arrive at
any date, even by rough approximation. The genealogical relations of the
actors are by no means certain, but some interesting points are tolerably
clear. Some time after the conquest of Canaan, a descendant of Caleb
married two wives, one a Jewess, the other an Egyptian. The Egyptian was
Bithiah, a daughter of Pharaoh, _i.e._, of the contemporary king of Egypt.
It appears probable that the inhabitants of Eshtemoa traced their descent
to this Egyptian princess, while those of Gedor, Soco, and Zanoah claimed
Mered as their ancestor by his Jewish wife.(80) Here again we have the
bare outline of a romance, which the imagination is at liberty to fill in.
It has been suggested that Bithiah may have been the victim of some Jewish
raid into Egypt, but surely a king of Egypt would have either ransomed his
daughter or recovered her by force of arms. The story rather suggests that
the chiefs of the clans of Judah were semi-independent and possessed of
considerable wealth and power, so that the royal family of Egypt could
intermarry with them, as with reigning sovereigns. But if so, the pride of
Egypt must have been greatly broken since the time when the Pharaohs
haughtily refused to give their daughters in marriage to the kings of
Babylon.

Both Egyptian alliances occur among the Kenizzites, the descendants of the
brothers Caleb and Jerahmeel. In one case a Jewess marries an Egyptian
slave; in the other a Jew marries an Egyptian princess. Doubtless these
marriages did not stand alone, and there were others with foreigners of
varying social rank. The stories show that even after the Captivity the
tradition survived that the clans in the south of Judah had been closely
connected with Egypt, and that Solomon was not the only member of the
tribe who had taken an Egyptian wife. Now intermarriage with foreigners is
partly forbidden by the Pentateuch; and the prohibition was extended and
sternly enforced by Ezra and Nehemiah.(81) In the time of the chronicler
there was a growing feeling against such marriages. Hence the traditions
we are discussing cannot have originated after the Return, but must be at
any rate earlier than the publication of Deuteronomy under Josiah.

Such marriages with Egyptians must have had some influence on the religion
of the south of Judah, but probably the foreigners usually followed the
example of Ruth, and adopted the faith of the families into which they
came. When they said, “Thy people shall be my people,” they did not fail
to add, “and thy God shall be my God.” When the Egyptian princess married
the head of a Jewish clan, she became one of Jehovah’s people; and her
adoption into the family of the God of Israel was symbolised by a new
name: “Bithiah,” “daughter of Jehovah.” Whether later Judaism owed
anything to Egyptian influences can only be matter of conjecture; at any
rate, they did not pervert the southern clans from their old faith. The
Calebites and Jerahmeelites were the backbone of Judah both before and
after the Captivity.

The remaining traditions relate to the warfare of the Israelites with
their neighbours. The first is a colourless reminiscence, that might have
been recorded of the effectual prayer of any pious Israelite. The
genealogies of chap. iv. are interrupted by a paragraph entirely
unconnected with the context. The subject of this fragment is a certain
Jabez never mentioned elsewhere, and, so far as any record goes, as
entirely “without father, without mother, without genealogy,” as
Melchizedek himself. As chap. iv. deals with the families of Judah, and in
ii. 55 there is a town Jabez also belonging to Judah, we may suppose that
the chronicler had reasons for assigning Jabez to that tribe; but he has
neither given these reasons, nor indicated how Jabez was connected
therewith. The paragraph runs as follows(82): “And Jabez was honoured
above his brethren, and his mother called his name Jabez” (_Ya’bēç_),
“saying, In pain” (_’ōçeb_) “I bore him. And Jabez called upon the God of
Israel, saying,—


    ‘If Thou wilt indeed bless me
      By enlarging my possessions,
    And Thy hand be with me
      To provide pasture,(83) that I be not in distress’ (_’ōçeb_).


And God brought about what he asked.” The chronicler has evidently
inserted here a broken and disconnected fragment from one of his sources;
and we are puzzled to understand why he gives so much, and no more. Surely
not merely to introduce the etymologies of Jabez; or if Jabez were so
important that it was worth while to interrupt the genealogies to furnish
two derivations of his name, why are we not told more about him? Who was
he, when and where did he live, and at whose expense were his possessions
enlarged and pasture provided for him? Everything that could give colour
and interest to the narrative is withheld, and we are merely told that he
prayed for earthly blessing and obtained it. The spiritual lesson is
obvious, but it is very frequently enforced and illustrated in the Old
Testament. Why should this episode about an utterly unknown man be thrust
by main force into an unsuitable context, if it is only one example of a
most familiar truth? It has been pointed out that Jacob vowed a similar
vow and built an altar to El, the God of Israel(84); but this is one of
many coincidences. The paragraph certainly tells us something about the
chronicler’s views on prayer, but nothing that is not more forcibly stated
and exemplified in many other passages; it is mainly interesting to us
because of the light it throws on his methods of composition. Elsewhere he
embodies portions of well-known works and apparently assumes that his
readers are sufficiently versed in them to be able to understand the point
of his extracts. Probably Jabez was so familiar to the chronicler’s
immediate circle that he can take for granted that a few lines will
suffice to recall all the circumstances to a reader.

We have next a series of much more definite statements about Israelite
prowess and success in wars against Moab and other enemies.

In iv. 21, 22, we read, “The sons of Shelah the son of Judah: Er the
father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of
the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea; and
Jokim, and the men of Cozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, who had dominion in
Moab and returned to Bethlehem.”(85) Here again the information is too
vague to enable us to fix any date, nor is it quite certain who had
dominion in Moab. The verb “had dominion” is plural in Hebrew, and may
refer to all or any of the sons of Shelah. But, in spite of uncertainties,
it is interesting to find chiefs or clans of Judah ruling in Moab.
Possibly this immigration took place when David conquered and partly
depopulated the country. The men of Judah may have returned to Bethlehem
when Moab passed to the northern kingdom at the disruption, or when Moab
regained its independence.

The incident in iv. 34-43 differs from the preceding in having a definite
date assigned to it. In the time of Hezekiah some Simeonite clans had
largely increased in number and found themselves straitened for room for
their flocks. They accordingly went in search of new pasturage. One
company went to Gedor, another to Mount Seir.

The situation of Gedor is not clearly known. It cannot be the Gedor of
Josh. xv. 58, which lay in the heart of Judah. The LXX. has Gerar, a town
to the south of Gaza, and this may be the right reading; but whether we
read Gedor or Gerar, the scene of the invasion will be in the country
south of Judah. Here the children of Simeon found what they wanted, “fat
pasture, and good,” and abundant, for “the land was wide.” There was the
additional advantage that the inhabitants were harmless and inoffensive
and fell an easy prey to their invaders: “The land was quiet and
peaceable, for they that dwelt there aforetime were of Ham.” As Ham in the
genealogies is the father of Cainan, these peaceable folk would be
Cainanites; and among them were a people called Meunim, probably not
connected with any of the Maons mentioned in the Old Testament, but with
some other town or district of the same name. So “these written by name
came in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and smote their tents, and
the Meunim that were found there, and devoted them to destruction as
accursed, so that none are left unto this day. And the Simeonites dwelt in
their stead.”(86)

                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Then follows in the simplest and most unconscious way the only
justification that is offered for the behaviour of the invaders: “because
there was pasture there for their flocks.” The narrative takes for
granted—


    “The good old rule, the simple plan,
    That they should take who have the power,
    And they should keep who can.”


The expedition to Mount Seir appears to have been a sequel to the attack
on Gedor. Five hundred of the victors emigrated into Edom, and smote the
remnant of the Amalekites who had survived the massacre under Saul(87);
“and they also dwelt there unto this day.”

In substance, style, and ideas this passage closely resembles the books of
Joshua and Judges, where the phrase “unto this day” frequently occurs.
Here, of course, the “day” in question is the time of the chronicler’s
authority. When Chronicles was written the Simeonites in Gedor and Mount
Seir had long ago shared the fate of their victims.

The conquest of Gedor reminds us how in the early days of the Israelite
occupation of Palestine “Judah went with Simeon his brother into the same
southern lands,” and they smote the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and
devoted them to destruction as accursed(88); and how the house of Joseph
took Bethel by treachery.(89) But the closest parallel is the Danite
conquest of Laish.(90) The Danite spies said that the people of Laish
“dwelt in security, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure,”
harmless and inoffensive, like the Gedorites. Nor were they likely to
receive succour from the powerful city of Zidon or from other allies, for
“they were far from the Zidonians, and had no dealings with any man.”
Accordingly, having observed the prosperous but defenceless position of
this peaceable people, they returned and reported to their brethren,
“Arise, and let us go up against them, for we have seen the land, and,
behold, it is very good; and are ye still? Be not slothful to go and to
enter in to possess the land. When ye go, ye shall come unto a people
secure, and the land,” like that of Gedor, “is large, for God hath given
it into your hand, a place where there is no want of anything that is in
the earth.”

The moral of these incidents is obvious. When a prosperous people is
peaceable and defenceless, it is a clear sign that God has delivered them
into the hand of any warlike and enterprising nation that knows how to use
its opportunities. The chronicler, however, is not responsible for this
morality, but he does not feel compelled to make any protest against the
ethical views of his source. There is a refreshing frankness about these
ancient narratives. The wolf devours the lamb without inventing any flimsy
pretext about troubled waters.

But in criticising these Hebrew clans who lived in the dawn of history and
religion we condemn ourselves. If we make adequate allowance for the
influence of Christ, and the New Testament, and centuries of Christian
teaching, Simeon and Dan do not compare unfavourably with modern nations.
As we review the wars of Christendom, we shall often be puzzled to find
any ground for the outbreak of hostilities other than the defencelessness
of the weaker combatant. The Spanish conquest of America and the English
conquest of India afford examples of the treatment of weaker races which
fairly rank with those of the Old Testament. Even to-day the independence
of the smaller European states is mainly guaranteed by the jealousies of
the Great Powers. Still there has been progress in international morality;
we have got at last to the stage of Æsop’s fable. Public opinion condemns
wanton aggression against a weak state; and the stronger power employs the
resources of civilised diplomacy in showing that not only the absent, but
also the helpless, are always wrong. There has also been a substantial
advance in humanity towards conquered peoples. Christian warfare even
since the Middle Ages has been stained with the horrors of the Thirty
Years’ War and many other barbarities; the treatment of the American
Indians by settlers has often been cruel and unjust; but no civilised
nation would now systematically massacre men, women, and children in cold
blood. We are thankful for any progress towards better things, but we
cannot feel that men have yet realised that Christ has a message for
nations as well as for individuals. As His disciples we can only pray more
earnestly that the kingdoms of the earth may in deed and truth become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

The next incident is more honourable to the Israelites. “The sons of
Reuben, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh” did not merely
surprise and slaughter quiet and peaceable people: they conquered
formidable enemies in fair fight.(91) There are two separate accounts of a
war with the Hagrites, one appended to the genealogy of Reuben and one to
that of Gad. The former is very brief and general, comprising nothing but
a bare statement that there was a successful war and a consequent
appropriation of territory. Probably the two paragraphs are different
forms of the same narrative, derived by the chronicler from independent
sources. We may therefore confine our attention to the more detailed
account.

Here, as elsewhere, these Transjordanic tribes are spoken of as
“valiant(92) men,” “men able to bear buckler and sword and to shoot with
the bow, and skilful in war.” Their numbers were considerable. While five
hundred Simeonites were enough to destroy the Amalekites on Mount Seir,
these eastern tribes mustered “forty and four thousand seven hundred and
threescore that were able to go forth to war.” Their enemies were not
“quiet and peaceable people,” but the wild Bedouin of the desert, “the
Hagrites, with Jetur and Naphish and Nodab.” Nodab is mentioned only here;
Jetur and Naphish occur together in the lists of the sons of Ishmael.(93)
Ituræa probably derived its name from the tribe of Jetur. The Hagrites or
Hagarenes were Arabs closely connected with the Ishmaelites, and they seem
to have taken their name from Hagar. In Psalm lxxxiii. 6-8 we find a
similar confederacy on a larger scale:—


    “The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
    Moab and the Hagarenes
    Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,
    Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre,
    Assyria also is joined with them;
    They have holpen the children of Lot.”


There could be no question of unprovoked aggression against these children
of Ishmael, that “wild ass of a man, whose hand was against every man, and
every man’s hand against him.”(94) The narrative implies that the
Israelites were the aggressors, but to attack the robber tribes of the
desert would be as much an act of self-defence as to destroy a hornet’s
nest. We may be quite sure that when Reuben and Gad marched eastward they
had heavy losses to retrieve and bitter wrongs to avenge. We might find a
parallel in the campaigns by which robber tribes are punished for their
raids within our Indian frontier, only we must remember that Reuben and
Gad were not very much more law-abiding or unselfish than their Arab
neighbours. They were not engaged in maintaining a _pax Britannica_ for
the benefit of subject nations; they were carrying on a struggle for
existence with persistent and relentless foes. Another partial parallel
would be the border feuds on the Northumbrian marches, when—


    “... over border, dale, and fell
    Full wide and far was terror spread;
    For pathless marsh and mountain cell
    The peasant left his lowly shed:
    The frightened flocks and herds were pent
    Beneath the peel’s rude battlement,
    And maids and matrons dropped the tear
    While ready warriors seized the spear;
    ... the watchman’s eye
    Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy.”(95)


But the Israelite expedition was on a larger scale than any “warden raid,”
and Eastern passions are fiercer and shriller than those sung by the Last
Minstrel: the maids and matrons of the desert would shriek and wail
instead of “dropping a tear.”

In this great raid of ancient times “the war was of God,” not, as at
Laish, because God found for them helpless and easy victims, but because
He helped them in a desperate struggle. When the fierce Israelite and Arab
borderers joined battle, the issue was at first doubtful; and then “they
cried to God, and He was entreated of them, because they put their trust
in Him,” “and they were helped against” their enemies; “and the Hagrites
were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them, and there
fell many slain, because the war was of God”; “and they took away their
cattle: of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty
thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of slaves a hundred thousand.”
“And they dwelt in their stead until the captivity.”

This “captivity” is the subject of another short note. The chronicler
apparently was anxious to distribute his historical narratives equally
among the tribes. The genealogies of Reuben and Gad each conclude with a
notice of a war, and a similar account follows that of Eastern
Manasseh:—“And they trespassed against the God of their fathers, and went
a-whoring after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God destroyed
before them. And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of
Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, and he
carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara,
and to the river of Gozan, unto this day.”(96) And this war also was “of
God.” Doubtless the descendants of the surviving Hagrites and Ishmaelites
were among the allies of the Assyrian king, and saw in the ruin of Eastern
Israel a retribution for the sufferings of their own people; but the later
Jews and probably the exiles in “Halah, Habor, and Hara,” and by “the
river of Gozan,” far away in North-eastern Mesopotamia, found the cause of
their sufferings in too great an intimacy with their heathen neighbours:
they had gone a-whoring after their gods.

The last two incidents which we shall deal with in this chapter serve to
illustrate afresh the rough-and-ready methods by which the chronicler has
knotted together threads of heterogeneous tradition into one tangled
skein. We shall see further how ready ancient writers were to represent a
tribe by the ancestor from whom it traced its descent. We read in vii. 20,
21, “The sons of Ephraim: Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his
son, and Eleadah his son, and Zabad his son, and Shuthelah his son, and
Ezer and Elead, whom the men of Gath that were born in the land slew,
because they came down to take away their cattle.”

Ezer and Elead are apparently brothers of the second Shuthelah; at any
rate, as six generations are mentioned between them and Ephraim, they
would seem to have lived long after the Patriarch. Moreover, they came
down to Gath, so that they must have lived in some hill-country not far
off, presumably the hill-country of Ephraim. But in the next two verses
(22 and 23) we read, “And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his
brethren came to comfort him. And he went in to his wife, and she
conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Beriah, because it went
evil with his house.”

Taking these words literally, Ezer and Elead were the actual sons of
Ephraim; and as Ephraim and his family were born in Egypt and lived there
all their days, these patriarchal cattle-lifters did not come down from
any neighbouring highlands, but must have come up from Egypt, all the way
from the land of Goshen, across the desert and past several Philistine and
Canaanite towns. This literal sense is simply impossible. The author from
whom the chronicler borrowed this narrative is clearly using a natural and
beautiful figure to describe the distress in the tribe of Ephraim when two
of its clans were cut off, and the fact that a new clan named _Beriah_ was
formed to take their place. Possibly we are not without information as to
how this new clan arose. In viii. 13 we read of two Benjamites, “_Beriah_
and Shema, who were heads of fathers’ houses of the inhabitants of
Aijalon, who put to flight the inhabitants of Gath.” Beriah and Shema
probably, coming to the aid of Ephraim, avenged the defeat of Ezer and
Elead; and in return received the possessions of the clans, who had been
cut off, and Beriah was thus reckoned among the children of Ephraim.(97)

The language of ver. 22 is very similar to that of Gen. xxxvii. 34, 35:
“And Jacob mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his
daughters rose up to comfort him”; and the personification of the tribe
under the name of its ancestor may be paralleled from Judges xxi. 6: “And
the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother.”

Let us now reconstruct the story and consider its significance. Two
Ephraimite clans, Ezer and Elead, set out to drive the cattle “of the men
of Gath, who were born in the land,” _i.e._, of the aboriginal Avvites,
who had been dispossessed by the Philistines, but still retained some of
the pasture-lands. Falling into an ambush or taken by surprise when
encumbered with their plunder, the Ephraimites were cut off, and nearly
all the fighting men of the clans perished. The Avvites, reinforced by the
Philistines of Gath, pressed their advantage, and invaded the territory of
Ephraim, whose border districts, stripped of their defenders, lay at the
mercy of the conquerors. From this danger they were rescued by the
Benjamite clans Shema and Beriah, then occupying Aijalon(98); and the men
of Gath in their turn were defeated and driven back. The grateful
Ephraimites invited their allies to occupy the vacant territory and in all
probability to marry the widows and daughters of their slaughtered
kinsmen. From that time onwards Beriah was reckoned as one of the clans of
Ephraim.

The account of this memorable cattle foray is a necessary note to the
genealogies to explain the origin of an important clan and its double
connection with Ephraim and Benjamin. Both the chronicler and his
authority recorded it because of its genealogical significance, not
because they were anxious to perpetuate the memory of the unfortunate
raid. In the ancient days to which the episode belonged, a frontier cattle
foray seemed as natural and meritorious an enterprise as it did to William
of Deloraine. The chronicler does not think it necessary to signify any
disapproval it is by no means certain that he did disapprove—of such
spoiling of the uncircumcised; but the fact that he gives the record
without comment does not show that he condoned cattle-stealing. Men to-day
relate with pride the lawless deeds of noble ancestors, but they would be
dismayed if their own sons proposed to adopt the moral code of mediæval
barons or Elizabethan buccaneers.

In reviewing the scanty religious ideas involved in this little group of
family traditions, we have to remember that they belong to a period of
Israelite history much older than that of the chronicler; in estimating
their value, we have to make large allowance for the conventional ethics
of the times. Religion not only serves to raise the standard of morality,
but also to keep the average man up to the conventional standard; it helps
and encourages him to do what he believes to be right as well as gives him
a better understanding of what right means. Primitive religion is not to
be disparaged because it did not at once convert the rough Israelite
clansmen into Havelocks and Gordons. In those early days, courage,
patriotism, and loyalty to one’s tribesmen were the most necessary and
approved virtues. They were fostered and stimulated by the current belief
in a God of battles, who gave victory to His faithful people. Moreover,
the idea of Deity implied in these traditions, though inadequate, is by no
means unworthy. God is benevolent; He enriches and succours His people; He
answers prayer, giving to Jabez the land and pasture for which he asked.
He is a righteous God; He responds to and justifies His people’s faith:
“He was entreated of the Reubenites and Gadites because they put their
trust in Him.” On the other hand, He is a jealous God; He punishes Israel
when they “trespass against the God of their fathers and go a-whoring
after the gods of the peoples of the land.” But the feeling here
attributed to Jehovah is not merely one of personal jealousy. Loyalty to
Him meant a great deal more than a preference for a god called Jehovah
over a god called Chemosh. It involved a special recognition of morality
and purity, and gave a religious sanction to patriotism and the sentiment
of national unity. Worship of Moabite or Syrian gods weakened a man’s
enthusiasm for Israel and his sense of fellowship with his countrymen,
just as allegiance to an Italian prince and prelate has seemed to
Protestants to deprive the Romanist of his full inheritance in English
life and feeling. He who went astray after other gods did not merely
indulge his individual taste in doctrine and ritual: he was a traitor to
the social order, to the prosperity and national union, of Israel. Such
disloyalty broke up the nation, and sent Israel and Judah into captivity
piecemeal.




Chapter V. The Jewish Community In The Time Of The Chronicler.


We have already referred to the light thrown by Chronicles on this
subject. Besides the direct information given in Ezra and Nehemiah, and
sometimes in Chronicles itself, the chronicler by describing the past in
terms of the present often unconsciously helps us to reconstruct the
picture of his own day. We shall have to make occasional reference to the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah, but the age of the chronicler is later than
the events which they describe, and we shall be traversing different
ground from that covered by the volume of the “Expositor’s Bible” which
deals with them.

Chronicles is full of evidence that the civil and ecclesiastical system of
the Pentateuch had become fully established long before the chronicler
wrote. Its gradual origin had been forgotten, and it was assumed that the
Law in its final and complete form had been known and observed from the
time of David onwards. At every stage of the history Levites are
introduced, occupying the subordinate position and discharging the menial
duties assigned to them by the latest documents of the Pentateuch. In
other matters small and great, especially those concerning the Temple and
its sanctity, the chronicler shows himself so familiar with the Law that
he could not imagine Israel without it. Picture the life of Judah as we
find it in 2 Kings and the prophecies of the eighth century, put this
picture side by side with another of the Judaism of the New Testament, and
remember that Chronicles is about a century nearer to the latter than to
the former. It is not difficult to trace the effect of this absorption in
the system of the Pentateuch. The community in and about Jerusalem had
become a Church, and was in possession of a Bible. But the hardening,
despiritualising processes which created later Judaism were already at
work. A building, a system of ritual, and a set of officials were coming
to be regarded as the essential elements of the Church. The Bible was
important partly because it dealt with these essential elements, partly
because it provided a series of regulations about washings and meats, and
thus enabled the layman to exalt his everyday life into a round of
ceremonial observances. The habit of using the Pentateuch chiefly as a
handbook of external and technical ritual seriously influenced the current
interpretation of the Bible. It naturally led to a hard literalism and a
disingenuous exegesis. This interest in externals is patent enough in the
chronicler, and the tendencies of Biblical exegesis are illustrated by his
use of Samuel and Kings. On the other hand, we must allow for great
development of this process in the interval between Chronicles and the New
Testament. The evils of later Judaism were yet far from mature, and
religious life and thought in Palestine were still much more elastic than
they became later on.

We have also to remember that at this period the zealous observers of the
Law can only have formed a portion of the community, corresponding roughly
to the regular attendants at public worship in a Christian country. Beyond
and beneath the pious legalists were “the people of the land,” those who
were too careless or too busy to attend to ceremonial; but for both
classes the popular and prominent ideal of religion was made up of a
magnificent building, a dignified and wealthy clergy, and an elaborate
ritual, alike for great public functions and for the minutiæ of daily
life.

Besides all these the Jewish community had its sacred writings. As one of
the ministers of the Temple, and, moreover, both a student of the national
literature and himself an author, the chronicler represents the best
literary knowledge of contemporary Palestinian Judaism; and his somewhat
mechanical methods of composition make it easy for us to discern his
indebtedness to older writers. We turn his pages with interest to learn
what books were known and read by the most cultured Jews of his time.
First and foremost, and overshadowing all the rest, there appears the
Pentateuch. Then there is the whole array of earlier Historical Books:
Joshua, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings. The plan of Chronicles excludes a direct
use of Judges, but it must have been well known to our author. His
appreciation of the Psalms is shown by his inserting in his history of
David a cento of passages from Psalms xcvi., cv., and cvi.; on the other
hand, Psalm xviii. and other lyrics given in the books of Samuel are
omitted by the chronicler. The later Exilic Psalms were more to his taste
than ancient hymns, and he unconsciously carries back into the history of
the monarchy the poetry as well as the ritual of later times. Both
omissions and insertions indicate that in this period the Jews possessed
and prized a large collection of psalms.

There are also traces of the Prophets. Hanani the seer in his address to
Asa(99) quotes Zech. iv. 10: “The eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro
through the whole earth.” Jehoshaphat’s exhortation to his people,
“Believe in the Lord your God; so shall ye be established,”(100) is based
on Isa. vii. 9: “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be
established.” Hezekiah’s words to the Levites, “Our fathers ... have
turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their
backs,”(101) are a significant variation of Jer. ii. 27: “They have turned
their back unto Me, and not their face.” The Temple is substituted for
Jehovah.

There are of course references to Isaiah and Jeremiah and traces of other
prophets; but when account is taken of them all, it is seen that the
chronicler makes scanty use, on the whole, of the Prophetical Books. It is
true that the idea of illustrating and supplementing information derived
from annals by means of contemporary literature not in narrative form had
not yet dawned upon historians; but if the chronicler had taken a tithe of
the interest in the Prophets that he took in the Pentateuch and the
Psalms, his work would show many more distinct marks of their influence.

An apocalypse like Daniel and works like Job, Proverbs, and the other
books of Wisdom lay so far outside the plan and subject of Chronicles that
we can scarcely consider the absence of any clear trace of them a proof
that the chronicler did not either know them or care for them.

Our brief review suggests that the literary concern of the chronicler and
his circle was chiefly in the books most closely connected with the
Temple; viz., the Historical Books, which contained its history, the
Pentateuch, which prescribed its ritual, and the Psalms, which served as
its liturgy. The Prophets occupy a secondary place, and Chronicles
furnishes no clear evidence as to other Old Testament books.

We also find in Chronicles that the Hebrew language had degenerated from
its ancient classical purity, and that Jewish writers had already come
very much under the influence of Aramaic.

We may next consider the evidence supplied by the chronicler as to the
elements and distribution of the Jewish community in his time. In Ezra and
Nehemiah we find the returning exiles divided into the men of Judah, the
men of Benjamin, and the priests, Levites, etc. In Ezra ii. we are told
that in all there returned 42,360, with 7,337 slaves and 200 “singing men
and singing women.” The priests numbered 4,289; there were 74 Levites, 128
singers of the children of Asaph, 139 porters, and 392 Nethinim and
children of Solomon’s servants. The singers, porters, Nethinim, and
children of Solomon’s servants are not reckoned among the Levites, and
there is only one guild of singers: “the children of Asaph.” The Nethinim
are still distinguished from the Levites in the list of those who returned
with Ezra, and in various lists which occur in Nehemiah. We see from the
Levitical genealogies and the Levites in 1 Chron. vi., ix., etc, that in
the time of the chronicler these arrangements had been altered. There were
now three guilds of singers, tracing their descent to Heman, Asaph, and
Ethan(102) or Jeduthun, and reckoned by descent among the Levites. The
guild of Heman seems to have been also known as “the sons of Korah.”(103)
The porters and probably eventually the Nethinim were also reckoned among
the Levites.(104)

We see therefore that in the interval between Nehemiah and the chronicler
the inferior ranks of the Temple ministry had been reorganised, the
musical staff had been enlarged and doubtless otherwise improved, and the
singers, porters, Nethinim, and other Temple servants had been promoted to
the position of Levites. Under the monarchy many of the Temple servants
had been slaves of foreign birth; but now a sacred character was given to
the humblest menial who shared in the work of the house of God. In
after-times Herod the Great had a number of priests trained as masons, in
order that no profane hand might take part in the building of his temple.

Some details have been preserved of the organisation of the Levites. We
read how the porters were distributed among the different gates, and of
Levites who were over the chambers and the treasuries, and of other
Levites how—

“They lodged round about the house of God, because the charge was upon
them, and to them pertained the opening thereof morning by morning.

“And certain of them had charge of the vessels of service; for by tale
were they brought in, and by tale were they taken out.

“Some of them also were appointed over the furniture, and over all the
vessels of the sanctuary, and over the fine flour, and the wine, and the
oil, and the frankincense, and the spices.

“And some of the sons of the priests prepared the confection of the
spices.

“And Mattithiah, one of the Levites who was the first-born of Shallum the
Korahite, had the set office over the things that were baked in pans.

“And some of their brethren, of the sons of the Kohathites, were over the
shewbread to prepare it every sabbath.”(105)

This account is found in a chapter partly identical with Neh. xi., and
apparently refers to the period of Nehemiah; but the picture in the latter
part of the chapter was probably drawn by the chronicler from his own
knowledge of Temple routine. So, too, in his graphic accounts of the
sacrifices by Hezekiah and Josiah,(106) we seem to have an eyewitness
describing familiar scenes. Doubtless the chronicler himself had often
been one of the Temple choir “when the burnt-offering began, and the song
of Jehovah began also, together with the instruments of David, king of
Israel; and all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the
trumpeters sounded; and all this continued till the burnt-offering was
finished.”(107) Still the scale of these sacrifices, the hundreds of oxen
and thousands of sheep, may have been fixed to accord with the splendour
of the ancient kings. Such profusion of victims probably represented
rather the dreams than the realities of the chronicler’s Temple.

Our author’s strong feeling for his own Levitical order shows itself in
his narrative of Hezekiah’s great sacrifices. The victims were so numerous
that there were not priests enough to flay them; to meet the emergency the
Levites were allowed on this one occasion to discharge a priestly function
and to take an unusually conspicuous part in the national festival. In
zeal they were even superior to the priests: “The Levites were more
upright in heart to sanctify themselves than the priests.” Possibly here
the chronicler is describing an incident which he could have paralleled
from his own experience. The priests of his time may often have yielded to
a natural temptation to shirk the laborious and disagreeable parts of
their duty; they would catch at any plausible pretext to transfer their
burdens to the Levites, which the latter would be eager to accept for the
sake of a temporary accession of dignity. Learned Jews were always experts
in the art of evading the most rigid and minute regulations of the Law.
For instance, the period of service appointed for the Levites in the
Pentateuch was from the age of thirty to that of fifty.(108) But we gather
from Ezra and Nehemiah that comparatively few Levites could be induced to
throw in their lot with the returning exiles; there were not enough to
perform the necessary duties. To make up for paucity of numbers, this
period of service was increased; and they were required to serve from
twenty years old and upward.(109) As the former arrangement had formed
part of the law attributed to Moses, in course of time the later
innovation was supposed to have originated with David.

There were, too, other reasons for increasing the efficiency of the
Levitical order by lengthening their term of service and adding to their
numbers. The establishment of the Pentateuch as the sacred code of Judaism
imposed new duties on priests and Levites alike. The people needed
teachers and interpreters of the numerous minute and complicated rules by
which they were to govern their daily life. Judges were needed to apply
the laws in civil and criminal cases. The Temple ministers were the
natural authorities on the Torah; they had a chief interest in expounding
and enforcing it. But in these matters also the priests seem to have left
the new duties to the Levites. Apparently the first “scribes,” or
professional students of the Law, were mainly Levites. There were priests
among them, notably the great father of the order, “Ezra the priest the
scribe,” but the priestly families took little share in this new work. The
origin of the educational and judicial functions of the Levites had also
come to be ascribed to the great kings of Judah. A Levitical scribe is
mentioned in the time of David.(110) In the account of Josiah’s reign we
are expressly told that “of the Levites there were scribes, and officers,
and porters”; and they are described as “the Levites that taught all
Israel.”(111) In the same context we have the traditional authority and
justification for this new departure. One of the chief duties imposed upon
the Levites by the Law was the care and carriage of the Tabernacle and its
furniture during the wanderings in the wilderness. Josiah, however, bids
the Levites “put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David,
king of Israel, did build; there shall no more be a burden upon your
shoulders; now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel.”(112) In
other words, “You are relieved of a large part of your old duties, and
therefore have time to undertake new ones.” The immediate application of
this principle seems to be that a section of the Levites should do all the
menial work of the sacrifices, and so leave the priests, and singers, and
porters free for their own special service; but the same argument would be
found convenient and conclusive whenever the priests desired to impose any
new functions on the Levites.

Still the task of expounding and enforcing the Law brought with it
compensations in the shape of dignity, influence, and emolument; and the
Levites would soon be reconciled to their work as scribes, and would
discover with regret that they could not retain the exposition of the Law
in their own hands. Traditions were cherished in certain Levitical
families that their ancestors had been “officers and judges” under
David(113); and it was believed that Jehoshaphat had organised a
commission largely composed of Levites to expound and administer the Law
in country districts.(114) This commission consisted of five princes, nine
Levites, and two priests; “and they taught in Judah, having the book of
the law of the Lord with them; and they went about throughout all the
cities of Judah and taught among the people.” As the subject of their
teaching was the Pentateuch, their mission must have been rather judicial
than religious. With regard to a later passage, it has been suggested that
“probably it is the organisation of justice as existing in his own day
that he” (the chronicler) “here carries back to Jehoshaphat, so that here
most likely we have the oldest testimony to the synedrium of Jerusalem as
a court of highest instance over the provincial synedria, as also to its
composition and presidency.”(115) We can scarcely doubt that the form the
chronicler has given to the tradition is derived from the institutions of
his own age, and that his friends the Levites were prominent among the
doctors of the Law, and not only taught and judged in Jerusalem, but also
visited the country districts.

It will appear from this brief survey that the Levites were very
completely organised. There were not only the great classes, the scribes,
officers, porters, singers, and the Levites proper, so to speak, who
assisted the priests, but special families had been made responsible for
details of service: “Mattithiah had the set office over the things that
were baked in pans; and some of their brethren, of the sons of the
Kohathites, were over the shewbread, to prepare it every sabbath.”(116)

The priests were organised quite differently. The small number of Levites
necessitated careful arrangements for using them to the best advantage; of
priests there were enough and to spare. The four thousand two hundred and
eighty-nine priests who returned with Zerubbabel were an extravagant and
impossible allowance for a single temple, and we are told that the numbers
increased largely as time went on. The problem was to devise some means by
which all the priests should have some share in the honours and emoluments
of the Temple, and its solution was found in the “courses.” The priests
who returned with Zerubbabel are registered in four families: “the
children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua; ... the children of Immer;
... the children of Pashhur; ... the children of Harim.”(117) But the
organisation of the chronicler’s time is, as usual, to be found among the
arrangements ascribed to David, who is said to have divided the priests
into their twenty-four courses.(118) Amongst the heads of the courses we
find Jedaiah, Jeshua, Harim, and Immer, but not Pashhur. Post-Biblical
authorities mention twenty-four courses in connection with the second
Temple. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, belonged to the course
of Abijah(119); and Josephus mentions a course “Eniakim.”(120) Abijah was
the head of one of David’s courses; and Eniakim is almost certainly a
corruption of Eliakim, of which name Jakim in Chronicles is a contraction.

These twenty-four courses discharged the priestly duties each in its turn.
One was busy at the temple while the other twenty-three were at home, some
perhaps living on the profits of their office, others at work on their
farms. The high-priest, of course, was always at the Temple; and the
continuity of the ritual would necessitate the appointment of other
priests as a permanent staff. The high-priest and the staff, being always
on the spot, would have great opportunities for improving their own
position at the expense of the other members of the courses, who were only
there occasionally for a short time. Accordingly we are told later on that
a few families had appropriated nearly all the priestly emoluments.

Courses of the Levites are sometimes mentioned in connection with those of
the priests, as if the Levites had an exactly similar organisation.(121)
Indeed, twenty-four courses of the singers are expressly named.(122) But
on examination we find that “course” for the Levites in all cases where
exact information is given(123) does not mean one of a number of divisions
which took work in turn, but a division to which a definite piece of work
was assigned, _e.g._, the care of the shewbread or of one of the gates.
The idea that in ancient times there were twenty-four alternating courses
of Levites was not derived from the arrangements of the chronicler’s age,
but was an inference from the existence of priestly courses. According to
the current interpretation of the older history, there must have been
under the monarchy a very great many more Levites than priests, and any
reasons that existed for organising twenty-four priestly courses would
apply with equal force to the Levites. It is true that the names of
twenty-four courses of singers are given, but in this list occurs the
remarkable and impossible group of names already discussed:—

“_I-have-magnified_, _I-have-exalted-help_; _Sitting-in-distress_,
_I-have-spoken_ _In-abundance Visions_”(124) which are in themselves
sufficient proof that these twenty-four courses of singers did not exist
in the time of the chronicler.

Thus the chronicler provides material for a fairly complete account of the
service and ministers of the Temple; but his interest in other matters was
less close and personal, so that he gives us comparatively little
information about civil persons and affairs. The restored Jewish community
was, of course, made up of descendants of the members of the old kingdom
of Judah. The new Jewish state, like the old, is often spoken of as
“Judah”; but its claim to fully represent the chosen people of Jehovah is
expressed by the frequent use of the name “Israel.” Yet within this new
Judah the old tribes of Judah and Benjamin are still recognised. It is
true that in the register of the first company of returning exiles the
tribes are ignored, and we are not told which families belonged to Judah
or which to Benjamin; but we are previously told that the chiefs of Judah
and Benjamin rose up to return to Jerusalem. Part of this register
arranges the companies according to the towns in which their ancestors had
lived before the Captivity, and of these some belong to Judah and some to
Benjamin. We also learn that the Jewish community included certain of the
children of Ephraim and Manasseh.(125) There may also have been families
from the other tribes; St. Luke, for instance, describes Anna as of the
tribe of Asher.(126) But the mass of genealogical matter relating to Judah
and Benjamin far exceeds what is given as to the other tribes,(127) and
proves that Judah and Benjamin were co-ordinate members of the restored
community, and that no other tribe contributed any appreciable contingent,
except a few families from Ephraim and Manasseh. It has been suggested
that the chronicler shows special interest in the tribes which had
occupied Galilee—Asher, Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar—and that this
special interest indicates that the settlement of Jews in Galilee had
attained considerable dimensions at the time when he wrote. But this
special interest is not very manifest; and later on, in the time of the
Maccabees, the Jews in Galilee were so few that Simon took them all away
with him, together with their wives and their children and all that they
had, and brought them into Judæa.

The genealogies seem to imply that no descendants of the Transjordanic
tribes or of Simeon were found in Judah in the age of the chronicler.

Concerning the tribe of Judah, we have already noted that it included two
families which traced their descent to Egyptian ancestors, and that the
Kenizzite clans of Caleb and Jerahmeel had been entirely incorporated in
Judah and formed the most important part of the tribe. A comparison of the
parallel genealogies of the house of Caleb gives us important information
as to the territory occupied by the Jews. In ii. 42-49 we find the
Calebites at Hebron and other towns of the south country, in accordance
with the older history; but in ii. 50-55 they occupy Bethlehem and
Kirjath-jearim and other towns in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The two
paragraphs are really giving their territory before and after the Exile;
during the Captivity Southern Judah had been occupied by the Edomites. It
is indeed stated in Neh. xi. 25-30 that the children of Judah dwelt in a
number of towns scattered over the whole territory of the ancient tribe;
but the list concludes with the significant sentence, “So they _encamped_
from Beer-sheba unto the valley of Hinnom.” We are thus given to
understand that the occupation was not permanent.

We have already noted that much of the space allotted to the genealogies
of Judah is devoted to the house of David.(128) The form of this pedigree
for the generations after the Captivity indicates that the head of the
house of David was no longer the chief of the state. During the monarchy
only the kings are given as heads of the family in each generation:
“Solomon’s son was Rehoboam, Abijah his son, Asa his son,” etc., etc.; but
after the Captivity the first-born no longer occupied so unique a
position. We have all the sons of each successive head of the family.

The genealogies of Judah include one or two references which throw a
little light on the social organisation of the times. There were “families
of scribes which dwelt at Jabez”(129) as well as the Levitical scribes. In
the appendix(130) to the genealogies of chap. iv. we read of a house whose
families wrought fine linen, and of other families who were porters to the
king and lived on the royal estates. The immediate reference of these
statements is clearly to the monarchy, and we are told that “the records
are ancient”; but these ancient records were probably obtained by the
chronicler from contemporary members of the families, who still pursued
their hereditary calling.

As regards the tribe of Benjamin, we have seen that there was a family
claiming descent from Saul.

The slight and meagre information given about Judah and Benjamin cannot
accurately represent their importance as compared with the priests and
Levites, but the general impression conveyed by the chronicler is
confirmed by our other authorities. In his time the supreme interests of
the Jews were religious. The one great institution was the Temple; the
highest order was the priesthood. All Jews were in a measure servants of
the Temple; Ephesus indeed was proud to be called the temple-keeper of the
great Diana, but Jerusalem was far more truly the temple-keeper of
Jehovah. Devotion to the Temple gave to the Jews a unity which neither of
the older Hebrew states had ever possessed. The kernel of this later
Jewish territory seems to have been a comparatively small district of
which Jerusalem was the centre. The inhabitants of this district carefully
preserved the records of their family history, and loved to trace their
descent to the ancient clans of Judah and Benjamin; but for practical
purposes they were all Jews, without distinction of tribe. Even the
ministry of the Temple had become more homogeneous; the non-Levitical
descent of some classes of the Temple servants was first ignored and then
forgotten, so that assistants at the sacrifices, singers, musicians,
scribes, and porters, were all included in the tribe of Levi. The Temple
conferred its own sanctity upon all its ministers.

In a previous chapter the Temple and its ministry were compared to a
mediæval monastery or the establishment of a modern cathedral. In the same
way Jerusalem might be compared to cities, like Ely or Canterbury, which
exist mainly for the sake of their cathedrals, only both the sanctuary and
city of the Jews came to be on a larger scale. Or, again, if the Temple be
represented by the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury, Bury St. Edmunds itself
might stand for Jerusalem, and the wide lands of the abbey for the
surrounding districts, from which the Jewish priests derived their
free-will offerings, and first-fruits, and tithes. Still in both these
English instances there was a vigorous and independent secular life far
beyond any that existed in Judæa.

A closer parallel to the temple on Zion is to be found in the immense
establishments of the Egyptian temples. It is true that these were
numerous in Egypt, and the authority and influence of the priesthood were
checked and controlled by the power of the kings; yet on the fall of the
twentieth dynasty the high-priest of the great temple of Amen at Thebes
succeeded in making himself king, and Egypt, like Judah, had its dynasty
of priest-kings.

The following is an account of the possessions of the Theban temple of
Amen, supposed to be given by an Egyptian living about B.C. 1350(131):—

“Since the accession of the eighteenth dynasty, Amen has profited more
than any other god, perhaps even more than Pharaoh himself, by the
Egyptian victories over the peoples of Syria and Ethiopia. Each success
has brought him a considerable share of the spoil collected upon the
battle-fields, indemnities levied from the enemy, prisoners carried into
slavery. He possesses lands and gardens by the hundred in Thebes and the
rest of Egypt, fields and meadows, woods, hunting-grounds, and fisheries;
he has colonies in Ethiopia or in the oases of the Libyan desert, and at
the extremity of the land of Canaan there are cities under vassalage to
him, for Pharaoh allows him to receive the tribute from them. The
administration of these vast properties requires as many officials and
departments as that of a kingdom. It includes innumerable bailiffs for the
agriculture; overseers for the cattle and poultry; treasurers of twenty
kinds for the gold, silver, and copper, the vases and valuable stuffs;
foremen for the workshops and manufactures; engineers; architects;
boatmen; a fleet and an army which often fight by the side of Pharaoh’s
fleet and army. It is really a state within the state.”

Many of the details of this picture would not be true for the temple of
Zion; but the Jews were even more devoted to Jehovah than the Thebans to
Amen, and the administration of the Jewish temple was more than “a state
within the state”: it was the state itself.




Chapter VI. Teaching By Anachronism. 1 Chron. ix. (cf. xv., xvi.,
xxiii.-xxvii., etc.).


    “And David the king said, ... Who then offereth willingly?... And
    they gave for the service of the house of God ... ten thousand
    darics.”—1 CHRON. xxix. 1, 5, 7.


Teaching by anachronism is a very common and effective form of religious
instruction; and Chronicles, as the best Scriptural example of this
method, affords a good opportunity for its discussion and illustration.

All history is more or less guilty of anachronism; every historian
perforce imports some of the ideas and circumstances of his own time into
his narratives and pictures of the past: but we may distinguish three
degrees of anachronism. Some writers or speakers make little or no attempt
at archæological accuracy; others temper the generally anachronistic
character of their compositions by occasional reference to the manners and
customs of the period they are describing; and, again, there are a few
trained students who succeed in drawing fairly accurate and consistent
pictures of ancient life and history.

We will briefly consider the last two classes before returning to the
first, in which we are chiefly interested.

Accurate archæology is, of course, part of the ideal of the scientific
historian. By long and careful study of literature and monuments and by
the exercise of a lively and well-trained imagination, the student obtains
a vision of ancient societies. Nineveh and Babylon, Thebes and Memphis,
rise from their ashes and stand before him in all their former splendour;
he walks their streets and mixes with the crowds in the market-place and
the throng of worshippers at the temple, each “in his habit as he lived.”
Rameses and Sennacherib, Ptolemy and Antiochus, all play their proper
parts in this drama of his fancy. He can not only recall their costumes
and features: he can even think their thoughts and feel their emotions; he
actually lives in the past. In _Marius the Epicurean_, in Ebers’s _Uarda_,
in Maspero’s _Sketches of Assyrian and Egyptian Life_, and in other more
serious works we have some of the fruits of this enlightened study of
antiquity, and are enabled to see the visions at second hand and in some
measure to live at once in the present and the past, to illustrate and
interpret the one by the other, to measure progress and decay, and to
understand the Divine meaning of all history. Our more recent histories
and works on life and manners and even our historical romances, especially
those of Walter Scott, have rendered a similar service to students of
English history. And yet at its very best such realisation of the past is
imperfect; the gaps in our information are unconsciously filled in from
our experience, and the ideas of the present always colour our
reproduction of ancient thought and feeling. The most accurate history is
only a rough approximation to exact truth; but, like many other rough
approximations, it is exact enough for many important practical purposes.

But scholarly familiarity with the past has its drawbacks. The scholar may
come to live so much amongst ancient memories that he loses touch with his
own present. He may gain large stores of information about ancient
Israelite life, and yet not know enough of his own generation to be able
to make them sharers of his knowledge. Their living needs and
circumstances lie outside his practical experience; he cannot explain the
past to them because he does not sympathise with their present; he cannot
apply its lessons to difficulties and dangers which he does not
understand.

Nor is the usefulness of the archæologist merely limited by his own lack
of sympathy and experience. He may have both, and yet find that there are
few of his contemporaries who can follow him in his excursions into bygone
time. These limitations and drawbacks do not seriously diminish the value
of archæology, but they have to be taken into account in discussing
teaching by anachronism, and they have an important bearing on the
practical application of archæological knowledge. We shall return to these
points later on.

The second degree of anachronism is very common. We are constantly hearing
and reading descriptions of Bible scenes and events in which the centuries
before and after Christ are most oddly blended. Here and there will be a
costume after an ancient monument, a Biblical description of Jewish
customs, a few Scriptural phrases; but these are embedded in paragraphs
which simply reproduce the social and religious ideas of the nineteenth
century. For instance, in a recent work, amidst much display of
archæological knowledge, we have the very modern ideas that Joseph and
Mary went up to Bethlehem at the census, because Joseph and perhaps Mary
also had property in Bethlehem, and that when Joseph died “he left her a
small but independent fortune.” Many modern books might be named in which
Patriarchs and Apostles hold the language and express the sentiments of
the most recent schools of devotional Christianity; and yet an air of
historical accuracy is assumed by occasional touches of archæology.
Similarly in mediæval miracle-plays characters from the Bible appeared in
the dress of the period, and uttered a grotesque mixture of Scriptural
phrases and vernacular jargon. Much of such work as this may for all
practical purposes be classed under the third degree of anachronism.
Sometimes, however, the spiritual significance of a passage or an incident
turns upon a simple explanation of some ancient custom, so that the
archæological detail makes a clear addition to its interest and
instructiveness. But in other cases a little archæology is a dangerous
thing. Scattered fragments of learned information do not enable the reader
in any way to revive the buried past; they only remove the whole subject
further from his interest and sympathy. He is not reading about his own
day, nor does he understand that the events and personages of the
narrative ever had anything in common with himself and his experience. The
antique garb, the strange custom, the unusual phrase, disguise that real
humanity which the reader shares with these ancient worthies. They are no
longer men of like passions with himself, and he finds neither warning nor
encouragement in their story. He is like a spectator of a drama played by
poor actors with a limited stock of properties. The scenery and dresses
show that the play does not belong to his own time, but they fail to
suggest that it ever belonged to any period. He has a languid interest in
the performance as a spectacle, but his feelings are not touched, and he
is never carried away by the acting.

We have laid so much stress on the drawbacks attaching to a little
archæology because they will emphasise what we have to say about the use
of pure anachronism. Our last illustration, however, reminds us that these
drawbacks detract but little from the influence of earnest men. If the
acting be good, we forget the scenery and costumes; the genius of a great
preacher more than atones for poor archæology, because, in spite of dress
and custom, he makes his hearers feel that the characters of the Bible
were instinct with rich and passionate life. We thus arrive at our third
degree of pure anachronism.

Most people read their Bible without any reference to archæology. If they
dramatise the stories, they do so in terms of their own experience. The
characters are dressed like the men and women they know: Nazareth is like
their native village, and Jerusalem is like the county town; the
conversations are carried on in the English of the Authorised Version.
This reading of Scripture is well illustrated by the description in a
recent writer of a modern prophet in Tennessee(132):—

“There was nought in the scene to suggest to a mind familiar with the
facts an Oriental landscape—nought akin to the hills of Judæa. It was
essentially of the New World, essentially of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Yet ignorance has its licence. It never occurred to Teck Jepson that his
Bible heroes had lived elsewhere. Their history had to him an intimate
personal relation, as of the story of an ancestor, in the homestead ways
and closely familiar. He brooded upon these narratives, instinct with
dramatic interest, enriched with poetic colour, and localised in his
robust imagination, till he could trace Hagar’s wild wanderings in the
fastnesses, could show where Jacob slept and piled his altar of stones,
could distinguish the bush, of all others on the ‘bald,’ that blazed with
fire from heaven when the angel of the Lord stood within it. Somehow, even
in their grotesque variation, they lost no dignity in their transmission
to the modern conditions of his fancy. Did the facts lack significance
because it was along the gullied red clay roads of Piomingo Cove that he
saw David, the smiling stripling, running and holding high in his hand the
bit of cloth cut from Saul’s garments while the king had slept in a cave
at the base of Chilhowie Mountain? And how was the splendid miracle of
translation discredited because Jepson believed that the chariot of the
Lord had rested in scarlet and purple clouds upon the towering summit of
Thunderhead, that Elijah might thence ascend into heaven?”

Another and more familiar example of “singular alterations in date and
circumstances” is the version in _Ivanhoe_ of the war between Benjamin and
the other tribes:—

“How long since in Palestine a deadly feud arose between the tribe of
Benjamin and the rest of the Israelitish nation; and how they cut to
pieces well-nigh all the chivalry of that tribe; and how they swore by our
blessed Lady that they would not permit those who remained to marry in
their lineage; and how they became grieved for their vow, and sent to
consult his Holiness the Pope how they might be absolved from it; and how,
by the advice of the Holy Father, the youth of the tribe of Benjamin
carried off from a superb tournament all the ladies who were there
present, and thus won them wives without the consent either of their
brides or their brides’ families.”

It is needless to say that the chronicler was not thus hopelessly at sea
about the circumstances of ancient Hebrew history; but he wrote in the
same simple, straightforward, childlike spirit. Israel had always been the
Israel of his own experience, and it never occurred to him that its
institutions under the kings had been other than those with which he was
familiar. He had no more hesitation in filling up the gaps in the book of
Kings from what he saw round about him than a painter would have in
putting the white clouds and blue waters of to-day into a picture of skies
and seas a thousand years ago. He attributes to the pious kings of Judah
the observance of the ritual of his own times. Their prophets use phrases
taken from post-Exilic writings. David is regarded as the author of the
existing ecclesiastical system in almost all matters that do not date back
to Moses, and especially as the organiser of the familiar music of the
Temple. David’s choristers sing the hymns of the second Temple. Amongst
the contributions of his nobles towards the building of the Temple, we
read of ten thousand darics, the daric being a coin introduced by the
Persian king Darius.

But we must be careful to recognise that the chronicler writes in perfect
good faith. These views of the monarchy were common to all educated and
thoughtful men of his time; they were embodied in current tradition, and
were probably already to be met with in writing. To charge him with
inventing them is absurd; they already existed, and did not need to be
invented. He cannot have coloured his narrative in the interests of the
Temple and the priesthood. When he lived, these interests were guaranteed
by ancient custom and by the authoritative sanction of the Pentateuchal
Law. The chronicler does not write with the strong feeling of a man who
maintains a doubtful cause; there is no hint of any alternative view which
needs to be disproved and rejected in favour of his own. He expatiates on
his favourite themes with happy, leisurely serenity, and is evidently
confident that his treatment of them will meet with general and cordial
approval.

And doubtless the author of Chronicles “served his own generation by the
will of God,” and served them in the way he intended. He made the history
of the monarchy more real and living to them, and enabled them to
understand better that the reforming kings of Judah were loyal servants of
Jehovah and had been used by Him for the furtherance of true religion. The
pictures drawn by Samuel and Kings of David and the best of his successors
would not have enabled the Jews of his time to appreciate these facts.
They had no idea of any piety that was not expressed in the current
observances of the Law, and Samuel and Kings did not ascribe such
observances to the earlier kings of Judah. But the chronicler and his
authorities were able to discern in the ancient Scriptures the genuine
piety of David and Hezekiah and other kings, and drew what seemed to them
the obvious conclusion that these pious kings observed the Law. They then
proceeded to rewrite the history in order that the true character of the
kings and their relation to Jehovah might be made intelligible to the
people. The only piety which the chronicler could conceive was combined
with observance of the Law; naturally therefore it was only thus that he
could describe piety. His work would be read with eager interest, and
would play a definite and useful part in the religious education of the
people. It would bring home to them, as the older histories could not, the
abiding presence of Jehovah with Israel and its leaders. Chronicles
interpreted history to its own generation by translating older records
into the circumstances and ideas of its own time.

And in this it remains our example. Chronicles may fall very far short of
the ideal and yet be superior to more accurate histories which fail to
make themselves intelligible to their own generation. The ideal history no
doubt would tell the story with archæological precision, and then
interpret it by modern parallels; the historian would show us what we
should actually have seen and heard if we had lived in the period he is
describing; he would also help our weak imagination by pointing us to such
modern events or persons as best illustrate those ancient times. No doubt
Chronicles fails to bring before our eyes an accurate vision of the
history of the monarchy; but, as we have said, all history fails somewhat
in this respect. It is simply impossible to fulfil the demand for history
that shall have the accuracy of an architect’s plans of a house or an
astronomer’s diagrams of the orbit of a planet. Chronicles, however, fails
more seriously than most history, and on the whole rather more than most
commentaries and sermons.

But this lack of archæological accuracy is far less serious than a failure
to make it clear that the events of ancient history were as real and as
interesting as those of modern times, and that its personages were actual
men and women, with a full equipment of body, mind, and soul. There have
been many teachers and preachers, innocent of archæology, who have yet
been able to apply Bible narratives with convincing power to the hearts
and consciences of their hearers. They may have missed some points and
misunderstood others, but they have brought out clearly the main,
practical teaching of their subject; and we must not allow amusement at
curious anachronisms to blind us to their great gifts in applying ancient
history to modern circumstances. For instance, the little captive maid in
the story of Naaman has been described by a local preacher as having
illuminated texts hung up in her bedroom, and (perambulators not being
then in use) as having constructed a go-cart for the baby out of an old
tea-chest and four cotton reels. We feel inclined to smile; but, after
all, such a picture would make children feel that the captive maid was a
girl whom they could understand and might even imitate. A more correct
version of the story, told with less human interest, might leave the
impression that she was a mere animated doll in a quaint costume, who made
impossibly pious remarks.

Enlightened and well-informed Christian teachers may still learn something
from the example of the chronicler. The uncritical character of his age
affords no excuse to them for shutting their eyes to the fuller light
which God has given to their generation. But we are reminded that
permanently significant stories have their parallels in every age. There
are always prodigal sons, and foolish virgins, importunate widows, and
good Samaritans. The ancient narratives are interesting as quaint and
picturesque stories of former times; but it is our duty as teachers to
discover the modern parallels of their eternal meaning: their lessons are
often best enforced by telling them afresh as they would have been told if
their authors had lived in our time, in other words by a frank use of
anachronism.

It may be objected that the result in the case of Chronicles is not
encouraging. Chronicles is far less interesting than Kings, and far less
useful in furnishing materials for the historian. These facts, however,
are not inconsistent with the usefulness of the book for its own age.
Teaching by anachronism simply seeks to render a service to its own
generation; its purpose is didactic, and not historical. How many people
read the sermons of eighteenth-century divines? But each generation has a
right to this special service. The first duty of the religious teacher is
for the men and women that look to him for spiritual help and guidance. He
may incidentally produce literary work of permanent value for posterity;
but a Church whose ministry sacrificed practical usefulness in the attempt
to be learned and literary would be false to its most sacred functions.
The noblest self-denial of Christian service may often lie in putting
aside all such ambition and devoting the ability which might have made a
successful author to making Divine truth intelligible and interesting to
the uncultured and the unimaginative. Authors themselves are sometimes led
to make a similar sacrifice; they write to help the many to-day when they
might have written to delight men of literary taste in all ages. Few
things are so ephemeral as popular religious literature; it is as quickly
and entirely forgotten as last year’s sunsets: but it is as necessary and
as useful as the sunshine and the clouds, which are being always spent and
always renewed. Chronicles is a specimen of this class of literature, and
its presence in the canon testifies to the duty of providing a special
application of the sacred truths of ancient history for each succeeding
generation.





BOOK III. MESSIANIC AND OTHER TYPES.




Chapter I. Teaching By Types.


A more serious charge has been brought against Chronicles than that dealt
with in the last chapter. Besides anachronisms, additions, and
alterations, the chronicler has made omissions that give an entirely new
complexion to the history. He omits, for instance, almost everything that
detracts from the character and achievements of David and Solomon; he
almost entirely ignores the reigns of Saul and Ishbosheth, and of all the
northern kings. These facts are obvious to the most casual reader, and a
moment’s reflection shows that David as we should know him if we had only
Chronicles is entirely different from the historical David of Samuel and
Kings. The latter David has noble qualities, but displays great weakness
and falls into grievous sin; the David of Chronicles is almost always an
hero and a blameless saint.

All this is unquestionably true, and yet the purpose and spirit of
Chronicles are honest and praiseworthy. Our judgment must be governed by
the relation which the chronicler intended his work to sustain towards the
older history. Did he hope that Samuel and Kings would be altogether
superseded by this new version of the history of the monarchy, and so
eventually be suppressed and forgotten? There were precedents that might
have encouraged such a hope. The Pentateuch and the books from Joshua to
Kings derived their material from older works; but the older works were
superseded by these books, and entirely disappeared. The circumstances,
however, were different when the chronicler wrote: Samuel and Kings had
been established for centuries. Moreover, the Jewish community in Babylon
still exercised great influence over the Palestinian Jews. Copies of
Samuel and Kings must have been preserved at Babylon, and their possessors
could not be eager to destroy them, and then to incur the expense of
replacing them by copies of a history written at Jerusalem from the point
of view of the priests and Levites. We may therefore put aside the theory
that Chronicles was intended altogether to supersede Samuel and Kings.
Another possible theory is that the chronicler, after the manner of
mediæval historians, composed an abstract of the history of the world from
the Creation to the Captivity as an introduction to his account in Ezra
and Nehemiah of the more recent post-Exilic period. This theory has some
truth in it, but does not explain the fact that Chronicles is
disproportionately long if it be merely such an introduction. Probably the
chronicler’s main object was to compose a text-book, which could safely
and usefully be placed in the hands of the common people. There were
obvious objections to the popular use of Samuel and Kings. In making a
selection from his material, the chronicler had no intention of falsifying
history. Scholars, he knew, would be acquainted with the older books, and
could supplement his narrative from the sources which he himself had used.
In his own work he was anxious to confine himself to the portions of the
history which had an obvious religious significance, and could readily be
used for purposes of edification. He was only applying more thoroughly a
principle that had guided his predecessors. The Pentateuch itself is the
result of a similar selection, only there and in the other earlier
histories a very human interest in dramatic narrative has sometimes
interfered with an exclusive attention to edification.

Indeed, the principles of selection adopted by the chronicler are common
to many historians. A school history does not dwell on the domestic vices
of kings or on the private failings of statesmen. It requires no great
stretch of imagination to conceive of a Royalist history of England, that
should entirely ignore the Commonwealth. Indeed, historians of Christian
missions sometimes show about the same interest in the work of other
Churches than their own that Chronicles takes in the northern kingdom. The
work of the chronicler may also be compared to monographs which confine
themselves to some special aspect of their subject. We have every reason
to be thankful that the Divine providence has preserved for us the richer
and fuller narrative of Samuel and Kings, but we cannot blame the
chronicler because he has observed some of the ordinary canons for the
composition of historical text-books.

The chronicler’s selective method, however, is carried so far that the
historical value of his work is seriously impaired; yet in this respect
also he is kept in countenance by very respectable authorities. We are
more concerned, however, to point out the positive results of the method.
Instead of historical portraits, we are presented with a gallery of
ideals, types of character which we are asked either to admire or to
condemn. On the one hand, we have David and Solomon, Jehoshaphat and
Hezekiah, and the rest of the reforming kings of Judah; on the other hand,
there are Jeroboam, and Ahab, and Ahaz, the kings of Israel, and the bad
kings of Judah. All these are very sharply defined in either white or
black. The types of Chronicles are ideals, and not studies of ordinary
human character, with its mingled motives and subtle gradations of light
and shade. The chronicler has nothing in common with the authors of modern
realistic novels or anecdotal memoirs. His subject is not human nature as
it is so much as human nature as it ought to be. There is obviously much
to be learnt from such ideal pictures, and this form of inspired teaching
is by no means the least effective; it may be roughly compared with our
Lord’s method of teaching by parables, without, however, at all putting
the two upon the same level.

Before examining these types in detail, we may devote a little space to
some general considerations upon teaching by types. For the present we
will confine ourselves to a non-theological sense of type, using the word
to mean any individual who is representative or typical of a class. But
the chronicler’s individuals do not represent classes of actual persons,
but good men as they seem to their most devoted admirers and bad men as
they seem to their worst enemies. They are ideal types. Chronicles is not
the only literature in which such ideal types are found. They occur in the
funeral sermons and obituary notices of popular favourites, and in the
pictures which politicians draw in election speeches of their opponents,
only in these there is a note of personal feeling from which the
chronicler is free.

In fact, all biography tends to idealise; human nature as it is has
generally to be looked for in the pages of fiction. When we have been
blessed with a good and brave man, we wish to think of him at his best; we
are not anxious to have thrust upon our notice the weaknesses and sins
which he regretted and for the most part controlled. Some one who loved
and honoured him is asked to write the biography, with a tacit
understanding that he is not to give us a picture of the real man in the
_déshabille_, as it were, of his own inner consciousness. He is to paint
us a portrait of the man as he strove to fashion himself after his own
high ideal. The true man, as God knows him and as his fellows should
remember him, was the man in his higher nature and nobler aspirations. The
rest, surely, was but the vanishing remnant of a repudiated self. The
biographer idealises, because he believes that the ideal best represents
the real man. This is what the chronicler, with a large faith and liberal
charity, has done for David and Solomon.

Such an ideal picture appeals to us with pathetic emphasis. It seems to
say, “In spite of temptation, and sin, and grievous falls, this is what I
ever aimed at and desired to be. Do not thou content thyself with any
lower ideal. My higher nature had its achievements as well as its
aspirations. Remember that in thy weakness thou mayest also achieve.”


    “What I aspired to be,
    And was not, comforts me;

    All I could never be,
    All men ignored in me,
    This I was worth to God....”


But we may take these ideals as types, not only in a general sense, but
also in a modification of the dogmatic meaning of the word. We are not
concerned here with the type as the mere external symbol of truth yet to
be revealed; such types are chiefly found in the ritual of the Pentateuch.
The circumstances of a man’s life may also serve as a type in the narrower
sense, but we venture to apply the theological idea of type to the
significance of the higher nature in a good man. It has been said in
reference to types in the theological sense that “a type is neither a
prophecy, nor a symbol, nor an allegory, yet it has relations with each of
these. A prophecy is a prediction in words, a type a prediction in things.
A symbol is a sensuous representation of a thing; a type is such a
representation having a distinctly predictive aspect: ... a type is an
enacted prophecy, a kind of prophecy by action.”(133) We cannot, of
course, include in our use of the term type “sensuous representation” and
some other ideas connected with “type” in a theological sense. Our type is
a prediction in persons rather than in things. But the use of the term is
justified as including the most essential point: that “a type is an
enacted prophecy, a kind of prophecy by action.” These personal types are
the most real and significant; they have no mere arbitrary or conventional
relation to their antitype. The enacted prophecy is the beginning of its
own fulfilment, the first-fruits of the greater harvest that is to be. The
better moments of the man who is hungering and thirsting after
righteousness are a type, a promise, and prophecy of his future
satisfaction. They have also a wider and deeper meaning: they show what is
possible for humanity, and give an assurance of the spiritual progress of
the world. The elect remnant of Israel were the type of the great
Christian Church; the spiritual aspirations and persistent faith of a few
believers were a prophecy that “the earth should be full of the knowledge
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “The kingdom of heaven is like
unto a grain of mustard seed, ... which is less than all seeds; but when
it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree.” When
therefore the chronicler ignores the evil in David and Solomon and only
records the good, he treats them as types. He takes what was best in them
and sets it forth as a standard and prophecy for the future, a pattern in
the mount to be realised hereafter in the structure of God’s spiritual
temple upon earth.

But the Holy Spirit guided the hopes and intuitions of the sacred writers
to a special fulfilment. We can see that their types have one antitype in
the growth of the Church and the progress of mankind; but the Old
Testament looked for their chief fulfilment in a Divine Messenger and
Deliverer: its ideals are types of the Messiah. The higher life of a good
man was a revelation of God and a promise of His highest and best
manifestation in Christ. We shall endeavour to show in subsequent chapters
how Chronicles served to develop the idea of the Messiah.

But the chronicler’s types are not all prophecies of future progress or
Messianic glory. The brighter portions of his picture are thrown into
relief by a dark background. The good in Jeroboam is as completely ignored
as the evil in David. Apart from any question of historical accuracy, the
type is unfortunately a true one. There is a leaven of the Pharisees and
of Herod, as well as a leaven of the kingdom. If the base leaven be left
to work by itself, it will leaven the whole mass; and in a final estimate
of the character of those who do evil “with both hands earnestly,” little
allowance needs to be made for redeeming features. Even if we are still
able to believe that there is a seed of goodness in things evil, we are
forced to admit that the seed has remained dead and unfertilised, has had
no growth and borne no fruit. But probably most men may sometimes be
profitably admonished by considering the typical sinner—the man in whose
nature evil has been able to subdue all things to itself.

The strange power of teaching by types has been well expressed by one who
was herself a great mistress of the art: “Ideas are often poor ghosts: our
sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour,
and cannot make themselves felt; they breathe upon us with warm breath,
they touch us with soft, responsive hands; they look at us with sad,
sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a
living human soul; ... their presence is a power.”(134)




Chapter II. David—I. His Tribe And Dynasty.


King and kingdom were so bound up in ancient life that an ideal for the
one implied an ideal for the other; all distinction and glory possessed by
either was shared by both. The tribe and kingdom of Judah were exalted by
the fame of David and Solomon; but, on the other hand, a specially exalted
position is accorded to David in the Old Testament because he is the
representative of the people of Jehovah. David himself had been anointed
by Divine command to be king of Israel, and he thus became the founder of
the only legitimate dynasty of Hebrew kings. Saul and Ishbosheth had no
significance for the later religious history of the nation. Apparently to
the chronicler the history of true religion in Israel was a blank between
Joshua and David; the revival began when the Ark was brought to Zion, and
the first steps were taken to rear the Temple in succession to the Mosaic
tabernacle. He therefore omits the history of the Judges and Saul. But the
battle of Gilboa is given to introduce the reign of David, and incidental
condemnation is passed on Saul: “So Saul died for his trespass which he
committed against the Lord, because of the word of the Lord, which he kept
not, and also for that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit,
to inquire thereby, and inquired not of the Lord; therefore He slew him
and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.”

The reign of Saul had been an unsuccessful experiment; its only real value
had been to prepare the way for David. At the same time the portrait of
Saul is not given at full length, like those of the wicked kings, partly
perhaps because the chronicler had little interest for anything before the
time of David and the Temple, but partly, we may hope, because the record
of David’s affection for Saul kept alive a kindly feeling towards the
founder of the monarchy.

Inasmuch as Jehovah had “turned the kingdom unto David,” the reign of
Ishbosheth was evidently the intrusion of an illegitimate pretender; and
the chronicler treats it as such. If we had only Chronicles, we should
know nothing about the reign of Ishbosheth, and should suppose that, on
the death of Saul, David succeeded at once to an undisputed sovereignty
over all Israel. The interval of conflict is ignored because, according to
the chronicler’s views, David was, from the first, king _de jure_ over the
whole nation. Complete silence as to Ishbosheth was the most effective way
of expressing this fact.

The same sentiment of hereditary legitimacy, the same formal and exclusive
recognition of a _de jure_ sovereign, has been shown in modern times by
titles like Louis XVIII. and Napoleon III. For both schools of Legitimists
the absence of _de facto_ sovereignty did not prevent Louis XVII. and
Napoleon II. from having been lawful rulers of France. In Israel,
moreover, the Divine right of the one chosen dynasty had religious as well
as political importance. We have already seen that Israel claimed a
hereditary title to its special privileges; it was therefore natural that
a hereditary qualification should be thought necessary for the kings. They
represented the nation; they were the Divinely appointed guardians of its
religion; they became in time the types of the Messiah, its promised
Saviour. In all this Saul and Ishbosheth had neither part nor lot; the
promise to Israel had always descended in a direct line, and the special
promise that was given to its kings and through them to their people began
with David. There was no need to carry the history further back.

We have already noticed that, in spite of this general attitude towards
Saul, the genealogy of some of his descendants is given twice over in the
earlier chapters. No doubt the chronicler made this concession to gratify
friends or to conciliate an influential family. It is interesting to note
how personal feeling may interfere with the symmetrical development of a
theological theory. At the same time we are enabled to discern a practical
reason for rigidly ignoring the kingship of Saul and Ishbosheth. To have
recognised Saul as the Lord’s anointed, like David, would have complicated
contemporary dogmatics, and might possibly have given rise to jealousies
between the descendants of Saul and those of David. Within the narrow
limits of the Jewish community such quarrels might have been inconvenient
and even dangerous.

The reasons for denying the legitimacy of the northern kings were obvious
and conclusive. Successful rebels who had destroyed the political and
religious unity of Israel could not inherit “the sure mercies of David” or
be included in the covenant which secured the permanence of his dynasty.

The exclusive association of Messianic ideas with a single family
emphasises their antiquity, continuity, and development. The hope of
Israel had its roots deep in the history of the people; it had grown with
their growth and maintained itself through their changing fortunes. As the
hope centred in a single family, men were led to expect an individual
personal Messiah; they were being prepared to see in Christ the fulfilment
of all righteousness.

But the choice of the house of David involved the choice of the tribe of
Judah and the rejection of the kingdom of Samaria. The ten tribes, as well
as the kings of Israel, had cut themselves off both from the Temple and
the sacred dynasty, and therefore from the covenant into which Jehovah had
entered with “the man after his own heart.” Such a limitation of the
chosen people was suggested by many precedents. Chronicles, following the
Pentateuch, tells how the call came to Abraham, but only some of the
descendants of one of his sons inherited the promise. Why should not a
selection be made from among the sons of Jacob? But the twelve tribes had
been explicitly and solemnly included in the unity of Israel, largely
through David himself. The glory of David and Solomon consisted in their
sovereignty over a united people. The national recollection of this golden
age loved to dwell on the union of the twelve tribes. The Pentateuch added
legal sanction to ancient sentiment. The twelve tribes were associated
together in national lyrics, like the “Blessing of Jacob” and the
“Blessing of Moses.” The song of Deborah told how the northern tribes
“came to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” It was simply
impossible for the chronicler to absolutely repudiate the ten tribes; and
so they are formally included in the genealogies of Israel, and are
recognised in the history of David and Solomon. Then the recognition
stops. From the time of the disruption the northern kingdom is quietly but
persistently ignored. Its prophets and sanctuaries were as illegitimate as
its kings. The great struggle of Elijah and Elisha for the honour of
Jehovah is omitted, with all the rest of their history. Elijah is only
mentioned as sending a letter to Jehoram, king of Judah; Elisha is never
even named.

On the other hand, it is more than once implied that Judah, with the
Levites, and the remnants of Simeon and Benjamin, are the true Israel.
When Rehoboam “was strong he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel
with him.” After Shishak’s invasion, “the princes of Israel and the king
humbled themselves.”(135) The annals of Manasseh, king of Judah, are said
to be “written among the acts of the kings of Israel.”(136) The register
of the exiles, who returned with Zerubbabel is headed “The number of the
men of the people of Israel.”(137) The chronicler tacitly anticipates the
position of St. Paul: “They are not all Israel which are of Israel”; and
the Apostle might have appealed to Chronicles to show that the majority of
Israel might fail to recognise and accept the Divine purpose for Israel,
and that the true Israel would then be found in an elect remnant. The Jews
of the second Temple naturally and inevitably came to ignore the ten
tribes and to regard themselves as constituting this true Israel. As a
matter of history, there had been a period during which the prophets of
Samaria were of far more importance to the religion of Jehovah than the
temple at Jerusalem; but in the chronicler’s time the very existence of
the ten tribes was ancient history. Then, at any rate, it was true that
God’s Israel was to be found in the Jewish community, at and around
Jerusalem. They inherited the religious spirit of their fathers, and
received from them the sacred writings and traditions, and carried on the
sacred ritual. They preserved the truth and transmitted it from generation
to generation, till at last it was merged in the mightier stream of
Christian revelation.

The attitude of the chronicler towards the prophets of the northern
kingdom does not in any way represent the actual importance of these
prophets to the religion of Israel; but it is a very striking expression
of the fact that after the Captivity the ten tribes had long ceased to
exercise any influence upon the spiritual life of their nation.

The chronicler’s attitude is also open to criticism on another side. He is
dominated by his own surroundings, and in his references to the Judaism of
his own time there is no formal recognition of the Jewish community in
Babylon; and yet even his own casual allusions confirm what we know from
other sources, namely that the wealth and learning of the Jews in Babylon
were an important factor in Judaism until a very late date. This point
perhaps rather concerns Ezra and Nehemiah than Chronicles, but it is
closely connected with our present subject, and is most naturally treated
along with it. The chronicler might have justified himself by saying that
the true home of Israel must be in Palestine, and that a community in
Babylon could only be considered as subsidiary to the nation in its own
home and worshipping at the Temple. Such a sentiment, at any rate, would
have met with universal approval amongst Palestinian Jews. The chronicler
might also have replied that the Jews in Babylon belonged to Judah and
Benjamin and were sufficiently recognised in the general prominence give
to these tribes. In all probability some Palestinian Jews would have been
willing to class their Babylonian kinsmen with the ten tribes. Voluntary
exiles from the Temple, the Holy City, and the Land of Promise had in
great measure cut themselves off from the full privileges of the people of
Jehovah. If, however, we had a Babylonian book of Chronicles, we should
see both Jerusalem and Babylon in another light.

The chronicler was possessed and inspired by the actual living present
round about him; he was content to let the dead past bury its dead. He was
probably inclined to believe that the absent are mostly wrong, and that
the men who worked with him for the Lord and His temple were the true
Israel and the Church of God. He was enthusiastic in his own vocation and
loyal to his brethren. If his interests were somewhat narrowed by the
urgency of present circumstances, most men suffer from the same
limitations. Few Englishmen realise that the battle of Agincourt is part
of the history of the United States, and that Canterbury Cathedral is a
monument of certain stages in the growth of the religion of New England.
We are not altogether willing to admit that these voluntary exiles from
our Holy Land belong to the true Anglo-Saxon Israel.

Churches are still apt to ignore their obligations to teachers who, like
the prophets of Samaria, seem to have been associated with alien or
hostile branches of the family of God. A religious movement which fails to
secure for itself a permanent monument is usually labelled heresy. If it
has neither obtained recognition within the Church nor yet organised a
sect for itself, its services are forgotten or denied. Even the orthodoxy
of one generation is sometimes contemptuous of the older orthodoxy which
made it possible; and yet Gnostics, Arians and Athanasians, Arminians and
Calvinists, have all done something to build up the temple of faith.

The nineteenth century prides itself on a more liberal spirit. But
Romanist historians are not eager to acknowledge the debt of their Church
to the Reformers; and there are Protestant partisans who deny that we are
the heirs of the Christian life and thought of the mediæval Church and are
anxious to trace the genealogy of pure religion exclusively through a
supposed succession of obscure and half-mythical sects. Limitations like
those of the chronicler still narrow the sympathies of earnest and devout
Christians.

But it is time to return to the more positive aspects of the teaching of
Chronicles, and to see how far we have already traced its exposition of
the Messianic idea. The plan of the book implies a spiritual claim on
behalf of the Jewish community of the Restoration. Because they believed
in Jehovah, whose providence had in former times controlled the destinies
of Israel, they returned to their ancestral home that they might serve and
worship the God of their fathers. Their faith survived the ruin of Judah
and their own captivity; they recognised the power, and wisdom, and love
of God alike in the prosperity and in the misfortunes of their race. “They
believed God, and it was counted unto them for righteousness.” The great
prophet of the Restoration had regarded this new Israel as itself a
Messianic people, perhaps even “a light to the Gentiles” and “salvation
unto the ends of the earth.”(138) The chronicler’s hopes were more modest;
the new Jerusalem had been seen by the prophet as an ideal vision; the
historian knew it by experience as an imperfect human society: but he
believed none the less in its high spiritual vocation and prerogatives. He
claimed the future for those who were able to trace the hand of God in
their past.

Under the monarchy the fortunes of Jerusalem had been bound up with those
of the house of David. The chronicler brings out all that was best in the
history of the ancient kings of Judah, that this ideal picture of the
state and its rulers might encourage and inspire to future hope and
effort. The character and achievements of David and his successors were of
permanent significance. The grace and favour accorded to them symbolised
the Divine promise for the future, and this promise was to be realised
through a Son of David.




Chapter III. David—II. His Personal History.


In order to understand why the chronicler entirely recasts the graphic and
candid history of David given in the book of Samuel, we have to consider
the place that David had come to fill in Jewish religion. It seems
probable that among the sources used by the author of the book of Samuel
was a history of David, written not long after his death, by some one
familiar with the inner life of the court. “No one,” says the proverb, “is
an hero to his valet”; very much what a valet is to a private gentleman
courtiers are to a king: their knowledge of their master approaches to the
familiarity which breeds contempt. Not that David was ever a subject for
contempt or less than an hero even to his own courtiers; but they knew him
as a very human hero, great in his vices as well as in his virtues, daring
in battle and wise in counsel, sometimes also reckless in sin, yet capable
of unbounded repentance, loving not wisely, but too well. And as they knew
him, so they described him; and their picture is an immortal possession
for all students of sacred life and literature. But it is not the portrait
of a Messiah; when we think of the “Son of David,” we do not want to be
reminded of Bath-sheba.

During the six or seven centuries that elapsed between the death of David
and the chronicler, the name of David had come to have a symbolic meaning,
which was largely independent of the personal character and career of the
actual king. His reign had become idealised by the magic of antiquity; it
was a glory of “the good old times.” His own sins and failures were
obscured by the crimes and disasters of later kings. And yet, in spite of
all its shortcomings, the “house of David” still remained the symbol alike
of ancient glory and of future hopes. We have seen from the genealogies
how intimate the connection was between the family and its founder.
Ephraim and Benjamin may mean either patriarchs or tribes. A Jew was not
always anxious to distinguish between the family and the founder. “David”
and “the house of David” became almost interchangeable terms.

Even the prophets of the eighth century connect the future destiny of
Israel with David and his house. The child, of whom Isaiah prophesied, was
to sit “upon the throne of David” and be “over his kingdom, to establish
it and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth
even for ever.”(139) And, again, the king who is to “sit ... in truth, ...
judging, and seeking judgment, and swift to do righteousness,” is to have
“his throne ... established in mercy in the tent of David.”(140) When
Sennacherib attacked Jerusalem, the city was defended(141) for Jehovah’s
own sake and for His servant David’s sake. In the word of the Lord that
came to Isaiah for Hezekiah, David supersedes, as it were, the sacred
fathers of the Hebrew race; Jehovah is not spoken of as “the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” but “the God of David.”(142) As founder of the
dynasty, he takes rank with the founders of the race and religion of
Israel: he is “the patriarch David.”(143) The northern prophet Hosea looks
forward to the time when “the children of Israel shall return, and seek
the Lord their God and David their king”(144); when Amos wishes to set
forth the future prosperity of Israel, he says that the Lord “will raise
up the tabernacle of David”(145); in Micah “the ruler in Israel” is to
come forth from Bethlehem Ephrathah, the birthplace of David(146); in
Jeremiah such references to David are frequent, the most characteristic
being those relating to the “righteous branch, whom the Lord will raise up
unto David,” who “shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute
judgment and justice in the land, in whose days Judah shall be saved, and
Israel shall dwell safely”(147); in Ezekiel “My servant David” is to be
the shepherd and prince of Jehovah’s restored and reunited people(148);
Zechariah, writing at what we may consider the beginning of the
chronicler’s own period, follows the language of his predecessors: he
applies Jeremiah’s prophecy of “the righteous branch” to Zerubbabel, the
prince of the house of David(149): similarly in Haggai Zerubbabel is the
chosen of Jehovah(150); in the appendix to Zechariah it is said that when
“the Lord defends the inhabitants of Jerusalem” “the house of David shall
be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.”(151) In the later
literature, Biblical and apocryphal, the Davidic origin of the Messiah is
not conspicuous till it reappears in the Psalms of Solomon(152) and the
New Testament, but the idea had not necessarily been dormant meanwhile.
The chronicler and his school studied and meditated on the sacred
writings, and must have been familiar with this doctrine of the prophets.
The interest in such a subject would not be confined to scholars.
Doubtless the downtrodden people cherished with ever-growing ardour the
glorious picture of the Davidic king. In the synagogues it was not only
Moses, but the Prophets, that were read; and they could never allow the
picture of the Messianic king to grow faint and pale.(153)

David’s name was also familiar as the author of many psalms. The
inhabitants of Jerusalem would often hear them sung at the Temple, and
they were probably used for private devotion. In this way especially the
name of David had become associated with the deepest and purest spiritual
experiences.

This brief survey shows how utterly impossible it was for the chronicler
to transfer the older narrative bodily from the book of Samuel to his own
pages. Large omissions were absolutely necessary. He could not sit down in
cold blood to tell his readers that the man whose name they associated
with the most sacred memories and the noblest hopes of Israel had been
guilty of treacherous murder, and had offered himself to the Philistines
as an ally against the people of Jehovah.

From this point of view let us consider the chronicler’s omissions
somewhat more in detail. In the first place, with one or two slight
exceptions, he omits the whole of David’s life before his accession to the
throne, for two reasons: partly because he is anxious that his readers
should think of David as king, the anointed of Jehovah, the Messiah;
partly that they may not be reminded of his career as an outlaw and a
freebooter and of his alliance with the Philistines.(154) It is probably
only an unintentional result of this omission that it enables the
chronicler to ignore the important services rendered to David by Abiathar,
whose family were rivals of the house of Zadok in the priesthood.

We have already seen that the events of David’s reign at Hebron and his
struggle with Ishbosheth are omitted because the chronicler does not
recognise Ishbosheth as a legitimate king. The omission would also commend
itself because this section contains the account of Joab’s murder of Abner
and David’s inability to do more than protest against the crime. “I am
this day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah are
too hard for me,”(155) are scarcely words that become an ideal king.

The next point to notice is one of those significant alterations that mark
the chronicler’s industry as a redactor. In 2 Sam. v. 21 we read that
after the Philistines had been defeated at Baal-perazim they left their
images there, and David and his men took them away. Why did they take them
away? What did David and his men want with images? Missionaries bring home
images as trophies, and exhibit them triumphantly, like soldiers who have
captured the enemy’s standards. No one, not even an unconverted native,
supposes that they have been brought away to be used in worship. But the
worship of images was no improbable apostacy on the part of an Israelite
king. The chronicler felt that these ambiguous words were open to
misconstruction; so he tells us what he assumes to have been their
ultimate fate: “And they left their gods there; and David gave
commandment, and they were burnt with fire.”(156)

The next omission was obviously a necessary one; it is the incident of
Uriah and Bath-sheba. The name Bath-sheba never occurs in Chronicles. When
it is necessary to mention the mother of Solomon, she is called Bath-shua,
possibly in order that the disgraceful incident might not be suggested
even by the use of the name. The New Testament genealogies differ in this
matter in somewhat the same way as Samuel and Chronicles. St. Matthew
expressly mentions Uriah’s wife as an ancestress of our Lord, but St. Luke
does not mention her or any other ancestress.

The next omission is equally extensive and important. It includes the
whole series of events connected with the revolt of Absalom, from the
incident of Tamar to the suppression of the rebellion of Sheba the son of
Bichri. Various motives may have contributed to this omission. The
narrative contains unedifying incidents, which are passed over as lightly
as possible by modern writers like Stanley. It was probably a relief to
the chronicler to be able to omit them altogether. There is no heinous sin
like the murder of Uriah, but the story leaves a general impression of
great weakness on David’s part. Joab murders Amasa as he had murdered
Abner, and this time there is no record of any protest even on the part of
David. But probably the main reason for the omission of this narrative is
that it mars the ideal picture of David’s power and dignity and the
success and prosperity of his reign.

The touching story of Rizpah is omitted; the hanging of her sons does not
exhibit David in a very amiable light. The Gibeonites propose that “they
shall hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the
Lord,” and David accepts the proposal. This punishment of the children for
the sin of their father was expressly against the Law(157); and the whole
incident was perilously akin to human sacrifice. How could they be hung up
before Jehovah in Gibeah unless there was a sanctuary of Jehovah in
Gibeah? And why should Saul at such a time and in such a connection be
called emphatically “the chosen of Jehovah”? On many grounds, it was a
passage which the chronicler would be glad to omit.

In 2 Sam. xxi. 15-17 we are told that David waxed faint and had to be
rescued by Abishai. This is omitted by Chronicles probably because it
detracts from the character of David as the ideal hero. The next paragraph
in Samuel also tended to depreciate David’s prowess. It stated that
Goliath was slain by Elhanan. The chronicler introduces a correction. It
was not Goliath whom Elhanan slew, but Lahmi, the brother of Goliath.
However, the text in Samuel is evidently corrupt; and possibly this is one
of the cases in which Chronicles has preserved the correct text.(158)

Then follow two omissions that are not easily accounted for. 2 Sam. xxii.,
xxiii., contain two psalms, Psalm xviii. and “the Last Words of David,”
the latter not included in the Psalter. These psalms are generally
considered a late addition to the book of Samuel, and it is barely
possible that they were not in the copy used by the chronicler; but the
late date of Chronicles makes against this supposition. The psalms may be
omitted for the sake of brevity, and yet elsewhere a long cento of
passages from post-Exilic psalms is added to the material derived from the
book of Samuel. Possibly something in the omitted section jarred upon the
theological sensibilities of the chronicler, but it is not clear what. He
does not as a rule look below the surface for obscure suggestions of
undesirable views. The grounds of his alterations and omissions are
usually sufficiently obvious; but these particular omissions are not at
present susceptible of any obvious explanation. Further research into the
theology of Judaism may perhaps provide us with one hereafter.

Finally, the chronicler omits the attempt of Adonijah to seize the throne,
and David’s dying commands to Solomon. The opening chapters of the book of
Kings present a graphic and pathetic picture of the closing scenes of
David’s life. The king is exhausted with old age. His authoritative
sanction to the coronation of Solomon is only obtained when he has been
roused and directed by the promptings and suggestions of the women of his
harem. The scene is partly a parallel and partly a contrast to the last
days of Queen Elizabeth; for when _her_ bodily strength failed, the
obstinate Tudor spirit refused to be guided by the suggestions of her
courtiers. The chronicler was depicting a person of almost Divine dignity,
in whom incidents of human weakness would have been out of keeping; and
therefore they are omitted.

David’s charge to Solomon is equally human. Solomon is to make up for
David’s weakness and undue generosity by putting Joab and Shimei to death;
on the other hand, he is to pay David’s debt of gratitude to the son of
Barzillai. But the chronicler felt that David’s mind in those last days
must surely have been occupied with the temple which Solomon was to build,
and the less edifying charge is omitted.

Constantine is reported to have said that, for the honour of the Church,
he would conceal the sin of a bishop with his own imperial purple. David
was more to the chronicler than the whole Christian episcopate to
Constantine. His life of David is compiled in the spirit and upon the
principles of lives of saints generally, and his omissions are made in
perfect good faith.

Let us now consider the positive picture of David as it is drawn for us in
Chronicles. Chronicles would be published separately, each copy written
out on a roll of its own. There may have been Jews who had Chronicles, but
not Samuel and Kings, and who knew nothing about David except what they
learned from Chronicles. Possibly the chronicler and his friends would
recommend the work as suitable for the education of children and the
instruction of the common people. It would save its readers from being
perplexed by the religious difficulties suggested by Samuel and Kings.
There were many obstacles, however, to the success of such a scheme; the
persecutions of Antiochus and the wars of the Maccabees took the
leadership out of the hands of scholars and gave it to soldiers and
statesmen. The latter perhaps felt more drawn to the real David than to
the ideal, and the new priestly dynasty would not be anxious to emphasise
the Messianic hopes of the house of David. But let us put ourselves for a
moment in the position of a student of Hebrew history who reads of David
for the first time in Chronicles and has no other source of information.

Our first impression as we read the book is that David comes into the
history as abruptly as Elijah or Melchizedek. Jehovah slew Saul “and
turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.”(159) Apparently the
Divine appointment is promptly and enthusiastically accepted by the
nation; all the twelve tribes come at once in their tens and hundreds of
thousands to Hebron to make David king. They then march straight to
Jerusalem and take it by storm, and forthwith attempt to bring up the Ark
to Zion. An unfortunate accident necessitates a delay of three months, but
at the end of that time the Ark is solemnly installed in a tent at
Jerusalem.(160)

We are not told who David the son of Jesse was, or why the Divine choice
fell upon him, or how he had been prepared for his responsible position,
or how he had so commended himself to Israel as to be accepted with
universal acclaim. He must, however, have been of noble family and high
character; and it is hinted that he had had a distinguished career as a
soldier.(161) We should expect to find his name in the introductory
genealogies; and if we have read these lists of names with conscientious
attention, we shall remember that there are sundry incidental references
to David, and that he was the seventh son of Jesse,(162) who was descended
from the Patriarch Judah, through Boaz, the husband of Ruth.

As we read further we come to other references which throw some light on
David’s early career, and at the same time somewhat mar the symmetry of
the opening narrative. The wide discrepancy between the chronicler’s idea
of David and the account given by his authorities prevents him from
composing his work on an entirely consecutive and consistent plan. We
gather that there was a time when David was in rebellion against his
predecessor, and maintained himself at Ziklag and elsewhere, keeping
“himself close, because of Saul the son of Kish,” and even that he came
with the Philistines against Saul to battle, but was prevented by the
jealousy of the Philistine chiefs from actually fighting against Saul.
There is nothing to indicate the occasion or circumstances of these
events.(163) But it appears that even at this period, when David was in
arms against the king of Israel and an ally of the Philistines, he was the
chosen leader of Israel. Men flocked to him from Judah and Benjamin,
Manasseh and Gad, and doubtless from the other tribes as well: “From day
to day there came to David to help him, until it was a great host like the
host of God.”(164)

This chapter partly explains David’s popularity after Saul’s death; but it
only carries the mystery a stage further back. How did this outlaw and
apparently unpatriotic rebel get so strong a hold on the affections of
Israel?

Chap. xii. also provides material for plausible explanations of another
difficulty. In chap. x. the army of Israel is routed, the inhabitants of
the land take to flight, and the Philistines occupy their cities; in xi.
and xii. 23-40 all Israel come straightway to Hebron in the most peaceful
and unconcerned fashion to make David king. Are we to understand that his
Philistine allies, mindful of that “great host, like the host of God,” all
at once changed their minds and entirely relinquished the fruits of their
victory?

Elsewhere, however, we find a statement that renders other explanations
possible. David reigned seven years in Hebron,(165) so that our first
impression as to the rapid sequence of events at the beginning of his
reign is apparently not correct, and there was time in these seven years
for a more gradual expulsion of the Philistines. It is doubtful, however,
whether the chronicler intended his original narrative to be thus modified
and interpreted.

The main thread of the history is interrupted here and later on(166) to
insert incidents which illustrate the personal courage and prowess of
David and his warriors. We are also told how busily occupied David was
during the three months’ sojourn of the Ark in the house of Obed-edom the
Gittite. He accepted an alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre; he added to his
harem; he successfully repelled two inroads of the Philistines, and made
him houses in the city of David.(167)

The narrative returns to its main subject: the history of the sanctuary at
Jerusalem. As soon as the Ark was duly installed in its tent, and David
was established in his new palace, he was struck by the contrast between
the tent and the palace: “Lo, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of
the covenant of the Lord dwelleth under curtains.” He proposed to
substitute a temple for the tent, but was forbidden by his prophet Nathan,
through whom God promised him that his son should build the Temple, and
that his house should be established for ever.(168)

Then we read of the wars, victories, and conquests of David. He is no
longer absorbed in the defence of Israel against the Philistines. He takes
the aggressive and conquers Gath; he conquers Edom, Moab, Ammon, and
Amalek; he and his armies defeat the Syrians in several battles, the
Syrians become tributary, and David occupies Damascus with a garrison.
“And the Lord gave victory to David whithersoever he went.” The conquered
were treated after the manner of those barbarous times. David and his
generals carried off much spoil, especially brass, and silver, and gold;
and when he conquered Rabbah, the capital of Ammon, “he brought forth the
people that were therein, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of
iron, and with axes. And thus did David unto all the cities of the
children of Ammon.” Meanwhile his home administration was as honourable as
his foreign wars were glorious: “He executed judgment and justice unto all
his people”; and the government was duly organised with commanders of the
host and the bodyguard, with priests and scribes.(169)

Then follows a mysterious and painful dispensation of Providence, which
the historian would gladly have omitted, if his respect for the memory of
his hero had not been overruled by his sense of the supreme importance of
the Temple. David, like Job, was given over for a season to Satan, and
while possessed by this evil spirit displeased God by numbering Israel.
His punishment took the form of a great pestilence, which decimated his
people, until, by Divine command, David erected an altar in the
threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite and offered sacrifices upon it,
whereupon the plague was stayed. David at once perceived the significance
of this incident: Jehovah had indicated the site of the future Temple.
“This is the house of Jehovah Elohim,(170) and this is the altar of burnt
offering for Israel.”(171)

This revelation of the Divine will as to the position of the Temple led
David to proceed at once with preparations for its erection by Solomon,
which occupied all his energies for the remainder of his life.(172) He
gathered funds and materials, and gave his son full instructions about the
building; he organised the priests and Levites, the Temple orchestra and
choir, the doorkeepers, treasurers, officers, and judges; he also
organised the army, the tribes, and the royal exchequer on the model of
the corresponding arrangements for the Temple.

Then follows the closing scene of David’s life. The sun of Israel sets
amid the flaming glories of the western sky. No clouds or mists rob him of
accustomed splendour. David calls a great assembly of princes and
warriors; he addresses a solemn exhortation to them and to Solomon; he
delivers to his son instructions for “all the works” which “I have been
made to understand in writing from the hand of Jehovah.” It is almost as
though the plans of the Temple had shared with the first tables of stone
the honour of being written with the very finger of God Himself, and David
were even greater than Moses. He reminds Solomon of all the preparations
he had made, and appeals to the princes and the people for further gifts;
and they render willingly—thousands of talents of gold, and silver, and
brass, and iron. David offers prayer and thanksgiving to the Lord: “And
David said to all the congregation, Now bless Jehovah our God. And all the
congregation blessed Jehovah, the God of their fathers, and bowed down
their heads, and worshipped Jehovah _and the king_. And they sacrificed
sacrifices unto Jehovah, and offered burnt offerings unto Jehovah, on the
morrow after that day, even a thousand bullocks, a thousand rams, and a
thousand lambs, with their drink offerings and sacrifices in abundance for
all Israel, and did eat and drink before Jehovah on that day with great
gladness. And they made Solomon king; ... and David died in a good old
age, full of days, riches, and honour, and Solomon his son reigned in his
stead.”(173)

The Roman expressed his idea of a becoming death more simply: “An emperor
should die standing.” The chronicler has given us the same view at greater
length; this is how the chronicler would have wished to die if he had been
David, and how, therefore, he conceives that God honoured the last hours
of the man after His own heart.

It is a strange contrast to the companion picture in the book of Kings.
There the king is bedridden, dying slowly of old age; the life-blood
creeps coldly through his veins. The quiet of the sick-room is invaded by
the shrill outcry of an aggrieved woman, and the dying king is roused to
hear that once more eager hands are clutching at his crown. If the
chronicler has done nothing else, he has helped us to appreciate better
the gloom and bitterness of the tragedy that was enacted in the last days
of David.

What idea does Chronicles give us of the man and his character? He is
first and foremost a man of earnest piety and deep spiritual feeling. Like
the great religious leaders of the chronicler’s own time, his piety found
its chief expression in ritual. The main business of his life was to
provide for the sanctuary and its services; that is, for the highest
fellowship of God and man, according to the ideas then current. But David
is no mere formalist; the psalm of thanksgiving for the return of the Ark
to Jerusalem is a worthy tribute to the power and faithfulness of
Jehovah.(174) His prayer after God had promised to establish his dynasty
is instinct with devout confidence and gratitude.(175) But the most
gracious and appropriate of these Davidic utterances is his last prayer
and thanksgiving for the liberal gifts of the people for the Temple.(176)

Next to David’s enthusiasm for the Temple, his most conspicuous qualities
are those of a general and soldier: he has great personal strength and
courage, and is uniformly successful in wars against numerous and powerful
enemies; his government is both able and upright; his great powers as an
organiser and administrator are exercised both in secular and
ecclesiastical matters; in a word, he is in more senses than one an ideal
king.

Moreover, like Alexander, Marlborough, Napoleon, and other epoch-making
conquerors, he had a great charm of personal attractiveness; he inspired
his officers and soldiers with enthusiasm and devotion to himself. The
pictures of all Israel flocking to him in the first days of his reign and
even earlier, when he was an outlaw, are forcible illustrations of this
wonderful gift; and the same feature of his character is at once
illustrated and partly explained by the romantic episode at Adullam. What
greater proof of affection could outlaws give to their captain than to
risk their lives to get him a draught of water from the well of Bethlehem?
How better could David have accepted and ratified their devotion than by
pouring out this water as a most precious libation to God?(177) But the
chronicler gives most striking expression to the idea of David’s
popularity when he finally tells us in the same breath that the people
worshipped Jehovah and the king.(178)

In drawing an ideal picture, our author has naturally omitted incidents
that might have revealed the defects of his hero. Such omissions deceive
no one, and are not meant to deceive any one. Yet David’s failings are not
altogether absent from this history. He has those vices which were
characteristic alike of his own age and of the chronicler’s, and which
indeed are not yet wholly extinct. He could treat his prisoners with
barbarous cruelty. His pride led him to number Israel, but his repentance
was prompt and thorough; and the incident brings out alike both his faith
in God and his care for his people. When the whole episode is before us,
it does not lessen our love and respect for David. The reference to his
alliance with the Philistines is vague and incidental. If this were our
only account of the matter, we should interpret it by the rest of his
life, and conclude that if all the facts were known, they would justify
his conduct.

In forming a general estimate of David according to Chronicles, we may
fairly neglect these less satisfactory episodes. Briefly David is perfect
saint and perfect king, beloved of God and man.

A portrait reveals the artist as well as the model and the chronicler in
depicting David gives indications of the morality of his own times. We may
deduce from his omissions a certain progress in moral sensitiveness. The
book of Samuel emphatically condemns David’s treachery towards Uriah, and
is conscious of the discreditable nature of many incidents connected with
the revolts of Absalom and Adonijah; but the silence of Chronicles implies
an even severer condemnation. In other matters, however, the chronicler
“judges himself in that which he approveth.”(179) Of course the first
business of an ancient king was to protect his people from their enemies
and to enrich them at the expense of their neighbours. The urgency of
these duties may excuse, but not justify, the neglect of the more peaceful
departments of the administration. The modern reader is struck by the
little stress laid by the narrative upon good government at home; it is
just mentioned, and that is about all. As the sentiment of international
morality is even now only in its infancy, we cannot wonder at its absence
from Chronicles; but we are a little surprised to find that cruelty
towards prisoners is included without comment in the character of the
ideal king.(180) It is curious that the account in the book of Samuel is
slightly ambiguous and might possibly admit of a comparatively mild
interpretation; but Chronicles, according to the ordinary translation,
says definitely, “He _cut_ them with saws.” The mere reproduction of this
passage need not imply full and deliberate approval of its contents; but
it would not have been allowed to remain in the picture of the ideal king,
if the chronicler had felt any strong conviction as to the duty of
humanity towards one’s enemies. Unfortunately we know from the book of
Esther and elsewhere that later Judaism had not attained to any wide
enthusiasm of humanity.




Chapter IV. David—III. His Official Dignity.


In estimating the personal character of David, we have seen that one
element of it was his ideal kingship. Apart from his personality, his name
is significant for Old Testament theology, as that of the typical king.
From the time when the royal title “Messiah” began to be a synonym for the
hope of Israel, down to the period when the Anglican Church taught the
Divine right of kings, and Calvinists insisted on the Divine sovereignty
or royal authority of God, the dignity and power of the King of kings have
always been illustrated by, and sometimes associated with, the state of an
earthly monarch—whereof David is the most striking example.

The times of the chronicler were favourable to the development of the idea
of the perfect king of Israel, the prince of the house of David. There was
no king in Israel; and, as far as we can gather, the living
representatives of the house of David held no very prominent position in
the community. It is much easier to draw a satisfactory picture of the
ideal monarch when the imagination is not checked and hampered by the
faults and failings of an actual Ahaz or Hezekiah. In earlier times the
prophetic hopes for the house of David had often been rudely disappointed,
but there had been ample space to forget the past and to revive the old
hopes in fresh splendour and magnificence. Lack of experience helped to
commend the idea of the Davidic king to the chronicler. Enthusiasm for a
benevolent despot is mostly confined to those who have not enjoyed the
privilege of living under such autocratic government.

On the other hand, there was no temptation to flatter any living Davidic
king, so that the semi-Divine character of the kingship of David is not
set forth after the gross and almost blasphemous style of Roman emperors
or Turkish sultans. It is indeed said that the people worshipped Jehovah
and the king; but the essential character of Jewish thought made it
impossible that the ideal king should sit “in the temple of God, setting
himself forth as God.” David and Solomon could not share with the pagan
emperors the honours of Divine worship in their life-time and apotheosis
after their death. Nothing addressed to any Hebrew king parallels the
panegyric to the Christian emperor Theodosius, in which allusion is made
to his “sacred mind,” and he is told that “as the Fates are said to assist
with their tablets _that God who is the partner in your majesty_, so does
some Divine power serve your bidding, which writes down and in due time
suggests to your memory the promises which you have made.”(181) Nor does
Chronicles adorn the kings of Judah with extravagant Oriental titles, such
as “King of kings of kings of kings.” Devotion to the house of David never
oversteps the bounds of a due reverence, but the Hebrew idea of monarchy
loses nothing by this salutary reserve.

Indeed, the title of the royal house of Judah rested upon Divine
appointment. “Jehovah ... turned the kingdom unto David; ... and they
anointed David king over Israel, according to the word of Jehovah by the
hand of Samuel.”(182) But the Divine choice was confirmed by the cordial
consent of the nation; the sovereigns of Judah, like those of England,
ruled by the grace of God and the will of the people. Even before David’s
accession the Israelites had flocked to his standard; and after the death
of Saul a great array of the twelve tribes came to Hebron to make David
king, “and all the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David
king.”(183) Similarly Solomon is the king “whom God hath chosen,” and all
the congregation make him king and anoint him to be prince.(184) The
double election of David by Jehovah and by the nation is clearly set forth
in the book of Samuel, and in Chronicles the omission of David’s early
career emphasises this election. In the book of Samuel we are shown the
natural process that brought about the change of dynasty; we see how the
Divine choice took effect through the wars between Saul and the
Philistines and through David’s own ability and energy. Chronicles is
mostly silent as to secondary causes, and fixes our attention on the
Divine choice as the ultimate ground for David’s elevation.

The authority derived from God and the people continued to rest on the
same basis. David sought Divine direction alike for the building of the
Temple and for his campaigns against the Philistines. At the same time,
when he wished to bring up the Ark to Jerusalem, he “consulted with the
captains of thousands and of hundreds, even with every leader; and David
said unto all the assembly of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and if it
be of Jehovah our God, ... let us bring again the ark of our God to us;
... and all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was
right in the eyes of all the people.”(185) Of course the chronicler does
not intend to describe a constitutional monarchy, in which an assembly of
the people had any legal status. Apparently in his own time the Jews
exercised their measure of local self-government through an informal
oligarchy, headed by the high-priest; and these authorities occasionally
appealed to an assembly of the people. The administration under the
monarchy was carried on in a somewhat similar fashion, only the king had
greater authority than the high-priest, and the oligarchy of notables were
not so influential as the colleagues of the latter. But apart from any
formal constitution the chronicler’s description of these incidents
involves a recognition of the principle of popular consent in government
as well as the doctrine that civil order rests upon a Divine sanction.

It is interesting to see how a member of a great ecclesiastical community,
imbued, as we should suppose, with all the spirit of priestcraft, yet
insists upon the royal supremacy both in state and Church. But to have
done otherwise would have been to go in the teeth of all history; even in
the Pentateuch the “king in Jeshurun” is greater than the priest.
Moreover, the chronicler was not a priest, but a Levite; and there are
indications that the Levites’ ancient jealousy of the priests had by no
means died out. In Chronicles, at any rate, there is no question of
priests interfering with the king’s secular administration. They are not
even mentioned as obtaining oracles for David as Abiathar did before his
accession.(186) This was doubtless implied in the original account of the
Philistine raids in chap. xiv., but the chronicler may not have understood
that “inquiring of God” meant obtaining an oracle from the priests.

The king is equally supreme also in ecclesiastical affairs; we might even
say that the civil authorities generally shared this supremacy. Somewhat
after the fashion of Cromwell and his major-generals, David utilised “the
captains of the host” as a kind of ministry of public worship; they joined
with him in organising the orchestra and choir for the services of the
sanctuary(187): probably Napoleon and his marshals would have had no
hesitation in selecting anthems for Notre Dame if the idea had occurred to
them. David also consulted his captains,(188) and not the priests, about
bringing the Ark to Jerusalem. When he gathered the great assembly to make
his final arrangements for the building of the Temple, the princes and
captains, the rulers and mighty men, are mentioned, but no priests.(189)
And, last, all the congregation apparently anoint(190) Zadok to be priest.
The chronicler was evidently a pronounced Erastian.(191) David is no mere
nominal head of the Church; he takes the initiative in all important
matters, and receives the Divine commands either directly or through his
prophets Nathan and Gad. Now these prophets are not ecclesiastical
authorities; they have nothing to do with the priesthood, and do not
correspond to the officials of an organised Church. They are rather the
domestic chaplains or confessors of the king, differing from modern
chaplains and confessors in having no ecclesiastical superiors. They were
not responsible to the bishop of any diocese or the general of any order;
they did not manipulate the royal conscience in the interests of any party
in the Church; they served God and the king, and had no other masters.
They did not beard David before his people, as Ambrose confronted
Theodosius or as Chrysostom rated Eudoxia; they delivered their message to
David in private, and on occasion he communicated it to the people.(192)
The king’s spiritual dignity is rather enhanced than otherwise by this
reception of prophetic messages specially delivered to himself. There is
another aspect of the royal supremacy in religion. In this particular
instance its object is largely the exaltation of David; to arrange for
public worship is the most honourable function of the ideal king. At the
same time the care of the sanctuary is his most sacred duty, and is
assigned to him that it may be punctually and worthily discharged. State
establishment of the Church is combined with a very thorough control of
the Church by the state.

We see then that the monarchy rested on Divine and national election, and
was guided by the will of God and of the people. Indeed, in bringing up
the Ark(193) the consent of the people is the only recorded indication of
the will of God. “Vox populi vox Dei.” The king and his government are
supreme alike over the state and the sanctuary, and are entrusted with the
charge of providing for public worship. Let us try to express the modern
equivalents of these principles. Civil government is of Divine origin, and
should obtain the consent of the people; it should be carried on according
to the will of God, freely accepted by the nation. The civil authority is
supreme both in Church and state, and is responsible for the maintenance
of public worship.

One at least of these principles is so widely accepted that it is quite
independent of any Scriptural sanction from Chronicles. The consent of the
people has long been accepted as an essential condition of any stable
government. The sanctity of civil government and the sacredness of its
responsibilities are coming to be recognised, at present perhaps rather in
theory than in practice. We have not yet fully realised how the truth
underlying the doctrine of the Divine right of kings applies to modern
conditions. Formerly the king was the representative of the state, or even
the state itself; that is to say, the king directly or indirectly
maintained social order, and provided for the security of life and
property. The Divine appointment and authority of the king expressed the
sanctity of law and order as the essential conditions of moral and
spiritual progress. The king is no longer the state. His Divine right,
however, belongs to him, not as a person or as a member of a family, but
as the embodiment of the state, the champion of social order against
anarchy. The “Divinity that doth hedge a king” is now shared by the
sovereign with all the various departments of government. The state—that
is to say, the community organised for the common good and for mutual
help—is now to be recognised as of Divine appointment and as wielding a
Divine authority. “The Lord has turned the kingdom to” the people.

This revolution is so tremendous that it would not be safe to apply to the
modern state the remaining principles of the chronicler. Before we could
do so we should need to enter into a discussion which would be out of
place here, even if we had space for it.

In one point the new democracies agree with the chronicler: they are not
inclined to submit secular affairs to the domination of ecclesiastical
officials.

The questions of the supremacy of the state over the Church and of the
state establishment of the Church involve larger and more complicated
issues than existed in the mind or experience of the chronicler. But his
picture of the ideal king suggests one idea that is in harmony with some
modern aspirations. In Chronicles the king, as the representative of the
state, is the special agent in providing for the highest spiritual needs
of the people. May we venture to hope that out of the moral consciousness
of a nation united in mutual sympathy and service there may arise a new
enthusiasm to obey and worship God? Human cruelty is the greatest
stumbling-block to belief and fellowship; when the state has somewhat
mitigated the misery of “man’s inhumanity to man,” faith in God will be
easier.




Chapter V. Solomon.


The chronicler’s history of Solomon is constructed on the same principles
as that of David, and for similar reasons. The builder of the first Temple
commanded the grateful reverence of a community whose national and
religious life centred in the second Temple. While the Davidic king became
the symbol of the hope of Israel, the Jews could not forget that this
symbol derived much of its significance from the widespread dominion and
royal magnificence of Solomon. The chronicler, indeed, attributes great
splendour to the court of David, and ascribes to him a lion’s share in the
Temple itself. He provided his successor with treasure and materials and
even the complete plans, so that on the principle, “Qui facit per alium,
facit per se,” David might have been credited with the actual building.
Solomon was almost in the position of a modern engineer who puts together
a steamer that has been built in sections. But, with all these
limitations, the clear and obvious fact remained that Solomon actually
built and dedicated the Temple. Moreover, the memory of his wealth and
grandeur kept a firm hold on the popular imagination; and these
conspicuous blessings were received as certain tokens of the favour of
Jehovah.

Solomon’s fame, however, was threefold: he was not only the Divinely
appointed builder of the Temple and, by the same Divine grace, the richest
and most powerful king of Israel: he had also received from Jehovah the
gift of “wisdom and knowledge.” In his royal splendour and his sacred
buildings he only differed in degree from other kings; but in his wisdom
he stood alone, not only without equal, but almost without competitor.
Herein he was under no obligation to his father, and the glory of Solomon
could not be diminished by representing that he had been anticipated by
David. Hence the name of Solomon came to symbolise Hebrew learning and
philosophy.

In religious significance, however, Solomon cannot rank with David. The
dynasty of Judah could have only one representative, and the founder and
eponym of the royal house was the most important figure for the subsequent
theology. The interest that later generations felt in Solomon lay apart
from the main line of Jewish orthodoxy, and he is never mentioned by the
prophets.(194)

Moreover, the darker aspects of Solomon’s reign made more impression upon
succeeding generations than even David’s sins and misfortunes. Occasional
lapses into vice and cruelty might be forgiven or even forgotten; but the
systematic oppression of Solomon rankled for long generations in the
hearts of the people, and the prophets always remembered his wanton
idolatry. His memory was further discredited by the disasters which marked
the close of his own reign and the beginning of Rehoboam’s. Centuries
later these feelings still prevailed. The prophets who adapted the Mosaic
law for the closing period of the monarchy exhort the king to take warning
by Solomon, and to multiply neither horses, nor wives, nor gold and
silver.(195)

But as time went on Judah fell into growing poverty and distress, which
came to a head in the Captivity, and were renewed with the Restoration.
The Jews were willing to forget Solomon’s faults in order that they might
indulge in fond recollections of the material prosperity of his reign.
Their experience of the culture of Babylon led them to feel greater
interest and pride in his wisdom, and the figure of Solomon began to
assume a mysterious grandeur, which has since become the nucleus for
Jewish and Mohammedan legends. The chief monument of his fame in Jewish
literature is the book of Proverbs, but his growing reputation is shown by
the numerous Biblical and apocryphal works ascribed to him. His name was
no doubt attached to Canticles because of a feature in his character which
the chronicler ignores. His supposed authorship of Ecclesiastes and of the
Wisdom of Solomon testifies to the fame of his wisdom, while the titles of
the “Psalms of Solomon” and even of some canonical psalms credit him with
spiritual feeling and poetic power.(196)

When the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach proposes to “praise famous
men,” it dwells upon Solomon’s temple and his wealth, and especially upon
his wisdom; but it does not forget his failings.(197) Josephus celebrates
his glory at great length. The New Testament has comparatively few notices
of Solomon; but these include references to his wisdom,(198) his
splendour,(199) and his temple.(200) The Koran, however, far surpasses the
New Testament in its interest in Solomon; and his name and his seal play a
leading part in Jewish and Arabian magic. The bulk of this literature is
later than the chronicler, but the renewed interest in the glory of
Solomon must have begun before his time. Perhaps, by connecting the
building of the Temple as far as possible with David, the chronicler marks
his sense of Solomon’s unworthiness. On the other hand, there were many
reasons why he should welcome the aid of popular sentiment to enable him
to include Solomon among the ideal Hebrew kings. After all, Solomon had
built and dedicated the Temple; he was the “pious founder,” and the
beneficiaries of the foundation would wish to make the most of his piety.
“Jehovah” had “magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel,
and bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on any king
before him in Israel.”(201) “King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the
earth in riches and wisdom; and all the kings of the earth sought the
presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his
heart.”(202) The chronicler would naturally wish to set forth the better
side of Solomon’s character as an ideal of royal wisdom and splendour,
devoted to the service of the sanctuary. Let us briefly compare Chronicles
and Kings to see how he accomplished his purpose.

The structure of the narrative in Kings rendered the task comparatively
easy: it could be accomplished by removing the opening and closing
sections and making a few minor changes in the intermediate portion. The
opening section is the sequel to the conclusion of David’s reign; the
chronicler omitted this conclusion, and therefore also its sequel. But the
contents of this section were objectionable in themselves. Solomon’s
admirers willingly forget that his reign was inaugurated by the execution
of Shimei, of his brother Adonijah, and of his father’s faithful minister
Joab, and by the deposition of the high-priest Abiathar. The chronicler
narrates with evident approval the strong measures of Ezra and Nehemiah
against foreign marriages, and he is therefore not anxious to remind his
readers that Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter. He does not, however,
carry out his plan consistently. Elsewhere he wishes to emphasise the
sanctity of the Ark and tells us that “Solomon brought up the daughter of
Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he had built for her,
for he said, My wife shall not dwell in the house of David, king of
Israel, because the places are holy whereunto the ark of the Lord hath
come.”(203)

In Kings the history of Solomon closes with a long account of his numerous
wives and concubines, his idolatry and consequent misfortunes. All this is
omitted by the chronicler; but later on, with his usual inconsistency, he
allows Nehemiah to point the moral of a tale he has left untold: “Did not
Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things?... Even him did strange
women cause to sin.”(204) In the intervening section he omits the famous
judgment of Solomon, probably on account of the character of the women
concerned. He introduces sundry changes which naturally follow from his
belief that the Levitical law was then in force.(205) His feeling for the
dignity of the chosen people and their king comes out rather curiously in
two minor alterations. Both authorities agree in telling us that Solomon
had recourse to forced labour for his building operations; in fact, after
the usual Eastern fashion from the Pyramids down to the Suez Canal,
Solomon’s temple and palaces were built by the _corvée_. According to the
oldest narrative, he “raised a levy out of all Israel.”(206) This suggests
that forced labour was exacted from the Israelites themselves, and it
would help to account for Jeroboam’s successful rebellion. The chronicler
omits this statement as open to an interpretation derogatory to the
dignity of the chosen people, and not only inserts a later explanation
which he found in the book of Kings, but also another express statement
that Solomon raised his levy of the “strangers that were in the land of
Israel.”(207) These statements may have been partly suggested by the
existence of a class of Temple slaves called Solomon’s servants.

The other instance relates to Solomon’s alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre.
In the book of Kings we are told that “Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in
the land of Galilee.”(208) There were indeed redeeming features connected
with the transaction; the cities were not a very valuable possession for
Hiram: “they pleased him not”; yet he “sent to the King six score talents
of gold.” However, it seemed incredible to the chronicler that the most
powerful and wealthy of the kings of Israel should either cede or sell any
portion of Jehovah’s inheritance. He emends the text of his authority so
as to convert it into a casual reference to certain cities which Hiram had
given to Solomon.(209)

We will now reproduce the story of Solomon as given by the chronicler.
Solomon was the youngest of four sons born to David at Jerusalem by
Bath-shua, the daughter of Ammiel. Besides these three brothers, he had at
least six other elder brothers. As in the cases of Isaac, Jacob, Judah,
and David himself, the birthright fell to a younger son. In the prophetic
utterance which foretold his birth, he was designated to succeed to his
father’s throne and to build the Temple. At the great assembly which
closed his father’s reign he received instructions as to the plans and
services of the Temple,(210) and was exhorted to discharge his duties
faithfully. He was declared king according to the Divine choice, freely
accepted by David and ratified by popular acclamation. At David’s death no
one disputed his succession to the throne: “All Israel obeyed him; and all
the princes and the mighty men and all the sons likewise of King David
submitted themselves unto Solomon the king.”(211)

His first act after his accession was to sacrifice before the brazen altar
of the ancient Tabernacle at Gibeon. That night God appeared unto him “and
said unto him, Ask what I shall give thee.” Solomon chose wisdom and
knowledge to qualify him for the arduous task of government. Having thus
“sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” all other
things—“riches, wealth, and honour”—were added unto him.(212)

He returned to Jerusalem, gathered a great array of chariots and horses by
means of traffic with Egypt, and accumulated great wealth, so that silver,
and gold, and cedars became abundant at Jerusalem.(213)

He next proceeded with the building of the Temple, collected workmen,
obtained timber from Lebanon and an artificer from Tyre. The Temple was
duly erected and dedicated, the king taking the chief and most conspicuous
part in all the proceedings. Special reference, however, is made to the
presence of the priests and Levites at the dedication. On this occasion
the ministry of the sanctuary was not confined to the course whose turn it
was to officiate, but “all the priests that were present had sanctified
themselves and did not keep their courses; also the Levites, which were
the singers, all of them, even Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and
their brethren, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, and psalteries, and
harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them a hundred and
twenty priests sounding with trumpets.”(214)

Solomon’s dedication prayer concludes with special petitions for the
priests, the saints, and the king: “Now therefore arise, O Jehovah Elohim,
into Thy resting-place, Thou and the ark of Thy strength; let Thy priests,
O Jehovah Elohim, be clothed with salvation, and let Thy saints rejoice in
goodness. O Jehovah Elohim, turn not away the face of Thine anointed;
remember the mercies of David Thy servant.”(215)

When David sacrificed at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, the
place had been indicated as the site of the future Temple by the descent
of fire from heaven; and now, in token that the mercy shown to David
should be continued to Solomon, the fire again fell from heaven, and
consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of Jehovah
“filled the house of Jehovah,”(216) as it had done earlier in the day,
when the Ark was brought into the Temple. Solomon concluded the opening
ceremonies by a great festival: for eight days the Feast of Tabernacles
was observed according to the Levitical law, and seven days more were
specially devoted to a dedication feast.(217)

Afterwards Jehovah appeared again to Solomon, as He had before at Gibeon,
and told him that this prayer was accepted. Taking up the several
petitions that the king had offered, He promised, “If I shut up heaven
that there be no rain, or if I send pestilence among My people; if My
people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray,
and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from
heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Now Mine
eyes shall be open, and Mine ears attent, unto the prayer that is made in
this place.” Thus Jehovah, in His gracious condescension, adopts Solomon’s
own words(218) to express His answer to the prayer. He allows Solomon to
dictate the terms of the agreement, and merely appends His signature and
seal.

Besides the Temple, Solomon built palaces for himself and his wife, and
fortified many cities, among the rest Hamath-zobah, formerly allied to
David.(219) He also organised the people for civil and military purposes.

As far as the account of his reign is concerned, the Solomon of Chronicles
appears as “the husband of one wife”; and that wife is the daughter of
Pharaoh. A second, however, is mentioned later on as the mother of
Rehoboam; she too was a “strange woman,” an Ammonitess, Naamah by name.

Meanwhile Solomon was careful to maintain all the sacrifices and festivals
ordained in the Levitical law, and all the musical and other arrangements
for the sanctuary commanded by David, the man of God.(220)

We read next of his commerce by sea and land, his great wealth and wisdom,
and the romantic visit of the queen of Sheba.(221)

And so the story of Solomon closes with this picture of royal state,—


            “The wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
    Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
    Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.”


Wealth was combined with imperial power and Divine wisdom. Here, as in the
case of Plato’s own pupils Dionysius and Dion of Syracuse, Plato’s dream
came true; the prince was a philosopher, and the philosopher a prince.

At first sight it seems as if this marriage of authority and wisdom had
happier issue at Jerusalem than at Syracuse. Solomon’s history closes as
brilliantly as David’s, and Solomon was subject to no Satanic possession
and brought no pestilence upon Israel. But testimonials are chiefly
significant in what they omit; and when we compare the conclusions of the
histories of David and Solomon, we note suggestive differences.

Solomon’s life does not close with any scene in which his people and his
heir assemble to do him honour and to receive his last injunctions. There
are no “last words” of the wise king; and it is not said of him that “he
died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour.” “Solomon slept
with his fathers, and he was buried in the city of David his father; and
Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead”(222): that is all. When the
chronicler, the professed panegyrist of the house of David, brings his
narrative of this great reign to so lame and impotent a conclusion, he
really implies as severe a condemnation upon Solomon as the book of Kings
does by its narrative of his sins.

Thus the Solomon of Chronicles shows the same piety and devotion to the
Temple and its ritual which were shown by his father. His prayer at the
dedication of the Temple is parallel to similar utterances of David.
Instead of being a general and a soldier, he is a scholar and a
philosopher. He succeeded to the administrative abilities of his father;
and his prayer displays a deep interest in the welfare of his subjects.
His record—in Chronicles—is even more faultless than that of David. And
yet the careful student with nothing but Chronicles, even without Ezra and
Nehemiah, might somehow get the impression that the story of Solomon, like
that of Cambuscan, had been “left half told.” In addition to the points
suggested by a comparison with the history of David, there is a certain
abruptness about its conclusion. The last fact noted of Solomon, before
the formal statistics about “the rest of his acts” and the years of his
reign, is that horses were brought for him “out of Egypt and out of all
lands.” Elsewhere the chronicler’s use of his materials shows a feeling
for dramatic effect. We should not have expected him to close the history
of a great reign by a reference to the king’s trade in horses.(223)

Perhaps we are apt to read into Chronicles what we know from the book of
Kings; yet surely this abrupt conclusion would have raised a suspicion
that there were omissions, that facts had been suppressed because they
could not bear the light. Upon the splendid figure of the great king, with
his wealth and wisdom, his piety and devotion, rests the vague shadow of
unnamed sins and unrecorded misfortunes. A suggestion of unhallowed
mystery attaches itself to the name of the builder of the Temple, and
Solomon is already on the way to become the Master of the Genii and the
chief of magicians.(224)




Chapter VI. Solomon (continued).


When we turn to consider the spiritual significance of this ideal picture
of the history and character of Solomon, we are confronted by a difficulty
that attends the exposition of any ideal history. An author’s ideal of
kingship in the early stages of literature is usually as much one and
indivisible as his ideal of priesthood, of the office of the prophet, and
of the wicked king. His authorities may record different incidents in
connection with each individual; but he emphasises those which correspond
with his ideal, or even anticipates the higher criticism by constructing
incidents which seem required by the character and circumstances of his
heroes. On the other hand, where the priest, or the prophet, or the king
departs from the ideal, the incidents are minimised or passed over in
silence. There will still be a certain variety because different
individuals may present different elements of the ideal, and the
chronicler does not insist on each of his good kings possessing all the
characteristics of royal perfection. Still the tendency of the process is
to make all the good kings alike. It would be monotonous to take each of
them separately and deduce the lessons taught by their virtues, because
the chronicler’s intention is that they shall all teach the same lessons
by the same kind of behaviour described from the same point of view. David
has a unique position, and has to be taken by himself; but in considering
the features that must be added to the picture of David in order to
complete the picture of the good king, it is convenient to group Solomon
with the reforming kings of Judah. We shall therefore defer for more
consecutive treatment the chronicler’s account of their general characters
and careers. Here we shall merely gather up the suggestions of the
different narratives as to the chronicler’s ideal Hebrew king.

The leading points have already been indicated from the chronicler’s
history of David. The first and most indispensable feature is devotion to
the temple at Jerusalem and the ritual of the Pentateuch. This has been
abundantly illustrated from the account of Solomon. Taking the reforming
kings in their order:—

Asa removed the high places which were rivals of the Temple,(225) renewed
the altar of Jehovah, gathered the people together for a great
sacrifice,(226) and made munificent donations to the Temple treasury.(227)

Similarly Jehoshaphat took away the high places,(228) and sent out a
commission to teach the Law.(229)

Joash repaired the Temple(230); but, curiously enough, though Jehoram had
restored the high places(231) and Joash was acting under the direction of
the high-priest Jehoiada, it is not stated that the high places were done
away with. This is one of the chronicler’s rather numerous oversights.
Perhaps, however, he expected that so obvious a reform would be taken for
granted.

Amaziah was careful to observe “the law in the book of Moses” that “the
children should not die for the fathers,”(232) but Amaziah soon turned
away from following Jehovah. This is perhaps the reason why in his case
also nothing is said about doing away with the high places.

Hezekiah had a special opportunity of showing his devotion to the Temple
and the Law. The Temple had been polluted and closed by Ahaz, and its
services discontinued. Hezekiah purified the Temple, reinstated the
priests and Levites, and renewed the services; he made arrangements for
the payment of the Temple revenues according to the provisions of the
Levitical law, and took away the high places. He also held a reopening
festival and a passover with numerous sacrifices.(233)

Manasseh’s repentance is indicated by the restoration of the Temple
ritual.(234)

Josiah took away the high places, repaired the Temple, made the people
enter into a covenant to observe the rediscovered Law, and, like Hezekiah,
held a great passover.(235)

The reforming kings, like David and Solomon, are specially interested in
the music of the Temple and in all the arrangements that have to do with
the porters and doorkeepers and other classes of Levites. Their enthusiasm
for the exclusive rights of the one Temple symbolises their loyalty to the
one God, Jehovah, and their hatred of idolatry.

Zeal for Jehovah and His temple is still combined with uncompromising
assertion of the royal supremacy in matters of religion. The king, and not
the priest, is the highest spiritual authority in the nation. Solomon,
Hezekiah, and Josiah control the arrangements for public worship as
completely as Moses or David. Solomon receives Divine communications
without the intervention of either priest or prophet; he himself offers
the great dedication prayer, and when he makes an end of praying, fire
comes down from heaven. Under Hezekiah the civil authorities decide when
the passover shall be observed: “For the king had taken counsel, and his
princes, and all the congregation in Jerusalem, to keep the passover in
the second month.”(236) The great reforms of Josiah are throughout
initiated and controlled by the king. He himself goes up to the Temple and
reads in the ears of the people all the words of the book of the covenant
that was found in the house of Jehovah. The chronicler still adheres to
the primitive idea of the theocracy, according to which the chief, or
judge, or king is the representative of Jehovah.

The title to the crown rests throughout on the grace of God and the will
of the people. In Judah, however, the principle of hereditary succession
prevails throughout. Athaliah is not really an exception: she reigned as
the widow of a Davidic king. The double election of David by Jehovah and
by Israel carried with it the election of his dynasty. The permanent rule
of the house of David was secured by the Divine promise to its founder.
Yet the title is not allowed to rest on mere hereditary right. Divine
choice and popular recognition are recorded in the case of Solomon and
other kings. “All Israel came to Shechem to make Rehoboam king,” and yet
revolted from him when he refused to accept their conditions; but the
obstinacy which caused the disruption “was brought about of God, that
Jehovah might establish His word which He spake by the hand of Ahijah the
Shilonite.”

Ahaziah, Joash, Uzziah, Josiah, Jehoahaz, were all set upon the throne by
the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.(237) After Solomon the Divine
appointment of kings is not expressly mentioned; Jehovah’s control over
the tenure of the throne is chiefly shown by the removal of unworthy
occupants.

It is interesting to note that the chronicler does not hesitate to record
that of the last three sovereigns of Judah two were appointed by foreign
kings: Jehoiakim was the nominee of Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt; and the
last king of all, Zedekiah, was appointed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon. In like manner, the Herods, the last rulers of the restored
kingdom of Judah, were the nominees of the Roman emperors. Such
nominations forcibly illustrate the degradations and ruin of the
theocratic monarchy. But yet, according to the teaching of the prophets,
Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar were tools in the hand of Jehovah; and their
nomination was still an indirect Divine appointment. In the chronicler’s
time, however, Judah was thoroughly accustomed to receive her governors
from a Persian or Greek king; and Jewish readers would not be scandalised
by a similar state of affairs in the closing years of the earlier kingdom.

Thus the reforming kings illustrate the ideal kingship set forth in the
history of David and Solomon: the royal authority originates in, and is
controlled by, the will of God and the consent of the people; the king’s
highest duty is the maintenance of the worship of Jehovah; but the king
and people are supreme both in Church and state.

The personal character of the good kings is also very similar to that of
David and Solomon. Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah are men of spiritual
feeling as well as careful observers of correct ritual. None of the good
kings, with the exception of Joash and Josiah, are unsuccessful in war;
and good reasons are given for the exceptions. They all display
administrative ability by their buildings, the organisation of the Temple
services and the army, and the arrangements for the collection of the
revenue, especially the dues of the priests and Levites.

There is nothing, however, to indicate that the personal charm of David’s
character was inherited by his descendants; but when biography is made
merely a means of edification, it often loses those touches of nature
which make the whole world kin, and are capable of exciting either
admiration or disgust.

The later narrative affords another illustration of the absence of any
sentiment of humanity towards enemies. As in the case of David, the
chronicler records the cruelty of a good king as if it were quite
consistent with loyalty to Jehovah. Before he turned away from following
Jehovah, Amariah defeated the Edomites and smote ten thousand of them.
Others were treated like some of the Malagasy martyrs: “And other ten
thousand did the children of Judah carry away alive, and brought them unto
the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock, that
they all were broken in pieces.”(238) In this case, however, the
chronicler is not simply reproducing Kings: he has taken the trouble to
supplement his main authority from some other source, probably local
tradition. His insertion of this verse is another testimony to the undying
hatred of Israel for Edom.

But in one respect the reforming kings are sharply distinguished from
David and Solomon. The record of their lives is by no means blameless, and
their sins are visited by condign chastisement. They all, with the single
exception of Jotham, come to a bad end. Asa consulted physicians, and was
punished by being allowed to die of a painful disease.(239) The last event
of Jehoshaphat’s life was the ruin of the navy, which he had built in
unholy alliance with Ahaziah, king of Israel, who did very wickedly.(240)
Joash murdered the prophet Zechariah, the son of the high-priest Jehoiada;
his great host was routed by a small company of Syrians, and Joash himself
was assassinated by his servants.(241) Amaziah turned away from following
Jehovah, and “brought the gods of the children of Seir, and set them up to
be his gods, and bowed down himself before them, and burned incense unto
them.” He was accordingly defeated by Joash, king of Israel, and
assassinated by his own people.(242) Uzziah insisted on exercising the
priestly function of burning incense to Jehovah, and so died a leper.(243)
“Even Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him,
for his heart was lifted up in the business of ambassadors of the princes
of Babylon; therefore there was wrath upon him and upon Judah and
Jerusalem. Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his
heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of
Jehovah came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah.” But yet the last days
of Hezekiah were clouded by the thought that he was leaving the punishment
of his sin as a legacy to Judah and the house of David.(244) Josiah
refused to heed the warning sent to him by God through the king of Egypt:
“He hearkened not unto the words of Neco from the mouth of God, and came
to fight in the valley of Megiddo”; and so Josiah died like Ahab: he was
wounded by the archers, carried out of the battle in his chariot, and died
at Jerusalem.(245)

The melancholy record of the misfortunes of the good kings in their
closing years is also found in the book of Kings. There too Asa in his old
age was diseased in his feet, Jehoshaphat’s ships were wrecked, Joash and
Amaziah were assassinated, Uzziah became a leper, Hezekiah was rebuked for
his pride, and Josiah slain at Megiddo. But, except in the case of
Hezekiah, the book of Kings says nothing about the sins which, according
to Chronicles, occasioned these sufferings and catastrophes. The narrative
in the book of Kings carries upon the face of it the lesson that piety is
not usually rewarded with unbroken prosperity, and that a pious career
does not necessarily ensure a happy deathbed. The significance of the
chronicler’s additions will be considered elsewhere; what concerns us here
is his departure from the principles he observed in dealing with the lives
of David and Solomon. They also sinned and suffered; but the chronicler
omits their sins and sufferings, especially in the case of Solomon. Why
does he pursue an opposite course with other good kings and blacken their
characters by perpetuating the memory of sins not mentioned in the book of
Kings, instead of confining his record to the happier incidents of their
career? Many considerations may have influenced him. The violent deaths of
Joash, Amaziah, and Josiah could neither be ignored nor explained away.
Hezekiah’s sin and repentance are closely parallel to David’s in the
matter of the census. Although Asa’s disease, Jehoshaphat’s alliance with
Israel, and Uzziah’s leprosy might easily have been omitted, yet, if some
reformers must be allowed to remain imperfect, there was no imperative
necessity to ignore the infirmities of the rest. The great advantage of
the course pursued by the chronicler consisted in bringing out a clearly
defined contrast between David and Solomon on the one hand and the
reforming kings on the other. The piety of the latter is conformed to the
chronicler’s ideal; but the glory and devotion of the former are enhanced
by the crimes and humiliation of the best of their successors. Hezekiah,
doubtless, is not more culpable than David, but David’s pride was the
first of a series of events which terminated in the building of the
Temple; while the uplifting of Hezekiah’s heart was a precursor of its
destruction. Besides, Hezekiah ought to have prompted by David’s
experience.

By developing this contrast, the chronicler renders the position of David
and Solomon even more unique, illustrious, and full of religious
significance.

Thus as illustrations of ideal kingship the accounts of the good kings of
Judah are altogether subordinate to the history of David and Solomon.
While these kings of Judah remain loyal to Jehovah, they further
illustrate the virtues of their great predecessors by showing how these
virtues might have been exercised under different circumstances: how David
would have dealt with an Ethiopian invasion and what Solomon would have
done if he had found the Temple desecrated and its services stopped. But
no essential feature is added to the earlier pictures.

The lapses of kings who began to walk in the law of the Lord and then fell
away serve as foils to the undimmed glory of David and Solomon. Abrupt
transitions within the limits of the individual lives of Asa, Joash, and
Amaziah bring out the contrast between piety and apostacy with startling,
dramatic effect.

We return from this brief survey to consider the significance of the life
of Solomon according to Chronicles. Its relation to the life of David is
summed up in the name Solomon, the Prince of peace. David is the ideal
king, winning by force of arms for Israel empire and victory, security at
home and tribute from abroad. Utterly subdued by his prowess, the natural
enemies of Israel no longer venture to disturb her tranquillity. His
successor inherits wide dominion, immense wealth, and assured peace.
Solomon, the Prince of peace, is the ideal king, administering a great
inheritance for the glory of Jehovah and His temple. His history in
Chronicles is one of unbroken calm. He has a great army and many strong
fortresses, but he never has occasion to use them. He implores Jehovah to
be merciful to Israel when they suffer from the horrors of war; but he is
interceding, not for his own subjects, but for future generations. In his
time—


    “No war or battle’s sound
    Was heard the world around:
        The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
    The hookèd chariot stood
    Unstained with hostile blood;
        The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng.”(246)


Perhaps, to use a paradox, the greatest proof of Solomon’s wisdom was that
he asked for wisdom. He realised at the outset of his career that a wide
dominion is more easily won than governed, that to use great wealth
honourably requires more skill and character than are needed to amass it.
To-day the world can boast half a dozen empires surpassing not merely
Israel, but even Rome, in extent of dominion; the aggregate wealth of the
world is far beyond the wildest dreams of the chronicler: but still the
people perish for lack of knowledge. The physical and moral foulness of
modern cities taints all the culture and tarnishes all the splendour of
our civilisation; classes and trades, employers and employed, maim and
crush one another in blind struggles to work out a selfish salvation;
newly devised organisations move their unwieldy masses—


    “... like dragons of the prime
    That tare each other.”(247)


They have a giant’s strength, and use it like a giant. Knowledge comes,
but wisdom lingers; and the world waits for the reign of the Prince of
peace who is not only the wise king, but the incarnate wisdom of God.

Thus one striking suggestion of the chronicler’s history of Solomon is the
special need of wisdom and Divine guidance for the administration of a
great and prosperous empire.

Too much stress, however, must not be laid on the twofold personality of
the ideal king. This feature is adopted from the history, and does not
express any opinion of the chronicler that the characteristic gifts of
David and Solomon could not be combined in a single individual. Many great
generals have also been successful administrators. Before Julius Cæsar was
assassinated he had already shown his capacity to restore order and
tranquillity to the Roman world; Alexander’s plans for the civil
government of his conquests were as far-reaching as his warlike ambition;
Diocletian reorganised the empire which his sword had re-established;
Cromwell’s schemes of reform showed an almost prophetic insight into the
future needs of the English people; the glory of Napoleon’s victories is a
doubtful legacy to France compared with the solid benefits of his internal
reforms.

But even these instances, which illustrate the union of military genius
and administrative ability, remind us that the assignment of success in
war to one king and a reign of peace to the next is, after all, typical.
The limits of human life narrow its possibilities. Cæsar’s work had to be
completed by Augustus; the great schemes of Alexander and Cromwell fell to
the ground because no one arose to play Solomon to their David.

The chronicler has specially emphasised the indebtedness of Solomon to
David. According to his narrative, the great achievement of Solomon’s
reign, the building of the Temple, has been rendered possible by David’s
preparations. Quite apart from plans and materials, the chronicler’s view
of the credit due to David in this matter is only a reasonable recognition
of service rendered to the religion of Israel. Whoever provided the timber
and stone, the silver and gold, for the Temple, David won for Jehovah the
land and the city that were the outer courts of the sanctuary, and roused
the national spirit that gave to Zion its most solemn consecration.
Solomon’s temple was alike the symbol of David’s achievements and the
coping-stone of his work.

By compelling our attention to the dependence of the Prince of Peace upon
the man who “had shed much blood,” the chronicler admonishes us against
forgetting the price that has been paid for liberty and culture. The
splendid courtiers whose “apparel” specially pleased the feminine tastes
of the queen of Sheba might feel all the contempt of the superior person
for David’s war-worn veterans. The latter probably were more at home in
the “store cities” than at Jerusalem. But without the blood and toil of
these rough soldiers Solomon would have had no opportunity to exchange
riddles with his fair visitor and to dazzle her admiring eyes with the
glories of his temple and palaces.

The blessings of peace are not likely to be preserved unless men still
appreciate and cherish the stern virtues that flourish in troubled times.
If our own times become troubled, and their serenity be invaded by fierce
conflict, it will be ours to remember that the rugged life of “the hold in
the wilderness” and the struggles with the Philistines may enable a later
generation to build its temple to the Lord and to learn the answers to
“hard questions.”(248) Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon, remind us
again how the Divine work is handed on from generation to generation:
Moses leads Israel through the wilderness, but Joshua brings them into the
Land of Promise; David collects the materials, but Solomon builds the
Temple. The settlement in Palestine and the building of the Temple were
only episodes in the working out of the “one increasing purpose,” but one
leader and one life-time did not suffice for either episode. We grow
impatient of the scale upon which God works: we want it reduced to the
limits of our human faculties and of our earthly lives; yet all history
preaches patience. In our demand for Divine interventions whereby—


                    “... sudden in a minute
    All is accomplished, and the work is done,”


we are very Esaus, eager to sell the birthright of the future for a mess
of pottage to-day.

And the continuity of the Divine purpose is only realised through the
continuity of human effort. We must indeed serve our own generation; but
part of that service consists in providing that the next generation shall
be trained to carry on the work, and that after David shall come
Solomon—the Solomon of Chronicles, and not the Solomon of Kings—and that,
if possible, Solomon shall not be succeeded by Rehoboam. As we attain this
larger outlook, we shall be less tempted to employ doubtful means, which
are supposed to be justified by their end; we shall be less enthusiastic
for processes that bring “quick returns,” but give very “small profits” in
the long run. Christian workers are a little too fond of spiritual
jerry-building, as if sites in the kingdom of heaven were let out on
ninety-nine-year leases; but God builds for eternity, and we are
fellow-workers together with Him.

To complete the chronicler’s picture of the ideal king, we have to add
David’s warlike prowess and Solomon’s wisdom and splendour to the piety
and graces common to both. The result is unique among the many pictures
that have been drawn by historians, philosophers, and poets. It has a
value of its own, because the chronicler’s gifts in the way of history,
philosophy, and poetry were entirely subordinated to his interest in
theology; and most theologians have only been interested in the doctrine
of the king when they could use it to gratify the vanity of a royal
patron.

The full-length portrait in Chronicles contrasts curiously with the little
vignette preserved in the book which bears the name of Solomon. There, in
the oracle which King Lemuel’s mother taught him, the king is simply
admonished to avoid strange women and strong drink, to “judge righteously,
and minister judgment to the poor and needy.”(249)

To pass to more modern theology, the theory of the king that is implied in
Chronicles has much in common with Wyclif’s doctrine of dominion: they
both recognise the sanctity of the royal power and its temporal supremacy,
and they both hold that obedience to God is the condition of the continued
exercise of legitimate rule. But the priest of Lutterworth was less
ecclesiastical and more democratic than our Levite.

A more orthodox authority on the Protestant doctrine of the king would be
the Thirty-nine Articles. These, however, deal with the subject somewhat
slightly. As far as they go, they are in harmony with the chronicler. They
assert the unqualified supremacy of the king, both ecclesiastical and
civil. Even “general councils may not be gathered together without the
commandment and will of princes.”(250) On the other hand, princes are not
to imitate Uzziah in presuming to exercise the priestly function of
offering incense: they are not to minister God’s word or sacraments.

Outside theology the ideal of the king has been stated with greater
fulness and freedom, but not many of the pictures drawn have much in
common with the chronicler’s David and Solomon. Machiavelli’s prince and
Bolingbroke’s patriot king belong to a different world; moreover, their
method is philosophical, and not historical: they state a theory rather
than draw a picture. Tennyson’s Arthur is, what he himself calls him, an
“ideal knight” rather than an ideal king. Perhaps the best parallels to
David are to be found in the Cyrus of the Greek historians and
philosophers and the Alfred of English story. Alfred indeed combines many
of the features both of David and Solomon: he secured English unity, and
was the founder of English culture and literature; he had a keen interest
in ecclesiastical affairs, great gifts of administration, and much
personal attractiveness. Cyrus, again, specially illustrates what we may
call the posthumous fortunes of David: his name stood for the ideal of
kingship with both Greeks and Persians, and in the _Cyropædia_ his life
and character are made the basis of a picture of the ideal king.

Many points are of course common to almost all such pictures; they portray
the king as a capable and benevolent ruler and a man of high personal
character. The distinctive characteristic of Chronicles is the stress laid
on the piety of the king, his care for the honour of God and the spiritual
welfare of his subjects. If the practical influence of this teaching has
not been altogether beneficent, it is because men have too invariably
connected spiritual profit with organisation, and ceremonies, and forms of
words, sound or otherwise.

But to-day the doctrine of the state takes the place of the doctrine of
the king. Instead of Cyropædias we have Utopias. We are asked sometimes to
look back, not to an ideal king, but to an ideal commonwealth, to the age
of the Antonines or to some happy century of English history when we are
told that the human race or the English people were “most happy and
prosperous”; oftener we are invited to contemplate an imaginary future. We
may add to those already made one or two further applications of the
chronicler’s principles to the modern state. His method suggests that the
perfect society will have the virtues of our actual life without its
vices, and that the possibilities of the future are best divined from a
careful study of the past. The devotion of his kings to the Temple
symbolises the truth that the ideal state is impossible without
recognition of a Divine presence and obedience to a Divine will.




Chapter VII. The Wicked Kings. 2 Chron. xxviii., etc.


The type of the wicked king is not worked out with any fulness in
Chronicles. There are wicked kings, but no one is raised to the “bad
eminence” of an evil counterpart to David; there is no anti-David, so to
speak, no prototype of antichrist. The story of Ahaz, for instance, is not
given at the same length and with the same wealth of detail as that of
David. The subject was not so congenial to the kindly heart of the
chronicler. He was not imbued with the unhappy spirit of modern realism,
which loves to dwell on all that is foul and ghastly in life and
character; he lingered affectionately over his heroes, and contented
himself with brief notices of his villains. In so doing he was largely
following his main authority: the books of Samuel and Kings. There too the
stories of David and Solomon, of Elijah and Elisha, are told much more
fully than those of Jeroboam and Ahab.

But the mention of these names reminds us that the chronicler’s limitation
of his subject to the history of Judah excludes much of the material that
might have been drawn from the earlier history for a picture of the wicked
king. If it had been part of the chronicler’s plan to tell the story of
Ahab, he might have been led to develop his material and moralise upon the
king’s career till the narrative assumed proportions that would have
rivalled the history of David. Over against the great scene that closed
David’s life might have been set another summing up in one dramatic moment
the guilt and ruin of Ahab. But these schismatic kings were “alienated
from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of the
promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”(251) The
disobedient sons of the house of David were still children within the
home, who might be rebuked and punished; but the Samaritan kings, as the
chronicler might style them, were outcasts, left to the tender mercies of
the dogs, and sorcerers, and murderers that were without the Holy City,
Cains without any protecting mark upon their forehead.

Hence the wicked kings in Chronicles are of the house of David. Therefore
the chronicler has a certain tenderness for them, partly for the sake of
their great ancestor, partly because they are kings of Judah, partly
because of the sanctity and religious significance of the Messianic
dynasty. These kings are not Esaus, for whom there is no place of
repentance. The chronicler is happy in being able to discover and record
the conversion, as we should term it, of some kings whose reigns began in
rebellion and apostacy. By a curious compensation, the kings who begin
well end badly, and those who begin badly end well; they all tend to about
the same average. We read of Rehoboam(252) that “when he humbled himself
the wrath of the Lord turned from him, that he would not destroy him
altogether; and, moreover, in Judah there were good things found”; the
wickedness of Abijah, which is plainly set forth in the book of
Kings,(253) is ignored in Chronicles; Manasseh “humbled himself greatly
before the God of his fathers,” and turned altogether from the error of
his ways(254); the unfavourable judgment on Jehoahaz recorded in the book
of Kings, “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,
according to all that his fathers had done,”(255) is omitted in
Chronicles.

There remain seven wicked kings of whom nothing but evil is recorded:
Jehoram, Ahaziah, Ahaz, Amon, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Of
these we may take Ahaz as the most typical instance. As in the cases of
David and Solomon, we will first see how the chronicler has dealt with the
material derived from the book of Kings; then we will give his account of
the career of Ahaz; and finally, by a brief comparison of what is told of
Ahaz with the history of the other wicked kings, we will try to construct
the chronicler’s idea of the wicked king and to deduce its lessons.

The importance of the additions made by the chronicler to the history in
the book of Kings will appear later on. In his account of the attack made
upon Ahaz by Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, he
emphasises the incidents most discreditable to Ahaz. The book of Kings
simply states that the two allies “came up to Jerusalem to war; and they
besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him”(256); Chronicles dwells upon
the sufferings and losses inflicted on Judah by this invasion. The book of
Kings might have conveyed the impression that the wicked king had been
allowed to triumph over his enemies; Chronicles guards against this
dangerous error by detailing the disasters that Ahaz brought upon his
country.

The book of Kings also contains an interesting account of alterations made
by Ahaz in the Temple and its furniture. By his orders the high-priest
Urijah made a new brazen altar for the Temple after the pattern of an
altar that Ahaz had seen in Damascus. As Chronicles narrates the closing
of the Temple by Ahaz, it naturally omits these previous alterations.
Moreover, Urijah appears in the book of Isaiah as a friend of the prophet,
and is referred to by him as a “faithful witness.”(257) The chronicler
would not wish to perplex his readers with the problem, How could the
high-priest, whom Isaiah trusted as a faithful witness, become the agent
of a wicked king, and construct an altar for Jehovah after a heathen
pattern?

The chronicler’s story of Ahaz runs thus. This wicked king had been
preceded by three good kings: Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham. Amaziah indeed
had turned away from following Jehovah at the end of his reign, but Uzziah
had been zealous for Jehovah throughout, not wisely, but too well; and
Jotham shares with Solomon the honour of a blameless record. Without
counting Amaziah’s reign, king and people had been loyal to Jehovah for
sixty or seventy years. The court of the good kings would be the centre of
piety and devotion. Ahaz, no doubt, had been carefully trained in
obedience to the law of Jehovah, and had grown up in the atmosphere of
true religion. Possibly he had known his grandfather Uzziah in the days of
his power and glory; but at any rate, while Ahaz was a child, Uzziah was
living as a leper in his “several house,” and Ahaz must have been familiar
with this melancholy warning against presumptuous interference with the
Divine ordinances of worship.

Ahaz was twenty years old when he came to the throne, so that he had time
to profit by a complete education, and should scarcely have found
opportunity to break away from its influence. His mother’s name is not
mentioned, so that we cannot say whether, as may have been the case with
Rehoboam, some Ammonite woman led him astray from the God of his fathers.
As far as we can learn from our author, Ahaz sinned against light and
knowledge; with every opportunity and incentive to keep in the right path,
he yet went astray.

This is a common feature in the careers of the wicked kings. It has often
been remarked that the first great specialist on education failed utterly
in the application of his theories to his own son. Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah,
and Josiah were the most distinguished and the most virtuous of the
reforming kings, yet Jehoshaphat was succeeded by Jehoram, who was almost
as wicked as Ahaz; Hezekiah’s son “Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem to err, so that they did evil more than did the nations whom
the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel”;(258) Josiah’s son and
grandsons “did evil in the sight of the Lord.”(259)

Many reasons may be suggested for this too familiar spectacle: the impious
son of a godly father, the bad successor of a good king. Heirs-apparent
have always been inclined to head an opposition to their fathers’ policy,
and sometimes on their accession they have reversed that policy. When the
father himself has been a zealous reformer, the interests that have been
harassed by reform are eager to encourage his successor in a retrograde
policy; and reforming zeal is often tinged with an inconsiderate harshness
that provokes the opposition of younger and brighter spirits. But, after
all, this atavism in kings is chiefly an illustration of the slow growth
of the higher nature in man. Practically each generation starts afresh
with an unregenerate nature of its own, and often nature is too strong for
education.

Moreover, a young king of Judah was subject to the evil influence of his
northern neighbour. Judah was often politically subservient to Samaria,
and politics and religion have always been very intimately associated. At
the accession of Ahaz the throne of Samaria was filled by Pekah, whose
twenty years’ tenure of authority indicates ability and strength of
character. It is not difficult to understand how Ahaz was led “to walk in
the ways of the kings of Israel” and “to make molten images for the
Baals.”

Nothing is told us of the actual circumstances of these innovations. The
new reign was probably inaugurated by the dismissal of Jotham’s ministers
and the appointment of the personal favourites of the new king. The
restoration of old idolatrous cults would be a natural advertisement of a
new departure in the government. So when the establishment of Christianity
was a novelty in the empire, and men were not assured of its permanence,
Julian’s accession was accompanied by an apostacy to paganism; and later
aspirants to the purple promised to follow his example. But the worship of
Jehovah was not at once suppressed. He was not deposed from His throne as
the Divine King of Judah; He was only called upon to share His royal
authority with the Baals of the neighbouring peoples.

But although the Temple services might still be performed, the king was
mainly interested in introducing and observing a variety of heathen rites.
The priesthood of the Temple saw their exclusive privileges disregarded
and the rival sanctuaries of the high places and the sacred trees taken
under royal patronage. But the king’s apostacy was not confined to the
milder forms of idolatry. His weak mind was irresistibly attracted by the
morbid fascination of the cruel rites of Moloch: “He burnt incense in the
valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, according
to the abomination of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the
children of Israel.”

The king’s devotions to his new gods were rudely interrupted. The insulted
majesty of Jehovah was vindicated by two disastrous invasions. First, Ahaz
was defeated by Rezin, king of Syria, who carried away a great multitude
of captives to Damascus; the next enemy was one of those kings of Israel
in whose idolatrous ways Ahaz had chosen to walk. The delicate flattery
implied by Ahaz becoming Pekah’s proselyte failed to conciliate that
monarch. He too defeated the Jews with great slaughter. Amongst his
warriors was a certain Zichri, whose achievements recalled the prowess of
David’s mighty men: he slew Maaseiah the king’s son and Azrikam, the ruler
of the house, the Lord High Chamberlain, and Elkanah, that was next unto
the king, the Prime Minister. With these notables, there perished in a
single day a hundred and twenty thousand Jews, all of them valiant men.
Their wives and children, to the number of two hundred thousand, were
carried captive to Samaria. All these misfortunes happened to Judah
“because they had forsaken Jehovah, the God of their fathers.”

And yet Jehovah in wrath remembered mercy. The Israelite army approached
Samaria with their endless train of miserable captives, women and
children, ragged and barefoot, some even naked, filthy and footsore with
forced marches, left hungry and thirsty after prisoners’ scanty rations.
Multiply a thousandfold the scenes depicted on Egyptian and Assyrian
monuments, and you have the picture of this great slave caravan. The
captives probably had no reason to fear the barbarities which the
Assyrians loved to inflict upon their prisoners, but yet their prospects
were sufficiently gloomy. Before them lay a life of drudgery and
degradation in Samaria. The more wealthy might hope to be ransomed by
their friends; others, again, might be sold to the Phœnician traders, to
be carried by them to the great slave marts of Nineveh and Babylon or even
oversea to Greece. But in a moment all was changed. “There was a prophet
of Jehovah, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army and said
unto them, Behold, because Jehovah, the God of your fathers, was wroth
with Judah, He hath delivered them into your hand; and ye have slain them
in a rage which hath reached up unto heaven. And now ye purpose to keep
the children of Judah and of Jerusalem for male and female slaves; but are
there not even with you trespasses of your own against Jehovah your God?
Now hear me therefore, and send back the captives, for the fierce wrath of
Jehovah is upon you.”

Meanwhile “the princes and all the congregation of Samaria” were waiting
to welcome their victorious army, possibly in “the void place at the
entering in of the gate of Samaria.” Oded’s words, at any rate, had been
uttered in their presence. The army did not at once respond to the appeal;
the two hundred thousand slaves were the most valuable part of their
spoil, and they were not eager to make so great a sacrifice. But the
princes made Oded’s message their own. Four heads of the children of
Ephraim are mentioned by name as the spokesmen of the “congregation,” the
king being apparently absent on some other warlike expedition. These four
were Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth,
Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai. Possibly among
the children of Ephraim who dwelt in Jerusalem after the Return there were
descendants of these men, from whom the chronicler obtained the
particulars of this incident. The princes “stood up against them that came
from the war,” and forbade their bringing the captives into the city. They
repeated and expanded the words of the prophet: “Ye purpose that which
will bring upon us a trespass against Jehovah, to add unto our sins and to
our trespass, for our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against
Israel.” The army were either convinced by the eloquence or overawed by
the authority of the prophet and the princes: “They left the captives and
the spoil before all the princes and the congregation.” And the four
princes “rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all
that were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them
to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them
upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto
their brethren; then they returned to Samaria.”

Apart from incidental allusions, this is the last reference in Chronicles
to the northern kingdom. The long history of division and hostility closes
with this humane recognition of the brotherhood of Israel and Judah. The
sun, so to speak, did not go down upon their wrath. But the king of Israel
had no personal share in this gracious act. At the first it was Jeroboam
that made Israel to sin; throughout the history the responsibility for the
continued division would specially rest upon the kings, and at the last
there is no sign of Pekah’s repentance and no prospect of his pardon.

The various incidents of the invasions of Rezin and Pekah were alike a
solemn warning and an impressive appeal to the apostate king of Judah. He
had multiplied to himself gods of the nations round about, and yet had
been left without an ally, at the mercy of a hostile confederation,
against whom his new gods either could not or would not defend him. The
wrath of Jehovah had brought upon Ahaz one crushing defeat after another,
and yet the only mitigation of the sufferings of Judah had also been the
work of Jehovah. The returning captives would tell Ahaz and his princes
how in schismatic and idolatrous Samaria a prophet of Jehovah had stood
forth to secure their release and obtain for them permission to return
home. The princes and people of Samaria had hearkened to his message, and
the two hundred thousand captives stood there as the monument of Jehovah’s
compassion and of the obedient piety of Israel. Sin was bound to bring
punishment; and yet Jehovah waited to be gracious. Wherever there was room
for mercy, He would show mercy. His wrath and His compassion had alike
been displayed before Ahaz. Other gods could not protect their worshippers
against Him; He only could deliver and restore His people. He had not even
waited for Ahaz to repent before He had given him proof of His willingness
to forgive.(260)

Such Divine goodness was thrown away upon Ahaz; there was no token of
repentance, no promise of amendment; and so Jehovah sent further judgments
upon the king and his unhappy people. The Edomites came and smote Judah,
and carried away captives; the Philistines also invaded the cities of the
lowland and of the south of Judah, and took Beth-shemesh, Aijalon,
Gederoth, Soco, Timnah, Gimzo, and their dependent villages, and dwelt in
them; and Jehovah brought Judah low because of Ahaz. And the king hardened
his heart yet more against Jehovah, and cast away all restraint, and
trespassed sore against Jehovah. Instead of submitting himself, he sought
the aid of the kings of Assyria, only to receive another proof of the
vanity of all earthly help so long as he remained unreconciled to Heaven.
Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, welcomed this opportunity of
interfering in the affairs of Western Asia, and saw attractive prospects
of levying blackmail impartially on his ally and his enemies. He came unto
Ahaz, “and distressed him, but strengthened him not.” These new troubles
were the occasion of fresh wickedness on the part of the king: to pay the
price of this worse than useless intervention, he took away a portion not
only from his own treasury and from the princes, but also from the
treasury of the Temple, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

Thus betrayed and plundered by his new ally, he trespassed “yet more
against Jehovah, this same king Ahaz.” It is almost incredible that one
man could be guilty of so much sin; the chronicler is anxious that his
readers should appreciate the extraordinary wickedness of this man, this
same king Ahaz. In him the chastening of the Lord yielded no peaceable
fruit of righteousness; he would not see that his misfortunes were sent
from the offended God of Israel. With perverse ingenuity, he found in them
an incentive to yet further wickedness. His pantheon was not large enough.
He had omitted to worship the gods of Damascus. These must be powerful
deities, whom it would be worth while to conciliate, because they had
enabled the kings of Syria to overrun and pillage Judah. Therefore Ahaz
sacrificed to the gods of Syria, that they might help him. “But,” says the
chronicler, “they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.” Still Ahaz went
on consistently with his policy of comprehensive eclecticism. He made
Jerusalem a very Athens for altars, which were set up at every street
corner; he discovered yet other gods whom it might be advisable to adore:
“And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense
unto other gods.”

Hitherto Jehovah had still received some share of the worship of this most
religious king, but apparently Ahaz came to regard Him as the least
powerful of his many supernatural allies. He attributed his misfortunes,
not to the anger, but to the helplessness, of Jehovah. Jehovah was
specially the God of Israel; if disaster after disaster fell upon His
people, He was evidently less potent than Baal, or Moloch, or Rimmon. It
was a useless expense to maintain the worship of so impotent a deity.
Perhaps the apostate king was acting in the blasphemous spirit of the
savage who flogs his idol when his prayers are not answered. Jehovah, he
thought, should be punished for His neglect of the interests of Judah.
“Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God, and cut in pieces
the vessels of the house of God, and shut up the doors of the house of
Jehovah”;(261) he had filled up the measure of his iniquities.

And thus it came to pass that in the Holy City, “which Jehovah had chosen
to cause His name to dwell there,” almost the only deity who was not
worshipped was Jehovah. Ahaz did homage to the gods of all the nations
before whom he had been humiliated; the royal sacrifices smoked upon a
hundred altars, but no sweet savour of burnt offering ascended to Jehovah.
The fragrance of the perpetual incense no longer filled the holy place
morning and evening; the seven lamps of the golden candlestick were put
out, and the Temple was given up to darkness and desolation. Ahaz had
contented himself with stripping the sanctuary of its treasures; but the
building itself, though closed, suffered no serious injury. A stranger
visiting the city, and finding it full of idols, could not fail to notice
the great pile of the Temple and to inquire what image, splendid above all
others, occupied that magnificent shrine. Like Pompey, he would learn with
surprise that it was not the dwelling-place of any image, but the symbol
of an almighty and invisible presence. Even if the stranger were some
Moabite worshipper of Chemosh, he would feel dismay at the wanton
profanity with which Ahaz had abjured the God of his fathers and
desecrated the temple built by his great ancestors. The annals of Egypt
and Babylon told of the misfortunes which had befallen those monarchs who
were unfaithful to their national gods. The pious heathen would anticipate
disaster as the punishment of Ahaz’s apostacy.

Meanwhile the ministers of the Temple shared its ruin and degradation; but
they could feel the assurance that Jehovah would yet recall His people to
their allegiance and manifest Himself once more in the Temple. The house
of Aaron and the tribe of Levi possessed their souls in patience till the
final judgment of Jehovah should fall upon the apostate. They had not long
to wait: after a reign of only sixteen years, Ahaz died at the early age
of thirty-six. We are not told that he died in battle or by the visitation
of God. His health may have been broken by his many misfortunes, or by
vicious practices that would naturally accompany his manifold idolatries;
but in any case his early death would be regarded as a Divine judgment.
The breath was scarcely out of his body before his religious innovations
were swept away by a violent reaction. The people at once passed sentence
of condemnation on his memory: “They brought him not into the sepulchres
of the kings of Israel.”(262) His successor inaugurated his reign by
reopening the Temple, and brought back Judah to the obedience of Jehovah.
The monuments of the impious worship of the wicked king, his multitudinous
idols, and their ritual passed away like an evil dream, like “the track of
a ship in the sea or a bird in the air.”

The leading features of this career are common to most of the wicked kings
and to the evil days of the good kings “Walking in the ways of the kings
of Israel” was the great crime of Jehoshaphat and his successors Jehoram
and Ahaziah. Other kings, like Manasseh, built high places and followed
after the abominations of the heathen whom Jehovah cast out before the
children of Israel. Asa’s lapse into wickedness began by plundering the
Temple treasury to purchase an alliance with a heathen king, the king of
Syria, against whose successor Ahaz in his turn hired the king of Assyria.
Amaziah adopted the gods of Edom, as Ahaz the gods of Syria, but with less
excuse, for Amaziah had conquered Edom. Other crimes are recorded among
the evil doings of the kings: Asa had recourse to physicians, that is,
probably to magic; Jehoram slew his brethren; Joash murdered the son of
his benefactor Jehoiada; but the supreme sin was disloyalty to Jehovah and
the Temple, and of this sin the chronicler’s brief history of Ahaz is the
most striking illustration. Ahaz is the typical apostate: he hardens his
heart alike against the mercy of Jehovah and against His repeated
judgment. He is a very Pharaoh among the kings of Judah. The discipline
that should have led to repentance is continually perverted to be the
occasion of new sin, and at last the apostate dies in his iniquity. The
effect of the picture is heightened by its insistence on this one sin of
apostacy; other sins are illustrated and condemned elsewhere, but here the
chronicler would have us concentrate our attention on the rise, progress,
and ruin of the apostate. Indeed, this one sin implied and involved all
others; the man who suppressed the worship of Jehovah, and revelled in the
obscene superstitions of heathen cults, was obviously capable of any
enormity. The chronicler is not indifferent to morality as compared with
ritual, and he sees in the neglect of Divinely appointed ritual an
indication of a character rotten through and through. In his time neglect
of ritual on the part of the average man or the average king implied
neglect of religion, or rather adherence to an alien and immoral faith.

Thus the supreme sin of the wicked kings naturally contrasts with the
highest virtue of the good kings. The standing of both is determined by
their attitude towards Jehovah. The character of the good kings is
developed in greater detail than that of their wicked brethren; but we
should not misrepresent the chronicler’s views, if we ascribed to the
wicked kings all the vices antithetic to the virtues of his royal ideal.
Nevertheless the picture actually drawn fixes our attention upon their
impious denial of the God of Israel. Much Church history has been written
on the same principle: Constantine is a saint because he established
Christianity; Julian is an incarnation of wickedness because he became an
apostate; we praise the orthodox Theodosius, and blame the Arian Valens.
Protestant historians have canonised Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and have
prefixed an unholy epithet to the name of their kinswoman, while Romanist
writers interchange these verdicts. But underlying even such opposite
judgments there is the same valid principle, the principle that was in the
mind of the chronicler: that the king’s relation to the highest and purest
truth accessible to him, whatever that truth may be, is a just criterion
of his whole character. The historian may err in applying the criterion,
but its general principle is none the less sound.

For the character of the wicked nation we are not left to the general
suggestions that may be derived from the wicked king. The prophets show us
that it was by no vicarious condemnation that priests and people shared
the ruin of their sovereign. In their pages the subject is treated from
many points of view: Israel and Judah, Edom and Tyre, Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylon, serve in their turn as models for the picture of the wicked
nation. In the Apocalypse the ancient picture is adapted to new
circumstances, and the City of the Seven Hills takes the place of Babylon.
Modern prophets have further adapted the treatment of the subject to their
own times, and for the most part to their own people. With stern and
uncompromising patriotism, Carlyle and Ruskin have sought righteousness
for England even at the expense of its reputation; they have emphasised
its sin and selfishness in order to produce repentance and reform. For
other teachers the history of foreign peoples has furnished the picture of
the wicked nation, and the France of the Revolution or the “unspeakable”
Turk has been held up as an example of all that is abominable in national
life.

Any detailed treatment of this theme in Scripture would need an
exposition, not merely of Chronicles, but of the whole Bible. We may,
however, make one general application of the chronicler’s principle that
the wicked nation is the nation that forgets God. We do not now measure a
people’s religion by the number and magnificence of its priests and
churches, or by the amount of money devoted to the maintenance of public
worship. The most fatal symptoms of national depravity are the absence of
a healthy public opinion, indifference to character in politics, neglect
of education as a means of developing character, and the stifling of the
spirit of brotherhood in a desperate struggle for existence. When God is
thus forgotten, and the gracious influences of His Spirit are no longer
recognised in public and private life, a country may well be degraded into
the ranks of the wicked nations.

The perfectly general terms in which the doings and experiences of Ahaz
are described facilitate the application of their warnings to the ordinary
individual. His royal station only appears in the form and scale of his
wickedness, which in its essence is common to him with the humblest
sinner. Every young man enters, like Ahaz, upon a royal inheritance;
character and career are as all-important to a peasant or a shopgirl as
they are to an emperor or a queen. When a girl of seventeen or a youth of
twenty succeeds to some historic throne, we are moved to think of the
heavy burden of responsibility laid upon inexperienced shoulders and of
the grave issues that must be determined during the swiftly passing years
of their early manhood and womanhood. Alas, this heavy burden and these
grave issues are but the common lot. The young sovereign is happy in the
fierce light that beats upon his throne, for he is not allowed to forget
the dignity and importance of life. History, with its stories of good and
wicked kings, has obviously been written for his instruction; if the time
be out of joint, as it mostly is, he has been born to set it right. It is
all true, yet it is equally true for every one of his subjects. His lot is
only the common lot set upon a hill, in the full sunlight, to illustrate,
interpret, and influence lower and obscurer lives. People take such eager
interest in the doings of royal families, their christenings, weddings,
and funerals, because therein the common experience is, as it were,
glorified into adequate dignity and importance.

“Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen
years in Jerusalem”; but most men and women begin to reign before they are
twenty. The history of Judah for those sixteen years was really determined
long before Ahaz was invested with crown and sceptre. Men should all be
educated to reign, to respect themselves and appreciate their
opportunities. We do in some measure adopt this principle with promising
lads. Their energies are stimulated by the prospect of making a fortune or
a name, or the more soaring imagination dreams of a seat on the woolsack
or on one of the Front Benches. Gifted girls are also encouraged, as
becomes their gifts, to achieve a brilliant marriage or a popular novel.
We need to apply the principle more consistently and to recognise the
royal dignity of the average life and of those whom the superior person is
pleased to call commonplace people. It may then be possible to induce the
ordinary young man to take a serious interest in his own future. The
stress laid on the sanctity and supreme value of the individual soul has
always been a vital element of evangelical teaching; like most other
evangelical truths, it is capable of deeper meaning and wider application
than are commonly recognised in systematic theology.

We have kept our sovereign waiting too long on the threshold of his
kingdom; his courtiers and his people are impatient to know the character
and intentions of their new master. So with every heir who succeeds to his
royal inheritance. The fortunes of millions may depend upon the will of
some young Czar or Kaiser; the happiness of a hundred tenants or of a
thousand workmen may rest on the disposition of the youthful inheritor of
a wide estate or a huge factory; but none the less in the poorest cottage
mother and father and friends wait with trembling anxiety to see how the
boy or girl will “turn out” when they take their destinies into their own
hands and begin to reign. Already perhaps some tender maiden watches in
hope and fear, in mingled pride and misgiving, the rapidly unfolding
character of the youth to whom she has promised to commit all the
happiness of a life-time.

And to each one in turn there comes the choice of Hercules; according to
the chronicler’s phrase, the young king may either “do right in the eyes
of Jehovah, like David his father,” or he may walk “in the ways of the
kings of Israel, and make molten images for the Baals.”

The “right doings of David his father” may point to family traditions,
which set a high standard of noble conduct for each succeeding generation.
The teaching and influence of the pious Jotham are represented by the
example of godliness set in many a Christian home, by the wise and loving
counsel of parents and friends. And Ahaz has many modern parallels, sons
and daughters upon whom every good influence seems spent in vain. They are
led astray into the ways of the kings of Israel, and make molten images
for the Baals. There were several dynasties of the kings of Israel, and
the Baals were many and various; there are many tempters who deliberately
or unconsciously lay snares for souls, and they serve different powers of
evil. Israel was for the most part more powerful, wealthy, and cultured
than Judah. When Ahaz came to the throne as a mere youth, Pekah was
apparently in the prime of life and the zenith of power. He is no inapt
symbol of what the modern tempter at any rate desires to appear: the
showy, pretentious man of the world, who parades his knowledge of life,
and impresses the inexperienced youth with his shrewdness and success, and
makes his victim eager to imitate him, to walk in the ways of the kings of
Israel.

Moreover, the prospect of making molten images for the Baals is an
insidious temptation. Ahaz perhaps found the decorous worship of the one
God dull and monotonous. Baals meant new gods and new rites, with all the
excitement of novelty and variety. Jotham may not have realised that this
youth of twenty was a man: the heir-apparent may have been treated as a
child and left too much to the women of the harem. Responsible activity
might have saved Ahaz. The Church needs to recognise that healthy,
vigorous youth craves interesting occupation and even excitement. If a
father wishes to send his son to the devil, he cannot do better than make
that son’s life, both secular and religious, a routine of monotonous
drudgery. Then any pinchbeck king of Israel will seem a marvel of wit and
good fellowship, and the making of molten images a most pleasing
diversion. A molten image is something solid, permanent, and conspicuous,
a standing advertisement of the enterprise and artistic taste of the
maker; he engraves his name on the pedestal, and is proud of the
honourable distinction. Many of our modern molten images are duly set
forth in popular works, for instance the reputation for impure life, or
hard drinking, or reckless gambling, to achieve which some men have spent
their time, and money, and toil. Other molten images are dedicated to
another class of Baals: Mammon the respectable and Belial the polite.

The next step in the history of Ahaz is also typical of many a rake’s
progress. The king of Israel, in whose ways he has walked, turns upon him
and plunders him; the experienced man of the world gives his pupil painful
proof of his superiority, and calls in his confederates to share the
spoil. Now surely the victim’s eyes will be opened to the life he is
leading and the character of his associates. By no means. Ahaz has been
conquered by Syria, and therefore he will worship the gods of Syria, and
he will have a confederate of his own in the Assyrian king. The victim
tries to master the arts by which he has been robbed and ill-treated; he
will become as unscrupulous as his masters in wickedness. He seeks the
profit and distinction of being the accomplice of bold and daring sinners,
men as pre-eminent in evil as Tilgath-pilneser in Western Asia; and they,
like the Assyrian king, take his money and accept his flattery: they use
him and then cast him off more humiliated and desperate than ever. He
sinks into a prey of meaner scoundrels: the Edomites and Philistines of
fast life; and then, in his extremity, he builds new high places and
sacrifices to more new gods; he has recourse to all the shifty expedients
and sordid superstitions of the devotees of luck and chance.

All this while he has still paid some external homage to religion; he has
observed the conventions of honour and good breeding. There have been
services, as it were, in the temple of Jehovah. Now he begins to feel that
this deference has not met with an adequate reward; he has been no better
treated than the flagrantly disreputable: indeed, these men have often got
the better of him. “It is vain to serve God; what profit is there in
keeping His charge and in walking mournfully before the Lord of hosts? The
proud are called happy; they that work wickedness are built up: they tempt
God, and are delivered.” His moods vary; and, with reckless inconsistency,
he sometimes derides religion as worthless and unmeaning, and sometimes
seeks to make God responsible for his sins and misfortunes. At one time he
says he knows all about religion and has seen through it; he was brought
up to pious ways, and his mature judgment has shown him that piety is a
delusion; he will no longer countenance its hypocrisy and cant: at another
time he complains that he has been exposed to special temptations and has
not been provided with special safeguards; the road that leads to life has
been made too steep and narrow, and he has been allowed without warning
and remonstrance to tread “the primrose path that leads to the everlasting
bonfire”; he will cast off altogether the dull formalities and irksome
restraints of religion; he will work wickedness with a proud heart and a
high hand. His happiness and success have been hindered by pedantic
scruples; now he will be built up and delivered from his troubles. He gets
rid of the few surviving relics of the old honourable life. The service of
prayer and praise ceases; the lamp of truth is put out; the incense of
holy thought no longer perfumes the soul; and the temple of the Spirit is
left empty, and dark, and desolate.

At last, in what should be the prime of manhood, the sinner,
broken-hearted, worn out in mind and body, sinks into a dishonoured grave.

The career and fate of Ahaz may have other parallels besides this, but it
is sufficiently clear that the chronicler’s picture of the wicked king is
no mere antiquarian study of a vanished past. It lends itself with
startling facility to illustrate the fatal downward course of any man who,
entering on the royal inheritance of human life, allies himself with the
powers of darkness and finally becomes their slave.




Chapter VIII. The Priests.


The Israelite priesthood must be held to include the Levites. Their
functions and status differed from those of the house of Aaron in degree,
and not in kind. They formed a hereditary caste set apart for the service
of the sanctuary, and as such they shared the revenues of the Temple with
the sons of Aaron. The priestly character of the Levites is more than once
implied in Chronicles. After the disruption, we are told that “the priests
and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted to Rehoboam,” because
“Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not exercise the
priest’s office unto Jehovah.” On an emergency, as at Hezekiah’s great
feast at the reopening of the Temple, the Levites might even discharge
priestly functions. Moreover, the chronicler seems to recognise the
priestly character of the whole tribe of Levi by retaining in a similar
connection the old phrase “the priests the Levites.”(263)

The relation of the Levites to the priests, the sons of Aaron, was not
that of laymen to clergy, but of an inferior clerical order to their
superiors. When Charlotte Brontë has occasion to devote a chapter to
curates, she heads it “Levitical.” The Levites, again, like deacons in the
Church of England, were forbidden to perform the most sacred ritual of
Divine service. Technically their relation to the sons of Aaron might be
compared to that of deacons to priests or of priests to bishops. From the
point of view of numbers,(264) revenues, and social standing, the sons of
Aaron might be compared to the dignitaries of the Church: archbishops,
bishops, archdeacons, deans, and incumbents of livings with large incomes
and little work; while the Levites would correspond to the more moderately
paid and fully occupied clergy. Thus the nature of the distinction between
the priests and the Levites shows that they were essentially only two
grades of the same order; and this corresponds roughly to what has been
generally denoted by the term “priesthood.” Priest-hood, however, had a
more limited meaning in Israel than in later times. In some branches of
the Christian Church, the priests exercise or claim to exercise functions
which in Israel belonged to the prophets or the king.

Before considering the central and essential idea of the priest as a
minister of public worship, we will notice some of his minor duties. We
have seen that the sanctity of civil government is emphasised by the
religious supremacy of the king; the same truth is also illustrated by the
fact that the priests and Levites were sometimes the king’s officers for
civil affairs. Under David, certain Levites of Hebron are spoken of as
having the oversight of all Israel, both east and west of Jordan, not only
“for all the business of Jehovah,” but also “for the service of the
king.”(265) The business of the law-courts was recognised by Jehoshaphat
as the judgment of Jehovah, and accordingly amongst the judges there were
priests and Levites.(266) Similarly the mediæval governments often found
their most efficient and trustworthy administrators in the bishops and
clergy, and were glad to reinforce their secular authority by the sanction
of the Church; and even to-day bishops sit in Parliament: incumbents
preside over vestries, and sometimes act as county magistrates. But the
interest of religion in civil government is most manifest in the moral
influence exercised unofficially by earnest and public-spirited ministers
of all denominations.

The chronicler refers more than once to the educational work of the
priests, and especially of the Levites. The English version probably gives
his real meaning when it attributes to him the phrase “teaching
priest.”(267) Jehoshaphat’s educational commission was largely composed of
priests and Levites, and Levites are spoken of as scribes. Jewish
education was largely religious, and naturally fell into the hands of the
priesthood, just as the learning of Egypt and Babylon was chiefly in the
hands of priests and magi. The Christian ministry maintained the ancient
traditions: the monasteries were the homes of mediæval learning, and till
recently England and Scotland mainly owed their schools to the Churches,
and almost all schoolmasters of any position were in holy orders—priests
and Levites. Under our new educational system the free choice of the
people places many ministers of religion on the school boards.

The next characteristic of the priesthood is not so much in accordance
with Christian theory and practice. The house of Aaron and the tribe of
Levi were a Church militant in a very literal sense. In the beginning of
their history the tribe of Levi earned the blessing of Jehovah by the
pious zeal with which they flew to arms in His cause and executed His
judgment upon their guilty fellow-countrymen.(268) Later on, when “Israel
joined himself unto Baal-peor, and the anger of Jehovah was kindled
against Israel,”(269) then stood up Phinehas, “the ancestor of the house
of Zadok,” and executed judgment.


    “And so the plague was stayed,
    And that was counted unto him for righteousness
    Unto all generations for evermore.”(270)


But the militant character of the priesthood was not confined to its early
history. Amongst those who “came armed for war to David to Hebron to turn
the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the word of Jehovah,” were four
thousand six hundred of the children of Levi and three thousand seven
hundred of the house of Aaron, “and Zadok, a young man mighty of valour,
and twenty-two captains of his father’s house.”(271) “The third captain of
David’s army for the third month was Benaiah the son of Jehoiada the
priest.”(272)

David’s Hebronite overseers were all “mighty men of valour.” When Judah
went out to war, the trumpets of the priests gave the signal for
battle(273); when the high-priest Jehoiada recovered the kingdom for
Joash, the Levites compassed the king round about, every man with his
weapons in his hand(274); when Nehemiah rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem,
“every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other
held his weapon,”(275) and amongst the rest the priests. Later on, when
Jehovah delivered Israel from the hand of Antiochus Epiphanes, the
priestly family of the Maccabees, in the spirit of their ancestor
Phinehas, fought and died for the Law and the Temple. There were priestly
soldiers as well as priestly generals, for we read how “at that time
certain priests, desirous to show their valour, were slain in battle, for
that they went out to fight inadvisedly.”(276) In the Jewish war the
priest Josephus was Jewish commander in Galilee.

Christianity has aroused a new sentiment with regard to war. We believe
that the servant of the Lord must not strive in earthly battles. Arms may
be lawful for the Christian citizen, but it is felt to be unseemly that
the ministers who are the ambassadors of the Prince of Peace should
themselves be men of blood. Even in the Middle Ages fighting prelates like
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, were felt to be exceptional anomalies; and the
prince-bishops and electoral archbishops were often ecclesiastics only in
name. To-day the Catholic Church in France resents the conscription of its
seminarists as an act of vindictive persecution.

And yet the growth of Christian sentiment in favour of peace has not
prevented the occasional combination of the soldier and the ecclesiastic.
If Islam has had its armies of dervishes, Cyril’s monks fought for
orthodoxy at Alexandria and at Constantinople with all the ferocity of
wild beasts. The Crusaders, the Templars, the Knights of St. John, were in
varying degrees partly priests and partly soldiers. Cromwell’s Ironsides,
when they were wielding carnal weapons in their own defence or in any
other good cause, were as expert as any Levites at exhortations and psalms
and prayers; and in our own day certain generals and admirals are fond of
playing the amateur ecclesiastic. In this, as in so much else, while we
deny the form of Judaism, we retain its spirit. Havelock and Gordon were
no unworthy successors of the Maccabees.

The characteristic function, however, of the Jewish priesthood was their
ministry in public worship, in which they represented the people before
Jehovah. In this connection public worship does not necessarily imply that
the public were present, or that the worship in question was the united
act of a great assembly. Such worshipping assemblies were not uncommon,
especially at the feasts; but ordinary public worship was worship on
behalf of the people, not by the people. The priests and Levites were part
of an elaborate system of symbolic ritual. Worshippers might gather in the
Temple courts, but the Temple itself was not a place in which public
meetings for worship were held, and the people were not admitted into it.
The Temple was Jehovah’s house, and His presence there was symbolised by
the Ark. In this system of ritual the priests and Levites represented
Israel; their sacrifices and ministrations were the acceptable offerings
of the nation to God. If the sacrifices were duly offered by the priests
“according to all that was written in the law of Jehovah, and if the
priests with trumpets and the Levites with psalteries, and harps, and
cymbals duly ministered before the ark of Jehovah to celebrate, and thank,
and praise Jehovah, the God of Israel,” then the Divine service of Israel
was fully performed. The whole people could not be regularly present at a
single sanctuary, nor would they be adequately represented by the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and casual visitors from the rest of the country.
Three times a year the nation was fully and naturally represented by those
who came up to the feasts, but usually the priests and Levites stood in
their place.

When an assembly gathered for public worship at a feast or any other time,
the priests and Levites expressed the devotion of the people. They
performed the sacrificial rites, they blew the trumpets and played upon
the psalteries, and harps, and cymbals, and sang the praises of Jehovah.
The people were dismissed by the priestly blessing. When an individual
offered a sacrifice as an act of private worship, the assistance of the
priests and Levites was still necessary. At the same time the king as well
as the priesthood might lead the people in praise and prayer, and the
Temple psalmody was not confined to the Levitical choir. When the Ark was
brought away from Kirjath-jearim, “David and all Israel played before God
with all their might, even with songs, and with harps, and with
psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets”; and
when at last the Ark had been safely housed in Jerusalem, and the due
sacrifices had all been offered, David dismissed the people in priestly
fashion by blessing them in the name of Jehovah.(277) At the two solemn
assemblies which celebrated the beginning and the close of the great
enterprise of building the Temple, public prayer was offered, not by the
priests, but by David(278) and Solomon.(279) Similarly Jehoshaphat led the
prayers of the Jews when they gathered to seek deliverance from the
invading Moabites and Ammonites. Hezekiah at his great passover both
exhorted the people and interceded for them, and Jehovah accepted his
intercession; but on this occasion, when the festival was over, it was not
the king, but “the priests the Levites,”(280) who “arose and blessed the
people: and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to His holy
habitation, even unto heaven.” In the descriptions of Hezekiah’s and
Josiah’s festivals, the orchestra and choir, of course, are busy with the
music and singing; otherwise the main duty of the priests and Levites is
to sacrifice. In his graphic account of Josiah’s passover, the chronicler
no doubt reproduces on a larger scale the busy scenes in which he himself
had often taken part. The king, the princes, and the chiefs of the Levites
had provided between them thirty-seven thousand six hundred lambs and kids
and three thousand eight hundred oxen for sacrifices; and the resources of
the establishment of the Temple were taxed to the utmost. “So the service
was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the Levites by the
courses, according to the king’s commandment. And they killed the
passover, and the priests sprinkled the blood, which they received of
their hand, and the Levites flayed the sacrifices. And they removed the
burnt offerings, that they might give them according to the divisions of
the fathers’ houses of the children of the people, to offer unto Jehovah,
as it is written in the law of Moses; and so they did with the oxen. And
they roasted the passover according to the ordinance; and they boiled the
holy offerings in pots, and caldrons, and pans, and carried them quickly
to all the children of the people. And afterward they prepared for
themselves and for the priests, because the priests the sons of Aaron were
busied in offering the burnt offerings and the fat until night; therefore
the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of Aaron.
And the singers were in their place, and the porters were at their several
gates; they needed not to depart from their service, for their brethren
the Levites prepared for them. So all the service of Jehovah was prepared
the same day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt offerings upon the
altar of Jehovah.”(281) Thus even in the accounts of great public
gatherings for worship the main duty of the priests and Levites is to
perform the sacrifices. The music and singing naturally fall into their
hands, because the necessary training is only possible to a professional
choir. Otherwise the now symbolic portions of the service, prayer,
exhortation, and blessing, were not exclusively reserved to ecclesiastics.

The priesthood, like the Ark, the Temple, and the ritual, belonged
essentially to the system of religious symbolism. This was their peculiar
domain, into which no outsider might intrude. Only the Levites could touch
the Ark. When the unhappy Uzzah “put forth his hand to the Ark,” “the
anger of Jehovah was kindled against him; and he smote Uzzah so that he
died there before God.”(282) The king might offer up public prayer; but
when Uzziah ventured to go into the Temple to burn incense upon the altar
of incense, leprosy broke forth in his forehead, and the priests thrust
him out quickly from the Temple.(283)

Thus the symbolic and representative character of the priesthood and
ritual gave the sacrifices and other ceremonies a value in themselves,
apart alike from the presence of worshippers and the feelings or
“intention” of the officiating minister. They were the provision made by
Israel for the expression of its prayer, its penitence and thanksgiving.
When sin had estranged Jehovah from His people, the sons of Aaron made
atonement for Israel; they performed the Divinely appointed ritual by
which the nation made submission to its offended King and cast itself upon
His mercy. The Jewish sacrifices had features which have survived in the
sacrifice of the Mass, and the multiplication of sacrifices arose from
motives similar to those that lead to the offering up of many masses.

One would expect, as has happened in the Christian Church, that the
ministrants of the symbolic ritual would annex the other acts of public
worship, not only praise, but also prayer and exhortation. Considerations
of convenience would suggest such an amalgamation of functions; and among
the priests, while the more ambitious would see in preaching a means of
extending their authority, the more earnest would be anxious to use their
unique position to promote the spiritual life of the people. Chronicles,
however, affords few traces of any such tendency; and the great scene in
the book of Nehemiah in which Ezra and the Levites expound the Law had no
connection with the Temple and its ritual. The development of the Temple
service was checked by its exclusive privileges; it was simply impossible
that the single sanctuary should continue to provide for all the religious
wants of the Jews, and thus supplementary and inferior places of worship
grew up to appropriate the non-ritual elements of service. Probably even
in the chronicler’s time the division of religious services between the
Temple and the synagogue had already begun, with the result that the
representative and symbolic character of the priesthood is almost
exclusively emphasised.

The representative character of the priesthood has another aspect.
Strictly the priest represented the nation before Jehovah; but in doing so
it was inevitable that he should also in some measure represent Jehovah to
the nation. He could not be the channel of worship offered to God without
being also the channel of Divine grace to man. From the priest the
worshipper learnt the will of God as to correct ritual, and received the
assurance that the atoning sacrifice was duly accepted. The high-priest
entered within the veil to make atonement for Israel; he came forth as the
bearer of Divine forgiveness and renewed grace, and as he blessed the
people he spoke in the name of Jehovah. We have been able to discern the
presence of these ideas in Chronicles, but they are not very conspicuous.
The chronicler was not a layman; he was too familiar with priests to feel
any profound reverence for them. On the other hand, he was not himself a
priest, but was specially preoccupied with the musicians, the Levites, and
the doorkeepers; so that probably he does not give us an adequate idea of
the relative dignity of the priests and the honour in which they were held
by the people. Organists and choirmasters, it is said, seldom take an
exalted view of their minister’s office.

The chronicler deals more fully with a matter in which priests and Levites
were alike interested: the revenues of the Temple. He was doubtless aware
of the bountiful provision made by the Law for his order, and loved to
hold up this liberality of kings, princes, and people in ancient days for
his contemporaries to admire and imitate. He records again and again the
tens of thousands of sheep and oxen provided for sacrifice, not altogether
unmindful of the rich dues that must have accrued to the priests out of
all this abundance; he tells us how Hezekiah first set the good example of
appointing “a portion of his substance for the burnt offerings,” and then
“commanded the people that dwelt at Jerusalem to give the portion of the
priests and the Levites that they might give themselves to the law of the
Lord. And as soon as the commandment came abroad the children of Israel
gave in abundance the first-fruits of corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and
of all the increase of the field; and the tithe of all things brought they
in abundantly.”(284) These were the days of old, the ancient years when
the offering of Judah and Jerusalem was pleasant to Jehovah; when the
people neither dared nor desired to offer on God’s altar a scanty tale of
blind, lame, and sick victims; when the tithes were not kept back, and
there was meat in the house of God(285); when, as Hezekiah’s high-priest
testified, they could eat and have enough and yet leave plenty.(286) The
manner in which the chronicler tells the tale of ancient abundance
suggests that his days were like the days of Malachi. He was no pampered
ecclesiastic, revelling in present wealth and luxury, but a man who
suffered hard times, and looked back wistfully to the happier experiences
of his predecessors.

Let us now restore the complete picture of the chronicler’s priest from
his scattered references to the subject. The priest represents the nation
before Jehovah, and in a less degree represents Jehovah to the nation; he
leads their public worship, especially at the great festal gatherings; he
teaches the people the Law. The high character, culture, and ability of
the priests and Levites occasions their employment as judges and in other
responsible civil offices. If occasion required, they could show
themselves mighty men of valour in their country’s wars. Under pious
kings, they enjoyed ample revenues which gave them independence, added to
their importance in the eyes of the people, and left them at leisure to
devote themselves exclusively to their sacred duties.

In considering the significance of this picture, we can pass over without
special notice the exercise by priests and Levites of the functions of
leadership in public worship, teaching, and civil government. They are not
essential to the priesthood, but are entirely consistent with the tenure
of the priestly office, and naturally become associated with it. Warlike
prowess was certainly no part of the priesthood; but, whatever may be true
of Christian ministers, it is difficult to charge the priests of the Lord
of hosts with inconsistency because, like Jehovah Himself, they were men
of war(287) and went forth to battle in the armies of Israel. When a
nation was continually fighting for its very existence, it was impossible
for one tribe out of the twelve to be non-combatant.

With regard to the representative character of the priests, it would be
out of place here to enter upon the burning questions of sacerdotalism;
but we may briefly point out the permanent truth underlying the ancient
idea of the priesthood. The ideal spiritual life in every Church is one of
direct fellowship between God and the believer.


    “Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can
                meet;
    Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”


And yet a man may be truly religious and not realise this ideal, or only
realise it very imperfectly. The gift of an intense and real spiritual
life may belong to the humblest and poorest, to men of little intellect
and less learning; but, none the less, it is not within the immediate
reach of every believer, or indeed of any believer at every time. The
descendants of Mr. Little-faith and Mr. Ready-to-halt are amongst us
still, and there is no immediate prospect of their race becoming extinct.
Times come when we are all glad to put ourselves under the safe conduct of
Mr. Great-heart. There are many whose prayers seem to themselves too
feebly winged to rise to the throne of grace; they are encouraged and
helped when their petitions are borne upwards on the strong pinions of
another’s faith. George Eliot has pictured the Florentines as awed
spectators of Savonarola’s audiences with Heaven. To a congregation
sometimes the minister’s prayers are a sacred and solemn spectacle; his
spiritual feeling is beyond them; he intercedes for blessings they neither
desire nor understand; they miss the heavenly vision which stirs his soul.
He is not their spokesman, but their priest; he has entered the holy
place, bearing with him the sins that crave forgiveness, the fears that
beg for deliverance, the hopes that yearn to be fulfilled. Though the
people may remain in the outer court, yet they are fully assured that he
has passed into the very presence of God. They listen to him as to one who
has had actual speech with the King and received the assurance of His
goodwill towards them. When the vanguard of the Ten Thousand first sighted
the Euxine, the cry of “Thalassa! Thalassa!” (“The sea! the sea!”) rolled
backward along the line of march; the rearguard saw the long-hoped-for
sight with the eyes of the pioneers. Much unnecessary self-reproach would
be avoided if we accepted this as one of God’s methods of spiritual
education, and understood that we all have in a measure to experience this
discipline in humility. The priesthood of the believer is not merely his
right to enter for himself into the immediate presence of God: it becomes
his duty and privilege to represent others. But times will also come when
he himself will need the support of a priestly intercession in the Divine
presence-chamber, when he will seek out some one of quick sympathy and
strong faith and say, “Brother, pray for me.” Apart from any
ecclesiastical theory of the priesthood, we all recognise that there are
God-ordained priests, men and women, who can inspire dull souls with a
sense of the Divine presence and bring to the sinful and the struggling
the assurance of Divine forgiveness and help. If one in ten among the
official priests of the historic Churches had possessed these supreme
gifts, the world would have accepted the most extravagant sacerdotalism
without a murmur. As it is, every minister, every one who leads the
worship of a congregation, assumes for the time being functions and should
possess the corresponding qualifications. In his prayers he speaks for the
people; he represents them before God; on their behalf he enters into the
Divine presence; they only enter with him, if, as their spokesman and
representative, he has grasped their feelings and raised them to the level
of Divine fellowship. He may be an untutored labourer in his working
garments; but if he can do this, this spiritual gift makes him a priest of
God. But this Christian priesthood is not confined to public service; as
the priest offered sacrifice for the individual Jew, so the man of
spiritual sympathies helps the individual to draw near his Maker. “To pray
with people” is a well-known ministry of Christian service, and it
involves this priestly function of presenting another’s prayers to God.
This priesthood for individuals is exercised by many a Christian who has
no gifts of public utterance.

The ancient priest held a representative position in a symbolic ritual, a
position partly independent of his character and spiritual powers. Where
symbolic ritual is best suited for popular needs, there may be room for a
similar priesthood to-day. Otherwise the Christian priesthood is required
to represent the people not in symbol, but in reality, to carry not the
blood of dead victims into a material Holy of holies, but living souls
into the heavenly temple.

There remains one feature of the Jewish priestly system upon which the
chronicler lays great stress: the endowments and priestly dues. In the
case of the high-priest and the Levites, whose whole time was devoted to
sacred duties, it was obviously necessary that those who served the altar
should live by the altar. The same principle would apply, but with much
less force, to the twenty-four courses of priests, each of which in its
turn officiated at the Temple. But, apart from the needs of the
priesthood, their representative character demanded that they should be
able to maintain a certain state. They were the ambassadors of Israel to
Jehovah. Nations have always been anxious that the equipment and suite of
their representative at a foreign court should be worthy of their power
and wealth; moreover, the splendour of an embassy should be in proportion
to the rank of the sovereign to whom it is accredited. In former times,
when the social symbols were held of more account, a first-rate power
would have felt itself insulted if asked to receive an envoy of inferior
rank, attended by only a meagre train. Israel, by her lavish endowment of
the priesthood, consulted her own dignity and expressed her sense of the
homage due to Jehovah. The Jews could not express their devotion in the
same way as other nations. They had to be content with a single sanctuary,
and might not build a multitude of magnificent temples or adorn their
cities with splendid, costly statues in honour of God. There were limits
to their expenditure upon the sacrifices and buildings of the Temple; but
the priesthood offered a large opportunity for pious generosity. The
chronicler felt that loyal enthusiasm to Jehovah would always use this
opportunity, and that the priests might consent to accept the distinction
of wealth and splendour for the honour alike of Israel and Jehovah. Their
dignity was not personal to themselves, but rather the livery of a
self-effacing servitude. For the honour of the Church, Thomas à Becket
kept up a great establishment, appeared in his robes of office, and
entertained a crowd of guests with luxurious fare; while he himself wore a
hair shirt next his skin and fasted like an ascetic monk. When the Jews
stinted the ritual or the ministrants of Jehovah, they were doing what
they could to put Him to open shame before the nations. Julian’s
experience in the grove of Daphne at Antioch was a striking illustration
of the collapse of paganism: the imperial champion of the ancient gods
must have felt his heart sink within him when he was welcomed to that once
splendid sanctuary by one shabby priest dragging a solitary and reluctant
goose to the deserted altar. Similarly Malachi saw that Israel’s devotion
to Jehovah was in danger of dying out when men chose the refuse of their
flocks and herds and offered them grudgingly at the shrine.

The application of these principles leads directly to the question of a
paid ministry; but the connection is not so close as it appears at first
sight, nor are we yet in possession of all the data which the chronicler
furnishes for its discussion. Priestly duties form an essential, but not
predominant, part of the work of most Christian ministers. Still the loyal
believer must always be anxious that the buildings, the services, and the
men which, for himself and for the world, represent his devotion to
Christ, should be worthy of their high calling. But his ideas of the
symbolism suitable for spiritual realities are not altogether those of the
chronicler: he is less concerned with number, size, and weight, with tens
of thousands of sheep and oxen, vast quantities of stone and timber, brass
and iron, and innumerable talents of gold and silver. Moreover, in this
special connection the secondary priestly function of representing God to
man has been expressly transferred by Christ to the least of His brethren.
Those who wish to honour God with their substance in the person of His
earthly representatives are enjoined to seek for them in hospitals, and
workhouses, and prisons, to find these representatives in the hungry, the
thirsty, the friendless, the naked, the captives. No doubt Christ is
dishonoured when those who dwell in “houses of cedar” are content to
worship Him in a mean, dirty church, with a half-starved minister; but the
most disgraceful proof of the Church’s disloyalty to Christ is to be seen
in the squalor and misery of men, and women, and children whose bodies
were ordained of God to be the temples of His Holy Spirit.

This is only one among many illustrations of the truth that in Christ the
symbolism of religion took a new departure. His Church enjoys the
spiritual realities prefigured by the Jewish temple and its ministry. Even
where Christian symbols are parallel to those of Judaism, they are less
conventional and richer in their direct spiritual suggestiveness.




Chapter IX. The Prophets.


One remarkable feature of Chronicles as compared with the book of Kings is
the greater interest shown by the former in the prophets of Judah. The
chronicler, by confining his attention to the southern kingdom, was
compelled to omit almost all reference to Elijah and Elisha, and thus
exclude from his work some of the most thrilling chapters in the history
of the prophets of Israel. Nevertheless the prophets as a whole play
almost as important a part in Chronicles as in the book of Kings.
Compensation is made for the omission of the two great northern prophets
by inserting accounts of several prophets whose messages were addressed to
the kings of Judah.

The chronicler’s interest in the prophets was very different from the
interest he took in the priests and Levites. The latter belonged to the
institutions of his own time, and formed his own immediate circle. In
dealing with their past, he was reconstructing the history of his own
order; he was able to illustrate and supplement from observation and
experience the information afforded by his sources.

But when the chronicler wrote, prophets had ceased to be a living
institution in Judah. The light that had shone so brightly in Isaiah and
Jeremiah burned feebly in Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, and then went
out. Not long after the chronicler’s time the failure of prophecy is
expressly recognised. The people whose synagogues have been burnt up
complain,—


    “We see not our signs;
    There is no more any prophet.”(288)


When Judas Maccabæus appointed certain priests to cleanse the Temple after
its pollution by the Syrians, they pulled down the altar of burnt
offerings because the heathen had defiled it, and laid up the stones in
the mountain of the Temple in a convenient place, until there should come
a prophet to show what should be done with them.(289) This failure of
prophecy was not merely brief and transient. It marked the disappearance
of the ancient order of prophets. A parallel case shows how the Jews had
become aware that the high-priest no longer possessed the special gifts
connected with the Urim and Thummim. When certain priests could not find
their genealogies, they were forbidden “to eat of the most holy things
till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim.”(290) We have no
record of any subsequent appearance of “a priest with Urim and with
Thummim” or of any prophet of the old order.

Thus the chronicler had never seen a prophet; his conception of the
personality and office of the prophet was entirely based upon ancient
literature, and he took no professional interest in the order. At the same
time he had no prejudice against them; they had no living successors to
compete for influence and endowments with the priests and Levites.
Possibly the Levites, as the chief religious teachers of the people,
claimed some sort of apostolic succession from the prophets; but there are
very slight grounds for any such theory. The chronicler’s information on
the whole subject was that of a scholar with a taste for antiquarian
research.

Let us briefly examine the part played by the prophets in the history of
Judah as given by Chronicles. We have first, as in the book of Kings, the
references to Nathan and Gad: they make known to David the will of Jehovah
as regards the building of the Temple and the punishment of David’s pride
in taking the census of Israel. David unhesitatingly accepts their
messages as the word of Jehovah. It is important to notice that when
Nathan is consulted about building the Temple he first answers, apparently
giving a mere private opinion, “Do all that is in thine heart, for God is
with thee”; but when “the word of God comes” to him, he retracts his
former judgment and forbids David to build the Temple. Here again the plan
of the chronicler’s work leads to an important omission: his silence as to
the murder of Uriah prevents him from giving the beautiful and instructive
account of the way in which Nathan rebuked the guilty king. Later
narratives exhibit other prophets in the act of rebuking most of the kings
of Judah, but none of these incidents are equally striking and pathetic.
At the end of the histories of David and of most of the later kings we
find notes which apparently indicate that, in the chronicler’s time, the
prophets were credited with having written the annals of the kings with
whom they were contemporary. In connection with Hezekiah’s reformation we
are incidentally told that Nathan and Gad were associated with David in
making arrangements for the music of the Temple: “He set the Levites in
the house of Jehovah, with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps,
according to the commandment of David and of Gad the king’s seer and
Nathan the prophet, for the commandment was of Jehovah by His
prophets.”(291)

In the account of Solomon’s reign, the chronicler omits the interview of
Ahijah the Shilonite with Jeroboam, but refers to it in the history of
Rehoboam. From this point, in accordance with his general plan, he omits
almost all missions of prophets to the northern kings.

In Rehoboam’s reign, we have recorded, as in the book of Kings, a message
from Jehovah by Shemaiah forbidding the king and his two tribes of Judah
and Benjamin to attempt to compel the northern tribes to return to their
allegiance to the house of David. Later on, when Shishak invaded Judah,
Shemaiah was commissioned to deliver to the king and princes the message,
“Thus saith Jehovah: Ye have forsaken Me; therefore have I also left you
in the hand of Shishak.”(292) But when they repented and humbled
themselves before Jehovah, Shemaiah announced to them the mitigation of
their punishment.

Asa’s reformation was due to the inspired exhortations of a prophet called
both Oded and Azariah the son of Oded. Later on Hanani the seer rebuked
the king for his alliance with Benhadad, king of Syria. “Then Asa was
wroth with the seer, and put him in the prison-house; for he was in a rage
with him because of this thing.”(293)

Jehoshaphat’s alliance with Ahab and his consequent visit to Samaria
enabled the chronicler to introduce from the book of Kings the striking
narrative of Micaiah the son of Imlah; but this alliance with Israel
earned for the king the rebukes of Jehu the son of Hanani the seer and
Eliezar the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah. However, on the occasion of the
Moabite and Ammonite invasion Jehoshaphat and his people received the
promise of Divine deliverance from “Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son
of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah the Levite, of the sons
of Asaph.”(294)

The punishment of the wicked king Jehoram was announced to him by a
“writing from Elijah the prophet.”(295) His son Ahaziah apparently
perished without any prophetic warning; but when Joash and his princes
forsook the house of Jehovah and served the Asherim and the idols, “He
sent prophets to them to bring them again to Jehovah,” among the rest
Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest. Joash turned a deaf ear to the
message, and put the prophet to death.(296)

When Amaziah bowed down before the gods of Edom and burned incense unto
them, Jehovah sent unto him a prophet whose name is not recorded. His
mission failed, like that of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada; and Amaziah,
like Joash, showed no respect for the person of the messenger of Jehovah.
In this case the prophet escaped with his life. He began to deliver his
message, but the king’s patience soon failed, and he said unto the
prophet, “Have we made thee of the king’s counsel? forbear; why shouldest
thou be smitten?” The prophet, we are told, “forbare”; but his forbearance
did not prevent his adding one brief and bitter sentence: “I know that God
hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this and hast not
hearkened unto my counsel.”(297) Then apparently he departed in peace and
was not smitten.

We have now reached the period of the prophets whose writings are extant.
We learn from the headings of their works that Isaiah saw his “vision,”
and that the word of Jehovah came unto Hosea, in the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; that the word of Jehovah came to Micah in the
days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; and that Amos “saw” his “words” in the
days of Uzziah. But the chronicler makes no reference to any of these
prophets in connection with either Uzziah, Jotham, or Ahaz. Their writings
would have afforded the best possible materials for his history, yet he
entirely neglected them. In view of his anxiety to introduce into his
narrative all missions of prophets of which he found any record, we can
only suppose that he was so little interested in the prophetical writings
that he neither referred to them nor recollected their dates.

To Ahaz in Chronicles, in spite of all his manifold and persistent
idolatry, no prophet was sent. The absence of Divine warning marks his
extraordinary wickedness. In the book of Samuel the culmination of
Jehovah’s displeasure against Saul is shown by His refusal to answer him
either by dreams, by Urim, or by prophets. He sends no prophet to Ahaz,
because the wicked king of Judah is utterly reprobate. Prophecy, the token
of the Divine presence and favour, has abandoned a nation given over to
idolatry, and has even taken a temporary refuge in Samaria. Jerusalem was
no longer worthy to receive the Divine messages, and Oded was sent with
his words of warning and humane exhortation to the children of Ephraim.
There he met with a prompt and full obedience, in striking contrast to the
reception accorded by Joash and Amaziah to the prophets of Jehovah.

The chronicler’s history of the reign of Hezekiah further illustrates his
indifference to the prophets whose writings are extant. In the book of
Kings great prominence is given to Isaiah. In the account of Sennacherib’s
invasion his messages to Hezekiah are given at considerable length.(298)
He announces to the king his approaching death and Jehovah’s gracious
answers to Hezekiah’s prayer for a respite and his request for a sign.
When Hezekiah, in his pride of wealth, displayed his treasures to the
Babylonian ambassadors, Isaiah brought the message of Divine rebuke and
judgment. Chronicles characteristically devotes three long chapters to
ritual and Levites, and dismisses Isaiah in half a sentence: “And Hezekiah
the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, prayed because of
this”—_i.e._, the threatening language of Sennacherib—“and cried to
Heaven.”(299) In the accounts of Hezekiah’s sickness and recovery and of
the Babylonian embassy the references to Isaiah are entirely omitted.
These omissions may be due to lack of space, so much of which had been
devoted to the Levites that there was none to spare for the prophet.

Indeed, at the very point where prophecy began to exercise a controlling
influence over the religion of Judah the chronicler’s interest in the
subject altogether flags. He tells us that Jehovah spake to Manasseh and
to his people, and refers to “the words of the seers that spake to him in
the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel”;(300) but he names no prophet and
does not record the terms of any Divine message. In the case of Manasseh
his sources may have failed him, but we have seen that in Hezekiah’s reign
he deliberately passes over most of the references to Isaiah.

The chroniclers narrative of Josiah’s reign adheres more closely to the
book of Kings. He reproduces the mission from the king to the prophetess
Huldah and her Divine message of present forbearance and future judgment.
The other prophet of this reign is the heathen king Pharaoh Necho, through
whose mouth the Divine warning is given to Josiah. Jeremiah is only
mentioned as lamenting over the last good king.(301) In the parallel text
of this passage in the apocryphal book of Esdras Pharaoh’s remonstrance is
given in a somewhat expanded form; but the editor of Esdras shrank from
making the heathen king the mouthpiece of Jehovah. While Chronicles tells
us that Josiah “hearkened not unto the words of Neco from the mouth of
God,” Esdras, glaringly inconsistent both with the context and the
history, tells us that he did not regard “the words of the prophet
Jeremiah spoken by the mouth of the Lord.”(302) This amended statement is
borrowed from the chronicler’s account of Zedekiah, who “humbled not
himself before Jeremiah the prophet, speaking from the mouth of Jehovah.”
But this king was not alone in his disobedience. As the inevitable ruin of
Jerusalem drew near, the whole nation, priests and people alike, sank
deeper and deeper in sin. In these last days, “where sin abounded, grace
did yet more abound.” Jehovah exhausted the resources of His mercy:
“Jehovah, the God of their fathers, sent to them by His messengers, rising
up early and sending, because He had compassion on His people and on His
dwelling-place.” It was all in vain: “They mocked the messengers of God,
and despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of
Jehovah arose against His people, till there was no remedy.” There are two
other references in the concluding paragraphs of Chronicles to the
prophecies of Jeremiah; but the history of prophecy in Judah closes with
this last great unavailing manifestation of prophetic activity.

Before considering the general idea of the prophet that may be collected
from the various notices in Chronicles, we may devote a little space to
the chronicler’s curious attitude towards our canonical prophets. For the
most part he simply follows the book of Kings in making no reference to
them; but his almost entire silence as to Isaiah suggests that his
imitation of his authority in other cases is deliberate and intentional,
especially as we find him inserting one or two references to Jeremiah not
taken from the book of Kings. The chronicler had much more opportunity of
using the canonical prophets than the author or authors of the book of
Kings. The latter wrote before Hebrew literature had been collected and
edited; but the chronicler had access to all the literature of the
monarchy, Captivity, and even later times. His numerous extracts from
almost the entire range of the Historical Books, together with the
Pentateuch and Psalms, show that his plan included the use of various
sources, and that he had both the means and ability to work out his plan.
He makes two references to Haggai and Zechariah,(303) so that if he
ignores Amos, Hosea, and Micah, and all but ignores Isaiah, we can only
conclude that he does so of set purpose. Hosea and Amos might be excluded
on account of their connection with the northern kingdom; possibly the
strictures of Isaiah and Micah on the priesthood and ritual made the
chronicler unwilling to give them special prominence. Such an attitude on
the part of a typical representative of the prevailing school of religious
thought has an important bearing on the textual and other criticism of the
early prophets. If they were neglected by the authorities of the Temple in
the interval between Ezra and the Maccabees, the possibility of late
additions and alterations is considerably increased.

Let us now turn to the picture of the prophets drawn for us by the
chronicler. Both prophet and priest are religious personages, otherwise
they differ widely in almost every particular; we cannot even speak of
them as both holding religious offices. The term “office” has to be almost
unjustifiably strained in order to apply it to the prophet, and to use it
thus without explanation would be misleading. The qualifications, status,
duties, and rewards of the priests are all fully prescribed by rigid and
elaborate rules; but the prophets were the children of the Spirit: “The
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but
knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is
born of the Spirit.” The priest was bound to be a physically perfect male
of the house of Aaron; the prophet might be of any tribe and of either
sex. The warlike Deborah found a more peaceful successor in Josiah’s
counsellor Huldah, and among the degenerate prophets of Nehemiah’s time a
prophetess Noadiah(304) is specially mentioned. The priestly or Levitical
office did not exclude its holder from the prophetic vocation. The Levite
Jahaziel delivered the message of Jehovah to Jehoshaphat; and the prophet
Zechariah, whom Joash put to death, was the son of the high-priest
Jehoiada, and therefore himself a priest. Indeed, upon occasion the
prophetic gift was exercised by those whom we should scarcely call
prophets at all. Pharaoh Necho’s warning to Jehoshaphat is exactly
parallel to the prophetic exhortations addressed to other kings. In the
crisis of David’s fortunes at Ziklag, when Judah and Benjamin came out to
meet him with apparently doubtful intentions, their adhesion to the future
king was decided by a prophetic word given to the mighty warrior Amasai:
“Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, who was one of the thirty, and he said,
Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse: peace, peace, be
unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers; for thy God helpeth thee.”(305)
In view of this wide distribution of the prophetic gift, we are not
surprised to find it frequently exercised by the pious kings. They receive
and communicate to the nation direct intimations of the Divine will. David
gives to Solomon and the people the instructions which God has given him
with regard to the Temple; God’s promises are personally addressed to
Solomon, without the intervention of either prophet or priest; Abijah
rebukes and exhorts Jeroboam and the Israelites very much as other
prophets address the wicked kings; the speeches of Hezekiah and Josiah
might equally well have been delivered by one of the prophets. David
indeed is expressly called a prophet by St. Peter(306); and though the
immediate reference is to the Psalms, the chronicler’s history both of
David and of other kings gives them a valid claim to rank as prophets.

The authority and status of the prophets rested on no official or material
conditions, such as hedged in the priestly office on every side.
Accordingly their ancestry, previous history, and social standing are
matters with which the historian has no concern. If the prophet happens
also to be a priest or Levite, the chronicler, of course, knows and
records his genealogy. It was essential that the genealogy of a priest
should be known, but there are no genealogies of the prophets; their order
was like that of Melchizedek, standing on the page of history “without
father, without mother, without genealogy”; they appear abruptly, with no
personal introduction, they deliver their message, and then disappear with
equal abruptness. Sometimes not even their names are given. They had the
one qualification compared with which birth and sex, rank and reputation,
were trivial and meaningless things. The living word of Jehovah was on
their lips; the power of His Spirit controlled their hearers; messenger
and message were alike their own credentials. The supreme religious
authority of the prophet testified to the subordinate and accidental
character of all rites and symbols. On the other hand, the combination of
priest and prophet in the same system proved the loftiest spirituality,
the most emphatic recognition of the direct communion of the soul with
God, to be consistent with an elaborate and rigid system of ritual. The
services and ministry of the Temple were like lamps whose flame showed
pale and dim when earth and heaven were lit up by the lightnings of
prophetic inspiration.

The gifts and functions of the prophets did not lend themselves to any
regular discipline or organisation; but we can roughly distinguish between
two classes of prophets. One class seem to have exercised their gifts more
systematically and continuously than others. Gad and Nathan, Isaiah and
Jeremiah, became practically the domestic chaplains and spiritual advisers
of David, Hezekiah, and the last kings of Judah. Others are only mentioned
as delivering a single message; their ministry seems to have been
occasional, perhaps confined to a single period of their lives. The Divine
Spirit was free to take the whole life or to take a part only; He was not
to be conditioned even by gifts of His own bestowal.

Human organisation naturally attempted to classify the possessors of the
prophetic gift, to set them apart as a regular order, perhaps even to
provide them with a suitable training, and, still more impossible task, to
select the proper recipients of the gift and to produce and foster the
prophetic inspiration. We read elsewhere of “schools of the prophets” and
“sons of the prophets.” The chronicler omits all reference to such
institutions or societies; he declines to assign them any place in the
prophetic succession in Israel. The gift of prophecy was absolutely
dependent on the Divine will, and could not be claimed as a necessary
appurtenance of the royal court at Jerusalem or a regular order in the
kingdom of Judah. The priests are included in the list of David’s
ministers, but not the prophets Gad and Nathan. Abijah mentions among the
special privileges of Judah “priests ministering unto Jehovah, even the
sons of Aaron and the Levites in their work”; it does not occur to him to
name prophets among the regular and permanent ministers of Jehovah.

The chronicler, in fact, does not recognise the professional prophet. The
fifty sons of the prophets that watched Elisha divide the waters in the
name of the God of Elijah were no more prophets for him than the four
hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of the
Asherah that ate at Jezebel’s table. The true prophet, like Amos, need not
be either a prophet or the son of a prophet in the professional sense.
Long before the chronicler’s time the history and teaching of the great
prophets had clearly established the distinction between the professional
prophet, who was appointed by man or by himself, and the inspired
messenger, who received a direct commission from Jehovah.

In describing the prophet’s sole qualification we have also stated his
function. He was the messenger of Jehovah, and declared His will. The
priest in his ministrations represented Israel before God, and in a
measure represented God to Israel. The rites and ceremonies over which he
presided symbolised the permanent and unchanging features of man’s
religious experience and me eternal righteousness and mercy of Him who is
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. From generation to generation
men received the good gifts of God, and brought the offerings of their
gratitude; they sinned against God and came to seek forgiveness; and the
house of Aaron met them generation after generation in the same priestly
robes, with the same rites, in the one Temple, in token of the unchanging
willingness of Jehovah to accept and forgive His children.

The prophet, too, represented God to man; his words were the words of God;
through him the Divine presence and the Divine Spirit exerted their
influence over the hearts and consciences of his hearers. But while the
priestly ministrations symbolised the fixity and permanence of God’s
eternal majesty, the prophets expressed the infinite variety of His Divine
nature and its continual adaptation to all the changes of human life. They
came to the individual and to the nation in each crisis of history with
the Divine message that enabled them to suit themselves to altered
circumstances, to grapple with new difficulties, and to solve new
problems. The priest and the prophet together set forth the great paradox
that the unchanging God is the source of all change.


    “Lord God, by whom all change is wrought,
    By whom new things to birth are brought,
      In whom no change is known,

    To Thee we rise, in Thee we rest;
    We stay at home, we go in quest,
        Still Thou art our abode:
    The rapture swells, the wonder grows,
    As full on us new life still flows
      From our unchanging God.”


The prophetic utterances recorded by the chronicler illustrate the work of
the prophets in delivering the message that met the present needs of the
people. There is nothing in Chronicles to encourage the unspiritual notion
that the main object of prophecy was to give exact and detailed
information as to the remote future. There is prediction necessarily: it
was impossible to declare the will of God without stating the punishment
of sin and the victory of righteousness; but prediction is only part of
the declaration of God’s will. In Gad and Nathan prophecy appears as a
means of communication between the inquiring soul and God; it does not,
indeed, gratify curiosity, but rather gives guidance in perplexity and
distress. The later prophets constantly intervene to initiate reform or to
hinder the carrying out of an evil policy. Gad and Nathan lent their
authority to David’s organisation of the Temple music; Asa’s reform
originated in the exhortation of Oded the prophet; Jehoshaphat went out to
meet the Moabite and Ammonite invaders in response to the inspiriting
utterance of Jahaziel the Levite; Josiah consulted the prophetess Huldah
before carrying out his reformation; the chiefs of Ephraim sent back the
Jewish captives in obedience to another Oded. On the other hand, Shemaiah
prevented Rehoboam from fighting against Israel; Micaiah warned Ahab and
Jehoshaphat not to go up against Ramoth-gilead.

Often, however, the prophetic message gives the interpretation of history,
the Divine judgment upon conduct, with its sentence of punishment or
reward. Hanani the seer, for instance, comes to Asa to show him the real
value of his apparently satisfactory alliance with Benhadad, king of
Syria: “Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and hast not relied
on Jehovah thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out
of thine hand.... Herein thou hast done foolishly; for from henceforth
thou shalt have wars.” Jehoshaphat is told why his ships were broken:
“Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, Jehovah hath destroyed thy
works.” Thus the prophetic declaration of Divine judgment came to mean
almost exclusively rebuke and condemnation. The witness of a good
conscience may be left to speak for itself; God does not often need to
send a prophet to His obedient servants in order to signify His approval
of their righteous acts. But the censures of conscience need both the
stimulus of external suggestion and the support of external authority.
Upon the prophets was constantly laid the unwelcome task of rousing and
bracing the conscience for its stern duty. They became the heralds of
Divine wrath, the precursors of national misfortune. Often, too, the
warnings that should have saved the people were neglected or resented, and
thus became the occasion of new sin and severer punishment. We must not,
however, lay too much stress on this aspect of the prophets’ work. They
were no mere Cassandras, announcing inevitable ruin at the hands of a
blind destiny; they were not always, or even chiefly, the messengers of
coming doom. If they declared the wrath of God, they also vindicated His
justice; in the day of the Lord which they so often foretold, mercy and
grace tempered and at last overcame judgment. They taught, even in their
sternest utterances, the moral government of the world and the benevolent
purpose of its Ruler. These are man’s only hope, even in his sin and
suffering, the only ground for effort, and the only comfort in misfortune.

There are, however, one or two elements in the chronicler’s notices of the
prophets that scarcely harmonise with this general picture. The scanty
references of the books of Samuel and Kings to the “schools” and sons of
the prophets have suggested the theory that the prophets were the
guardians of national education, culture, and literature. The chronicler
expressly assigns the function to the Levites, and does not recognise that
the “schools of the prophets” had any permanent significance for the
religion of Israel, possibly because they chiefly appear in connection
with the northern kingdom. At the same time, we find this idea of the
literary character of the prophets in Chronicles in a new form. The
authorities referred to in the subscriptions to each reign bear the names
of the prophets who flourished during the reign. The primary significance
of the tradition followed by the chronicler is the supreme importance of
the prophet for his period; he, and not the king, gives it a distinctive
character. Therefore the prophet gives his name to his period, as the
consuls at Rome, the Archon Basileus at Athens, and the Assyrian priests
gave their own names to their year of office. Probably by the time
Chronicles was written the view had been adopted which we know prevailed
later on, and it was supposed that the prophets wrote the Historical Books
which bore their names. The ancient prophets had given the Divine
interpretation of the course of events and pronounced the Divine judgment
on history. The Historical Books were written for religious edification;
they contained a similar interpretation and judgment. The religious
instincts of later Judaism rightly classed them with the prophetic
Scriptures.

The striking contrast we have been able to trace between the priests and
the prophets in their qualifications and duties extends also to their
rewards. The book of Kings gives us glimpses of the way in which the
reverent gratitude of the people made some provision for the maintenance
of the prophets. We are all familiar with the hospitality of the
Shunammite, and we read how “a man from Baal-shalishah” brought
first-fruits to Elisha.(307) But the chronicler omits all such references
as being connected with the northern kingdom, and does not give us any
similar information as to the prophets of Judah. He is not usually
indifferent as to ways and means. He devotes some space to the revenues of
the kings of Judah, and delights to dwell on the sources of priestly
income. But it never seems to occur to him that the prophets have any
wants to be provided for. To use George Macdonald’s phrase, he is quite
content to leave them “on the lily and sparrow footing.” The priesthood
and the Levites must be richly endowed; the honour of Israel and of
Jehovah is concerned in their having cities, tithes, first-fruits, and
offerings. Prophets are sent to reproach the people when the priestly dues
are withheld; but for themselves the prophets might have said with St.
Paul, “We seek not yours, but you.” No one supposed that the authority and
dignity of the prophets needed to be supported by ecclesiastical status,
splendid robes, and great incomes. Spiritual force so manifestly resided
in them that they could afford to dispense with the most impressive
symbols of power and authority. On the other hand, they received an honour
that was never accorded to the priesthood: they suffered persecution for
the cause of Jehovah. Zechariah the son of Jehoiada was put to death, and
Micaiah the son of Imlah was imprisoned. We are never told that the priest
as priest suffered persecution. Ahaz closed the Temple, Manasseh set up an
idol in the house of God, but we do not read of either Ahaz or Manasseh
that they slew the priests of Jehovah. The teaching of the prophets was
direct and personal, and thus eminently calculated to excite resentment
and provoke persecution; the priestly services, however, did not at all
interfere with concurrent idolatry, and the priests were accustomed to
receive and execute the orders of the kings. There is nothing to suggest
that they sought to obtrude the worship of Jehovah upon unwilling
converts; and it is not improbable that some, at any rate, of the priests
allowed themselves to be made the tools of the wicked kings. On the eve of
the Captivity we read that “the chiefs of the priests and the people
trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the heathen, and
they polluted the house of Jehovah.” No such disloyalty is recorded of the
prophets in Chronicles. The most splendid incomes cannot purchase loyalty.
It is still true that “the hireling fleeth because he is a hireling”;
men’s most passionate devotion is for the cause in which they have
suffered.

We have seen that the modern ministry presents certain parallels to the
ancient priesthood. Where are we to look for an analogue to the prophet?
If the minister be, in a sense, a priest when he leads the worship of the
people, is he also a prophet when he preaches to them? Preaching is
intended to be—perhaps we may venture to say that it mostly is—a
declaration of the will of God. Moreover, it is not the exposition of a
fixed and unchangeable ritual or even of a set of rigid theological
formulæ. The preacher, like the prophet, seeks to meet the demands for new
light that are made by constantly changing circumstances; he seeks to
adapt the eternal truth to the varying needs of individual lives. So far
he is a prophet, but the essential qualifications of the prophet are still
to be sought after. Isaiah and Jeremiah did not declare the word of
Jehovah as they had learnt it from a Bible or any other book, nor yet
according to the traditions of a school or the teaching of great
authorities; such declaration might be made by the scribes and rabbis in
later times. But the prophets of Chronicles received their message from
Jehovah Himself; while they mused upon the needs of the people, the fire
of inspiration burned within them; then they spoke. Moreover, like their
great antitype, they spoke with authority, and not as the scribes; their
words carried with them conviction even when they did not produce
obedience. The reality of men’s conviction of their Divine authority was
shown by the persecution to which they were subjected. Are these tokens of
the prophet also the notes of the Christian ministry of preaching?
Prophets were found among the house of Aaron and from the tribe of Levi,
but not every Levite or priest was a prophet. Every branch of the
Christian Church has numbered among its official ministers men who
delivered their message with an inspired conviction of its truth; in them
the power and presence of the Spirit have compelled a belief in their
authority to speak for God: this belief has received the twofold
attestation of hearts and consciences submitted to the Divine will on the
one hand or of bitter and rancorous hostility on the other. In every
Church we find the record of men who have spoken, “not in words which
man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth.” Such were Wyclif
and Latimer, Calvin and Luther, George Whitefield and the Wesleys; such,
too, were Moffat and Livingstone. Nor need we suppose that in the modern
Christian Church the gift of prophecy has been confined to men of
brilliant genius who have been conspicuously successful. In the sacred
canon Haggai and Obadiah stand side by side with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel. The chronicler recognises the prophetic calling of men too
obscure to be mentioned by name. He whom God hath sent speaketh the words
of God, not necessarily the orator whom men crowd to hear and whose name
is recorded in history; and God giveth not the Spirit by measure. Many of
the least distinguished of His servants are truly His prophets, speaking,
by the conviction He has given them, a message which comes home with power
to some hearts at any rate, and is a savour of life unto life and of death
unto death. The seals of their ministry are to be found in redeemed and
purified lives, and also only too often in the bitter and vindictive
ill-will of those whom their faithfulness has offended.

We naturally expect to find that the official ministry affords the most
suitable sphere for the exercise of the gift of prophecy. Those who are
conscious of a Divine message will often seek the special opportunities
which the ministry affords. But our study of Chronicles reminds us that
the vocation of the prophet cannot be limited to any external
organisation; it was not confined to the official ministry of Israel; it
cannot be conditioned by recognition by bishops, presbyteries,
conferences, or Churches; it will often find its only external credential
in a gracious influence over individual lives. Nay, the prophet may have
his Divine vocation and be entirely rejected of men. In Chronicles we find
prophets, like Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, whose one Divine message is
received with scorn and defiance.

In practice, if not in theory, the Churches have long since recognised
that the prophetic gift is found outside any official ministry, and that
they may be taught the will of God by men and women of all ranks and
callings. They have provided opportunities for the free exercise of such
gifts in lay preaching, missions, Sunday-schools, meetings of all kinds.

We have here stumbled upon another modern controversy: the desirability of
women preaching. Chronicles mentions prophetesses as well as prophets; on
the other hand, there were no Jewish priestesses. The modern minister
combines some priestly duties with the opportunity, at least, of
exercising the gift of prophecy. The mention of only two or three
prophetesses in the Old Testament shows that the possession of the gift by
women was exceptional. These few instances, however, are sufficient to
prove that God did not in old times limit the gift to men; they suggest at
any rate the possibility of its being possessed by women now, and when
women have a Divine message the Church will not venture to quench the
Spirit. Of course the application of these broad principles would have to
be adapted to the circumstances of individual Churches. Huldah, for
instance, is not described as delivering any public address to the people;
the king sent his ministers to consult her in her own house. Whatever
hesitation may be felt about the public ministry of women, no one will
question their Divine commission to carry the messages of God to the
bedsides of the sick and the homes of the poor. Most of us have known
women to whom men have gone, as Josiah’s ministers went to Huldah, to
“inquire of the Lord.”

Another practical question, the payment of the ministers of religion, has
already been raised by the chronicler’s account of the revenues of the
priests. What more do we learn on the subject from his silence as to the
maintenance of the prophets? The silence is, of course, eloquent as to the
extent to which even a pious Levite may be preoccupied with his own
worldly interests and quite indifferent to other people’s; but it would
not have been possible if the idea of revenues and endowments for the
prophets had ever been very familiar to men’s minds. It has been said that
to-day the prophet sells his inspiration, but the gift of God can no more
be bought and sold with money now than in ancient Israel. The purely
spiritual character of true prophecy, its entire dependence on Divine
inspiration, makes it impossible to hire a prophet at a fixed salary
regulated by the quality and extent of his gifts. By the grace of God,
there is an intimate practical connection between the work of the official
ministry and the inspired declaration of the Divine will; and this
connection has its bearing upon the payment of ministers. Men’s gratitude
is stirred when they have received comfort and help through the spiritual
gifts of their minister, but in principle there is no connection between
the gift of prophecy and the payment of the ministry. A Church can
purchase the enjoyment of eloquence, learning, intellect, and industry; a
high character has a pecuniary value for ecclesiastical as well as for
commercial purposes. The prophet may be provided with leisure, society,
and literature so that the Divine message may be delivered in its most
attractive form; he may be installed in a large and well-appointed
building, so that he may have the best possible opportunity of delivering
his message; he will naturally receive a larger income when he surrenders
obscure and limited opportunities to minister in some more suitable
sphere. But when we have said all, it is still only the accessories that
have to do with payment, not the Divine gift of prophecy itself. When the
prophet’s message is not comforting, when his words grate upon the
theological and social prejudices of his hearers, especially when he is
invited to curse and is Divinely compelled to bless, there is no question
of payment for such ministry. It has been said of Christ, “For the minor
details necessary to secure respect, and obedience, and the enthusiasm of
the vulgar, for the tact, the finesse, the compromising faculty, the
judicious ostentation of successful politicians—for these arts He was not
prepared.”(308) Those who imitate their Master often share His reward.

The slight and accidental connection of the payment of ministers with
their prophetic gifts is further illustrated by the free exercise of such
gifts by men and women who have no ecclesiastical status and do not seek
any material reward. Here again any exact adoption of ancient methods is
impossible; we may accept from the chronicler the great principle that
loyal believers will make all adequate provision for the service and work
of Jehovah, and that they will be prepared to honour Him in the persons of
those whom they choose to represent them before Him, and also of those
whom they recognise as delivering to them His messages. On the other hand,
the prophet—and for our present purpose we may extend the term to the
humblest and least gifted Christian who in any way seeks to speak for
Christ—the prophet speaks by the impulse of the Spirit and from no meaner
motive.

With regard to the functions of the prophet, the Spirit is as entirely
free to dictate His own message as He is to choose His own messenger. The
chronicler’s prophets were concerned with foreign politics—alliances with
Syria and Assyria, wars with Egypt and Samaria—as well as with the ritual
of the Temple and the worship of Jehovah. They discerned a religious
significance in the purely secular matter of a census. Jehovah had His
purposes for the civil government and international policy of Israel as
well as for its creed and services. If we lay down the principle that
politics, whether local or national, are to be kept out of the pulpit, we
must either exclude from the official ministry all who possess any measure
of the prophetic gift, or else carefully stipulate that, if they be
conscious of any obligation to declare the Lord’s will in matters of
public righteousness, they shall find some more suitable place than the
Lord’s house and some more suitable time than the Lord’s day. When we
suggest that the prophet should mind his own business by confining himself
to questions of doctrine, worship, and the religious experiences of the
individual, we are in danger of denying God’s right to a voice in social
and national affairs.

Turning, however, to more directly ecclesiastical affairs, we have noted
that Asa’s reformation received its first impulse from the utterances of
the prophet Azariah or Oded, and also that one feature of the prophet’s
work is to provide for the fresh needs developed by changing
circumstances. A priesthood or any other official ministry is often
wanting in elasticity; it is necessarily attached to an established
organisation and trammelled by custom and tradition. The Holy Spirit in
all ages has commissioned prophets as the free agents in new movements in
the Divine government of the world. They may be ecclesiastics, like many
of the Reformers and like the Wesleys; but they are not dominated by the
official spirit. The initial impulse that moves such men is partly one of
recoil from their environment; and the environment in return casts them
out. Again, prophets may become ecclesiastics, like the tinker to whom
English-speaking Christians owe one of their great religious classics and
the cobbler who stirred up the Churches to missionary enthusiasm. Or they
may remain from beginning to end without official status in any Church,
like the apostle of the anti-slavery movement. In any case the impulse to
a larger, purer, and nobler standard of life than that consecrated by long
usage and ancient tradition does not come from the ecclesiastical official
because of his official training and experience; the living waters that go
out of Jerusalem in the day of the Lord are too wide, and deep, and strong
to flow in the narrow rock-hewn aqueducts of tradition: they make new
channels for themselves; and these channels are the men who do not demand
that the Spirit shall speak according to familiar formulæ and stereotyped
ideas, but are willing to be the prophets of strange and even uncongenial
truth. Or, to use the great metaphor of St. John’s Gospel, with such men,
both for themselves and for others, the water that the Lord gives them
becomes a well of water springing up unto eternal life.

But the chronicler’s picture of the work of the prophets has its darker
side. Few were privileged to give the signal for an immediate and happy
reformation. Most of the prophets were charged with messages of rebuke and
condemnation, so that they were ready to cry out with Jeremiah, “Woe is
me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of
contention to the whole earth! I have not lent on usury, neither have men
lent to me on usury, yet every one of them doth curse me.”(309)

Perhaps even to-day the prophetic spirit often charges its possessors with
equally unwelcome duties. We trust that the Christian conscience is more
sensitive than that of ancient Israel, and that the Church is more ready
to profit by the warnings addressed to it; but the response to the sterner
teaching of the Spirit is not always accompanied by a kindly feeling
towards the teacher, and even where there is progress, the progress is
slow compared to the eager longing of the prophet for the spiritual growth
of his hearers. And yet the sequel of the chronicler’s history suggests
some relief to the gloomier side of the picture. Prophet after prophet
utters his unavailing and seemingly useless rebuke, and delivers his
announcement of coming ruin, and at last the ruin falls upon the nation.
But that is not the end. Before the chronicler wrote there had arisen a
restored Israel, purified from idolatry and delivered from many of its
former troubles. The Restoration was only rendered possible through the
continued testimony of the prophets to the Lord and His righteousness.
However barren of immediate results such testimony may seem to-day, it is
still the word of the Lord that cannot return unto Him void, but shall
accomplish that which He pleaseth and shall prosper in the thing whereto
He sent it.

The chronicler’s conception of the prophetic character of the historian,
whereby his narrative sets forth God’s win and interprets His purposes, is
not altogether popular at present. The teleological view of history is
somewhat at a discount. Yet the prophetic method, so to speak, of Carlyle
and Ruskin is largely historical; and even in so unlikely a quarter as the
works of George Eliot we can find an example of didactic history. _Romola_
is largely taken up with the story of Savonarola, told so as to bring out
its religious significance. But teleological history is sometimes a
failure even from the standpoint of the Christian student, because it
defeats its own ends. He who is bent on deducing lessons from history may
lay undue stress on part of its significance and obscure the rest. The
historian is perhaps most a prophet when he leaves history to speak for
itself. In this sense, we may venture to attribute a prophetic character
to purely scientific history; accurate and unbiassed narrative is the best
starting-point for the study of the religious significance of the course
of events.

In concluding our inquiry as to how far modern Church life is illustrated
by the work of the prophets, one is tempted to dwell for a moment on the
methods they did not use and the subjects not dealt with in their
utterances. This theme, however, scarcely belongs to the exposition of
Chronicles; it would be more appropriate to a complete examination of the
history and writings of the prophets. One point, however, may be noticed.
Their utterances in Chronicles lay less direct stress on moral
considerations than the writings of the canonical prophets, not because of
any indifference to morality, but because, seen in the distance of a
remote past, all other sins seemed to be summed up in faithlessness to
Jehovah. Perhaps we may see in this a suggestion of a final judgment of
history, which should be equally instructive to the religious man who has
any inclination to disparage morality and to the moral man who wishes to
ignore religion.

Our review and discussion of the varied references of Chronicles to the
prophets brings home to us with fresh force the keen interest felt in them
by the chronicler and the supreme importance he attached to their work.
The reverent homage of a Levite of the second Temple centuries after the
golden age of prophecy is an eloquent testimony to the unique position of
the prophets in Israel. His treatment of the subject shows that the lofty
ideal of their office and mission had lost nothing in the course of the
development of Judaism; his selection from the older material emphasises
the independence of the true prophet of any professional status or
consideration of material reward; his sense of the importance of the
prophets to the State and Church in Judah is an encouragement to those
“who look for redemption in Jerusalem,” and who trust the eternal promise
of God that in all times of His people’s need He “will raise up a prophet
from among their brethren, ... and I will put My words in his mouth, and
he shall speak unto them all that I shall command them.”(310) “The
memorial of the prophets was blessed, ... for they comforted Jacob, and
delivered them by assured hope.”(311) Many prophets of the Church have
also left a blessed memorial of comfort and deliverance, and God ever
renews this more than apostolic succession.




Chapter X. Satan. 1 Chron. xxi.-xxii. 1.


    “And again the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and He
    moved David against them saying, Go, number Israel and Judah.”—2
    SAM. xxiv. 1.

    “And Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number
    Israel.”—1 CHRON. xxi. 1.

    “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God
    cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man: but
    each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and
    enticed.”—JAMES i, 13, 14.


The census of David is found both in the book of Samuel and in Chronicles,
in very much the same form; but the chronicler has made a number of small
but important alterations and additions. Taken together, these changes
involve a new interpretation of the history, and bring out lessons that
cannot so easily be deduced from the narrative in the book of Samuel.
Hence it is necessary to give a separate exposition of the narrative in
Chronicles.

As before, we will first review the alterations made by the chronicler and
then expound the narrative in the form in which it left his hand, or
rather in the form in which it stands in the Masoretic text. Any attempt
to deal with the peculiarly complicated problem of the textual criticism
of Chronicles would be out of place here. Probably there are no
corruptions of the text that would appreciably affect the general
exposition of this chapter.

At the very outset the chronicler substitutes Satan for Jehovah, and thus
changes the whole significance of the narrative. This point is too
important to be dealt with casually, and must be reserved for special
consideration later on. In ver. 2 there is a slight change that marks the
different points of the views of the Chronicler and the author of the
narrative in the book of Samuel. The latter had written that Joab numbered
the people from Dan to Beersheba, a merely conventional phrase indicating
the extent of the census. It might possibly, however, have been taken to
denote that the census began in the north and was concluded in the south.
To the chronicler, whose interests all centred in Judah, such an
arrangement seemed absurd; and he carefully guarded against any mistake by
altering “Dan to Beersheba” into “Beersheba to Dan.” In ver. 3 the
substance of Joab’s words is not altered, but various slight touches are
added to bring out more clearly and forcibly what is implied in the book
of Samuel. Joab had spoken of the census as being the king’s
pleasure.(312) It was scarcely appropriate to speak of David “taking
pleasure in” a suggestion of Satan. In Chronicles Joab’s words are less
forcible, “Why doth my lord require this thing?” Again, in the book of
Samuel Joab protests against the census without assigning any reason. The
context, it is true, readily supplies one; but in Chronicles all is made
clear by the addition, “Why will he” (David) “be a cause of guilt unto
Israel?” Further on the chronicler’s special interest in Judah again
betrays itself. The book of Samuel described, with some detail, the
progress of the enumerators through Eastern and Northern Palestine by way
of Beersheba to Jerusalem. Chronicles having already made them start from
Beersheba, omits these details.

In ver. 5 the numbers in Chronicles differ not only from those of the
older narrative, but also from the chronicler’s own statistics in chap.
xxvii. In this last account the men of war are divided into twelve courses
of twenty-four thousand each, making a total of two hundred and
eighty-eight thousand; in the book of Samuel Israel numbers eight hundred
thousand, and Judah five hundred thousand; but in our passage Israel is
increased to eleven hundred thousand, and Judah is reduced to four hundred
and seventy thousand. Possibly the statistics in chap. xxvii. are not
intended to include all the fighting men, otherwise the figures cannot be
harmonised. The discrepancy between our passage and the book of Samuel is
perhaps partly explained by the following verse, which is an addition of
the chronicler. In the book of Samuel the census is completed, but our
additional verse states that Levi and Benjamin were not included in the
census. The chronicler understood that the five hundred thousand assigned
to Judah in the older narrative were the joint total of Judah and
Benjamin; he accordingly reduced the total by thirty thousand, because,
according to his view, Benjamin was omitted from the census. The increase
in the number of the Israelites is unexpected. The chronicler does not
usually overrate the northern tribes. Later on Jeroboam, eighteen years
after the disruption, takes the field against Abijah with “eight hundred
thousand chosen men,” a phrase that implies a still larger number of
fighting men, if all had been mustered. Obviously the rebel king would not
be expected to be able to bring into the field as large a force as the
entire strength of Israel in the most flourishing days of David. The
chronicler’s figures in these two passages are consistent, but the
comparison is not an adequate reason for the alteration in the present
chapter. Textual corruption is always a possibility in case of numbers,
but on the whole this particular change does not admit of a satisfactory
explanation.

In ver. 7 we have a very striking alteration. According to the book of
Samuel, David’s repentance was entirely spontaneous: “David’s heart smote
him after that he had numbered the people”(313); but here God smites
Israel, and then David’s conscience awakes. In ver. 12 the chronicler
makes a slight addition, apparently to gratify his literary taste. In the
original narrative the third alternative offered to David had been
described simply as “the pestilence,” but in Chronicles the words “the
sword of Jehovah” are added in antithesis to “the sword of Thine enemies”
in the previous verse.

Ver. 16, which describes David’s vision of the angel with the drawn sword,
is an expansion of the simple statement of the book of Samuel that David
saw the angel. In ver. 18 we are not merely told that Gad spake to David,
but that he spake by the command of the angel of Jehovah. Ver. 20, which
tells us how Ornan saw the angel, is an addition of the chronicler’s. All
these changes lay stress upon the intervention of the angel, and
illustrate the interest taken by Judaism in the ministry of angels.
Zechariah, the prophet of the Restoration, received his messages by the
dispensation of angels; and the title of the last canonical prophet,
Malachi, probably means “the Angel.” The change from Araunah to Ornan is a
mere question of spelling. Possibly Ornan is a somewhat Hebraised form of
the older Jebusite name Araunah.

In ver. 22 the reference to “a full price” and other changes in the form
of David’s words are probably due to the influence of Gen. xxiii. 9. In
ver. 23 the chronicler’s familiarity with the ritual of sacrifice has led
him to insert a reference to a meal offering, to accompany the burnt
offering. Later on the chronicler omits the somewhat ambiguous words which
seem to speak of Araunah as a king. He would naturally avoid anything like
a recognition of the royal status of a Jebusite prince.

In ver. 25 David pays much more dearly for Ornan’s threshing-floor than in
the book of Samuel. In the latter the price is fifty shekels of silver, in
the former six hundred shekels of gold. Most ingenious attempts have been
made to harmonise the two statements. It has been suggested that fifty
shekels of silver means silver to the value of fifty shekels of gold and
paid in gold, and that six hundred shekels of gold means the value of six
hundred shekels of silver paid in gold. A more lucid but equally
impossible explanation is that David paid fifty shekels for every tribe,
six hundred in all.(314) The real reason for the change is that when the
Temple became supremely important to the Jews the small price of fifty
shekels for the site seemed derogatory to the dignity of the sanctuary;
six hundred shekels of gold was a more appropriate sum. Abraham had paid
four hundred shekels for a burying-place; and a site for the Temple, where
Jehovah had chosen to put His name, must surely have cost more. The
chronicler followed the tradition which had grown up under the influence
of this feeling.

Chaps. xxi. 27-xxii. 1 are an addition. According to the Levitical law,
David was falling into grievous sin in sacrificing anywhere except before
the Mosaic altar of burnt offering. The chronicler therefore states the
special circumstances that palliated this offence against the exclusive
privileges of the one sanctuary of Jehovah. He also reminds us that this
threshing-floor became the site of the altar of burnt offering for
Solomon’s temple. Here he probably follows an ancient and historical
tradition; the prominence given to the threshing-floor in the book of
Samuel indicates the special sanctity of the site. The Temple is the only
sanctuary whose site could be thus connected with the last days of David.
When the book of Samuel was written, the facts were too familiar to need
any explanation; every one knew that the Temple stood on the site of
Araunah’s threshing-floor. The chronicler, writing centuries later, felt
it necessary to make an explicit statement on the subject.

Having thus attempted to understand how our narrative assumed its present
form, we will now tell the chronicler’s story of these incidents. The long
reign of David was drawing to a close. Hitherto he had been blessed with
uninterrupted prosperity and success. His armies had been victorious over
all the enemies of Israel, the borders of the land of Jehovah had been
extended, David himself was lodged with princely splendour, and the
services of the Ark were conducted with imposing ritual by a numerous
array of priests and Levites. King and people alike were at the zenith of
their glory. In worldly prosperity and careful attention to religious
observances David and his people were not surpassed by Job himself.
Apparently their prosperity provoked the envious malice of an evil and
mysterious being, who appears only here in Chronicles: Satan, the
persecutor of Job. The trial to which he subjected the loyalty of David
was more subtle and suggestive than his assault upon Job. He harassed Job
as the wind dealt with the traveller in the fable, and Job only wrapped
the cloak of his faith closer about him; Satan allowed David to remain in
the full sunshine of prosperity, and seduced him into sin by fostering his
pride in being the powerful and victorious prince of a mighty people. He
suggested a census. David’s pride would be gratified by obtaining accurate
information as to the myriads of his subjects. Such statistics would be
useful for the civil organisation of Israel; the king would learn where
and how to recruit his army or to find an opportunity to impose additional
taxation. The temptation appealed alike to the king, the soldier, and the
statesman, and did not appeal in vain. David at once instructed Joab and
the princes to proceed with the enumeration; Joab demurred and protested:
the census would be a cause of guilt unto Israel. But not even the great
influence of the commander-in-chief could turn the king from his purpose.
His word prevailed against Joab, wherefore Joab departed, and went
throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem. This brief general statement
indicates a long and laborious task, simplified and facilitated in some
measure by the primitive organisation of society and by rough and ready
methods adopted to secure the very moderate degree of accuracy with which
an ancient Eastern sovereign would be contented. When Xerxes wished to
ascertain the number of the vast army with which he set out to invade
Greece, his officers packed ten thousand men into as small a space as
possible and built a wall round them; then they turned them out, and
packed the space again and again; and so in time they ascertained how many
tens of thousands of men there were in the army. Joab’s methods would be
different, but perhaps not much more exact. He would probably learn from
the “heads of fathers’ houses” the number of fighting men in each family.
Where the hereditary chiefs of a district were indifferent, he might make
some rough estimate of his own. We may be sure that both Joab and the
local authorities would be careful to err on the safe side. The king was
anxious to learn that he possessed a large number of subjects. Probably as
the officers of Xerxes went on with their counting they omitted to pack
the measured area as closely as they did at first; they might allow eight
or nine thousand to pass for ten thousand. Similarly David’s servants
would, to say the least, be anxious not to underestimate the number of his
subjects. The work apparently went on smoothly; nothing is said that
indicates any popular objection or resistance to the census; the process
of enumeration was not interrupted by any token of Divine displeasure
against the “cause of guilt unto Israel.” Nevertheless Joab’s misgivings
were not set at rest; he did what he could to limit the range of the
census and to withdraw at least two of the tribes from the impending
outbreak of Divine wrath. The tribe of Levi would be exempt from taxation
and the obligation of military service; Joab could omit them without
rendering his statistics less useful for military and financial purposes.
In not including the Levites in the general census of Israel, Joab was
following the precedent set by the numbering in the wilderness.

Benjamin was probably omitted in order to protect the Holy City, the
chronicler following that form of the ancient tradition which assigned
Jerusalem to Benjamin.(315) Later on,(316) however, the chronicler seems
to imply that these two tribes left to the last were not numbered because
of the growing dissatisfaction of Joab with his task: “Joab the son of
Zeruiah began to number, but finished not.” But these different reasons
for the omission of Levi and Benjamin do not mutually exclude each other.
Another limitation is also stated in the later reference: “David took not
the number of them twenty years old and under, because Jehovah had said
that He would increase Israel like to the stars of heaven.” This statement
and explanation seems a little superfluous; the census was specially
concerned with the fighting men, and in the book of Numbers only those
over twenty are numbered. But we have seen elsewhere that the chronicler
has no great confidence in the intelligence of his readers, and feels
bound to state definitely matters that have only been implied and might be
overlooked. Here, therefore, he calls our attention to the fact that the
numbers previously given do not comprise the whole male population, but
only the adults.

At last the census, so far as it was carried out at all, was finished, and
the results were presented to the king. They are meagre and bald compared
to the volumes of tables which form the report of a modern census. Only
two divisions of the country are recognised: “Judah” and “Israel,” or the
ten tribes. The total is given for each: eleven hundred thousand for
Israel, four hundred and seventy thousand for Judah, in all fifteen
hundred and seventy thousand. Whatever details may have been given to the
king, he would be chiefly interested in the grand total. Its figures would
be the most striking symbol of the extent of his authority and the glory
of his kingdom.

Perhaps during the months occupied in taking the census David had
forgotten the ineffectual protests of Joab, and was able to receive his
report without any presentiment of coming evil. Even if his mind were not
altogether at ease, all misgivings would for the time be forgotten. He
probably made or had made for him some rough calculation as to the total
of men, women, and children that would correspond to the vast array of
fighting men. His servants would not reckon the entire population at less
than nine or ten millions. His heart would be uplifted with pride as he
contemplated the statement of the multitudes that were the subjects of his
crown and prepared to fight at his bidding. The numbers are moderate
compared with the vast populations and enormous armies of the great powers
of modern Europe; they were far surpassed by the Roman empire and the
teeming populations of the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the
Tigris; but during the Middle Ages it was not often possible to find in
Western Europe so large a population under one government or so numerous
an army under one banner. The resources of Cyrus may not have been greater
when he started on his career of conquest; and when Xerxes gathered into
one motley horde the warriors of half the known world, their total was
only about double the number of David’s robust and warlike Israelites.
There was no enterprise that was likely to present itself to his
imagination that he might not have undertaken with a reasonable
probability of success. He must have regretted that his days of warfare
were past, and that the unwarlike Solomon, occupied with more peaceful
tasks, would allow this magnificent instrument of possible conquests to
rust unused.

But the king was not long left in undisturbed enjoyment of his greatness.
In the very moment of his exaltation, some sense of the Divine displeasure
fell upon him.(317) Mankind has learnt by a long and sad experience to
distrust its own happiness. The brightest hours have come to possess a
suggestion of possible catastrophe, and classic story loved to tell of the
unavailing efforts of fortunate princes to avoid their inevitable
downfall. Polycrates and Crœsus, however, had not tempted the Divine anger
by ostentatious pride; David’s power and glory had made him neglectful of
the reverent homage due to Jehovah, and he had sinned in spite of the
express warnings of his most trusted minister.

When the revulsion of feeling came, it was complete. The king at once
humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and made full acknowledgment
of his sin and folly: “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this
thing: but now put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant, for
I have done very foolishly.”

The narrative continues as in the book of Samuel. Repentance could not
avert punishment, and the punishment struck directly at David’s pride of
power and glory. The great population was to be decimated either by
famine, war, or pestilence. The king chose to suffer from the pestilence,
“the sword of Jehovah”: “Let me fall now into the hand of Jehovah, for
very great are His mercies; and let me not fall into the hand of man. So
Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there fell of Israel seventy
thousand men.” Not three days since Joab handed in his report, and already
a deduction of seventy thousand would have to be made from its total; and
still the pestilence was not checked, for “God sent an angel unto
Jerusalem to destroy it.” If, as we have supposed, Joab had withheld
Jerusalem from the census, his pious caution was now rewarded: “Jehovah
repented Him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough;
now stay thine hand.” At the very last moment the crowning catastrophe was
averted. In the Divine counsels Jerusalem was already delivered, but to
human eyes its fate still trembled in the balance: “And David lifted up
his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah stand between the earth and the
heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.” So
another great Israelite soldier lifted up his eyes beside Jericho and
beheld the captain of the host of Jehovah standing over against him with
his sword drawn in his hand.(318) Then the sword was drawn to smite the
enemies of Israel, but now it was turned to smite Israel itself. David and
his elders fell upon their faces as Joshua had done before them: “And
David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered?
even I it is that have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep,
what have they done? Let Thine hand, I pray Thee, O Jehovah my God, be
against me and against my father’s house, but not against Thy people, that
they should be plagued.”

The awful presence returned no answer to the guilty king, but addressed
itself to the prophet Gad, and commanded _him_ to bid David go up and
build an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
The command was a message of mercy. Jehovah permitted David to build Him
an altar; He was prepared to accept an offering at his hands. The king’s
prayers were heard, and Jerusalem was saved from the pestilence. But still
the angel stretched out his drawn sword over Jerusalem; he waited till the
reconciliation of Jehovah with His people should have been duly ratified
by solemn sacrifices. At the bidding of the prophet, David went up to the
threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Sorrow and reassurance, hope and
fear, contended for the mastery. No sacrifice could call back to life the
seventy thousand victims whom the pestilence had already destroyed, and
yet the horror of its ravages was almost forgotten in relief at the
deliverance of Jerusalem from the calamity that had all but overtaken it.
Even now the uplifted sword might be only back for a time; Satan might yet
bring about some heedless and sinful act, and the respite might end not in
pardon, but in the execution of God’s purpose of vengeance. Saul had been
condemned because he sacrificed too soon; now perhaps delay would be
fatal. Uzzah had been smitten because he touched the Ark; till the
sacrifice was actually offered who could tell whether some thoughtless
blunder would not again provoke the wrath of Jehovah? Under ordinary
circumstances David would not have dared to sacrifice anywhere except upon
the altar of burnt offering before the tabernacle at Gibeon; he would have
used the ministry of priests and Levites. But ritual is helpless in great
emergencies. The angel of Jehovah with the drawn sword seemed to bar the
way to Gibeon, as once before he had barred Balaam’s progress when he came
to curse Israel. In his supreme need David builds his own altar and offers
his own sacrifices; he receives the Divine answer without the intervention
this time of either priest or prophet. By God’s most merciful and
mysterious grace, David’s guilt and punishment, his repentance and pardon,
broke down all barriers between himself and God.

But, as he went up to the threshing-floor, he was still troubled and
anxious. The burden was partly lifted from his heart, but he still craved
full assurance of pardon. The menacing attitude of the destroying angel
seemed to hold out little promise of mercy and forgiveness, and yet the
command to sacrifice would be cruel mockery if Jehovah did not intend to
be gracious to His people and His anointed.

At the threshing-floor Ornan and his four sons were threshing wheat,
apparently unmoved by the prospect of the threatened pestilence. In Egypt
the Israelites were protected from the plagues with which their oppressors
were punished. Possibly now the situation was reversed, and the remnant of
the Canaanites in Palestine were not afflicted by the pestilence that fell
upon Israel. But Ornan turned back and saw the angel; he may not have
known the grim mission with which the Lord’s messenger had been entrusted,
but the aspect of the destroyer, his threatening attitude, and the lurid
radiance of his unsheathed and outstretched sword must have seemed
unmistakable tokens of coming calamity. Whatever might be threatened for
the future, the actual appearance of this supernatural visitant was enough
to unnerve the stoutest heart; and Ornan’s four sons hid themselves.

Before long, however, Ornan’s terrors were somewhat relieved by the
approach of less formidable visitors. The king and his followers had
ventured to show themselves openly, in spite of the destroying angel; and
they had ventured with impunity. Ornan went forth and bowed himself to
David with his face to the ground. In ancient days the father of the
faithful, oppressed by the burden of his bereavement, went to the Hittites
to purchase a burying-place for his wife. Now the last of the Patriarchs,
mourning for the sufferings of his people, came by Divine command to the
Jebusite to purchase the ground on which to offer sacrifices, that the
plague might be stayed from the people. The form of bargaining was
somewhat similar in both cases. We are told that bargains are concluded in
much the same fashion to-day. Abraham had paid four hundred shekels of
silver for the field of Ephron in Machpelah, “with the cave which was
therein, and all the trees that were in the field.” The price of Ornan’s
threshing-floor was in proportion to the dignity and wealth of the royal
purchaser and the sacred purpose for which it was designed. The fortunate
Jebusite received no less than six hundred shekels of gold.

David built his altar, and offered up his sacrifices and prayers to
Jehovah. Then, in answer to David’s prayers, as later in answer to
Solomon’s, fire fell from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering, and all
this while the sword of Jehovah flamed across the heavens above Jerusalem,
and the destroying angel remained passive, but to all appearances
unappeased. But as the fire of God fell from heaven, Jehovah gave yet
another final and convincing token that He would no longer execute
judgment against His people. In spite of all that had happened to reassure
them, the spectators must have been thrilled with alarm when they saw that
the angel of Jehovah no longer remained stationary, and that his flaming
sword was moving through the heavens. Their renewed terror was only for a
moment: “the angel put up his sword again into the sheath thereof,” and
the people breathed more freely when they saw the instrument of Jehovah’s
wrath vanish out of their sight.

The use of Machpelah as a patriarchal burying-place led to the
establishment of a sanctuary at Hebron, which continued to be the seat of
a debased and degenerate worship even after the coming of Christ. It is
even now a Mohammedan holy place. But on the threshing-floor of Ornan the
Jebusite there was to arise a more worthy memorial of the mercy and
judgment of Jehovah. Without the aid of priestly oracle or prophetic
utterance, David was led by the Spirit of the Lord to discern the
significance of the command to perform an irregular sacrifice in a
hitherto unconsecrated place. When the sword of the destroying angel
interposed between David and the Mosaic tabernacle and altar of Gibeon,
the way was not merely barred against the king and his court on one
exceptional occasion. The incidents of this crisis symbolised the cutting
off for ever of the worship of Israel from its ancient shrine and the
transference of the Divinely appointed centre of the worship of Jehovah to
the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, that is to say to Jerusalem,
the city of David and the capital of Judah.

The lessons of this incident, so far as the chronicler has simply borrowed
from his authority, belong to the exposition of the book of Samuel. The
main features peculiar to Chronicles are the introduction of the evil
angel Satan, together with the greater prominence given to the angel of
Jehovah, and the express statement that the scene of David’s sacrifice
became the site of Solomon’s altar of burnt offering.

The stress laid upon angelic agency is characteristic of later Jewish
literature, and is especially marked in Zechariah and Daniel. It was no
doubt partly due to the influence of the Persian religion, but it was also
a development from the primitive faith of Israel, and the development was
favoured by the course of Jewish history. The Captivity and the
Restoration, with the events that preceded and accompanied these
revolutions, enlarged the Jewish experience of nature and man. The
captives in Babylon and the fugitives in Egypt saw that the world was
larger than they had imagined. In Josiah’s reign the Scythians from the
far North swept over Western Asia, and the Medes and Persians broke in
upon Assyria and Chaldæa from the remote East. The prophets claimed
Scythians, Medes, and Persians as the instruments of Jehovah. The Jewish
appreciation of the majesty of Jehovah, the Maker and Ruler of the world,
increased as they learnt more of the world He had made and ruled; but the
invasion of a remote and unknown people impressed them with the idea of
infinite dominion and unlimited resources, beyond all knowledge and
experience. The course of Israelite history between David and Ezra
involved as great a widening of man’s ideas of the universe as the
discovery of America or the establishment of Copernican astronomy. A
Scythian invasion was scarcely less portentous to the Jews than the
descent of an irresistible army from the planet Jupiter would be to the
civilised nations of the nineteenth century. The Jew began to shrink from
intimate and familiar fellowship with so mighty and mysterious a Deity. He
felt the need of a mediator, some less exalted being, to stand between
himself and God. For the ordinary purposes of everyday life the Temple,
with its ritual and priesthood, provided a mediation; but for unforeseen
contingencies and exceptional crises the Jews welcomed the belief that a
ministry of angels provided a safe means of intercourse between himself
and the Almighty. Many men have come to feel to-day that the discoveries
of science have made the universe so infinite and marvellous that its
Maker and Governor is exalted beyond human approach. The infinite spaces
of the constellations seem to intervene between the earth and the
presence-chamber of God; its doors are guarded against prayer and faith by
inexorable laws; the awful Being, who dwells within, has become
“unmeasured in height, undistinguished into form.” Intellect and
imagination alike fail to combine the manifold and terrible attributes of
the Author of nature into the picture of a loving Father. It is no new
experience, and the present century faces the situation very much as did
the chronicler’s contemporaries. Some are happy enough to rest in the
mediation of ritual priests; others are content to recognise, as of old,
powers and forces, not now, however, personal messengers of Jehovah, but
the physical agencies of “that which makes for righteousness.” Christ came
to supersede the Mosaic ritual and the ministry of angels; He will come
again to bring those who are far off into renewed fellowship with His
Father and theirs.

On the other hand, the recognition of Satan, the evil angel, marks an
equally great change from the theology of the book of Samuel. The
primitive Israelite religion had not yet reached the stage at which the
origin and existence of moral evil became an urgent problem of religious
thought; men had not yet realised the logical consequences of the doctrine
of Divine unity and omnipotence. Not only was material evil traced to
Jehovah as the expression of His just wrath against sin, but “morally
pernicious acts were quite frankly ascribed to the direct agency of
God.”(319) God hardens the heart of Pharaoh and the Canaanites; Saul is
instigated by an evil spirit from Jehovah to make an attempt upon the life
of David; Jehovah moves David to number Israel; He sends forth a lying
spirit that Ahab’s prophets may prophesy falsely and entice him to his
ruin.(320) The Divine origin of moral evil implied in these passages is
definitely stated in the book of Proverbs: “Jehovah hath made everything
for its own end, yea even the wicked for the day of evil”; in
Lamentations, “Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not evil and
good?” and in the book of Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil; I am Jehovah, that doeth all these
things.”(321)

The ultra-Calvinism, so to speak, of earlier Israelite religion was only
possible so long as its full significance was not understood. An emphatic
assertion of the absolute sovereignty of the one God was necessary as a
protest against polytheism, and later on against dualism as well. For
practical purposes men’s faith needed to be protected by the assurance
that God worked out His purposes in and through human wickedness. The
earlier attitude of the Old Testament towards moral evil had a distinct
practical and theological value.

But the conscience of Israel could not always rest in this view of the
origin of evil. As the standard of morality was raised, and its
obligations were more fully insisted on, as men shrank from causing evil
themselves and from the use of deceit and violence, they hesitated more
and more to ascribe to Jehovah what they sought to avoid themselves. And
yet no easy way of escape presented itself. The facts remained; the
temptation to do evil was part of the punishment of the sinner and of the
discipline of the saint. It was impossible to deny that sin had its place
in God’s government of the world; and in view of men’s growing reverence
and moral sensitiveness, it was becoming almost equally impossible to
admit without qualification or explanation that God was Himself the Author
of evil. Jewish thought found itself face to face with the dilemma against
which the human intellect vainly beats its wings, like a bird against the
bars of its cage.

However, even in the older literature there were suggestions, not indeed
of a solution of the problem, but of a less objectionable way of stating
facts. In Eden the temptation to evil comes from the serpent; and, as the
story is told, the serpent is quite independent of God; and the question
of any Divine authority or permission for its action is not in any way
dealt with. It is true that the serpent was one of the beasts of the field
which the Lord God had made, but the narrator probably did not consider
the question of any Divine responsibility for its wickedness. Again, when
Ahab is enticed to his ruin, Jehovah does not act directly, but through
the twofold agency first of the lying spirit and then of the deluded
prophets. This tendency to dissociate God from any direct agency of evil
is further illustrated in Job and Zechariah. When Job is to be tried and
tempted, the actual agent is the malevolent Satan; and the same evil
spirit stands forth to accuse the high-priest Joshua(322) as the
representative of Israel. The development of the idea of angelic agency
afforded new resources for the reverent exposition of the facts connected
with the origin and existence of moral evil. If a sense of Divine majesty
led to a recognition of the angel of Jehovah as the Mediator of
revelation, the reverence for Divine holiness imperatively demanded that
the immediate causation of evil should also be associated with angelic
agency. This agent of evil receives the name of Satan, the adversary of
man, the _advocatus diaboli_ who seeks to discredit man before God, the
impeacher of Job’s loyalty and of Joshua’s purity. Yet Jehovah does not
resign any of His omnipotence. In Job Satan cannot act without God’s
permission; he is strictly limited by Divine control: all that he does
only illustrates Divine wisdom and effects the Divine purpose. In
Zechariah there is no refutation of the charge brought by Satan; its truth
is virtually admitted: nevertheless Satan is rebuked for his attempt to
hinder God’s gracious purposes towards His people. Thus later Jewish
thought left the ultimate Divine sovereignty untouched, but attributed the
actual and direct causation of moral evil to malign spiritual agency.

Trained in this school, the chronicler must have read with something of a
shock that Jehovah moved David to commit the sin of numbering Israel. He
was familiar with the idea that in such matters Jehovah used or permitted
the activity of Satan. Accordingly he carefully avoids reproducing any
words from the book of Samuel that imply a direct Divine temptation of
David, and ascribes it to the well-known and crafty animosity of Satan
against Israel. In so doing, he has gone somewhat further than his
predecessors: he is not careful to emphasise any Divine permission given
to Satan or Divine control exercised over him. The subsequent narrative
implies an overruling for good, and the chronicler may have expected his
readers to understand that Satan here stood in the same relation to God as
in Job and Zechariah; but the abrupt and isolated introduction of Satan to
bring about the fall of David invests the arch-enemy with a new and more
independent dignity.

The progress of the Jews in moral and spiritual life had given them a
keener appreciation both of good and evil, and of the contrast and
opposition between them. Over against the pictures of the good kings, and
of the angel of the Lord, the generation of the chronicler set the
complementary pictures of the wicked kings and the evil angel. They had a
higher ideal to strive after, a clearer vision of the kingdom of God; they
also saw more vividly the depths of Satan and recoiled with horror from
the abyss revealed to them.

Our text affords a striking illustration of the tendency to emphasise the
recognition of Satan as the instrument of evil and to ignore the question
of the relation of God to the origin of evil. Possibly no more practical
attitude can be assumed towards this difficult question. The absolute
relation of evil to the Divine sovereignty is one of the problems of the
ultimate nature of God and man. Its discussion may throw many sidelights
upon other subjects, and will always serve the edifying and necessary
purpose of teaching men the limitations of their intellectual powers.
Otherwise theologians have found such controversies barren, and the
average Christian has not been able to derive from them any suitable
nourishment for his spiritual life. Higher intelligences than our own, we
have been told,—


                              “... reasoned high
    Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
    Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
    And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.”


On the other hand, it is supremely important that the believer should
clearly understand the reality of temptation as an evil spiritual force
opposed to Divine grace. Sometimes this power of Satan will show itself as
“the alien law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and
bringing him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his
members.” He will be conscious that “he is drawn away by his own lust and
enticed.” But sometimes temptation will rather come from the outside. A
man will find his “adversary” in circumstances, in evil companions, in
“the sight of means to do ill deeds”; the serpent whispers in his ear, and
Satan moves him to wrong-doing. Let him not imagine for a moment that he
is delivered over to the powers of evil; let him realise clearly that with
every temptation God provides a way of escape. Every man knows in his own
conscience that speculative difficulties can neither destroy the sanctity
of moral obligation nor hinder the operation of the grace of God.

Indeed, the chronicler is at one with the books of Job and Zechariah in
showing us the malice of Satan overruled for man’s good and God’s glory.
In Job the affliction of the Patriarch only serves to bring out his faith
and devotion, and is eventually rewarded by renewed and increased
prosperity; in Zechariah the protest of Satan against God’s gracious
purposes for Israel is made the occasion of a singular display of God’s
favour towards His people and their priest. In Chronicles the malicious
intervention of Satan leads up to the building of the Temple.

Long ago Jehovah had promised to choose a place in Israel wherein to set
His name; but, as the chronicler read in the history of his nation, the
Israelites dwelt for centuries in Palestine, and Jehovah made no sign: the
ark of God still dwelt in curtains. Those who still looked for the
fulfilment of this ancient promise must often have wondered by what
prophetic utterance or vision Jehovah would make known His choice. Bethel
had been consecrated by the vision of Jacob, when he was a solitary
fugitive from Esau, paying the penalty of his selfish craft; but the
lessons of past history are not often applied practically, and probably no
one ever expected that Jehovah’s choice of the site for His one temple
would be made known to His chosen king, the first true Messiah of Israel,
in a moment of even deeper humiliation than Jacob’s, or that the Divine
announcement would be the climax of a series of events initiated by the
successful machinations of Satan.

Yet herein lies one of the main lessons of the incident. Satan’s
machinations are not really successful; he often attains his immediate
object, but is always defeated in the end. He estranges David from Jehovah
for a moment, but eventually Jehovah and His people are drawn into closer
union, and their reconciliation is sealed by the long-expected choice of a
site for the Temple. Jehovah is like a great general, who will sometimes
allow the enemy to obtain a temporary advantage, in order to overwhelm him
in some crushing defeat. The eternal purpose of God moves onward,
unresting and unhasting; its quiet and irresistible persistence finds
special opportunity in the hindrances that seem sometimes to check its
progress. In David’s case a few months showed the whole process complete:
the malice of the Enemy; the sin and punishment of his unhappy victim; the
Divine relenting and its solemn symbol in the newly consecrated altar. But
with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day; and this brief episode in the history of a small people is a symbol
alike of the eternal dealings of God in His government of the universe and
of His personal care for the individual soul. How short-lived has been the
victory of sin in many souls! Sin is triumphant; the tempter seems to have
it all his own way, but his first successes only lead to his final rout;
the devil is cast out by the Divine exorcism of chastisement and
forgiveness; and he learns that his efforts have been made to subserve the
training in the Christian warfare of such warriors as Augustine and John
Bunyan. Or, to take a case more parallel to that of David, Satan catches
the saint unawares, and entraps him into sin; and, behold, while the evil
one is in the first flush of triumph, his victim is back again at the
throne of grace in an agony of contrition, and before long the repentant
sinner is bowed down into a new humility at the undeserved graciousness of
the Divine pardon: the chains of love are riveted with a fuller constraint
about his soul, and he is tenfold more the child of God than before.

And in the larger life of the Church and the world Satan’s triumphs are
still the heralds of his utter defeat. He prompted the Jews to slay
Stephen; and the Church were scattered abroad, and went about preaching
the word; and the young man at whose feet the witnesses laid down their
garments became the Apostle of the Gentiles. He tricked the reluctant
Diocletian into ordering the greatest of the persecutions, and in a few
years Christianity was an established religion in the empire. In more
secular matters the apparent triumph of an evil principle is usually the
signal for its downfall. In America the slave-holders of the Southern
States rode rough-shod over the Northerners for more than a generation,
and then came the Civil War.

These are not isolated instances, and they serve to warn us against undue
depression and despondency when for a season God seems to refrain from any
intervention with some of the evils of the world. We are apt to ask in our
impatience,—


    “Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning?
      What are these desperate and hideous years?
    Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning,
      Sighs of the bondsman, and a woman’s tears?”


The works of Satan are as earthly as they are devilish; they belong to the
world; which passeth away, with the lust thereof: but the gracious
providence of God has all infinity and all eternity to work in. Where
to-day we can see nothing but the destroying angel with his flaming sword,
future generations shall behold the temple of the Lord.

David’s sin, and penitence, and pardon were no inappropriate preludes to
this consecration of Mount Moriah. The Temple was not built for the use of
blameless saints, but the worship of ordinary men and women. Israel
through countless generations was to bring the burden of its sins to the
altar of Jehovah. The sacred splendour of Solomon’s dedication festival
duly represented the national dignity of Israel and the majesty of the God
of Jacob; but the self-abandonment of David’s repentance, the deliverance
of Jerusalem from impending pestilence, the Divine pardon of presumptuous
sin, constituted a still more solemn inauguration of the place where
Jehovah had chosen to set His name. The sinner, seeking the assurance of
pardon in atoning sacrifice, would remember how David had then received
pardon for his sin, and how the acceptance of his offerings had been the
signal for the disappearance of the destroying angel. So in the Middle
Ages penitents founded churches to expiate their sins. Such sanctuaries
would symbolise to sinners in after-times the possibility of forgiveness;
they were monuments of God’s mercy as well as of the founders’ penitence.
To-day churches, both in fabric and fellowship, have been made sacred for
individual worshippers because in them the Spirit of God has moved them to
repentance and bestowed upon them the assurance of pardon. Moreover, this
solemn experience consecrates for God His most acceptable temples in the
souls of those that love Him.

One other lesson is suggested by the happy issues of Satan’s malign
interference in the history of Israel as understood by the chronicler. The
inauguration of the new altar was a direct breach of the Levitical law,
and involved the superseding of the altar and tabernacle that had hitherto
been the only legitimate sanctuary for the worship of Jehovah. Thus the
new order had its origin in the violation of existing ordinances and the
neglect of an ancient sanctuary. Its early history constituted a
declaration of the transient character of sanctuaries and systems of
ritual. God would not eternally limit himself to any building, or His
grace to the observance of any forms of external ritual. Long before the
chronicler’s time Jeremiah had proclaimed this lesson in the ears of
Judah: “Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My
name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of
My people Israel.... I will do unto the house which is called by My name,
wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and your fathers,
as I have done to Shiloh.... I will make this house like Shiloh, and will
make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.”(323) In the
Tabernacle all things were made according to the pattern that was showed
to Moses in the mount; for the Temple David was made to understand the
pattern of all things “in writing from the hand of Jehovah.”(324) If the
Tabernacle could be set aside for the Temple, the Temple might in its turn
give place to the universal Church. If God allowed David in his great need
to ignore the one legitimate altar of the Tabernacle and to sacrifice
without its officials, the faithful Israelite might be encouraged to
believe that in extreme emergency Jehovah would accept his offering
without regard to place or priest.

The principles here involved are of very wide application. Every
ecclesiastical system was at first a new departure. Even if its highest
claims be admitted, they simply assert that within historic times God set
aside some other system previously enjoying the sanction of His authority,
and substituted for it a more excellent way. The Temple succeeded the
Tabernacle; the synagogue appropriated in a sense part of the authority of
the Temple; the Church superseded both synagogue and Temple. God’s action
in authorising each new departure warrants the expectation that He may yet
sanction new ecclesiastical systems; the authority which is sufficient to
establish is also adequate to supersede. When the Anglican Church broke
away from the unity of Western Christendom by denying the supremacy of the
Pope and refusing to recognise the orders of other Protestant Churches,
she set an example of dissidence that was naturally followed by the
Presbyterians and Independents. The revolt of the Reformers against the
theology of their day in a measure justifies those who have repudiated the
dogmatic systems of the Reformed Churches. In these and in other ways to
claim freedom from authority, even in order to set up a new authority of
one’s own, involves in principle at least the concession to others of a
similar liberty of revolt against one’s self.




Chapter XI. Conclusion.


In dealing with the various subjects of this book, we have reserved for
separate treatment their relation to the Messianic hopes of the Jews and
to the realisation of these hopes in Christ. The Messianic teaching of
Chronicles is only complete when we collect and combine the noblest traits
in its pictures of David and Solomon, of prophets, priests, and kings. We
cannot ascribe to Chronicles any great influence on the subsequent
development of the Jewish idea of the Messiah. In the first place, the
chronicler does not point out the bearing which his treatment of history
has upon the expectation of a future deliverer. He has no formal intention
of describing the character and office of the Messiah; he merely wishes to
write a history so as to emphasise the facts which most forcibly
illustrated the sacred mission of Israel. And, in the second place,
Chronicles never exercised any great influence over Jewish thought, and
never attained to anything like the popularity of the books of Samuel and
Kings. Many circumstances conspired to prevent the Temple ministry from
obtaining an undivided authority over later Judaism. The growth of their
power was broken in upon by the persecutions of Antiochus and the wars of
the Maccabees. The ministry of the Temple under the Maccabæan high-priests
must have been very different from that to which the chronicler belonged.
Even if the priests and Levites still exercised any influence upon
theology, they were overshadowed by the growing importance of the
rabbinical schools of Babylon and Palestine. Moreover, the rise of
Hellenistic Judaism and the translation of the Scriptures into Greek
introduced another new and potent factor into the development of the
Jewish religion. Of all the varied forces that were at work few or none
tended to assign any special authority to Chronicles, nor has it left any
very marked traces on later literature. Josephus indeed uses it for his
history, but the New Testament is under very slight obligation to our
author.

But Chronicles reveals to us the position and tendencies of Jewish thought
in the interval between Ezra and the Maccabees. The Messiah was expected
to renew the ancient glories of the chosen people, “to restore the kingdom
to Israel”; we learn from Chronicles what sort of a kingdom He was to
restore. We see the features of the ancient monarchy that were dear to the
memories of the Jews, the characters of the prophets, priests, and kings
whom they delighted to honour. As their ideas of the past shaped and
coloured their hopes for the future, their conception of what was noblest
and best in the history of the monarchy was at the same time the measure
of what they expected in the Messiah. However little influence Chronicles
may have exerted as a piece of literature, the tendencies of which it is a
monument continued to leaven the thought of Israel, and are everywhere
manifest in the New Testament.

We have to bear in mind that Messiah, “Anointed,” was the familiar title
of the Israelite kings; its use for the priests was late and secondary.
The use of a royal title to denote the future Saviour of the nation shows
us that He was primarily conceived of as an ideal king; and apart from any
formal enunciation of this conception, the title itself would exercise a
controlling influence upon the development of the Messianic idea.
Accordingly in the New Testament we find that the Jews were looking for a
king; and Jesus calls His new society the Kingdom of Heaven.

But for the chronicler the Messiah, the Anointed of Jehovah, is no mere
secular prince. We have seen how the chronicler tends to include religious
duties and prerogatives among the functions of the king. David and Solomon
and their pious successors are supreme alike in Church and state as the
earthly representatives of Jehovah. The actual titles of priest and
prophet are not bestowed upon the kings, but they are virtually priests in
their care for and control over the buildings and ritual of the Temple,
and they are prophets when, like David and Solomon, they hold direct
fellowship with Jehovah and announce His will to the people. Moreover,
David, as “the Psalmist of Israel,” had become the inspired interpreter of
the religious experience of the Jews. The ancient idea of the king as the
victorious conqueror was gradually giving place to a more spiritual
conception of his office; the Messiah was becoming more and more a
definitely religious personage. Thus Chronicles prepared the way for the
acceptance of Christ as a spiritual Deliverer, who was not only King, but
also Priest and Prophet. In fact, we may claim the chronicler’s own
implied authority for including in the picture of the coming King the
characteristics he ascribes to the priest and the prophet. Thus the
Messiah of Chronicles is distinctly more spiritual and less secular than
the Messiah of popular Jewish enthusiasm in our Lord’s own time. Whereas
in the chronicler’s time the tendency was to spiritualise the idea of the
king, the tenure of the office of high-priest by the Maccabæan princes
tended rather to secularise the priesthood and to restore older and cruder
conceptions of the Messianic King.

Let us see how the chronicler’s history of the house of David illustrates
the person and work of the Son of David, who came to restore the ancient
monarchy in the spiritual kingdom of which it was the symbol. The Gospels
introduce our Lord very much as the chronicler introduces David: they give
us His genealogy, and pass almost immediately to His public ministry. Of
His training and preparation for that ministry, of the chain of earthly
circumstances that determined the time and method of His entry upon the
career of a public Teacher, they tell us next to nothing. We are only
allowed one brief glimpse of the life of the holy Child; our attention is
mainly directed to the royal Saviour when He has entered upon His kingdom;
and His Divine nature finds expression in mature manhood, when none of the
limitations of childhood detract from the fulness of His redeeming service
and sacrifice.

The authority of Christ rests on the same basis as that of the ancient
kings: it is at once human and Divine. In Christ indeed this twofold
authority is in one sense peculiar to Himself; but in the practical
application of His authority to the hearts and consciences of men He
treads in the footsteps of His ancestors. His kingdom rests on His own
Divine commission and on the consent of His subjects. God has given Him
the right to rule, but He will not reign in any heart till He receives its
free submission. And still, as of old, Christ, thus chosen and well
beloved of God and man, is King over the whole life of His people, and
claims to rule over them in their homes, their business, their recreation,
their social and political life, as well as in their public and private
worship. If David and his pious successors were devoted to Jehovah and His
temple, if they protected their people from foreign foes and wisely
administered the affairs of Israel, Christ sets us the example of perfect
obedience to the Father; He gives us deliverance and victory in our
warfare against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of
this darkness, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly
places; He administers in peace and holiness the inner kingdom of the
believing heart. All that was foreshadowed both by David and Solomon is
realised in Christ. The warlike David is a symbol of the holy warfare of
Christ and the Church militant, of Him who came not to send peace on
earth, but a sword; Solomon is the symbol of Christ, the Prince of peace
in the Church triumphant. The tranquillity and splendour of the reign of
the first son of David are types of the serene glory of Christ’s kingdom
as it is partly realised in the hearts of His children and as it will be
fully realised in heaven; the God-given wisdom of Solomon prefigures the
perfect knowledge and understanding of Him who is Himself the Word and
Wisdom of God.

The shadows that darken the history of the kings of Judah and even the
life of David himself remind us that the Messiah moved upon a far higher
moral and spiritual level than the monarchs whose royal dignity was a type
of His own. Like David, He was exposed to the machinations of Satan; but,
unlike David, He successfully resisted the tempter. He was in “all points
tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

The great priestly work of David and Solomon was the building of the
Temple and the organisation of its ritual and ministry. By this work the
kings made splendid provision for fellowship between Jehovah and His
people, and for the system of sacrifices, whereby a sinful nation
expressed their penitence and received the assurance of forgiveness. This
has been the supreme work of Christ: through Him we have access to God; we
enter into the holy place, into the Divine presence, by a new and living
way, that is to say His flesh; He has brought us into the perpetual
fellowship of the Spirit. And whereas Solomon could only build one temple,
to which the believer paid occasional visits and obtained the sense of
Divine fellowship through the ministry of the priests, Christ makes every
faithful heart the temple of sacred service, and He has offered for us the
one sacrifice, and provides a universal atonement.

In His priesthood, as in His sacrifice, He represents us before God, and
this representation is not merely technical and symbolic: in Him we find
ourselves brought near to God, and our desires and aspirations are
presented as petitions at the throne of the heavenly grace. But, on the
other hand, in His love and righteousness He represents God to us, and
brings the assurance of our acceptance.

Other minor features of the office and rights of the priests and Levites
find a parallel in Christ. He also is our Teacher and our Judge; to Him
and to His service all worldly wealth may be consecrated. Christ is in all
things the spiritual Heir of the house of Aaron as well as of the house of
David; because He is a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, He,
like Melchizedek, is also King of Salem; of His kingdom and of His
priesthood there shall be no end. But while Christ is to the Kingdom of
Heaven what David was to the Israelite monarchy, while in the different
aspects of His work He is at once Temple, Priest, and Sacrifice, yet in
the ministry of His earthly life He is above all a Prophet, the supreme
successor of Elijah and Isaiah. It was only in a figure that He sat upon
David’s throne; it formed no part of His plan to exercise earthly
dominion: His kingdom was not of this world. He did not belong to the
priestly tribe, and performed none of the external acts of priestly
ritual; He did not base His authority upon any genealogy with regard to
priesthood, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “It is evident that our
Lord hath sprung out of Judah, as to which tribe Moses spake nothing
concerning priests.”(325) His royal birth had its symbolic value, but He
never asked men to believe in Him because of His human descent from David.
He relied as little on the authority of office as on that of birth.
Officially He was neither scribe nor rabbi. Like the prophets, His only
authority was His Divine commission and the witness of the Spirit in the
hearts of His hearers. The people recognised Him as a prophet; they took
Him for Elijah or one of the prophets; He spoke of Himself as a prophet:
“Not without honour, save in his own country.” We have seen that, while
the priests ministered to the regular and recurring needs of the people,
the Divine guidance in special emergencies and the Divine authority for
new departures were given by the prophets. By a prophet Jehovah brought
Israel out of Egypt,(326) and Christ as a Prophet led His people out of
the bondage of the Law into the liberty of the Gospel. By Him the Divine
authority was given for the greatest religious revolution that the world
has ever seen. And still He is the Prophet of the Church. He does not
merely provide for the religious wants that are common to every race and
to every generation: as the circumstances of His Church altar, and the
believer is confronted with fresh difficulties and called upon to
undertake new tasks, Christ reveals to His people the purpose and counsel
of God. Even the record of His earthly teaching is constantly found to
have anticipated the needs of our own time; His Spirit enables us to
discover fresh applications of the truths He taught: and through Him
special light is sought and granted for the guidance of individuals and of
the Church in their need.

But in Chronicles special stress is laid on the darker aspects of the work
of the prophets. They constantly appear to administer rebukes and announce
coming punishment. Both Christ and His apostles were compelled to assume
the same attitude towards Israel. Like Jeremiah, their hearts sank under
the burden of so stern a duty. Christ denounced the Pharisees, and wept
over the city that knew not the things belonging to its peace; He declared
the impending ruin of the Temple and the Holy City. Even so His Spirit
still rebukes sin, and warns the impenitent of inevitable punishment.

We have seen also in Chronicles that no stress was laid on any material
rewards for the prophets, and that their fidelity was sometimes
recompensed with persecution and death. Like Christ Himself, they had
nothing to do with priestly wealth and splendour. The silence of the
chronicler to the income of these prophets makes them fitting types of Him
who had not where to lay His head. A discussion of the income of Christ
would almost savour of blasphemy; we should shrink from inquiring how far
“those who derived spiritual profit from His teaching gave Him substantial
proofs of their appreciation of His ministry.” Christ’s recompense at the
hands of the world and of the Jewish Church was that which former prophets
had received. Like Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, He was persecuted and
slain; He delivered a prophet’s message, and died a prophet’s death.

But, besides the chronicler’s treatment of the offices of prophet, priest,
and king, there was another feature of his teaching which would prepare
the way for a clear comprehension of the person and work of Christ. We
have noticed how the growing sense of the power and majesty of Jehovah
seemed to set Him at a distance from man, and how the Jews welcomed the
idea of the mediation of an angelic ministry. And yet the angels were too
vague and unfamiliar, too little known, and too imperfectly understood to
satisfy men’s longing for some means of fellowship between themselves and
the remote majesty of an almighty God; while still their ministry served
to maintain faith in the possibility of mediation, and to quicken the
yearning after some better way of access to Jehovah. When Christ came He
found this faith and yearning waiting to be satisfied; they opened a door
through which Christ found His way into hearts prepared to receive Him. In
Him the familiar human figures of priest and prophet were exalted into the
supernatural dignity of the Angel of Jehovah. Men had long strained their
eyes in vain to a far-off heaven; and, behold, a human voice recalled
their gaze to the earth; and they turned and found God beside them, kindly
and accessible, a Man with men. They realised the promise that a modern
poet puts into David’s mouth:—


                                  “... O Saul, it shall be
    A face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
    Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever; a Hand like this hand
    Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ
                stand!”


We have thus seen how the figures of the chronicler’s history—prophet,
priest, king, and angel—were types and foreshadowings of Christ. We may
sum up this aspect of his teaching by a quotation from a modern exponent
of Old Testament theology:—

“Moses the prophet is the first type of the Mediator. By his side stands
Aaron the priest, who connects the people with God, and consecrates it....
But from the time of David both these figures pale in the imagination of
the people before the picture of the Davidic king. His is the figure which
appears the most indispensable condition of all true happiness for Israel.
David is the third and by far the most perfect type of the
Consummator.”(327)

This recurrence to the king as the most perfect type of the Redeemer
suggests a last application of the Messianic teaching of the chronicler.
In discussing his pictures of the kings, we have ventured to give them a
meaning adapted to modern political life. In Israel the king stood for the
state. When a community combined for common action to erect a temple or
repel an invader, the united force was controlled and directed by the
king; he was the symbol of national union and co-operation. To-day, when a
community acts as a whole, its agent and instrument is the civil
government; the state is the people organised for the common good,
subordinating individual ends to the welfare of the whole nation. Where
the Old Testament has “king,” its modern equivalent may read the state or
the civil government,—nay, even for special purposes the municipality, the
county council, or the school board. Shall we obtain any helpful or even
intelligible result if we apply this method of translation to the doctrine
of the Messiah? Externally at any rate the translation bears a startling
likeness to what has been regarded as a specially modern development.
“Israel looked for salvation from the king,” would read, “Modern society
should seek salvation from the state.” Assuredly there are many prophets
who have taken up this burden without any idea that their new heresy was
only a reproduction of old and forgotten orthodoxy. But the history of the
growth of the Messianic idea supplies a correction to the primitive
baldness of this principle of salvation by the state. In time the picture
of the Messianic king came to include the attributes of the prophet and
the priest. If we care to complete our modern application, we must affirm
that the state can never be a saviour till it becomes sensitive to Divine
influences and conscious of a Divine presence.

When we see how the Messianic hope of Israel was purified and ennobled to
receive a fulfilment glorious beyond its wildest dreams, we are encouraged
to believe that the fantastic visions of the Socialist may be divinely
guided to some reasonable ideal and may prepare the way for some further
manifestation of the grace of God. But the Messianic state, like the
Messiah, may be called upon to suffer and die for the salvation of the
world, that it may receive a better resurrection.





BOOK IV. THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.




Chapter I. The Last Prayer Of David. 1 Chron. xxix. 10-19.


In order to do justice to the chronicler’s method of presenting us with a
number of very similar illustrations of the same principle, we have in the
previous book grouped much of his material under a few leading subjects.
There remains the general thread of the history, which is, of course, very
much the same in Chronicles as in the book of Kings, and need not be dwelt
on at any length. At the same time some brief survey is necessary for the
sake of completeness and in order to bring out the different complexion
given to the history by the chronicler’s alterations and omissions.
Moreover, there are a number of minor points that are most conveniently
dealt with in the course of a running exposition.

The special importance attached by the chronicler to David and Solomon has
enabled us to treat their reigns at length in discussing his picture of
the ideal king; and similarly the reign of Ahaz has served as an
illustration of the character and fortunes of the wicked kings. We
therefore take up the history at the accession of Rehoboam, and shall
simply indicate very briefly the connection of the reign of Ahaz with what
precedes and follows. But before passing on to Rehoboam we must consider
“The Last Prayer of David,” a devotional paragraph peculiar to Chronicles.
The detailed exposition of this passage would have been out of proportion
in a brief sketch of the chronicler’s account of the character and reign
of David, and would have had no special bearing on the subject of the
ideal king. On the other hand, the “Prayer” states some of the leading
principles which govern the chronicler in his interpretation of the
history of Israel; and its exposition forms a suitable introduction to the
present division of our subject.

The occasion of this prayer was the great closing scene of David’s life,
which we have already described. The prayer is a thanksgiving for the
assurance David had received that the accomplishment of the great purpose
of his life, the erection of a temple to Jehovah, was virtually secured.
He had been permitted to collect the materials for the building, he had
received the plans of the Temple from Jehovah, and had placed them in the
willing hands of his successor. The princes and the people had caught his
own enthusiasm and lavishly supplemented the bountiful provision already
made for the future work. Solomon had been accepted as king by popular
acclamation. Every possible preparation had been made that could be made,
and the aged king poured out his heart in praise to God for His grace and
favour.

The prayer falls naturally into four subdivisions: vv. 10-13 are a kind of
doxology in honour of Jehovah; in vv. 14-16 David acknowledges that Israel
is entirely dependent upon Jehovah for the means of rendering Him
acceptable service; in ver. 17 he claims that he and his people have
offered willingly unto Jehovah; and in vv. 18 and 19 he prays that Solomon
and the people may build the Temple and abide in the Law.

In the doxology God is addressed as “Jehovah, the God of Israel, our
Father,” and similarly in ver. 18 as “Jehovah, the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Israel.” For the chronicler the accession of David is the
starting-point of Israelite history and religion, but here, as in the
genealogies, he links his narrative to that of the Pentateuch, and reminds
his readers that the crowning dispensation of the worship of Jehovah in
the Temple rested on the earlier revelations to Abraham, Isaac, and
Israel.

We are at once struck by the divergence from the usual formula: “Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.” Moreover, when God is referred to as the God of the
Patriarch personally, the usual phrase is “the God of Jacob.” The formula,
“God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,” occurs again in Chronicles in the
account of Hezekiah’s reformation; it only occurs elsewhere in the history
of Elijah in the book of Kings.(328) The chronicler avoids the use of the
name “Jacob,” and for the most part calls the Patriarch “Israel.” “Jacob”
only occurs in two poetic quotations, where its omission was almost
impossible, because in each case “Israel” is used in the parallel
clause.(329) This choice of names is an application of the same principle
that led to the omission of the discreditable incidents in the history of
David and Solomon. Jacob was the supplanter. The name suggested the
unbrotherly craft of the Patriarch. It was not desirable that the Jews
should be encouraged to think of Jehovah as the God of a grasping and
deceitful man. Jehovah was the God of the Patriarch’s nobler nature and
higher life, the God of Israel, who strove with God and prevailed.

In the doxology that follows the resources of language are almost
exhausted in the attempt to set forth adequately “the greatness, and the
power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, ... the riches and
honour, ... the power and might,” of Jehovah. These verses read like an
expansion of the simple Christian doxology, “Thine is the kingdom, the
power, and the glory,” but in all probability the latter is an
abbreviation from our text. In both there is the same recognition of the
ruling omnipotence of God; but the chronicler, having in mind the glory
and power of David and his magnificent offerings for the building of the
Temple, is specially careful to intimate that Jehovah is the source of all
worldly greatness: “Both riches and honour come of Thee, ... and in Thy
hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all.”

The complementary truth, the entire dependence of Israel on Jehovah, is
dealt with in the next verses. David has learnt humility from the tragic
consequences of his fatal census; his heart is no longer uplifted with
pride at the wealth and glory of his kingdom; he claims no credit for the
spontaneous impulse of generosity that prompted his munificence.
Everything is traced back to Jehovah: “All things come of Thee, and of
Thine own have we given Thee.” Before, when David contemplated the vast
population of Israel and the great array of his warriors, the sense of
God’s displeasure fell upon him; now, when the riches and honour of his
kingdom were displayed before him, he may have felt the chastening
influence of his former experience. A touch of melancholy darkened his
spirit for a moment; standing upon the brink of the dim, mysterious Sheol,
he found small comfort in barbaric abundance of timber and stone, jewels,
talents, and darics; he saw the emptiness of all earthly splendour. Like
Abraham before the children of Heth, he stood before Jehovah a stranger
and a sojourner.(330) Bildad the Shuhite had urged Job to submit himself
to the teaching of a venerable orthodoxy, because “we are of yesterday and
know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.”(331) The same
thought made David feel his insignificance, in spite of his wealth and
royal dominion: “Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there no
abiding.”

He turns from these sombre thoughts to the consoling reflection that in
all his preparations he has been the instrument of a Divine purpose, and
has served Jehovah willingly. To-day he can approach God with a clear
conscience: “I know also, my God, that Thou triest the heart and hast
pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of my heart I have
willingly offered all these things.” He rejoiced, moreover, that the
people had offered willingly. The chronicler anticipates the teaching of
St. Paul that “the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.” David gives of his
abundance in the same spirit in which the widow gave her mite. The two
narratives are mutually supplementary. It is possible to apply the story
of the widow’s mite so as to suggest that God values our offerings in
inverse proportion to their amount. We are reminded by the willing
munificence of David that the rich may give of his abundance as simply and
humbly and as acceptably as the poor man gives of his poverty.

But however grateful David might be for the pious and generous spirit by
which his people were now possessed, he did not forget that they could
only abide in that spirit by the continued enjoyment of Divine help and
grace. His thanksgiving concludes with prayer. Spiritual depression is apt
to follow very speedily in the train of spiritual exaltation; days of joy
and light are granted to us that we may make provision for future
necessity.

David does not merely ask that Israel may be kept in external obedience
and devotion: his prayer goes deeper. He knows that out of the heart are
the issues of life, and he prays that the heart of Solomon and the
thoughts of the heart of the people may be kept right with God. Unless the
fountain of life were pure, it would be useless to cleanse the stream.
David’s special desire is that the Temple may be built, but this desire is
only the expression of his loyalty to the Law. Without the Temple the
commandments, and testimonies, and statutes of the Law could not be
rightly observed. But he does not ask that the people may be constrained
to build the Temple and keeping the Law in order that their hearts may be
made perfect; their hearts are to be made perfect that they may keep the
Law.

Henceforward throughout his history the chronicler’s criterion of a
perfect heart, a righteous life, in king and people, is their attitude
towards the Law and the Temple. Because their ordinances and worship
formed the accepted standard of religion and morality, through which men’s
goodness would naturally express themselves. Similarly only under a
supreme sense of duty to God and man may the Christian willingly violate
the established canons of religious and social life.

We may conclude by noticing a curious feature in the wording of David’s
prayer. In the nineteenth, as in the first, verse of this chapter the
Temple, according to our English versions, is referred to as “the palace.”
The original word _bîrâ_ is probably Persian, though a parallel form is
quoted from the Assyrian. As a Hebrew word it belongs to the latest and
most corrupt stage of the language as found in the Old Testament; and only
occurs in Chronicles, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. In putting this word
into the mouth of David, the chronicler is guilty of an anachronism,
parallel to his use of the word “darics.” The word _bîrâ_ appears to have
first become familiar to the Jews as the name of a Persian palace or
fortress in Susa; it is used in Nehemiah of the castle attached to the
Temple, and in later times the derivative Greek name _Baris_ had the same
meaning. It is curious to find the chronicler, in his effort to find a
sufficiently dignified title for the temple of Jehovah, driven to borrow a
word which belonged originally to the royal magnificence of a heathen
empire, and which was used later on to denote the fortress whence a Roman
garrison controlled the fanaticism of Jewish worship.(332) The
chronicler’s intention, no doubt, was to intimate that the dignity of the
Temple surpassed that of any royal palace. He could not suppose that it
was greater in extent or constructed of more costly materials; the living
presence of Jehovah was its one supreme and unique distinction. The King
gave honour to His dwelling-place.




Chapter II. Rehoboam And Abijah: The Importance Of Ritual. 2 Chron.
x.-xiii.


The transition from Solomon to Rehoboam brings to light a serious drawback
of the chronicler’s principle of selection. In the history of Solomon we
read of nothing but wealth, splendour, unchallenged dominion, and
superhuman wisdom; and yet the breath is hardly out of the body of the
wisest and greatest king of Israel before his empire falls to pieces. We
are told, as in the book of Kings, that the people met Rehoboam with a
demand for release from “the grievous service of thy father,” and yet we
were expressly told only two chapters before that “of the children of
Israel did Solomon make no servants for his work; but they were men of
war, and chief of his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his
horsemen.”(333) Rehoboam apparently had been left by the wisdom of his
father to the companionship of head-strong and featherbrained youths; he
followed their advice rather than that of Solomon’s grey-headed
counsellors, with the result that the ten tribes successfully revolted and
chose Jeroboam for their king. Rehoboam assembled an army to reconquer his
lost territory, but Jehovah through the prophet Shemaiah forbade him to
make war against Jeroboam.

The chronicler here and elsewhere shows his anxiety not to perplex simple
minds with unnecessary difficulties. They might be harassed and disturbed
by the discovery that the king, who built the Temple and was specially
endowed with Divine wisdom, had fallen into grievous sin and been visited
with condign punishment. Accordingly everything that discredits Solomon
and detracts from his glory is omitted. The general principle is sound; an
earnest teacher, alive to his responsibility, will not wantonly obtrude
difficulties upon his hearers; when silence does not involve disloyalty to
truth, he will be willing that they should remain in ignorance of some of
the more mysterious dealings of God in nature and history. But silence was
more possible and less dangerous in the chronicler’s time than in the
nineteenth century. He could count upon a docile and submissive spirit in
his readers; they would not inquire beyond what they were told: they would
not discover the difficulties for themselves. Jewish youths were not
exposed to the attacks of eager and militant sceptics, who would force
these difficulties upon their notice in an exaggerated form, and at once
demand that they should cease to believe in anything human or Divine.

And yet, though the chronicler had great advantages in this matter, his
own narrative illustrates the narrow limits within which the principle of
the suppression of difficulties can be safely applied. His silence as to
Solomon’s sins and misfortunes makes the revolt of the ten tribes utterly
inexplicable. After the account of the perfect wisdom, peace, and
prosperity of Solomon’s reign, the revolt comes upon an intelligent reader
with a shock of surprise and almost of incredulity. If he could not test
the chronicler’s narrative by that of the book of Kings—and it was no part
of the chronicler’s purpose that his history should be thus tested—the
violent transition from Solomon’s unbroken prosperity to the catastrophe
of the disruption would leave the reader quite uncertain as to the general
credibility of Chronicles. In avoiding Scylla, our author has fallen into
Charybdis; he has suppressed one set of difficulties only to create
others. If we wish to help intelligent inquirers and to aid them to form
an independent judgment, our safest plan will often be to tell them all we
know ourselves and to believe that difficulties, which in no way mar our
spiritual life, will not destroy their faith.

In the next section(334) the chronicler tells how for three years Rehoboam
administered his diminished kingdom with wisdom and success; he and his
people walked in the way of David and Solomon, and his kingdom was
established, and he was strong. He fortified fifteen cities in Judah and
Benjamin, and put captains in them, and store of victuals, and oil and
wine, and shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong. Rehoboam was
further strengthened by deserters from the northern kingdom. Though the
Pentateuch and the book of Joshua assigned to the priests and Levites
cities in the territory held by Jeroboam, yet their intimate association
with the Temple rendered it impossible for them to remain citizens of a
state hostile to Jerusalem. The chronicler indeed tells us that “Jeroboam
and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the priest’s
office unto Jehovah, and appointed others to be priests for the high
places and the he-goats and for the calves which he had.” It is difficult
to understand what the chronicler means by this statement. On the face of
it, we should suppose that Jeroboam refused to employ the house of Aaron
and the tribe of Levi for the worship of his he-goats and calves, but the
chronicler could not describe such action as casting “them off that they
should not execute the priest’s office unto Jehovah.” The passage has been
explained to mean that Jeroboam sought to hinder them from exercising
their functions at the Temple by preventing them from visiting Judah; but
to confine the priests and Levites to his own kingdom would have been a
strange way of casting them off. However, whether driven out by Jeroboam
or escaping from him, they came to Jerusalem and brought with them from
among the ten tribes other pious Israelites, who were attached to the
worship of the Temple. Judah and Jerusalem became the home of all true
worshippers of Jehovah; and those who remained in the northern kingdom
were given up to idolatry or the degenerate and corrupt worship of the
high places. The chronicler then gives us some account of Rehoboam’s harem
and children, and tells that he dealt wisely, and dispersed his
twenty-eight sons “throughout all the lands of Judah and Benjamin, unto
every fenced city.” He gave them the means of maintaining a luxurious
table, and provided them with numerous wives, and trusted that, being thus
happily circumstanced, they would lack leisure, energy, and ambition to
imitate Absalom and Adonijah.

Prosperity and security turned the head of Rehoboam as they had done that
of David: “He forsook the law of Jehovah, and all Israel with him.” “All
Israel” means all the subjects of Rehoboam; the chronicler treats the ten
tribes as cut off from Israel. The faithful worshippers of Jehovah in
Judah had been reinforced by the priests, Levites, and all other pious
Israelites from the northern kingdom; and yet in three years they forsook
the cause for which they had left their country and their fathers house.
Punishment was not long delayed, for Shishak, king of Egypt, invaded Judah
with an immense host and took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah
and of the king’s house.

The chronicler explains why Rehoboam was not more severely punished.(335)
Shishak appeared before Jerusalem with his immense host: Ethiopians, Lubim
or Lybians, and Sukiim, a mysterious people only mentioned here. The LXX.
and Vulgate translate Sukiim “Troglodytes,” apparently identifying them
with the cave-dwellers on the western or Ethiopian coast of the Red Sea.
In order to find safety from these strange and barbarous enemies, Rehoboam
and his princes were gathered together in Jerusalem. Shemaiah the prophet
appeared before them, and declared that the invasion was Jehovah’s
punishment for their sin, whereupon they humbled themselves, and Jehovah
accepted their penitent submission. He would not destroy Jerusalem, but
the Jews should serve Shishak, “that they may know My service and the
service of the kingdoms of the countries.” When they threw off the yoke of
Jehovah, they sold themselves into a worse bondage. There is no freedom to
be gained by repudiating the restraints of morality and religion. If we do
not choose to be the servants of obedience unto righteousness, our only
alternative is to become the slaves “of sin unto death.” The repentant
sinner may return to his true allegiance, and yet he may still be allowed
to taste something of the bitterness and humiliation of the bondage of
sin. His Shishak may be some evil habit or propensity or special liability
to temptation, that is permitted to harass him without destroying his
spiritual life. In time the chastening of the Lord works out the peaceable
fruits of righteousness, and the Christian is weaned for ever from the
unprofitable service of sin.

Unhappily the repentance inspired by trouble and distress is not always
real and permanent. Many will humble themselves before the Lord in order
to avert imminent ruin, and will forsake Him when the danger has passed
away. Apparently Rehoboam soon fell away again into sin, for the final
judgment upon him is, “He did that which was evil, because he set not his
heart to seek Jehovah.”(336) David in his last prayer had asked for a
“perfect heart” for Solomon, but he had not been able to secure this
blessing for his grandson, and Rehoboam was “the foolishness of the
people, one that had no understanding, who turned away the people through
his counsel.”(337)

Rehoboam was succeeded by his son Abijah, concerning whom we are told in
the book of Kings that “he walked in all the sins of his father, which he
had done before him; and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God,
as the heart of David his father.” The chronicler omits this unfavourable
verdict; he does not indeed classify Abijah among the good kings by the
usual formal statement that “he did that which was good and right in the
eyes of Jehovah,” but Abijah delivers a hortatory speech and by Divine
assistance obtains a great victory over Jeroboam. There is not a
suggestion of any evil-doing on the part of Abijah; and yet we gather from
the history of Asa that in Abijah’s reign the cities of Judah were given
up to idolatry, with all its paraphernalia of “strange altars, high
places, Asherim, and sun-images.” As in the case of Solomon, so here, the
chronicler has sacrificed even the consistency of his own narrative to his
care for the reputation of the house of David. How the verdict of ancient
history upon Abijah came to be set aside we do not know. The charitable
work of whitewashing the bad characters of history has always had an
attraction for enterprising annalists; and Abijah was a more promising
subject than Nero, Tiberius, or Henry VIII. The chronicler would rejoice
to discover one more good king of Judah; but yet why should the record of
Abijah’s sins be expunged, while Ahaziah and Amon were still held up to
the execration of posterity? Probably the chronicler was anxious that
nothing should mar the effect of his narrative of Abijah’s victory. If his
later sources had recorded anything equally creditable of Ahaziah and
Amon, he might have ignored the judgment of the book of Kings in their
case also.

The section(338) to which the chronicler attaches so much importance
describes a striking episode in the chronic warfare between Judah and
Israel. Here Israel is used, as in the older history, to mean the northern
kingdom, and does not denote the spiritual Israel—_i.e._, Judah—as in the
previous chapter. This perplexing variation in the use of the term
“Israel” shows how far Chronicles has departed from the religious ideas of
the book of Kings, and reminds us that the chronicler has only partially
and imperfectly assimilated his older material.

Abijah and Jeroboam had each gathered an immense army, but the army of
Israel was twice as large as that of Judah: Jeroboam had eight hundred
thousand to Abijah’s four hundred thousand. Jeroboam advanced, confident
in his overwhelming superiority and happy in the belief that Providence
sides with the strongest battalions. Abijah, however, was nothing dismayed
by the odds against him; his confidence was in Jehovah. The two armies met
in the neighbourhood of Mount Zemaraim, upon which Abijah fixed his camp.
Mount Zemaraim was in the hill-country of Ephraim, but its position cannot
be determined with certainty; it was probably near the border of the two
kingdoms. Possibly it was the site of the Benjamite city of the same name
mentioned in the book of Joshua in close connection with Bethel.(339) If
so, we should look for it in the neighbourhood of Bethel, a position which
would suit the few indications of place given by the narrative.

Before the battle, Abijah made an effort to induce his enemies to depart
in peace. From the vantage-ground of his mountain camp he addressed
Jeroboam and his army as Jotham had addressed the men of Shechem from
Mount Gerizim.(340) Abijah reminded the rebels—for as such he regarded
them—that Jehovah, the God of Israel, had given the kingdom over Israel to
David for ever, even to him and to his sons, by a covenant of salt, by a
charter as solemn and unalterable as that by which the heave-offerings had
been given to the sons of Aaron.(341) The obligation of an Arab host to
the guest who had sat at meat with him and eaten of his salt was not more
binding than the Divine decree which had given the throne of Israel to the
house of David. And yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat had dared to infringe
the sacred rights of the elect dynasty. He, the slave of Solomon, had
risen up and rebelled against his master.

The indignant prince of the house of David not unnaturally forgets that
the disruption was Jehovah’s own work, and that Jeroboam rose up against
his master, not at the instigation of Satan, but by the command of the
prophet Ahijah.(342) The advocates of sacred causes even in inspired
moments are apt to be one-sided in their statements of fact.

While Abijah is severe upon Jeroboam and his accomplices and calls them
“vain men, sons of Belial,” he shows a filial tenderness for the memory of
Rehoboam. That unfortunate king had been taken at a disadvantage, when he
was young and tender-hearted and unable to deal sternly with rebels. The
tenderness which could threaten to chastise his people with scorpions must
have been of the kind—


    “That dared to look on torture and could not look on war”;


it only appears in the history in Rehoboam’s headlong flight to Jerusalem.
No one, however, will censure Abijah for taking an unduly favourable view
of his father’s character.

But whatever advantage Jeroboam may have found in his first revolt, Abijah
warns him that now he need not think to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah
in the hands of the sons of David. He is no longer opposed to an
unseasoned youth, but to men who know their overwhelming advantage.
Jeroboam need not think to supplement and complete his former achievements
by adding Judah and Benjamin to his kingdom. Against his superiority of
four hundred thousand soldiers Abijah can set a Divine alliance, attested
by the presence of priests and Levites and the regular performance of the
pentateuchal ritual, whilst the alienation of Israel from Jehovah is
clearly shown by the irregular orders of their priests. But let Abijah
speak for himself: “Ye be a great multitude, and there are with you the
golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods.” Possibly Abijah was able
to point to Bethel, where the royal sanctuary of the golden calf was
visible to both armies: “Have ye not driven out the priests of Jehovah,
the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests in
heathen fashion? When any one comes to consecrate himself with a young
bullock and seven rams, ye make him a priest of them that are no gods. But
as for us, Jehovah is our God, and we have not forsaken Him; and we have
priests, the sons of Aaron, ministering unto Jehovah, and the Levites,
doing their appointed work: and they burn unto Jehovah morning and evening
burnt offerings and sweet incense: the shewbread also they set in order
upon the table that is kept free from all uncleanness; and we have the
candlestick of gold, with its lamps, to burn every evening; for we observe
the ordinances of Jehovah our God; but ye have forsaken Him. And, behold,
God is with us at our head, and His priests, with the trumpets of alarm,
to sound an alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against
Jehovah, the God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”

This speech, we are told, “has been much admired. It was well suited to
its object, and exhibits correct notions of the theocratical
institutions.” But, like much other admirable eloquence, in the House of
Commons and elsewhere, Abijah’s speech had no effect upon those to whom it
was addressed. Jeroboam apparently utilised the interval to plant an
ambush in the rear of the Jewish army.

Abijah’s speech is unique. There have been other instances in which
commanders have tried to make oratory take the place of arms, and, like
Abijah, they have mostly been unsuccessful; but they have usually appealed
to lower motives. Sennacherib’s envoys tried ineffectually to seduce the
garrison of Jerusalem from their allegiance to Hezekiah, but they relied
on threats of destruction and promises of “a land of corn and wine, a land
of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and honey.” There is, however,
a parallel instance of more successful persuasion. When Octavian was at
war with his fellow-triumvir Lepidus, he made a daring attempt to win over
his enemy’s army. He did not address them from the safe elevation of a
neighbouring mountain, but rode openly into the hostile camp. He appealed
to the soldiers by motives as lofty as those urged by Abijah, and called
upon them to save their country from civil war by deserting Lepidus. At
the moment his appeal failed, and he only escaped with a wound in his
breast; but after a while his enemy’s soldiers came over to him in
detachments, and eventually Lepidus was compelled to surrender to his
rival. But the deserters were not altogether influenced by pure
patriotism. Octavian had carefully prepared the way for his dramatic
appearance in the camp of Lepidus, and had used grosser means of
persuasion than arguments addressed to patriotic feeling.

Another instance of a successful appeal to a hostile force is found in the
history of the first Napoleon, when he was marching on Paris after his
return from Elba. Near Grenoble he was met by a body of royal troops. He
at once advanced to the front, and exposing his breast, exclaimed to the
opposing ranks, “Here is your emperor; if any one would kill me, let him
fire.” The detachment, which had been sent to arrest his progress, at once
deserted to their old commander. Abijah’s task was less hopeful: the
soldiers whom Octavian and Napoleon won over had known these generals as
lawful commanders of Roman and French armies respectively, but Abijah
could not appeal to any old associations in the minds of Jeroboam’s army;
the Israelites were animated by ancient tribal jealousies, and Jeroboam
was made of sterner stuff than Lepidus or Louis XVIII. Abijah’s appeal is
a monument of his humanity, faith, and devotion; and if it failed to
influence the enemy, doubtless served to inspirit his own army.

At first, however, things went hardly with Judah. They were outgeneralled
as well as outnumbered; Jeroboam’s main body attacked them in front, and
the ambush assailed their rear. Like the men of Ai, “when Judah looked
back, behold, the battle was before and behind them.” But Jehovah, who
fought against Ai, was fighting for Judah, and they cried unto Jehovah;
and then, as at Jericho, “the men of Judah gave a shout, and when they
shouted, God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.” The
rout was complete, and was accompanied by terrible slaughter. No fewer
than five hundred thousand Israelites were slain by the men of Judah. The
latter pressed their advantage, and took the neighbouring city of Bethel
and other Israelite towns. For the time Israel was “brought under,” and
did not recover from its tremendous losses during the three years of
Abijah’s reign. As for Jeroboam, Jehovah smote him, and he died; but
“Abijah waxed mighty, and took unto himself fourteen wives, and begat
twenty-and-two sons and sixteen daughters.”(343) His history closes with
the record of these proofs of Divine favour, and he “slept with his
fathers, and they buried him in the city of David, and Asa his son reigned
in his stead.”

The lesson which the chronicler intends to teach by his narrative is
obviously the importance of ritual, not the importance of ritual apart
from the worship of the true God; he emphasises the presence of Jehovah
with Judah, in contrast to the Israelite worship of calves and those that
are no gods. The chronicler dwells upon the maintenance of the legitimate
priesthood and the prescribed ritual as the natural expression and clear
proof of the devotion of the men of Judah to their God.

It may help us to realise the significance of Abijah’s speech, if we try
to construct an appeal in the same spirit for a Catholic general in the
Thirty Years’ War addressing a hostile Protestant army. Imagine
Wallenstein or Tilly, moved by some unwonted spirit of pious oratory,
addressing the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus:—

“We have a pope who sits in Peter’s chair, bishops and priests ministering
unto the Lord, in the true apostolical succession. The sacrifice of the
Mass is daily offered; matins, laud, vespers, and compline are all duly
celebrated; our churches are fragrant with incense and glorious with
stained glass and images; we have crucifixes, and lamps, and candles; and
our priests are fitly clothed in ecclesiastical vestments; for we observe
the traditions of the Church, but ye have forsaken the Divine order.
Behold, God is with us at our head; and we have banners blessed by the
Pope. O ye Swedes, ye fight against God; ye shall not prosper.”

As Protestants we may find it difficult to sympathise with the feelings of
a devout Romanist or even with those of a faithful observer of the
complicated Mosaic ritual. We could not construct so close a parallel to
Abijah’s speech in terms of any Protestant order of service, and yet the
objections which any modern denomination feels to departures from its own
forms of worship rest on the same principles as those of Abijah. In the
abstract the speech teaches two main lessons: the importance of an
official and duly accredited ministry and of a suitable and authoritative
ritual. These principles are perfectly general, and are not confined to
what is usually known as sacerdotalism and ritualism. Every Church has in
practice some official ministry, even those Churches that profess to owe
their separate existence to the necessity for protesting against an
official ministry. Men whose chief occupation is to denounce priestcraft
may themselves be saturated with the sacerdotal spirit. Every Church, too,
has its ritual. The silence of a Friends’ meeting is as much a rite as the
most elaborate genuflexion before a highly ornamented altar. To regard
either the absence or presence of rites as essential is equally
ritualistic. The man who leaves his wonted place of worship because “Amen”
is sung at the end of a hymn is as bigoted a ritualist as his brother who
dare not pass an altar without crossing himself. Let us then consider the
chronicler’s two principles in this broad sense. The official ministry of
Israel consisted of the priests and Levites, and the chronicler counted it
a proof of the piety of the Jews that they adhered to this ministry and
did not admit to the priesthood any one who could bring a young bullock
and seven rams. The alternative was not between a hereditary priesthood
and one open to any aspirant with special spiritual qualifications, but
between a duly trained and qualified ministry on the one hand and a motley
crew of the forerunners of Simon Magus on the other. It is impossible not
to sympathise with the chronicler. To begin with, the property
qualification was too low. If livings are to be purchased at all, they
should bear a price commensurate with the dignity and responsibility of
the sacred office. A mere entrance fee, so to speak, of a young bullock
and seven rams must have flooded Jeroboam’s priesthood with a host of
adventurers, to whom the assumption of the office was a matter of social
or commercial speculation. The private adventure system of providing for
the ministry of the word scarcely tends to either the dignity or the
efficiency of the Church. But, in any case, it is not desirable that mere
worldly gifts, money, social position, or even intellect should be made
the sole passports to Christian service; even the traditions and education
of a hereditary priesthood would be more probable channels of spiritual
qualifications.

Another point that the chronicler objects to in Jeroboam’s priests is the
want of any other than a property qualification. Any one who chose could
be a priest. Such a system combined what might seem opposite vices. It
preserved an official ministry; these self-appointed priests formed a
clerical order; and yet it gave no guarantee whatever of either fitness or
devotion. The chronicler, on the other hand, by the importance he attaches
to the Levitical priesthood, recognises the necessity of an official
ministry, but is anxious that it should be guarded with jealous care
against the intrusion of unsuitable persons. A conclusive argument for an
official ministry is to be found in its formal adoption by most Churches
and its uninvited appearance in the rest. We should not now be contented
with the safeguards against unsuitable ministers to be found in hereditary
succession; the system of the Pentateuch would be neither acceptable nor
possible in the nineteenth century: and yet, if it had been perfectly
administered, the Jewish priesthood would have been worthy of its high
office, nor were the times ripe for the substitution of any better system.
Many of the considerations which justify hereditary succession in a
constitutional monarchy might be adduced in defence of a hereditary
priesthood. Even now, without any pressure of law or custom, there is a
certain tendency towards hereditary succession in the ministerial office.
It would be easy to name distinguished ministers who were inspired for the
high calling by their fathers’ devoted service, and who received an
invaluable preparation for their life-work from the Christian enthusiasm
of a clerical household. The clerical ancestry of the Wesleys is only one
among many illustrations of an inherited genius for the ministry.

But though the best method of obtaining a suitable ministry varies with
changing circumstances, the chronicler’s main principle is of permanent
and universal application. The Church has always felt a just concern that
the official representatives of its faith and order should commend
themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. The prophet
needs neither testimonials nor official status: the word of the Lord can
have free course without either; but the appointment or election to
ecclesiastical office entrusts the official with the honour of the Church
and in a measure of its Master.

The chronicler’s other principle is the importance of a suitable and
authoritative ritual. We have already noticed that any order of service
that is fixed by the constitution or custom of a Church involves the
principle of ritual. Abijah’s speech does not insist that only the
established ritual should be tolerated; such questions had not come within
the chronicler’s horizon. The merit of Judah lay in possessing and
practising a legitimate ritual, that is to say in observing the Pauline
injunction to do all things decently and in order. The present generation
is not inclined to enforce any very stringent obedience to Paul’s
teaching, and finds it difficult to sympathise with Abijah’s enthusiasm
for the symbolism of worship. But men to-day are not radically different
from the chronicler’s contemporaries, and it is as legitimate to appeal to
spiritual sensibility through the eye as through the ear; architecture and
decoration are neither more nor less spiritual than an attractive voice
and impressive elocution. Novelty and variety have, or should have, their
legitimate place in public worship; but the Church has its obligations to
those who have more regular spiritual wants. Most of us find much of the
helpfulness of public worship in the influence of old and familiar
spiritual associations, which can only be maintained by a measure of
permanence and fixity in Divine service. The symbolism of the Lord’s
Supper never loses its freshness, and yet it is restful because familiar
and impressive because ancient. On the other hand, the maintenance of this
ritual is a constant testimony to the continuity of Christian life and
faith. Moreover, in this rite the great bulk of Christendom finds the
outward and visible sign of its unity.

Ritual, too, has its negative value. By observing the Levitical ordinances
the Jews were protected from the vagaries of any ambitious owner of a
young bullock and seven rams. While we grant liberty to all to use the
form of worship in which they find most spiritual profit, we need to have
Churches whose ritual will be comparatively fixed. Christians who find
themselves most helped by the more quiet and regular methods of devotion
naturally look to a settled order of service to protect them from undue
and distracting excitement.

In spite of the wide interval that separates the modern Church from
Judaism, we can still discern a unity of principle, and are glad to
confirm the judgment of Christian experience from the lessons of an older
and different dispensation. But we should do injustice to the chronicler’s
teaching if we forgot that for his own times his teaching was capable of
much more definite and forcible application. Christianity and Islam have
purified religious worship throughout Europe, America, and a large portion
of Asia. We are no longer tempted by the cruel and loathsome rites of
heathenism. The Jews knew the wild extravagance, gross immorality, and
ruthless cruelty of Phœnician and Syrian worship. If we had lived in the
chronicler’s age and had shared his experience of idolatrous rites, we
should have also shared his enthusiasm for the pure and lofty ritual of
the Pentateuch. We should have regarded it as a Divine barrier between
Israel and the abominations of heathenism, and should have been jealous
for its strict observance.




Chapter III. Asa: Divine Retribution. 2 Chron. xiv.-xvi.


Abijah, dying, as far as we can gather from Chronicles, in the odour of
sanctity, was succeeded by his son Asa. The chronicler’s history of Asa is
much fuller than that which is given in the book of Kings. The older
narrative is used as a framework into which material from later sources is
freely inserted. The beginning of the new reign was singularly promising.
Abijah had been a very David, he had fought the battles of Jehovah, and
had assured the security and independence of Judah. Asa, like Solomon,
entered into the peaceful enjoyment of his predecessor’s exertions in the
field. “In his days the land was quiet ten years,” as in the days when the
judges had delivered Israel, and he was able to exhort his people to
prudent effort by reminding them that Jehovah had given them rest on every
side.(344) This interval of quiet was used for both religious reform and
military precautions.(345) The high places and heathen idols and symbols
which had somehow survived Abijah’s zeal for the Mosaic ritual were swept
away, and Judah was commanded to seek Jehovah and observe the Law; and he
built fortresses with towers, and gates, and bars, and raised a great army
“that bare bucklers and spears,”—no mere hasty levy of half-armed peasants
with scythes and axes. The mighty array surpassed even Abijah’s great
muster of four hundred thousand from Judah and Benjamin: there were five
hundred and eighty thousand men, three hundred thousand out of Judah that
bare bucklers and spears and two hundred and eighty thousand out of
Benjamin that bare shields and drew bows. The great muster of Benjamites
under Asa is in striking contrast to the meagre tale of six hundred
warriors that formed the whole strength of Benjamin after its disastrous
defeat in the days of the judges; and the splendid equipment of this
mighty host shows the rapid progress of the nation from the desperate days
of Shamgar and Jael or even of Saul’s early reign, when “there was neither
shield nor spear seen among forty thousand in Israel.”

These references to buildings, especially fortresses, to military stores
and the vast numbers of Jewish and Israelite armies, form a distinct class
amongst the additions made by the chronicler to the material taken from
the book of Kings. They are found in the narratives of the reigns of
David, Rehoboam, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Jotham, Manasseh, in fact in the
reigns of nearly all the good kings; Manasseh’s building was done after he
had turned from his evil ways.(346) Hezekiah and Josiah were too much
occupied with sacred festivals on the one hand and hostile invaders on the
other to have much leisure for building, and it would not have been in
keeping with Solomon’s character as the prince of peace to have laid
stress on his arsenals and armies. Otherwise the chronicler, living at a
time when the warlike resources of Judah were of the slightest, was
naturally interested in these reminiscences of departed glory; and the
Jewish provincials would take a pride in relating these pieces of
antiquarian information about their native towns, much as the servants of
old manor-houses delight to point out the wing which was added by some
famous Cavalier or by some Jacobite squire.

Asa’s warlike preparations were possibly intended, like those of the
Triple Alliance, to enable him to maintain peace; but if so, their sequel
did not illustrate the maxim, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” The rumour of
his vast armaments reached a powerful monarch: “Zerah the Ethiopian.”(347)
The vagueness of this description is doubtless due to the remoteness of
the chronicler from the times he is describing. Zerah has sometimes been
identified with Shishak’s successor, Osorkon I., the second king of the
twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. Zerah felt that Asa’s great army was a
standing menace to the surrounding princes, and undertook the task of
destroying this new military power: “He came out against them.” Numerous
as Asa’s forces were, they still left him dependent upon Jehovah, for the
enemy were even more numerous and better equipped. Zerah led to a battle
an army of a million men, supported by three hundred war chariots. With
this enormous host he came to Mareshah, at the foot of the Judæan
highlands, in a direction south-west of Jerusalem. In spite of the
inferiority of his army, Asa came out to meet him; “and they set the
battle in array in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.” Like Abijah, Asa
felt that, with his Divine Ally, he need not be afraid of the odds against
him even when they could be counted by hundreds of thousands. Trusting in
Jehovah, he had taken the field against the enemy; and now at the decisive
moment he made a confident appeal for help: “Jehovah, there is none beside
Thee to help between the mighty and him that hath no strength.” Five
hundred and eighty thousand men seemed nothing compared to the host
arrayed against them, and outnumbering them in the proportion of nearly
two to one. “Help us, Jehovah our God; for we rely on Thee, and in Thy
name are we come against this multitude. Jehovah, Thou art our God; let
not man prevail against Thee.”

Jehovah justified the trust reposed in Him. He smote the Ethiopians, and
they fled towards the south-west in the direction of Egypt; and Asa and
his army pursued them as far as Gerar, with fearful slaughter, so that of
Zerah’s million followers not one remained alive.(348) Of course this
statement is hyperbolical. The carnage was enormous, and no living enemies
remained in sight. Apparently Gerar and the neighbouring cities had aided
Zerah in his advance and attempted to shelter the fugitives from Mareshah.
Paralysed with fear of Jehovah, whose avenging wrath had been so terribly
manifested, these cities fell an easy prey to the victorious Jews. They
smote and spoiled all the cities about Gerar, and reaped a rich harvest,
“for there was much spoil in them.” It seems that the nomad tribes of the
southern wilderness had also in some way identified themselves with the
invaders; Asa attacked them in their turn. “They smote also the tents of
cattle”; and as the wealth of these tribes lay in their flocks and herds;
“they carried away sheep in abundance and camels, and returned to
Jerusalem.”

This victory is closely parallel to that of Abijah over Jeroboam. In both
the numbers of the armies are reckoned by hundreds of thousands; and the
hostile host outnumbers the army of Judah in the one case by exactly two
to one, in the other by nearly that proportion: in both the king of Judah
trusts with calm assurance to the assistance of Jehovah, and Jehovah
smites the enemy; the Jews then massacre the defeated army and spoil or
capture the neighbouring cities.

These victories over superior numbers may easily be paralleled or
surpassed by numerous striking examples from secular history. The odds
were greater at Agincourt, where at least sixty thousand French were
defeated by not more than twenty thousand Englishmen; at Marathon the
Greeks routed a Persian army ten times as numerous as their own; in India
English generals have defeated innumerable hordes of native warriors, as
when Wellesley—


    “Against the myriads of Assaye
    Clashed with his fiery few and won.”


For the most part victorious generals have been ready to acknowledge the
succouring arm of the God of battles. Shakespeare’s Henry V. after
Agincourt speaks altogether in the spirit of Asa’s prayer:—


        “... O God, Thy arm was here;
    And not to us, but to Thy arm alone,
    Ascribe we all....
                        ... Take it, God,
    For it is only Thine.”


When the small craft that made up Elizabeth’s fleet defeated the huge
Spanish galleons and galleasses, and the storms of the northern seas
finished the work of destruction, the grateful piety of Protestant England
felt that its foes had been destroyed by the breath of the Lord; “Afflavit
Deus et dissipantur.”

The principle that underlies such feelings is quite independent of the
exact proportions of opposing armies. The victories of inferior numbers in
a righteous cause are the most striking, but not the most significant,
illustrations of the superiority of moral to material force. In the wider
movements of international politics we may find even more characteristic
instances. It is true of nations as well as of individuals that—


    “The Lord killeth and maketh alive;
    He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up:
    The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich;
    He bringeth low, He also lifteth up:
    He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,
    He lifteth up the needy from the dunghill,
    To make them sit with princes
    And inherit the throne of glory.”


Italy in the eighteenth century seemed as hopelessly divided as Israel
under the judges, and Greece as completely enslaved to the “unspeakable
Turk” as the Jews to Nebuchadnezzar; and yet, destitute as they were of
any material resources, these nations had at their disposal great moral
forces: the memory of ancient greatness and the sentiment of nationality;
and to-day Italy can count hundreds of thousands like the chronicler’s
Jewish kings, and Greece builds her fortresses by land and her ironclads
to command the sea. The Lord has fought for Israel.

But the principle has a wider application. A little examination of the
more obscure and complicated movements of social life will show moral
forces everywhere overcoming and controlling the apparently irresistible
material forces opposed to them. The English and American pioneers of the
movements for the abolition of slavery had to face what seemed an
impenetrable phalanx of powerful interests and influences; but probably
any impartial student of history would have foreseen the ultimate triumph
of a handful of earnest men over all the wealth and political power of the
slave-owners. The moral forces at the disposal of the abolitionists were
obviously irresistible. But the soldier in the midst of smoke and tumult
may still be anxious and despondent at the very moment when the spectator
sees clearly that the battle is won; and the most earnest Christian
workers sometimes falter when they realise the vast and terrible forces
that fight against them. At such times we are both rebuked and encouraged
by the simple faith of the chronicler in the overruling power of God.

It may be objected that if victory were to be secured by Divine
intervention, there was no need to muster five hundred and eighty thousand
men or indeed any army at all. If in any and every case God disposes, what
need is there for the devotion to His service of our best strength, and
energy, and culture, or of any human effort at all? A wholesome spiritual
instinct leads the chronicler to emphasise the great preparations of
Abijah and Asa. We have no right to look for Divine co-operation till we
have done our best; we are not to sit with folded hands and expect a
complete salvation to be wrought for us, and then to continue as idle
spectators of God’s redemption of mankind: we are to tax our resources to
the utmost to gather our hundreds of thousands of soldiers; we are to work
out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh
in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

This principle may be put in another way. Even to the hundreds of
thousands the Divine help is still necessary. The leaders of great hosts
are as dependent upon Divine help as Jonathan and his armour-bearer
fighting single-handed against a Philistine garrison, or David arming
himself with a sling and stone against Goliath of Gath. The most competent
Christian worker in the prime of his spiritual strength needs grace as
much as the untried youth making his first venture in the Lord’s service.

At this point we meet with another of the chronicler’s obvious
self-contradictions. At the beginning of the narrative of Asa’s reign we
are told that the king did away with the high places and the symbols of
idolatrous worship, and that, because Judah had thus sought Jehovah, He
gave them rest. The deliverance from Zerah is another mark of Divine
favour. And yet in the fifteenth chapter Asa, in obedience to prophetic
admonition, takes away the abominations from his dominions, as if there
had been no previous reformation, but we are told that the high places
were not taken out of Israel. The context would naturally suggest that
Israel here means Asa’s kingdom, as the true Israel of God; but as the
verse is borrowed from the book of Kings, and “out of Israel” is an
editorial addition made by the chronicler, it is probably intended to
harmonise the borrowed verse with the chronicler’s previous statement that
Asa did away with the high places. If so, we must understand that Israel
means the northern kingdom, from which the high places had not been
removed, though Judah had been purged from these abominations. But here,
as often elsewhere, Chronicles taken alone affords no explanation of its
inconsistencies.

Again, in Asa’s first reformation he commanded Judah to seek Jehovah and
to do the Law and the commandments; and accordingly Judah sought the Lord.
Moreover, Abijah, about seventeen years(349) before Asa’s second
reformation, made it his special boast that Judah had not forsaken
Jehovah, but had priests ministering unto Jehovah, “the sons of Aaron and
the Levites in their work.” During Rehoboam’s reign of seventeen years
Jehovah was duly honoured for the first three years, and again after
Shishak’s invasion in the fifth year of Rehoboam. So that for the previous
thirty or forty years the due worship of Jehovah had only been interrupted
by occasional lapses into disobedience. But now the prophet Oded holds
before this faithful people the warning example of the “long seasons” when
Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and
without law. And yet previously Chronicles supplies an unbroken list of
high-priests from Aaron downwards. In response to Oded’s appeal, the king
and people set about the work of reformation as if they had tolerated some
such neglect of God, the priests, and the Law as the prophet had
described.

Another minor discrepancy is found in the statement that “the heart of Asa
was perfect all his days”; this is reproduced verbatim from the book of
Kings. Immediately afterwards the chronicler relates the evil doings of
Asa in the closing years of his reign.

Such contradictions render it impossible to give a complete and continuous
exposition of Chronicles that shall be at the same time consistent.
Nevertheless they are not without their value for the Christian student.
They afford evidence of the good faith of the chronicler. His
contradictions are clearly due to his use of independent and discrepant
sources, and not to any tampering with the statements of his authorities.
They are also an indication that the chronicler attaches much more
importance to spiritual edification than to historical accuracy. When he
seeks to set before his contemporaries the higher nature and better life
of the great national heroes, and thus to provide them with an ideal of
kingship, he is scrupulously and painfully careful to remove everything
that would weaken the force of the lesson which he is trying to teach; but
he is comparatively indifferent to accuracy of historical detail. When his
authorities contradict each other as to the number or the date of Asa’s
reformations, or even the character of his later years, he does not
hesitate to place the two narratives side by side and practically to draw
lessons from both. The work of the chronicler and its presence with the
Pentateuch and the Synoptic Gospels in the sacred canon imply an emphatic
declaration of the judgment of the Spirit and the Church that detailed
historical accuracy is not a necessary consequence of inspiration. In
expounding this second narrative of a reformation by Asa, we shall make no
attempt at complete harmony with the rest of Chronicles; any inconsistency
between the exposition here and elsewhere will simply arise from a
faithful adherence to our text.

The occasion then of Asa’s second reformation(350) was as follows: Asa was
returning in triumph from his great defeat of Zerah, bringing with him
substantial fruits of victory in the shape of abundant spoil. Wealth and
power had proved a snare to David and Rehoboam, and had involved them in
grievous sin. Asa might also have succumbed to the temptations of
prosperity; but, by a special Divine grace not vouchsafed to his
predecessors, he was guarded against danger by a prophetic warning. At the
very moment when Asa might have expected to be greeted by the acclamations
of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, when the king would be elate with the
sense of Divine favour, military success, and popular applause, the
prophet’s admonition checked the undue exaltation which might have hurried
Asa into presumptuous sin. Asa and his people were not to presume upon
their privilege; its continuance was altogether dependent upon their
continued obedience: if they fell into sin, the rewards of their former
loyalty would vanish like fairy gold. “Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and
Benjamin: Jehovah is with you while ye be with Him; and if ye seek Him, He
will be found of you; but if ye forsake Him, He will forsake you.” This
lesson was enforced from the earlier history of Israel. The following
verses are virtually a summary of the history of the judges:—

“Now for long seasons Israel was without the true God, and without
teaching priest, and without law.”

Judges tells how again and again Israel fell away from Jehovah. “But when
in their distress they turned unto Jehovah, the God of Israel, and sought
Him, He was found of them.”

Oded’s address is very similar to another and somewhat fuller summary of
the history of the judges, contained in Samuel’s farewell to the people,
in which he reminded them how when they forgot Jehovah, their God, He sold
them into the hand of their enemies, and when they cried unto Jehovah, He
sent Zerubbabel, and Barak, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered them
out of the hand of their enemies on every side, and they dwelt in
safety.(351) Oded proceeds to other characteristics of the period of the
judges: “There was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in;
but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the lands. And they
were broken in pieces, nation against nation and city against city, for
God did vex them with all adversity.”

Deborah’s song records great vexations: the highways were unoccupied, and
the travellers walked through by-ways; the rulers ceased in Israel; Gideon
“threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.” The
breaking of nation against nation and city against city will refer to the
destruction of Succoth and Penuel by Gideon, the sieges of Shechem and
Thebez by Abimelech, the massacre of the Ephraimites by Jephthah, and the
civil war between Benjamin and the rest of Israel and the consequent
destruction of Jabesh-gilead.(352)

“But,” said Oded, “be ye strong, and let not your hands be slack, for your
work shall be rewarded.” Oded implies that abuses were prevalent in Judah
which might spread and corrupt the whole people, so as to draw down upon
them the wrath of God and plunge them into all the miseries of the times
of the judges. These abuses were wide-spread, supported by powerful
interests and numerous adherents. The queen-mother, one of the most
important personages in an Eastern state, was herself devoted to heathen
observances. Their suppression needed courage, energy, and pertinacity;
but if they were resolutely grappled with, Jehovah would reward the
efforts of His servants with success, and Judah would enjoy prosperity.
Accordingly Asa took courage and put away the abominations out of Judah
and Benjamin and the cities he held in Ephraim. The abominations were the
idols and all the cruel and obscene accompaniments of heathen
worship.(353) In the prophet’s exhortation to be strong, and not be slack,
and in the corresponding statement that Asa took courage, we have a hint
for all reformers. Neither Oded nor Asa underrated the serious nature of
the task before them. They counted the cost, and with open eyes and full
knowledge confronted the evil they meant to eradicate. The full
significance of the chronicler’s language is only seen when we remember
what preceded the prophet’s appeal to Asa. The captain of half a million
soldiers, the conqueror of a million Ethiopians with three hundred
chariots, has to take courage before he can bring himself to put away the
abominations out of his own dominions. Military machinery is more readily
created than national righteousness; it is easier to slaughter one’s
neighbours than to let light into the dark places that are full of the
habitations of cruelty; and vigorous foreign policy is a poor substitute
for good administration. The principle has its application to the
individual. The beam in our own eye seems more difficult to extract than
the mote in our brother’s, and a man often needs more moral courage to
reform himself than to denounce other people’s sins or urge them to accept
salvation. Most ministers could confirm from their own experience Portia’s
saying, “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one
of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”

Asa’s reformation was constructive as well as destructive; the toleration
of “abominations” had diminished the zeal of the people for Jehovah, and
even the altar of Jehovah before the porch of the Temple had suffered from
neglect: it was now renewed, and Asa assembled the people for a great
festival. Under Rehoboam many pious Israelites had left the northern
kingdom to dwell where they could freely worship at the Temple; under Asa
there was a new migration, “for they fell to him out of Israel in
abundance when they saw that Jehovah his God was with him.” And so it came
about that in the great assembly which Asa gathered together at Jerusalem
not only Judah and Benjamin, but also Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, were
represented. The chronicler has already told us that after the return from
the Captivity some of the children of Ephraim and Manasseh dwelt at
Jerusalem with the children of Judah and Benjamin,(354) and he is always
careful to note any settlement of members of the ten tribes in Judah or
any acquisition of northern territory by the kings of Judah. Such facts
illustrated his doctrine that Judah was the true spiritual Israel, the
real δωδεκάφυλον, or twelve-tribed whole, of the chosen people.

Asa’s festival was held in the third month of his fifteenth year, the
month Sivan, corresponding roughly to our June. The Feast of Weeks, at
which first-fruits were offered, fell in this month; and his festival was
probably a special celebration of this feast. The sacrifice of seven
hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep out of the spoil taken from the
Ethiopians and their allies might be considered a kind of first-fruits.
The people pledged themselves most solemnly to permanent obedience to
Jehovah; this festival and its offerings were to be first-fruits or
earnest of future loyalty. “They entered into a covenant to seek Jehovah,
the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul;
... they sware unto Jehovah with a loud voice, and with shouting, and with
trumpets, and with cornets.” The observance of this covenant was not to be
left to the uncertainties of individual loyalty; the community were to be
on their guard against offenders, Achans who might trouble Israel.
According to the stern law of the Pentateuch,(355) “whosoever would not
seek Jehovah, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether small or
great, whether man or woman.” The seeking of Jehovah, so far as it could
be enforced by penalties, must have consisted in external observances; and
the usual proof that a man did not seek Jehovah would be found in his
seeking other gods and taking part in heathen rites. Such apostacy was not
merely an ecclesiastical offence: it involved immorality and a falling
away from patriotism. The pious Jew could no more tolerate heathenism than
we could tolerate in England religions that sanctioned polygamy or suttee.

Having thus entered into covenant with Jehovah, “all Judah rejoiced at
their oath because they had sworn with all their heart, and sought Him
with their whole desire.” At the beginning, no doubt, they, like their
king, “took courage”; they addressed themselves with reluctance and
apprehension to an unwelcome and hazardous enterprise. They now rejoiced
over the Divine grace that had inspired their efforts and been manifested
in their courage and devotion, over the happy issue of their enterprise,
and over the universal enthusiasm for Jehovah; and He set the seal of His
approval upon their gladness, He was found of them, and Jehovah gave them
rest round about, so that there was no more war for twenty years: unto the
thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign. It is an unsavoury task to put away
abominations: many foul nests of unclean birds are disturbed in the
process; men would not choose to have this particular cross laid upon
them, but only those who take up their cross and follow Christ can hope to
enter into the joy of the Lord.

The narrative of this second reformation is completed by the addition of
details borrowed from the book of Kings. The chronicler next recounts how
in the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign Baasha began to fortify Ramah as
an outpost against Judah, but was forced to abandon his undertaking by the
intervention of the Syrian king, Benhadad, whom Asa hired with his own
treasures and those of the Temple; whereupon Asa carried off Baasha’s
stones and timber and built Geba and Mizpah as Jewish outposts against
Israel. With the exception of the date and a few minor changes, the
narrative so far is taken verbatim from the book of Kings. The chronicler,
like the author of the priestly document of the Pentateuch, was anxious to
provide his readers with an exact and complete system of chronology; he
was the Ussher or Clinton of his generation. His date of the war against
Baasha is probably based upon an interpretation of the source used for
chap. xv.; the first reformation secured a rest of ten years, the second
and more thorough reformation a rest exactly twice as long as the first.
In the interest of these chronological references, the chronicler has
sacrificed a statement twice repeated in the book of Kings: that there was
war between Asa and Baasha all their days. As Baasha came to the throne in
Asa’s third year, the statement of the book of Kings would have seemed to
contradict the chronicler’s assertion that there was no war from the
fifteenth to the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.(356)

After his victory over Zerah, Asa received a Divine message(357) which
somewhat checked the exuberance of his triumph; a similar message awaited
him after his successful expedition to Ramah. By Oded Jehovah had warned
Asa, but now He commissioned Hanani the seer to pronounce a sentence of
condemnation. The ground of the sentence was that Asa had not relied on
Jehovah, but on the king of Syria.

Here the chronicler echoes one of the key-notes of the great prophets.
Isaiah had protested against the alliance which Ahaz concluded with
Assyria in order to obtain assistance against the united onset of Rezin,
king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, and had predicted that Jehovah
would bring upon Ahaz, his people, and his dynasty days that had not come
since the disruption, even the king of Assyria.(358) When this prediction
was fulfilled, and the thundercloud of Assyrian invasion darkened all the
land of Judah, the Jews, in their lack of faith, looked to Egypt for
deliverance; and again Isaiah denounced the foreign alliance: “Woe to them
that go down to Egypt for help, ... but they look not unto the Holy One of
Israel, neither seek Jehovah; ... the strength of Pharaoh shall be your
shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.”(359) So
Jeremiah in his turn protested against a revival of the Egyptian alliance:
“Thou shall be ashamed of Egypt also, as thou wast ashamed of
Assyria.”(360)

In their successive calamities the Jews could derive no comfort from a
study of previous history; the pretext upon which each of their oppressors
had intervened in the affairs of Palestine had been an invitation from
Judah. In their trouble they had sought a remedy worse than the disease;
the consequences of this political quackery had always demanded still more
desperate and fatal medicines. Freedom from the border raids of the
Ephraimites was secured at the price of the ruthless devastations of
Hazael; deliverance from Rezin only led to the wholesale massacres and
spoliation of Sennacherib. Foreign alliance was an opiate that had to be
taken in continually increasing doses, till at last it caused the death of
the patient.

Nevertheless these are not the lessons which the seer seeks to impress
upon Asa. Hanani takes a loftier tone. He does not tell him that his
unholy alliance with Benhadad was the first of a chain of circumstances
that would end in the ruin of Judah. Few generations are greatly disturbed
by the prospect of the ruin of their country in the distant future: “After
us the Deluge.” Even the pious king Hezekiah, when told of the coming
captivity of Judah, found much comfort in the thought that there should be
peace and truth in his days. After the manner of the prophets, Hanani’s
message is concerned with his own times. To his large faith the alliance
with Syria presented itself chiefly as the loss of a great opportunity.
Asa had deprived himself of the privilege of fighting with Syria, whereby
Jehovah would have found fresh occasion to manifest His infinite power and
His gracious favour towards Judah. Had there been no alliance with Judah,
the restless and warlike king of Syria might have joined Baasha to attack
Asa; another million of the heathen and other hundreds of their chariots
would have been destroyed by the resistless might of the Lord of Hosts.
And yet, in spite of the great object-lesson he had received in the defeat
of Zerah, Asa had not thought of Jehovah as his Ally. He had forgotten the
all-observing, all-controlling providence of Jehovah, and had thought it
necessary to supplement the Divine protection by hiring a heathen king
with the treasures of the Temple; and yet “the eyes of Jehovah run to and
fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in behalf of them
whose heart is perfect toward Him.” With this thought, that the eyes of
Jehovah run to and fro throughout the earth, Zechariah(361) comforted the
Jews in the dark days between the Return and the rebuilding of the Temple.
Possibly during Asa’s twenty years of tranquillity his faith had become
enfeebled for want of any severe discipline. It is only with a certain
reserve that we can venture to pray that the Lord will “take from our
lives the strain and stress.” The discipline of helplessness and
dependence preserves the consciousness of God’s loving providence. The
resources of Divine grace are not altogether intended for our personal
comfort; we are to tax them to the utmost, in the assurance that God will
honour all our drafts upon His treasury. The great opportunities of twenty
years of peace and prosperity were not given to Asa to lay up funds with
which to bribe a heathen king, and then, with this reinforcement of his
accumulated resources to accomplish the mighty enterprise of stealing
Baasha’s stones and timber and building the walls of a couple of frontier
fortresses. With such a history and such opportunities behind him, Asa
should have felt himself competent, with Jehovah’s help, to deal with both
Baasha and Benhadad, and should have had courage to confront them both.

Sin like Asa’s has been the supreme apostacy of the Church in all her
branches and through all her generations: Christ has been denied, not by
lack of devotion, but by want of faith. Champions of the truth, reformers
and guardians of the Temple, like Asa, have been eager to attach to their
holy cause the cruel prejudices of ignorance and folly, the greed and
vindictiveness of selfish men. They have feared lest these potent forces
should be arrayed amongst the enemies of the Church and her Master. Sects
and parties have eagerly contested the privilege of counselling a
profligate prince how he should satisfy his thirst for blood and exercise
his wanton and brutal insolence; the Church has countenanced almost every
iniquity and striven to quench by persecution every new revelation of the
Spirit, in order to conciliate vested interests and established
authorities. It has even been suggested that national Churches and great
national vices were so intimately allied that their supporters were
content that they should stand or fall together. On the other hand, the
advocates of reform have not been slow to appeal to popular jealousy and
to aggravate the bitterness of social feuds. To Hanani the seer had come
the vision of a larger and purer faith, that would rejoice to see the
cause of Satan supported by all the evil passions and selfish interests
that are his natural allies. He was assured that the greater the host of
Satan, the more signal and complete would be Jehovah’s triumph. If we had
his faith, we should not be anxious to bribe Satan to cast out Satan, but
should come to understand that the full muster of hell assailing us in
front is less dangerous than a few companies of diabolic mercenaries in
our own array. In the former case the overthrow of the powers of darkness
is more certain and more complete.

The evil consequences of Asa’s policy were not confined to the loss of a
great opportunity, nor were his treasures the only price he was to pay for
fortifying Geba and Mizpah with Baasha’s building materials. Hanani
declared to him that from henceforth he should have wars. This purchased
alliance was only the beginning, and not the end, of troubles. Instead of
the complete and decisive victory which had disposed of the Ethiopians
once for all, Asa and his people were harassed and exhausted by continual
warfare. The Christian life would have more decisive victories, and would
be less of a perpetual and wearing struggle, if we had faith to refrain
from the use of doubtful means for high ends.

Oded’s message of warning had been accepted and obeyed, but Asa was now no
longer docile to Divine discipline. David and Hezekiah submitted
themselves to the censure of Gad and Isaiah; but Asa was wroth with Hanani
and put him in prison, because the prophet had ventured to rebuke him. His
sin against God corrupted even his civil administration; and the ally of a
heathen king, the persecutor of God’s prophet, also oppressed the people.
Three years(362) after the repulse of Baasha a new punishment fell upon
Asa: his feet became grievously diseased. Still he did not humble himself,
but was guilty of further sin(363): he sought not Jehovah, but the
physicians. It is probable that to seek Jehovah concerning disease was not
merely a matter of worship. Reuss has suggested that the legitimate
practice of medicine belonged to the schools of the prophets; but it seems
quite as likely that in Judah, as in Egypt, any existing knowledge of the
art of healing was to be found among the priests. Conversely physicians
who were neither priests nor prophets of Jehovah were almost certain to be
ministers of idolatrous worship and magicians. They failed apparently to
relieve their patient: Asa lingered in pain and weakness for two years,
and then died. Possibly the sufferings of his latter days had protected
his people from further oppression, and had at once appealed to their
sympathy and removed any cause for resentment. When he died, they only
remembered his virtues and achievements; and buried him with royal
magnificence, with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices; and made a
very great burning for him, probably of aromatic woods.

In discussing the chronicler’s picture of the good kings, we have noticed
that, while Chronicles and the book of Kings agree in mentioning the
misfortunes which as a rule darkened their closing years, Chronicles in
each case records some lapse into sin as preceding these misfortunes. From
the theological standpoint of the chronicler’s school, these invidious
records of the sins of good kings were necessary in order to account for
their misfortunes. The devout student of the book of Kings read with
surprise that of the pious kings who had been devoted to Jehovah and His
temple, whose acceptance by Him had been shown by the victories vouchsafed
to them, one had died of a painful disease in his feet, another in a
lazar-house, two had been assassinated, and one slain in battle. Why had
faith and devotion been so ill rewarded? Was it not vain to serve God?
What profit was there in keeping His ordinances? The chronicler felt
himself fortunate in discovering amongst his later authorities additional
information which explained these mysteries and justified the ways of God
to man. Even the good kings had not been without reproach, and their
misfortunes had been the righteous judgment on their sins.

The principle which guided the chronicler in this selection of material
was that sin was always punished by complete, immediate, and manifest
retribution in this life, and that conversely all misfortune was the
punishment of sin. There is a simplicity and apparent justice about this
theory that has always made it the leading doctrine of a certain stage of
moral development. It was probably the popular religious teaching in
Israel from early days till the time when our Lord found it necessary to
protest against the idea that the Galilæans whose blood Pilate had mingled
with their sacrifices were sinners above all Galilæans because they had
suffered these things, or that the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam
fell, and killed them, were offenders above all the inhabitants of
Jerusalem. This doctrine of retribution was current among the Greeks. When
terrible calamities fell upon men, their neighbours supposed these to be
the punishment of specially heinous crimes. When the Spartan king
Cleomenes committed suicide, the public mind in Greece at once inquired of
what particular sin he had thus paid the penalty. The horrible
circumstances of his death were attributed to the wrath of some offended
deity, and the cause of the offence was sought for in one of his many acts
of sacrilege. Possibly he was thus punished because he had bribed the
priestess of the Delphic oracle. The Athenians, however, believed that his
sacrilege had consisted in cutting down trees in their sacred grove at
Eleusis; but the Argives preferred to hold that he came to an untimely end
because he had set fire to a grove sacred to their eponymous hero Argos.
Similarly, when in the course of the Peloponnesian war the Æginetans were
expelled from their island, this calamity was regarded as a punishment
inflicted upon them because fifty years before they had dragged away and
put to death a suppliant who had caught hold of the handle of the door of
the temple of Demeter Theomophorus. On the other hand, the wonderful way
in which on four or five occasions the ravages of pestilence delivered
Dionysius of Syracuse from his Carthaginian enemies was attributed by his
admiring friends to the favour of the gods.

Like many other simple and logical doctrines, this Jewish theory of
retribution came into collision with obvious facts, and seemed to set the
law of God at variance with the enlightened conscience. “Beneath the
simplest forms of truth the subtlest error lurks.” The prosperity of the
wicked and the sufferings of the righteous were a standing religious
difficulty to the devout Israelite. The popular doctrine held its ground
tenaciously, supported not only by ancient prescription, but also by the
most influential classes in society. All who were young, robust, wealthy,
powerful, or successful were interested in maintaining a doctrine that
made health, riches, rank, and success the outward and visible signs of
righteousness. Accordingly the simplicity of the original doctrine was
hedged about with an ingenious and elaborate apologetic. The prosperity of
the wicked was held to be only for a season; before he died the judgment
of God would overtake him. It was a mistake to speak of the sufferings of
the righteous: these very sufferings showed that his righteousness was
only apparent, and that in secret he had been guilty of grievous sin.

Of all the cruelty inflicted in the name of orthodoxy there is little that
can surpass the refined torture due to this Jewish apologetic. Its cynical
teaching met the sufferer in the anguish of bereavement, in the pain and
depression of disease, when he was crushed by sudden and ruinous losses or
publicly disgraced by the unjust sentence of a venal law-court. Instead of
receiving sympathy and help, he found himself looked upon as a moral
outcast and pariah on account of his misfortunes; when he most needed
Divine grace, he was bidden to regard himself as a special object of the
wrath of Jehovah. If his orthodoxy survived his calamities, he would
review his past life with morbid retrospection, and persuade himself that
he had indeed been guilty above all other sinners.

The book of Job is an inspired protest against the current theory of
retribution, and the full discussion of the question belongs to the
exposition of that book. But the narrative of Chronicles, like much Church
history in all ages, is largely controlled by the controversial interests
of the school from which it emanated. In the hands of the chronicler the
story of the kings of Judah is told in such a way that it becomes a
polemic against the book of Job. The tragic and disgraceful death of good
kings presented a crucial difficulty to the chronicler’s theology. A good
man’s other misfortunes might be compensated for by prosperity in his
latter days; but in a theory of retribution which required a complete
satisfaction of justice in this life there could be no compensation for a
dishonourable death. Hence the chronicler’s anxiety to record any lapses
of good kings in their latter days.

The criticism and correction of this doctrine belongs, as we have said, to
the exposition of the book of Job. Here we are rather concerned to
discover the permanent truth of which the theory is at once an imperfect
and exaggerated expression. To begin with, there are sins which bring upon
the transgressor a swift, obvious, and dramatic punishment. Human law
deals thus with some sins; the laws of health visit others with a similar
severity; at times the Divine judgment strikes down men and nations before
an awe-stricken world. Amongst such judgments we might reckon the
punishments of royal sins so frequent in the pages of Chronicles. God’s
judgments are not usually so immediate and manifest, but these striking
instances illustrate and enforce the certain consequences of sin. We are
dealing now with cases in which God was set at nought; and, apart from
Divine grace, the votaries of sin are bound to become its slaves and
victims. Ruskin has said, “Medicine often fails of its effect, but poison
never; and while, in summing the observation of past life not unwatchfully
spent, I can truly say that I have a thousand times seen Patience
disappointed of her hope and Wisdom of her aim, I have never yet seen
folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in calamity.”(364) Now
that we have been brought into a fuller light and delivered from the
practical dangers of the ancient Israelite doctrine, we can afford to
forget the less satisfactory aspects of the chronicler’s teaching, and we
must feel grateful to him for enforcing the salutary and necessary lesson
that sin brings inevitable punishment, and that therefore, whatever
present appearances may suggest, “the world was certainly not framed for
the lasting convenience of hypocrites, libertines, and oppressors.”(365)

Indeed, the consequences of sin are regular and exact; and the judgments
upon the kings of Judah in Chronicles accurately symbolise the operations
of Divine discipline. But pain, and ruin, and disgrace are only secondary
elements in God’s judgments; and most often they are not judgments at all.
They have their uses as chastisements; but if we dwell upon them with too
emphatic an insistence, men suppose that pain is a worse evil than sin,
and that sin is only to be avoided because it causes suffering to the
sinner. The really serious consequence of evil acts is the formation and
confirmation of evil character. Herbert Spencer says in his _First
Principles_(366) “that motion once set up along any line becomes itself a
cause of subsequent motion along that line.” This is absolutely true in
moral and spiritual dynamics: every wrong thought, feeling, word, or act,
every failure to think, feel, speak, or act rightly, at once alters a
man’s character for the worse. Henceforth he will find it easier to sin
and more difficult to do right; he has twisted another strand into the
cord of habit: and though each may be as fine as the threads of a spider’s
web, in time there will be cords strong enough to have bound Samson before
Delilah shaved off his seven locks. This is the true punishment of sin: to
lose the fine instincts, the generous impulses, and the nobler ambitions
of manhood, and become every day more of a beast and a devil.




Chapter IV. Jehoshaphat—The Doctrine Of Non-Resistance. 2 Chron. xvii.-xx.


Asa was succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat, and his reign began even more
auspiciously(367) than that of Asa. The new king had apparently taken
warning from the misfortunes of Asa’s closing years; and as he was
thirty-five years old when he came to the throne, he had been trained
before Asa fell under the Divine displeasure. He walked in the first ways
of his father David, before David was led away by Satan to number Israel.
Jehoshaphat’s heart was lifted up, not with foolish pride, like
Hezekiah’s, but “in the ways of Jehovah.” He sought the God of his father,
and walked in God’s commandments, and was not led astray by the evil
example and influence of the kings of Israel, neither did he seek the
Baals. While Asa had been enfeebled by illness and alienated from Jehovah,
the high places and the Asherim had sprung up again like a crop of evil
weeds; but Jehoshaphat once more removed them. According to the
chronicler, this removing of high places was a very labour of Sisyphus:
the stone was no sooner rolled up to the top of the hill than it rolled
down again. Jehoshaphat seems to have had an inkling of this; he felt that
the destruction of idolatrous sanctuaries and symbols was like mowing down
weeds and leaving the roots in the soil. Accordingly he made an attempt to
deal more radically with the evil: he would take away the inclination as
well as the opportunity for corrupt rites. A commission of princes,
priests, and Levites was sent throughout all the cities of Judah to
instruct the people in the law of Jehovah. Vice will always find
opportunities; it is little use to suppress evil institutions unless the
people are educated out of evil propensities. If, for instance, every
public-house in England were closed to-morrow, and there were still
millions of throats craving for drink, drunkenness would still prevail,
and a new administration would promptly reopen gin-shops.

Because the new king thus earnestly and consistently sought the God of his
fathers, Jehovah was with him, and established the kingdom in his hand.
Jehoshaphat received all the marks of Divine favour usually bestowed upon
good kings. He waxed great exceedingly; he had many fortresses, an immense
army, and much wealth; he built castles and cities of store; he had
arsenals for the supply of war material in the cities of Judah. And these
cities, together with other defensible positions and the border cities of
Ephraim occupied by Judah, were held by strong garrisons. While David had
contented himself with two hundred and eighty-eight thousand men from all
Israel, and Abijah had led forth four hundred thousand, and Asa five
hundred and eighty thousand, there waited on Jehoshaphat, in addition to
his numerous garrisons, _eleven hundred and sixty thousand men_. Of these
seven hundred and eighty thousand were men of Judah in three divisions,
and three hundred and eighty thousand were Benjamites in two divisions.
Probably the steady increase of the armies of Abijah, Asa, and Jehoshaphat
symbolises a proportionate increase of Divine favour.

The chronicler records the names of the captains of the five divisions.
Two of them are singled out for special commendation: Eliada the Benjamite
is styled “a mighty man of valour,” and of the Jewish captain Amaziah the
son of Zichri it is said that he offered either himself or his possessions
willingly to Jehovah, as David and his princes had offered, for the
building of the Temple. The devout king had devout officers.

He had also devoted subjects. All Judah brought him presents, so that he
had great riches and ample means to sustain his royal power and splendour.
Moreover, as in the case of Solomon and Asa, his piety was rewarded with
freedom from war: “The fear of Jehovah fell upon all the kingdoms round
about, so that they made no war against Jehoshaphat.” Some of his weaker
neighbours were overawed by the spectacle of his great power; the
Philistines brought him presents and tribute money, and the Arabians
immense flocks of rams and he-goats, seven thousand seven hundred of each.

Great prosperity had the usual fatal effect upon Jehoshaphat’s character.
In the beginning of his reign he had strengthened himself against Israel
and had refused to walk in their ways; now power had developed ambition,
and he sought and obtained the honour of marrying his son Jehoram to
Athaliah the daughter of Ahab, the mighty and magnificent king of Israel,
possibly also the daughter of the Phœnician princess Jezebel, the devotee
of Baal. This family connection of course implied political alliance.
After a time Jehoshaphat went down to visit his new ally, and was
hospitably received.(368)

Then follows the familiar story of Micaiah the son of Imlah, the
disastrous expedition of the two kings, and the death of Ahab, almost
exactly as in the book of Kings. There is one significant alteration: both
narratives tell us how the Syrian captains attacked Jehoshaphat because
they took him for the king of Israel and gave up their pursuit when he
cried out, and they discovered their mistake; but the chronicler adds the
explanation that Jehovah helped him and God moved them to depart from him.
And so the master of more than a million soldiers was happy in being
allowed to escape on account of his insignificance, and returned in peace
to Jerusalem. Oded and Hanani had met his predecessors on their return
from victory; now Jehu the son of Hanani(369) met Jehoshaphat when he came
home defeated. Like his father, the prophet was charged with a message of
rebuke. An alliance with the northern kingdom was scarcely less
reprehensible than one with Syria: “Shouldest thou help the wicked, and
love them that hate Jehovah? Jehovah is wroth with thee.” Asa’s previous
reforms were not allowed to mitigate the severity of his condemnation, but
Jehovah was more merciful to Jehoshaphat. The prophet makes mention of his
piety and his destruction of idolatrous symbols, and no further punishment
is inflicted upon him.

The chronicler’s addition to the account of the king’s escape from the
Syrian captains reminds us that God still watches over and protects His
children even when they are in the very act of sinning against Him.
Jehovah knew that Jehoshaphat’s sinful alliance with Ahab did not imply
complete revolt and apostacy. Hence doubtless the comparative mildness of
the prophet’s reproof.

When Jehu’s father Hanani rebuked Asa, the king flew into a passion, and
cast the prophet into prison; Jehoshaphat received Jehu’s reproof in a
very different spirit(370): he repented himself, and found a new zeal in
his penitence. Learning from his own experience the proneness of the human
heart to go astray, he went out himself amongst his people to bring them
back to Jehovah; and just as Asa in his apostacy oppressed his people,
Jehoshaphat in his renewed loyalty to Jehovah showed himself anxious for
good government. He provided judges in all the walled towns of Judah, with
a court of appeal at Jerusalem; he solemnly charged them to remember their
responsibility to Jehovah, to avoid bribery, and not to truckle to the
rich and powerful. Being themselves faithful to Jehovah, they were to
inculcate a like obedience and warn the people not to sin against the God
of their fathers. Jehoshaphat’s exhortation to his new judges concludes
with a sentence whose martial resonance suggests trial by combat rather
than the peaceful proceedings of a law-court: “Deal courageously, and
Jehovah defend the right!”

The principle that good government must be a necessary consequence of
piety in the rulers has not been so uniformly observed in later times as
in the pages of Chronicles. The testimony of history on this point is not
altogether consistent. In spite of all the faults of the orthodox and
devout Greek emperors Theodosius the Great and Marcian, their
administration rendered important services to the empire. Alfred the Great
was a distinguished statesman and warrior as well as zealous for true
religion. St. Louis of France exercised a wise control over Church and
state. It is true that when a woman reproached him in open court with
being a king of friars, of priests, and of clerks, and not a true king of
France, he replied with saintly meekness, “You say true! It has pleased
the Lord to make me king; it had been well if it had pleased Him to make
some one king who had better ruled the realm.”(371) But something must be
allowed for the modesty of the saint; apart from his unfortunate crusades,
it would have been difficult for France or even Europe to have furnished a
more beneficent sovereign. On the other hand, Charlemagne’s successor, the
Emperor Louis the Pious, and our own kings Edward the Confessor and the
saintly Henry VI., were alike feeble and inefficient; the zeal of the
Spanish kings and their kinswoman Mary Tudor is chiefly remembered for its
ghastly cruelty; and in comparatively recent times the misgovernment of
the States of the Church was a byword throughout Europe. Many causes
combined to produce this mingled record. The one most clearly contrary to
the chronicler’s teaching was an immoral opinion that the Christian should
cease to be a citizen, and that the saint has no duties to society. This
view is often considered to be the special vice of monasticism, but it
reappears in one form or another in every generation. The failure of the
administration of Louis the Pious is partly explained when we read that he
was with difficulty prevented from entering a monastery. In our own day
there are those who think that a newspaper should have no interest for a
really earnest Christian. According to their ideas, Jehoshaphat should
have divided his time between a private oratory in his palace and the
public services of the Temple, and have left his kingdom to the mercy of
unjust judges at home and heathen enemies abroad, or else have abdicated
in favour of some kinsman whose heart was not so perfect with Jehovah. The
chronicler had a clearer insight into Divine methods, and this doctrine of
his is not one that has been superseded together with the Mosaic ritual.

Possibly the martial tone of the sentence that concludes the account of
Jehoshaphat as the Jewish Justinian is due to the influence upon the
chronicler’s mind of the incident(372) which he now describes.

Jehoshaphat’s next experience was parallel to that of Asa with Zerah. When
his new reforms were completed, he was menaced with a formidable invasion.
His new enemies were almost as distant and strange as the Ethiopians and
Lubim who had followed Zerah. We hear nothing about any king of Israel or
Damascus, the usual leaders of assaults upon Judah; we hear instead of a
triple alliance against Judah. Two of the allies are Moab and Ammon; but
the Jewish kings were not wont to regard these as irresistible foes, so
that the extreme dismay which takes possession of king and people must be
due to the third ally: the “Meunim.”(373) The Meunim we have already met
with in connection with the exploits of the children of Simeon in the
reign of Hezekiah; they are also mentioned in the reign of Uzziah,(374)
and nowhere else, unless indeed they are identical with the Maonites, who
are named with the Amalekites in Judges x. 12. They are thus a people
peculiar to Chronicles, and appear from this narrative to have inhabited
Mount Seir, by which term “Meunim” is replaced as the story proceeds.(375)
Since the chronicler wrote so long after the events he describes, we
cannot attribute to him any very exact knowledge of political geography.
Probably the term “Meunim” impressed his contemporaries very much as it
does a modern reader, and suggested countless hordes of Bedouin
plunderers; Josephus calls them a great army of Arabians. This host of
invaders came from Edom, and having marched round the southern end of the
Dead Sea, were now at Engedi, on its western shore. The Moabites and
Ammonites might have crossed the Jordan by the fords near Jericho; but
this route would not have been convenient for their allies the Meunim, and
would have brought them into collision with the forces of the northern
kingdom.

On this occasion Jehoshaphat does not seek any foreign alliance. He does
not appeal to Syria, like Asa, nor does he ask Ahab’s successor to repay
in kind the assistance given to Ahab at Ramoth-gilead, partly perhaps
because there was no time, but chiefly because he had learnt the truth
which Hanani had sought to teach his father, and which Hanani’s son had
taught him. He does not even trust in his own hundreds of thousands of
soldiers, all of whom cannot have perished at Ramoth-gilead; his
confidence is placed solely and absolutely in Jehovah. Jehoshaphat and his
people made no military preparations; subsequent events justified their
apparent neglect: none were necessary. Jehoshaphat sought Divine help
instead, and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah; and all Judah gathered
themselves to Jerusalem to ask help of Jehovah. This great national
assembly met “before the new court” of the Temple. The chronicler, who is
supremely interested in the Temple buildings, has told us nothing about
any new court, nor is it mentioned elsewhere; our author is probably
giving the title of a corresponding portion of the second Temple: the
place where the people assembled to meet Jehoshaphat would be the great
court built by Solomon.(376)

Here Jehoshaphat stood up as the spokesman of the nation, and prayed to
Jehovah on their behalf and on his own. He recalls the Divine omnipotence;
Jehovah is God of earth and heaven, God of Israel and Ruler of the
heathen, and therefore able to help even in this great emergency:—

“O Jehovah, God of our fathers, art Thou not God in heaven? Dost Thou not
rule all the kingdoms of the heathen? And in Thy hand is power and might,
so that none is able to withstand Thee.”

The land of Israel had been the special gift of Jehovah to His people, in
fulfilment of His ancient promise to Abraham:—

“Didst not Thou, O our God, dispossess the inhabitants of this land in
favour of Thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham Thy
friend for ever?”

And now long possession had given Israel a prescriptive right to the Land
of Promise; and they had, so to speak, claimed their rights in the most
formal and solemn fashion by erecting a temple to the God of Israel.
Moreover, the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple had been
accepted by Jehovah as the basis of His covenant with Israel, and
Jehoshaphat quotes a clause from that prayer or covenant which had
expressly provided for such emergencies as the present:—

“And they” (Israel) “dwelt in the land, and built Thee therein a sanctuary
for Thy name, saying, If evil come upon us, the sword, judgment,
pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before Thee
(for Thy name is in this house), and cry unto Thee in our affliction; and
Thou wilt hear and save.”(377)

Moreover, the present invasion was not only an attempt to set aside
Jehovah’s disposition of Palestine and the long-established rights of
Israel: it was also gross ingratitude, a base return for the ancient
forbearance of Israel towards her present enemies:—

“And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom Thou
wouldest not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt,
but they turned aside from them and destroyed them not—behold how they
reward us by coming to dispossess us of Thy possession which Thou hast
caused us to possess.”

For this nefarious purpose the enemies of Israel had come up in
overwhelming numbers, but Judah was confident in the justice of its cause
and the favour of Jehovah:—

“O our God, wilt Thou not execute judgment against them? for we have no
might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we
what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee.”

Meanwhile the great assemblage stood in the attitude of supplication
before Jehovah, not a gathering of mighty men of valour praying for
blessing upon their strength and courage, but a mixed multitude, men and
women, children and infants, seeking sanctuary, as it were, at the Temple,
and casting themselves in their extremity upon the protecting care of
Jehovah. Possibly when the king finished his prayer the assembly broke out
into loud, wailing cries of dismay and agonised entreaty; but the silence
of the narrative rather suggests that Jehoshaphat’s strong, calm faith
communicated itself to the people, and they waited quietly for Jehovah’s
answer, for some token or promise of deliverance. Instead of the confused
cries of an excited crowd, there was a hush of expectancy, such as
sometimes falls upon an assembly when a great statesman has risen to utter
words which will be big with the fate of empires.

And the answer came, not by fire from heaven or any visible sign, not by
voice of thunder accompanied by angelic trumpets, nor by angel or
archangel, but by a familiar voice hitherto unsuspected of any
supernatural gifts, by a prophetic utterance whose only credentials were
given by the influence of the Spirit upon the speaker and his audience.
The chronicler relates with evident satisfaction how, in the midst of that
great congregation, the Spirit of Jehovah came, not upon king, or priest,
or acknowledged prophet, but upon a subordinate minister of the Temple, a
Levite and member of the Temple choir like himself. He is careful to fix
the identity of this newly called prophet and to gratify the family pride
of existing Levitical families by giving the prophet’s genealogy for
several generations. He was Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of
Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, of the sons of Asaph. The
very names were encouraging. What more suitable names could be found for a
messenger of Divine mercy than Jahaziel—“God gives prophetic vision”—the
son of Zechariah—“Jehovah remembers”?

Jahaziel’s message showed that Jehoshaphat’s prayer had been accepted;
Jehovah responded without reserve to the confidence reposed in Him: He
would vindicate His own authority by delivering Judah; Jehoshaphat should
have blessed proof of the immense superiority of simple trust in Jehovah
over an alliance with Ahab or the king of Damascus. Twice the prophet
exhorts the king and people in the very words that Jehovah had used to
encourage Joshua when the death of Moses had thrown upon him all the heavy
responsibilities of leadership: “Fear not, nor be dismayed.” They need no
longer cling like frightened suppliants to the sanctuary, but are to go
forth at once, the very next day, against the enemy. That they may lose no
time in looking for them, Jehovah announces the exact spot where the enemy
are to be found: “Behold, they are coming by the ascent of Hazziz,(378)
and ye shall find them at the end of the ravine before the wilderness of
Jeruel.” This topographical description was doubtless perfectly
intelligible to the chronicler’s contemporaries, but it is no longer
possible to fix exactly the locality of Hazziz or Jeruel. The ascent of
Hazziz has been identified with the Wady Husasa, which leads up from the
coast of the Dead Sea north of Engedi, in the direction of Tekoa; but the
identification is by no means certain.

The general situation, however, is fairly clear: the allied invaders would
come up from the coast into the highlands of Judah by one of the wadies
leading inland; they were to be met by Jehoshaphat and his people on one
of the “wildernesses,” or plateaus of pasture-land, in the neighbourhood
of Tekoa.

But the Jews went forth, not as an army, but in order to be the passive
spectators of a great manifestation of the power of Jehovah. They had no
concern with the numbers and prowess of their enemies; Jehovah Himself
would lay bare His mighty arm, and Judah should see that no foreign ally,
no millions of native warriors, were necessary for their salvation: “Ye
shall not need to fight in this battle; take up your position, stand still
and see the deliverance of Jehovah with you, O Judah and Jerusalem.”

Thus had Moses addressed Israel on the eve of the passage of the Red Sea.
Jehoshaphat and his people owned and honoured the Divine message as if
Jahaziel were another Moses; they prostrated themselves on the ground
before Jehovah. The sons of Asaph had already been privileged to provide
Jehovah with His prophet; these Asaphites represented the Levitical clan
of Gershom: but now the Kohathites, with their guild of singers, the sons
of Korah, “stood up to praise Jehovah, the God of Israel, with an
exceeding loud voice,” as the Levites sang when the foundations of the
second Temple were laid, and when Ezra and Nehemiah made the people enter
into a new covenant with their God.

Accordingly on the morrow the people rose early in the morning and went
out to the wilderness of Tekoa, ten or twelve miles south of Jerusalem. In
ancient times generals were wont to make a set speech to their armies
before they led them into battle, so Jehoshaphat addresses his subjects as
they pass out before him. He does not seek to make them confident in their
own strength and prowess; he does not inflame their passions against Moab
and Ammon, nor exhort them to be brave and remind them that they fight
this day for the ashes of their fathers and the temple of their God. Such
an address would have been entirely out of place, because the Jews were
not going to fight at all. Jehoshaphat only bids them have faith in
Jehovah and His prophets. It is a curious anticipation of Pauline
teaching. Judah is to be “saved by faith” from Moab and Ammon, as the
Christian is delivered by faith from sin and its penalty. The incident
might almost seem to have been recorded in order to illustrate the truth
that St. Paul was to teach. It is strange that there is no reference to
this chapter in the epistles of St. Paul and St. James, and that the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not remind us how “by faith
Jehoshaphat was delivered from Moab and Ammon.”

There is no question of military order, no reference to the five great
divisions into which the armies of Judah and Benjamin are divided in chap.
xvii. Here, as at Jericho, the captain of Israel is chiefly concerned to
provide musicians to lead his army. When David was arranging for the
musical services before the Ark, he took counsel with his captains. In
this unique military expedition there is no mention of captains; they were
not necessary, and if they were present, there was no opportunity for them
to show their skill and prowess in battle. In an even more democratic
spirit Jehoshaphat takes counsel with the people—that is, probably makes
some proposition, which is accepted with universal acclamation.

The Levitical singers, dressed in the splendid robes(379) in which they
officiated at the Temple, were appointed to go before the people, and
offer praises unto Jehovah, and sing the anthem, “Give thanks unto
Jehovah, for His mercy endureth for ever.” These words or their equivalent
are the opening words, and the second clause the refrain, of the
post-Exilic Psalms: cvi., cvii., cxviii., and cxxxvi. As the chronicler
has already ascribed Psalm cvi. to David, he possibly ascribes all four to
David, and intends us to understand that one or all of them were sung by
the Levites on this occasion. Later Judaism was in the habit of denoting a
book or section of a book by its opening words.

And so Judah, a pilgrim caravan rather than an army, went on to its
Divinely appointed tryst with its enemies, and at its head the Levitical
choir sang the Temple hymns. It was not a campaign, but a sacred function,
on a much larger scale a procession such as may be seen winding its way,
with chants and incense, banners, images, and crucifixes, through the
streets of Catholic cities.

Meanwhile Jehovah was preparing a spectacle to gladden the eyes of His
people and reward their implicit faith and exact obedience; He was working
for those who were waiting for Him. Though Judah was still far from its
enemies, yet, like the trumpet at Jericho, the strain of praise and
thanksgiving was the signal for the Divine intervention: “When they began
to sing and praise, Jehovah set liers in wait against the children of
Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir.” Who were these liers in wait? They could not
be men of Judah: _they_ were not to fight, but to be passive spectators of
their own deliverance. Did the allies set an ambush for Judah, and was it
thus that they were afterwards led to mistake their own people for
enemies? Or does the chronicler intend us to understand that these “liers
in wait” were spirits; that the allied invaders were tricked and
bewildered like the shipwrecked sailors in the _Tempest_; or that when
they came to the wilderness of Jeruel there fell upon them a spirit of
mutual distrust, jealousy, and hatred, that had, as it were, been waiting
for them there? But, from whatever cause, a quarrel broke out amongst
them; and they were smitten. When Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite met,
there were many private and public feuds waiting their opportunity; and
such confederates were as ready to quarrel among themselves as a group of
Highland clans engaged in a Lowland foray. “Ammon and Moab stood up
against the inhabitants of Mount Seir utterly to slay and destroy them.”
But even Ammon and Moab soon dissolved their alliance; and at last, partly
maddened by panic, partly intoxicated by a wild thirst for blood, a very
Berserker frenzy, all ties of friendship and kindred were forgotten, and
every man’s hand was against his brother. “When they had made an end of
the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.”

While this tragedy was enacting, and the air was rent with the cruel yells
of that death struggle, Jehoshaphat and his people moved on in tranquil
pilgrimage to the cheerful sound of the songs of Zion. At last they
reached an eminence, perhaps the long, low summit of some ridge
overlooking the plateau of Jeruel. When they had gained this watchtower of
the wilderness, the ghastly scene burst upon their gaze. Jehovah had kept
His word: they had found their enemy. They “looked upon the multitude,”
all those hordes of heathen tribes that had filled them with terror and
dismay. They were harmless enough now: the Jews saw nothing but “dead
bodies fallen to the earth”; and in that Aceldama lay all the multitude of
profane invaders who had dared to violate the sanctity of the Promised
Land: “There were none that escaped.” So had Israel looked back after
crossing the Red Sea and seen the corpses of the Egyptians washed up on
the shore.(380) So when the angel of Jehovah smote Sennacherib,—


    “Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
    That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.”


There is no touch of pity for the wretched victims of their own sins.
Greeks of every city and tribe could feel the pathos of the tragic end of
the Athenian expedition against Syracuse; but the Jews had no ruth for the
kindred tribes that dwelt along their frontier, and the age of the
chronicler had not yet learnt that Jehovah had either tenderness or
compassion for the enemies of Israel.

The spectators of this carnage—we cannot call them victors—did not neglect
to profit to the utmost by their great opportunity. They spent three days
in stripping the dead bodies; and as Orientals delight in jewelled weapons
and costly garments, and their chiefs take the field with barbaric
ostentation of wealth, the spoil was both valuable and abundant: “riches,
and raiment,(381) and precious jewels, ... more than they could carry
away.”

In collecting the spoil, the Jews had become dispersed through all the
wide area over which the fighting between the confederates must have
extended; but on the fourth day they gathered together again in a
neighbouring valley and gave solemn thanks for their deliverance: “There
they blessed Jehovah; therefore the name of that place was called the
valley of Berachah unto this day.” West of Tekoa,(382) not too far from
the scene of carnage, a ruin and a wady still bear the name “Bereikut”;
and doubtless in the chronicler’s time the valley was called Berachah, and
local tradition furnished our author with this explanation of the origin
of the name.

When the spoil was all collected, they returned to Jerusalem as they came,
in solemn procession, headed, no doubt, by the Levites, with psalteries,
and harps, and trumpets. They came back to the scene of their anxious
supplications: to the house of Jehovah. But yesterday, as it were, they
had assembled before Jehovah, terror-stricken at the report of an
irresistible host of invaders; and to-day their enemies were utterly
destroyed. They had experienced a deliverance that might rank with the
Exodus; and as at that former deliverance they had spoiled the Egyptians,
so now they had returned laden with the plunder of Moab, Ammon, and Edom.
And all their neighbours were smitten with fear when they heard of the
awful ruin which Jehovah had brought upon these enemies of Israel. No one
would dare to invade a country where Jehovah laid a ghostly ambush of
liers in wait for the enemies of His people. The realm of Jehoshaphat was
quiet, not because he was protected by powerful allies or by the swords of
his numerous and valiant soldiers, but because Judah had become another
Eden, and cherubim with flaming swords guarded the frontier on every hand,
and “his God gave him rest round about.”

Then follow the regular summary and conclusion of the history of the reign
taken from the book of Kings, with the usual alterations in the reference
to further sources of information. We are told here, in direct
contradiction to xvii. 6 and to the whole tenor of the previous chapters,
that the high places were not taken away, another illustration of the
slight importance the chronicler attached to accuracy in details. He
either overlooks the contradiction between passages borrowed from
different sources, or else does not think it worth while to harmonise his
inconsistent materials.

But after the narrative of the reign is thus formally closed the
chronicler inserts a postscript, perhaps by a kind of after-thought. The
book of Kings narrates(383) how Jehoshaphat made ships to go to Ophir for
gold, but they were broken at Ezion-geber; then Ahaziah the son of Ahab
proposed to enter into partnership with Jehoshaphat, and the latter
rejected his proposal. As we have seen, the chronicler’s theory of
retribution required some reason why so pious a king experienced
misfortune. What sin had Jehoshaphat committed to deserve to have his
ships broken? The chronicler has a new version of the story, which
provides an answer to this question. Jehoshaphat did not build any ships
by himself; his unfortunate navy was constructed in partnership with
Ahaziah; and accordingly the prophet Eliezer rebuked him for allying
himself a second time with a wicked king of Israel, and announced the
coming wreck of the ships. And so it came about that the ships were
broken, and the shadow of Divine displeasure rested on the last days of
Jehoshaphat.

We have next to notice the chronicler’s most important omissions. The book
of Kings narrates another alliance of Jehoshaphat with Jehoram, king of
Israel, like his alliances with Ahab and Ahaziah. The narrative of this
incident closely resembles that of the earlier joint expedition to
Ramoth-gilead. As then Jehoshaphat marched out with Ahab, so now he
accompanies Ahab’s son Jehoram, taking with him his subject ally the king
of Edom. Here also a prophet appears upon the scene; but on this occasion
Elisha addresses no rebuke to Jehoshaphat for his alliance with Israel,
but treats him with marked respect: and the allied army wins a great
victory. If this narrative had been included in Chronicles, the reign of
Jehoshaphat would not have afforded an altogether satisfactory
illustration of the main lesson which the chronicler intended it to teach.

This main lesson was that the chosen people should not look for protection
against their enemies either to foreign alliances or to their own military
strength, but solely to the grace and omnipotence of Jehovah. One negative
aspect of this principle has been enforced by the condemnation of Asa’s
alliance with Syria and Jehoshaphat’s with Ahab and Ahaziah. Later on the
uselessness of an army apart from Jehovah is shown in the defeat of “the
great host” of Joash by “a small company” of Syrians.(384) The positive
aspect has been partially illustrated by the signal victories of Abijah
and Asa against overwhelming odds and without the help of any foreign
allies. But these were partial and unsatisfactory illustrations: Jehovah
vouchsafed to share the glory of these victories with great armies that
were numbered by the hundred thousand. And after all, the odds were not so
very overwhelming. Scores of parallels may be found in which the odds were
much greater. In the case of vast Oriental hosts a superiority of two to
one might easily be counterbalanced by discipline and valour in the
smaller army.

The peculiar value to the chronicler of the deliverance from Moab, Ammon,
and the Meunim lay in the fact that no human arm divided the glory with
Jehovah. It was shown conclusively not merely that Judah could safely be
contented with an army smaller than those of its neighbours, but that
Judah would be equally safe with no army at all. We feel that this lesson
is taught with added force when we remember that Jehoshaphat had a larger
army than is ascribed to any Israelite or Jewish king after David. Yet he
places no confidence in his eleven hundred and sixty thousand warriors,
and he is not allowed to make any use of them. In the case of a king with
small military resources, to trust in Jehovah might be merely making a
virtue of necessity; but if Jehoshaphat, with his immense army, felt that
his only real help was in his God, the example furnished an _à fortiori_
argument which would conclusively show that it was always the duty and
privilege of the Jews to say with the Psalmist, “Some trust in chariots,
and some in horses; but we will remember the name of Jehovah our
God.”(385) The ancient literature of Israel furnished other illustrations
of the principle: at the Red Sea the Israelites had been delivered without
any exercise of their own warlike prowess; at Jericho, as at Jeruel, the
enemy had been completely overthrown by Jehovah before His people rushed
upon the spoil; and the same direct Divine intervention saved Jerusalem
from Sennacherib. But the later history of the Jews had been a series of
illustrations of enforced dependence upon Jehovah. A little
semi-ecclesiastical community inhabiting a small province that passed from
one great power to another like a counter in the game of international
politics had no choice but to trust in Jehovah, if it were in any way to
maintain its self-respect. For this community of the second Temple to have
had confidence in its sword and bow would have seemed equally absurd to
the Jews and to their Persian and Greek masters.

When they were thus helpless, Jehovah wrought for Israel, as He had
destroyed the enemies of Jehoshaphat in the wilderness of Jeruel. The Jews
stood still and saw the working out of their deliverance; great empires
wrestled together like Moab, Ammon, and Edom, in the agony of the death
struggle: and over all the tumult of battle Israel heard the voice of
Jehovah, “The battle is not yours, but God’s; ... set yourselves, stand ye
still, and see the deliverance of Jehovah with you, O Judah and
Jerusalem.” Before their eyes there passed the scenes of that great drama
which for a time gave Western Asia Aryan instead of Semitic masters. For
them the whole action had but one meaning: without calling Israel into the
field, Jehovah was devoting to destruction the enemies of His people and
opening up a way for His redeemed to return, like Jehoshaphat’s
procession, to the Holy City and the Temple. The long series of wars
became a wager of battle, in which Israel, herself a passive spectator,
appeared by her Divine Champion; and the assured issue was her triumphant
vindication and restoration to her ancient throne in Zion.

After the Restoration God’s protecting providence asked no armed
assistance from Judah. The mandates of a distant court authorised the
rebuilding of the Temple and the fortifying of the city. The Jews solaced
their national pride and found consolation for their weakness and
subjection in the thought that their ostensible masters were in reality
only the instruments which Jehovah used to provide for the security and
prosperity of His children.

We have already noticed that this philosophy of history is not peculiar to
Israel. Every nation has a similar system, and regards its own interests
as the supreme care of Providence. We have seen, too, that moral
influences have controlled and checkmated material forces; God has fought
against the biggest battalions. Similarly the Jews are not the only people
for whom deliverances have been worked out almost without any co-operation
on their own part. It was not a negro revolt, for instance, that set free
the slaves of our colonies or of the Southern States. Italy regained her
Eternal City as an incidental effect of a great war in which she herself
took no part. Important political movements and great struggles involve
consequences equally unforeseen and unintended by the chief actors in
these dramas, consequences which would seem to them insignificant compared
with more obvious results. Some obscure nation almost ready to perish is
given a respite, a breathing space, in which it gathers strength; instead
of losing its separate existence, it endures till time and opportunity
make it one of the ruling influences in the world’s history: some Geneva
or Wittenberg becomes, just at the right time, a secure refuge and
vantage-ground for one of the Lord’s prophets. Our understanding of what
God is doing in our time and our hopes for what He may yet do will indeed
be small, if we think that God can do nothing for our cause unless our
banner flies in the forefront of the battle, and the war-cry is “The sword
of Gideon!” as well as “The sword of Jehovah!” There will be many battles
fought in which we shall strike no blow and yet be privileged to divide
the spoil. We sometimes “stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah.”

The chronicler has found disciples in these latter days of a kindlier
spirit and more catholic sympathies. He and they have reached their common
doctrines by different paths, but the chronicler teaches non-resistance as
clearly as the Society of Friends. “When you have fully yielded yourself
to the Divine teaching,” he says, “you will neither fight yourself nor ask
others to fight for you; you will simply stand still and watch a Divine
providence protecting you and destroying your enemies.” The Friends could
almost echo this teaching, not perhaps laying quite so much stress on the
destruction of the enemy, though among the visions of the earlier Friends
there were many that revealed the coming judgments of the Lord; and the
modern enthusiast is still apt to consider that his enemies, are the
Lord’s enemies and to call the gratification of his own revengeful spirit
a vindicating of the honour of the Lord and a satisfaction of outraged
justice.

If the chronicler had lived to-day, the history of the Society of Friends
might have furnished him with illustrations almost as apt as the
destruction of the allied invaders of Judah. He would have rejoiced to
tell us how a people that repudiated any resort to violence succeeded in
conciliating savage tribes and founding the flourishing colony of
Pennsylvania, and would have seen the hand of the Lord in the wealth and
honour that have been accorded to a once despised and persecuted sect.

We should be passing to matters that were still beyond the chronicler’s
horizon, if we were to connect his teaching with our Lord’s injunction,
“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also.” Such a sentiment scarcely harmonises with the three days’ stripping
of dead bodies in the wilderness of Jeruel. But though the chronicler’s
motives for non-resistance were not touched and softened with the Divine
gentleness of Jesus of Nazareth, and his object was not to persuade his
hearers to patient endurance of wrong, yet he had conceived the
possibility of a mighty faith that could put its fortunes unreservedly
into the hands of God and trust Him with the issues. If we are ever to be
worthy citizens of the kingdom of our Lord, it can only be by the
sustaining power and inspiring influence of a like faith.

When we come to ask how far the people for whom he wrote responded to his
teaching and carried it into practical life, we are met with one of the
many instances of the grim irony of history. Probably the chronicler’s
glowing vision of peaceful security, guarded on every hand by legions of
angels, was partly inspired by the comparative prosperity of the time at
which he wrote. Other considerations combine with this to suggest that the
composition of his work beguiled the happy leisure of one of the brighter
intervals between Ezra and the Maccabees.

Circumstances were soon to test the readiness of the Jews, in times of
national danger, to observe the attitude of passive spectators and wait
for a Divine deliverance. It was not altogether in this spirit that the
priests met the savage persecutions of Antiochus. They made no vain
attempts to exorcise this evil spirit with hymns, and psalteries, and
harps, and trumpets; but the priest Mattathias and his sons slew the
king’s commissioner and raised the standard of armed revolt. We do indeed
find indications of something like obedience to the chronicler’s
principles. A body of the revolted Jews were attacked on the Sabbath Day;
they made no attempt to defend themselves: “When they gave them battle
with all speed, they answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them,
nor stopped the places where they lay hid, ... and their enemies rose up
against them on the sabbath, and slew them, with their wives, and their
children, and their cattle, to the number of a thousand people.”(386) No
Divine intervention rewarded this devoted faith, nor apparently did the
Jews expect it, for they had said, “Let us die all in our innocency;
heaven and earth shall testify for us that ye put us to death wrongfully.”
This is, after all, a higher note than that of Chronicles: obedience may
not bring invariable reward; nevertheless the faithful will not swerve
from their loyalty. But the priestly leaders of the people looked with no
favourable eye upon this offering up of human hecatombs in honour of the
sanctity of the Sabbath. They were not prepared to die passively; and, as
representatives of Jehovah and of the nation for the time being, they
decreed that henceforth they would fight against those who attacked them,
even on the Sabbath Day. Warfare on these more secular principles was
crowned with that visible success which the chronicler regarded as the
manifest sign of Divine approval; and a dynasty of royal priests filled
the throne and led the armies of Israel, and assured and strengthened
their authority by intrigues and alliances with every heathen sovereign
within their reach.




Chapter V. Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah: The Consequences of a Foreign
Marriage. 2 Chron. xxi.-xxiii.


The accession of Jehoram is one of the instances in which a wicked son
succeeded to a conspicuously pious father, but in this case there is no
difficulty in explaining the phenomenon: the depraved character and evil
deeds of Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah are at once accounted for when we
remember that they were respectively the son-in-law, grandson, and
daughter of Ahab, and possibly of Jezebel. If, however, Jezebel were
really the mother of Athaliah, it is difficult to believe that the
chronicler understood or at any rate realised the fact. In the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah the chronicler lays great stress upon the iniquity and
inexpediency of marriage with strange wives, and he has been careful to
insert a note into the history of Jehoshaphat to call attention to the
fact that the king of Judah had joined affinity with Ahab. If he had
understood that this implied joining affinity with a Phœnician devotee of
Baal, this significant fact would not have been passed over in silence.
Moreover, the names Athaliah and Ahaziah are both compounded with the
sacred name Jehovah. A Phœnician Baal-worshipper may very well have been
sufficiently eclectic to make such use of the name sacred to the family
into which she married, but on the whole those names rather tell against
the descent of their owners from Jezebel and her Zidonian ancestors.

We have seen that, after giving the concluding formula for the reign of
Jehoshaphat, the chronicler adds a postscript narrating an incident
discreditable to the king. Similarly he prefaces the introductory formula
for the reign of Jehoram by inserting a cruel deed of the new king. Before
telling us Jehoram’s age at his accession and the length of his reign, the
chronicler relates(387) the steps taken by Jehoram to secure himself upon
his throne. Jehoshaphat, like Rehoboam, had disposed of his numerous sons
in the fenced cities of Judah, and had sought to make them quiet and
contented by providing largely for their material welfare: “Their father
gave them great gifts: silver, gold, and precious things, with fenced
cities in Judah.” The sanguine judgment of paternal affection might expect
that these gifts would make his younger sons loyal and devoted subjects of
their elder brother; but Jehoram, not without reason, feared that treasure
and cities might supply the means for a revolt, or that Judah might be
split up into a number of small principalities. Accordingly when he had
strengthened himself he slew all his brethren with the sword, and with
them those princes of Israel whom he suspected of attachment to his other
victims. He was following the precedent set by Solomon when he ordered the
execution of Adonijah; and, indeed, the slaughter by a new sovereign of
all those near relations who might possibly dispute his claim to the
throne has usually been considered in the East to be a painful but
necessary and perfectly justifiable act, being, in fact, regarded in much
the same light as the drowning of superfluous kittens in domestic circles.
Probably this episode is placed before the introductory formula for the
reign because until these possible rivals were removed Jehoram’s tenure of
the throne was altogether unsafe.

For the next few verses(388) the narrative follows the book of Kings with
scarcely any alteration, and states the evil character of the new reign,
accounting for Jehoram’s depravity by his marriage with a daughter of
Ahab. The successful revolt of Edom from Judah is next given, and the
chronicler adds a note of his own to the effect that Jehoram experienced
these reverses because he had forsaken Jehovah, the God of his fathers.

Then the chronicler proceeds(389) to describe further sins and misfortunes
of Jehoram. He mentions definitely, what is doubtless implied by the book
of Kings, that Jehoram made high places in the cities of Judah(390) and
seduced the people into taking part in a corrupt worship. The Divine
condemnation of the king’s wrong-doing came from an unexpected quarter and
in an unusual fashion. The other prophetic messages specially recorded by
the chronicler were uttered by prophets of Judah, some apparently
receiving their inspiration for one particular occasion. The prophet who
rebuked Jehoram was no less distinguished a personage than the great
Israelite Elijah, who, according to the book of Kings, had long since been
translated to heaven. In the older narrative Elijah’s work is exclusively
confined to the northern kingdom. But the chronicler entirely ignores
Elijah, except when his history becomes connected for a moment with that
of the house of David.

The other prophets of Judah delivered their messages by word of mouth, but
this communication is made by means of “a writing.” This, however, is not
without parallel: Jeremiah sent a letter to the captives in Babylon, and
also sent a written collection of his prophecies to Jehoiakim.(391) In the
latter case, however, the prophecies had been originally promulgated by
word of mouth.

Elijah writes in the name of Jehovah, the God of David, and condemns
Jehoram because he was not walking in the ways of Asa and Jehoshaphat, but
in the ways of the kings of Israel and the house of Ahab. It is pleasant
to find that, in spite of the sins which marked the latter days of Asa and
Jehoshaphat, their “ways” were as a whole such as could be held up as an
example by the prophet of Jehovah. Here and elsewhere God appeals to the
better feelings that spring from pride of birth. _Noblesse oblige._
Jehoram held his throne as representative of the house of David, and was
proud to trace his descent to the founder of the Israelite monarchy and to
inherit the glory of the great reigns of Asa and Jehoshaphat; but this
pride of race implied that to depart from their ways was dishonourable
apostacy. There is no more pitiful spectacle than an effeminate libertine
pluming himself on his noble ancestry.

Elijah further rebukes Jehoram for the massacre of his brethren, who were
better than himself. They had all grown up at their father’s court, and
till the other brethren were put in possession of their fenced cities had
been under the same influences. It is the husband of Ahab’s daughter who
is worse than all the rest; the influence of an unsuitable marriage has
already begun to show itself. Indeed, in view of Athaliah’s subsequent
history, we do her no injustice by supposing that, like Jezebel and Lady
Macbeth, she had suggested her husband’s crime. The fact that Jehoram’s
brethren were better men than himself adds to his guilt morally, but this
undesirable superiority of the other princes of the blood to the reigning
sovereign would seem to Jehoram and his advisers an additional reason for
putting them out of the way; the massacre was an urgent political
necessity.


    “Truly the tender mercies of the weak,
    As of the wicked, are but cruel.”


There is nothing so cruel as the terror of a selfish man. The Inquisition
is the measure not only of the inhumanity, but also of the weakness, of
the mediæval Church; and the massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to the
feebleness of Charles IX. as well as to the “revenge or the blind instinct
of self-preservation”(392) of Mary de Medici.

The chronicler’s condemnation of Jehoram’s massacre marks the superiority
of the standard of later Judaism to the current Oriental morality. For his
sins Jehoram was to be punished by sore disease and by a great “plague”
which would fall upon his people, and his wives, and his children, and all
his substance. From the following verses we see that “plague,” here as in
the case of some of the plagues of Egypt, has the sense of calamity
generally, and not the narrower meaning of pestilence. This plague took
the form of an invasion of the Philistines and of the Arabians “which are
beside the Ethiopians.” Divine inspiration prompted them to attack Judah;
Jehovah stirred up their spirit against Jehoram. Probably here, as in the
story of Zerah, the term Ethiopians is used loosely for the Egyptians, in
which case the Arabs in question would be inhabitants of the desert
between the south of Palestine and Egypt, and would thus be neighbours of
their Philistine allies.

These marauding bands succeeded where the huge hosts of Zerah had failed;
they broke into Judah, and carried off all the king’s treasure, together
with his sons and his wives, only leaving him his youngest son: Jehoahaz
or Ahaziah. They afterwards slew the princes they had taken captive.(393)
The common people would scarcely suffer less severely than their king.
Jehoram himself was reserved for special personal punishment: Jehovah
smote him with a sore disease; and, like Asa, he lingered for two years
and then died. The people were so impressed by his wickedness that “they
made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers,” whereas they
had made a very great burning for Asa.(394)

The chronicler’s account of the reign of Ahaziah(395) does not differ
materially from that given by the book of Kings, though it is considerably
abridged, and there are other minor alterations. The chronicler sets forth
even more emphatically than the earlier history the evil influence of
Athaliah and her Israelite kinsfolk over Ahaziah’s short reign of one
year. The story of his visit to Jehoram, king of Israel, and the murder of
the two kings by Jehu, is very much abridged. The chronicler carefully
omits all reference to Elisha, according to his usual principle of
ignoring the religious life of Northern Israel; but he expressly tells us
that, like Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah suffered for consorting with the house of
Omri: “His destruction or treading down was of God in that he went unto
Jehoram.” Our English versions have carefully reproduced an ambiguity in
the original; but it seems probable that the chronicler does not mean that
visiting Jehoram in his illness was a flagrant offence which God punished
with death, but rather that, to punish Ahaziah for his imitation of the
evil-doings of the house of Omri,(396) God allowed him to visit Jehoram in
order that he might share the fate of the Israelite king.

The book of Kings had stated that Jehu slew forty-two brethren of Ahaziah.
It is, of course, perfectly allowable to take “brethren” in the general
sense of “kinsmen”; but as the chronicler had recently mentioned the
massacre of all Ahaziah’s brethren, he avoids even the appearance of a
contradiction by substituting “sons of the brethren of Ahaziah” for
brethren. This alteration introduces new difficulties, but these
difficulties simply illustrate the general confusion of numbers and ages
which characterises the narrative at this point. In connection with the
burial of Ahaziah, it may be noted that the popular recollection of
Jehoshaphat endorsed the favourable judgment contained in the “writing of
Elijah”: “They said” of Ahaziah, “He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought
Jehovah with all his heart.”

The chronicler next narrates Athaliah’s murder of the seed royal of Judah
and her usurpation of the throne of David, in terms almost identical with
those of the narrative in the book of Kings. But his previous additions
and modifications are hard to reconcile with the account he here borrows
from his ancient authority. According to the chronicler, Jehoram had
massacred all the other sons of Jehoshaphat, and the Arabians had slain
all Jehoram’s sons except Ahaziah, and Jehu had slain their sons; so that
Ahaziah was the only living descendant in the male line of his grandfather
Jehoshaphat; he himself apparently died at the age of twenty-three. It is
intelligible enough that he should have a son Joash and possibly other
sons; but still it is difficult to understand where Athaliah found “all
the seed royal” and “the king’s sons” whom she put to death. It is at any
rate clear that Jehoram’s slaughter of his brethren met with an
appropriate punishment: all his own sons and grandsons were similarly
slain, except the child Joash.

The chronicler’s narrative of the revolution by which Athaliah was slain,
and the throne recovered for the house of David in the person of Joash,
follows substantially the earlier history, the chief difference being, as
we have already noticed,(397) that the chronicler substitutes the
Levitical guard of the second Temple for the bodyguard of foreign
mercenaries who were the actual agents in this revolution.

A distinguished authority on European history is fond of pointing to the
evil effects of royal marriages as one of the chief drawbacks to the
monarchical system of government. A crown may at any time devolve upon a
woman, and by her marriage with a powerful reigning prince her country may
virtually be subjected to a foreign yoke. If it happens that the new
sovereign professes a different religion from that of his wife’s subjects,
the evils arising from the marriage are seriously aggravated. Some such
fate befell the Netherlands as the result of the marriage of Mary of
Burgundy with the Emperor Maximilian, and England was only saved from the
danger of transference to Catholic dominion by the caution and patriotism
of Queen Elizabeth.

Athaliah’s usurpation was a bold attempt to reverse the usual process and
transfer the husband’s dominions to the authority and faith of the wife’s
family. It is probable that Athaliah’s permanent success would have led to
the absorption of Judah in the northern kingdom. This last misfortune was
averted by the energy and courage of Jehoiada, but in the meantime the
half-heathen queen had succeeded in causing untold harm and suffering to
her adopted country. Our own history furnishes numerous illustrations of
the evil influences that come in the train of foreign queens. Edward II.
suffered grievously at the hands of his French queen; Henry VI.’s wife,
Margaret of Anjou, contributed considerably to the prolonged bitterness of
the struggle between York and Lancaster; and to Henry VIII.’s marriage
with Catherine of Aragon the country owed the miseries and persecutions
inflicted by Mary Tudor. But, on the other hand, many of the foreign
princesses who have shared the English throne have won the lasting
gratitude of the nation. A French queen of Kent, for instance, opened the
way for Augustine’s mission to England.

But no foreign queen of England has had the opportunities for mischief
that were enjoyed and fully utilised by Athaliah. She corrupted her
husband and her son, and she was probably at once the instigator of their
crimes and the instrument of their punishment. By corrupting the rulers of
Judah and by her own misgovernment, she exercised an evil influence over
the nation; and as the people suffered, not for their sins only, but also
for those of their kings, Athaliah brought misfortunes and calamity upon
Judah. Unfortunately such experiences are not confined to royal families;
the peace and honour, and prosperity of godly families in all ranks of
life have been disturbed and often destroyed by the marriage of one of
their members with a woman of alien spirit and temperament. Here is a very
general and practical application of the chronicler’s objection to
intercourse with the house of Omri.




Chapter VI. Joash and Amaziah. 2 Chron. xxiv.-xxv.


For Chronicles, as for the book of Kings, the main interest of the reign
of Joash is the repairing of the Temple; but the later narrative
introduces modifications which give a somewhat different complexion to the
story. Both authorities tell us that Joash did that which was right in the
eyes of Jehovah all the days of Jehoiada, but the book of Kings
immediately adds that “the high places were not taken away: the people
still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places.”(398) Seeing that
Jehoiada exercised the royal authority during the minority of Joash, this
toleration of the high places must have had the sanction of the
high-priest. Now the chronicler and his contemporaries had been educated
in the belief that the Pentateuch was the ecclesiastical code of the
monarchy; they found it impossible to credit a statement that the
high-priest had sanctioned any other sanctuary besides the temple of Zion;
accordingly they omitted the verse in question.

In the earlier narrative of the repairing of the Temple the priests are
ordered by Joash to use certain sacred dues and offerings to repair the
breaches of the house; but after some time had elapsed it was found that
the breaches had not been repaired: and when Joash remonstrated with the
priests, they flatly refused to have anything to do with the repairs or
with receiving funds for the purpose. Their objections were, however,
overruled; and Jehoiada placed beside the altar a chest with a hole in the
lid, into which “the priests put all the money that was brought into the
house of Jehovah.”(399) When it was sufficiently full, the king’s scribe
and the high-priest counted the money, and put it up in bags.

There were several points in this earlier narrative which would have
furnished very inconvenient precedents, and were so much out of keeping
with the ideas and practices of the second Temple that, by the time the
chronicler wrote, a new and more intelligible version of the story was
current among the ministers of the Temple. To begin with, there was an
omission which would have grated very unpleasantly on the feelings of the
chronicler. In this long narrative, wholly taken up with the affairs of
the Temple, nothing is said about the Levites. The collecting and
receiving of money might well be supposed to belong to them; and
accordingly in Chronicles the Levites are first associated with the
priests in this matter, and then the priests drop out of the narrative,
and the Levites alone carry out the financial arrangements.

Again, it might be understood from the book of Kings that sacred dues and
offerings, which formed the revenue of the priests and Levites, were
diverted by the king’s orders to the repair of the fabric. The chronicler
was naturally anxious that there should be no mistake on this point; the
ambiguous phrases are omitted, and it is plainly indicated that funds were
raised for the repairs by means of a special tax ordained by Moses. Joash
“assembled the priests and the Levites, and said to them, Go out into the
cities of Judah, and gather of all Israel money to repair the house of
your God from year to year, and see that ye hasten the matter. Howbeit the
Levites hastened it not.” The remissness of the priests in the original
narrative is here very faithfully and candidly transferred to the Levites.
Then, as in the book of Kings, Joash remonstrates with Jehoiada, but the
terms of his remonstrance are altogether different: here he complains
because the Levites have not been required “to bring in out of Judah and
out of Jerusalem the tax appointed by Moses the servant of Jehovah and by
the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony,”_i.e._, the
Tabernacle, containing the Ark and the tables of the Law. The reference
apparently is to the law(400) that when a census was taken a poll-tax of a
half-shekel a head should be paid for the service of the Tabernacle. As
one of the main uses of a census was to facilitate the raising of taxes,
this law might not unfairly be interpreted to mean that when occasion
arose, or perhaps even every year, a census should be taken in order that
this poll-tax might be levied. Nehemiah arranged for a yearly poll-tax of
a third of a shekel for the incidental expenses of the Temple.(401) Here,
however, the half-shekel prescribed in Exodus is intended; and it should
be observed that this poll-tax was to be levied, not once only but “from
year to year.” The chronicler then inserts a note to explain why these
repairs were necessary: “The sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had
broken up the house of God; and also all the dedicated things of the house
of Jehovah they bestowed upon the Baals.” Here we are confronted with a
further difficulty. All Jehoram’s sons except Ahaziah were murdered by the
Arabs in their father’s life-time. Who are these “sons of Athaliah” who
broke up the Temple? Jehoram was about thirty-seven when his sons were
massacred, so that some of them may have been old enough to break up the
Temple. One would think that “the dedicated things” might have been
recovered for Jehovah when Athaliah was overthrown; but possibly, when the
people retaliated by breaking into the house of Baal, there were Achans
among them, who appropriated the plunder.

Having remonstrated with Jehoiada, the king took matters into his own
hands; and he, not Jehoiada, had a chest made and placed, not beside the
altar—such an arrangement savoured of profanity—but without at the gate of
the Temple. This little touch is very suggestive. The noise and bustle of
paying over money, receiving it, and putting it into the chest, would have
mingled distractingly with the solemn ritual of sacrifice. In modern times
the tinkle of threepenny pieces often tends to mar the effect of an
impressive appeal and to disturb the quiet influences of a communion
service. The Scotch arrangement, by which a plate covered with a fair
white cloth is placed in the porch of a church and guarded by two modern
Levites or elders, is much more in accordance with Chronicles.

Then, instead of sending out Levites to collect the tax, proclamation was
made that the people themselves should bring their offerings. Obedience
apparently was made a matter of conscience, not of solicitation. Perhaps
it was because the Levites felt that sacred dues should be given freely
that they were not forward to make yearly tax-collecting expeditions. At
any rate, the new method was signally successful. Day after day the
princes and people gladly brought their offerings, and money was gathered
in abundance. Other passages suggest that the chronicler was not always
inclined to trust to the spontaneous generosity of the people for the
support of the priests and Levites; but he plainly recognised that
free-will offerings are more excellent than the donations which are
painfully extracted by the yearly visits of official collectors. He would
probably have sympathised with the abolition of pew-rents.

As in the book of Kings, the chest was emptied at suitable intervals; but
instead of the high-priest being associated with the king’s scribe, as if
they were on a level and both of them officials of the royal court, the
chief priest’s _officer_ assists the king’s _scribe_, so that the chief
priest is placed on a level with the king himself.

The details of the repairs in the two narratives differ considerably in
form, but for the most part agree in substance; the only striking point is
that they are apparently at variance as to whether vessels of silver or
gold were or were not made for the renovated Temple.

Then follows the account(402) of the ingratitude and apostacy of Joash and
his people. As long as Jehoiada lived, the services of the Temple were
regularly performed, and Judah remained faithful to its God; but at last
he died, full of days: a hundred and thirty years old. In his life-time he
had exercised royal authority, and when he died he was buried like a king:
“They buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done
good in Israel and toward God and His house.”(403) Like Nero when he shook
off the control of Seneca and Burrhus, Joash changed his policy as soon as
Jehoiada was dead. Apparently he was a weak character, always following
some one’s leading. His freedom from the influence that had made his early
reign decent and honourable was not, as in Nero’s case, his own act. The
change of policy was adopted at the suggestion of the princes of Judah.
Kings, princes, and people fell back into the old wickedness; they forsook
the Temple and served idols. Yet Jehovah did not readily give them up to
their own folly, nor hastily inflict punishment; He sent, not one prophet,
but many, to bring them back to Himself, but they would not hearken. At
last Jehovah made one last effort to win Joash back; this time He chose
for His messenger a priest who had special personal claims on the
favourable attention of the king. The prophet was Zechariah the son of
Jehoiada, to whom Joash owed his life and his throne. The name was a
favourite one in Israel, and was borne by two other prophets besides the
son of Jehoiada. Its very etymology constituted an appeal to the
conscience of Joash: it is compounded of the sacred name and a root
meaning “to remember”. The Jews were adepts at extracting from such a
combination all its possible applications. The most obvious was that
Jehovah would remember the sin of Judah, but the recent prophets sent to
recall the sinners to their God showed that Jehovah also remembered their
former righteousness and desired to recall it to them and them to it; they
should remember Jehovah. Moreover, Joash should remember the teaching of
Jehoiada and his obligations to the father of the man now addressing him.
Probably Joash did remember all this when, in the striking Hebrew idiom,
“the spirit of God clothed itself with Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the
priest, and he stood above the people and said unto them, Thus saith God:
Why transgress ye the commandments of Jehovah, to your hurt? Because ye
have forsaken Jehovah, He hath also forsaken you.” This is the burden of
the prophetic utterances in Chronicles(404); the converse is stated by
Irenæus when he says that to follow the Saviour is to partake of
salvation. Though the truth of this teaching had been enforced again and
again by the misfortunes that had befallen Judah under apostate kings,
Joash paid no heed to it, nor did he remember the kindness which Jehoiada
had done him; that is to say, he showed no gratitude towards the house of
Jehoiada. Perhaps an uncomfortable sense of obligation to the father only
embittered him the more against his son. But the son of the high-priest
could not be dealt with as summarily as Asa dealt with Hanani when he put
him in prison. The king might have been indifferent to the wrath of
Jehovah, but the son of the man who had for years ruled Judah and
Jerusalem must have had a strong party at his back. Accordingly the king
and his adherents conspired against Zechariah, and they stoned him with
stones by the king’s command. This Old Testament martyr died in a very
different spirit from that of Stephen; his prayer was, not, “Lord, lay not
this sin to their charge,” but “Jehovah, look upon it and require it.” His
prayer did not long remain unanswered. Within a year the Syrians(405) came
against Joash; he had a very great host, but he was powerless against a
small company of the Divinely commissioned avengers of Zechariah. The
tempters who had seduced the king into apostacy were a special mark for
the wrath of Jehovah: the Syrians destroyed all the princes, and sent
their spoil to the king of Damascus. Like Asa and Jehoram, Joash suffered
personal punishment in the shape of “great diseases,” but his end was even
more tragic than theirs. One conspiracy avenged another: in his own
household there were adherents of the family of Jehoiada: “Two of his own
servants conspired against him for the blood of Zechariah, and slew him on
his bed; and they buried him in the city of David, and not in the
sepulchres of the kings.”

The chronicler’s biography of Joash might have been specially designed to
remind his readers that the most careful education must sometimes fail of
its purpose. Joash had been trained from his earliest years in the Temple
itself, under the care of Jehoiada and of his aunt Jehoshabeath, the
high-priest’s wife. He had no doubt been carefully instructed in the
religion and sacred history of Israel, and had been continually surrounded
by the best religious influences of his age. For Judah, in the
chronicler’s estimation, was even then the one home of the true faith.
These holy influences had been continued after Joash had attained to
manhood, and Jehoiada was careful to provide that the young king’s harem
should be enlisted in the cause of piety and good government. We may be
sure that the two wives whom Jehoiada selected for his pupil were
consistent worshippers of Jehovah and loyal to the Law and the Temple. No
daughter of the house of Ahab, no “strange wife” from Egypt, Ammon, or
Moab, would be allowed the opportunity of undoing the good effects of
early training. Moreover, we might have expected the character developed
by education to be strengthened by exercise. The early years of his reign
were occupied by zealous activity in the service of the Temple. The pupil
outstripped his master, and the enthusiasm of the youthful king found
occasion to rebuke the tardy zeal of the venerable high-priest.

And yet all this fair promise was blighted in a day. The piety carefully
fostered for half a life-time gave way before the first assaults of
temptation, and never even attempted to reassert itself. Possibly the
brief and fragmentary records from which the chronicler had to make his
selection unduly emphasise the contrast between the earlier and later
years of the reign of Joash; but the picture he draws of the failure of
best of tutors and governors is unfortunately only too typical. Julian the
Apostate was educated by a distinguished Christian prelate, Eusebius of
Nicomedia, and was trained in a strict routine of religious observances;
yet he repudiated Christianity at the earliest safe opportunity. His
apostacy, like that of Joash, was probably characterised by base
ingratitude. At Constantine’s death the troops in Constantinople massacred
nearly all the princes of the imperial family, and Julian, then only six
years old, is said to have been saved and concealed in a church by Mark,
Bishop of Arethusa. When Julian became emperor, he repaid this obligation
by subjecting his benefactor to cruel tortures because he had destroyed a
heathen temple and refused to make any compensation. Imagine Joash
requiring Jehoiada to make compensation for pulling down a high place!

The parallel of Julian may suggest a partial explanation of the fall of
Joash. The tutelage of Jehoiada may have been too strict, monotonous, and
prolonged; in choosing wives for the young king, the aged priest may not
have made an altogether happy selection; Jehoiada may have kept Joash
under control until he was incapable of independence and could only pass
from one dominant influence to another. When the high-priest’s death gave
the king an opportunity of changing his masters, a reaction from the too
urgent insistence upon his duty to the Temple may have inclined Joash to
listen favourably to the solicitations of the princes.

But perhaps the sins of Joash are sufficiently accounted for by his
ancestry. His mother was Zibiah of Beersheba, and therefore probably a
Jewess. Of her we know nothing further good or bad. Otherwise his
ancestors for two generations had been uniformly bad. His father and
grandfather were the wicked kings Jehoram and Ahaziah; his grandmother was
Athaliah; and he was descended from Ahab, and possibly from Jezebel. When
we recollect that his mother Zibiah was a wife of Ahaziah and had probably
been selected by Athaliah, we cannot suppose that the element she
contributed to his character would do much to counteract the evil he
inherited from his father.

The chronicler’s account of his successor Amaziah is equally
disappointing; he also began well and ended miserably. In the opening
formulæ of the history of the new reign and in the account of the
punishment of the assassins of Joash, the chronicler closely follows the
earlier narrative, omitting, as usual, the statement that this good king
did not take away the high places. Like his pious predecessors, Amaziah in
his earlier and better years was rewarded with a great army(406) and
military success; and yet the muster-roll of his forces shows how the sins
and calamities of the recent wicked reigns had told on the resources of
Judah. Jehoshaphat could command more than eleven hundred and sixty
thousand soldiers; Amaziah has only three hundred thousand.

These were not sufficient for the king’s ambition; by the Divine grace, he
had already amassed wealth, in spite of the Syrian ravages at the close of
the preceding reign: and he laid out a hundred talents of silver in
purchasing the services of as many thousand Israelites, thus falling into
the sin for which Jehoshaphat had twice been reproved and punished.
Jehovah, however, arrested Amaziah’s employment of unholy allies at the
outset. A man of God came to him and exhorted him not to let the army of
Israel go with him, because “Jehovah is not with Israel”; if he had
courage and faith to go with only his three hundred thousand Jews, all
would be well, otherwise God would cast him down, as He had done Ahaziah.
The statement that Jehovah was not with Israel might have been understood
in a sense that would seem almost blasphemous to the chronicler’s
contemporaries; he is careful therefore to explain that here “Israel”
simply means “the children of Ephraim.”

Amaziah obeyed the prophet, but was naturally distressed at the thought
that he had spent a hundred talents for nothing: “What shall we do for the
hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel?” He did not
realise that the Divine alliance would be worth more to him than many
hundred talents of silver; or perhaps he reflected that Divine grace is
free, and that he might have saved his money. One would like to believe
that he was anxious to recover this silver in order to devote it to the
service of the sanctuary; but he was evidently one of those sordid souls
who like, as the phrase goes, “to get their religion for nothing.” No
wonder Amaziah went astray! We can scarcely be wrong in detecting a vein
of contempt in the prophet’s answer: “Jehovah can give thee much more than
this.”

This little episode carries with it a great principle. Every crusade
against an established abuse is met with the cry, “What shall we do for
the hundred talents?”—for the capital invested in slaves or in gin-shops;
for English revenues from alcohol or Indian revenues from opium? Few have
faith to believe that the Lord can provide for financial deficits, or, if
we may venture to indicate the method in which the Lord provides, that a
nation will ever be able to pay its way by honest finance. Let us note,
however, that Amaziah was asked to sacrifice his own talents, and not
other people’s.

Accordingly Amaziah sent the mercenaries home; and they returned in great
dudgeon, offended by the slight put upon them and disappointed at the loss
of prospective plunder. The king’s sin in hiring Israelite mercenaries was
to suffer a severer punishment than the loss of money. While he was away
at war, his rejected allies returned, and attacked the border cities,(407)
killed three thousand Jews, and took much plunder.

Meanwhile Amaziah and his army were reaping direct fruits of their
obedience in Edom, where they gained a great victory, and followed it up
by a massacre of ten thousand captives, whom they killed by throwing down
from the top of a precipice. Yet, after all, Amaziah’s victory over Edom
was of small profit to him, for he was thereby seduced into idolatry.
Amongst his other prisoners, he had brought away the gods of Edom; and
instead of throwing them over a precipice, as a pious king should have
done, “he set them up to be his gods, and bowed down himself before them,
and burned incense unto them.”

Then Jehovah, in His anger, sent a prophet to demand, “Why hast thou
sought after foreign gods, which have not delivered their own people out
of thine hand?” According to current ideas outside of Israel, a nation
might very reasonably seek after the gods of their conquerors. Such
conquest could only be attributed to the superior power and grace of the
gods of the victors: the gods of the defeated were vanquished along with
their worshippers, and were obviously incompetent and unworthy of further
confidence. But to act like Amaziah—to go out to battle in the name of
Jehovah, directed and encouraged by His prophet, to conquer by the grace
of the God of Israel, and then to desert Jehovah of hosts, the Giver of
victory, for the paltry and discredited idols of the conquered
Edomites—this was sheer madness. And yet as Greece enslaved her Roman
conquerors, so the victor has often been won to the faith of the
vanquished. The Church subdued the barbarians who had overwhelmed the
empire, and the heathen Saxons adopted at last the religion of the
conquered Britons. Henry IV. of France is scarcely a parallel to Amaziah:
he went to mass that he might hold his sceptre with a firmer grasp, while
the king of Judah merely adopted foreign idols in order to gratify his
superstition and love of novelty.

Apparently Amaziah was at first inclined to discuss the question: he and
the prophet talked together; but the king soon became irritated, and broke
off the interview with abrupt discourtesy: “Have we made thee of the
king’s counsel? Forbear; why shouldest thou be smitten?” Prosperity seems
to have been invariably fatal to the Jewish kings who began to reign well;
the success that rewarded, at the same time destroyed their virtue. Before
his victory Amaziah had been courteous and submissive to the messenger of
Jehovah; now he defied Him and treated His prophet roughly. The latter
disappeared, but not before he had declared the Divine condemnation of the
stubborn king.

The rest of the history of Amaziah—his presumptuous war with Joash, king
of Israel, his defeat and degradation, and his assassination—is taken
verbatim from the book of Kings, with a few modifications and editorial
notes by the chronicler to harmonise these sections with the rest of his
narrative. For instance, in the book of Kings the account of the war with
Joash begins somewhat abruptly: Amaziah sends his defiance before any
reason has been given for his action. The chronicler inserts a phrase
which connects his new paragraph very suggestively with the one that goes
before. The former concluded with the king’s taunt that the prophet was
not of his counsel, to which the prophet replied that the king should be
destroyed because he had not hearkened to the Divine counsel proffered to
him. Then Amaziah “took advice”; _i.e._, he consulted those who were of
his counsel, and the sequel showed their incompetence. The chronicler also
explains that Amaziah’s rash persistence in his challenge to Joash “was of
God, that He might deliver them into the hand of their enemies, because
they had sought after the gods of Edom.” He also tells us that the name of
the custodian of the sacred vessels of the Temple was Obed-edom. As the
chronicler mentions five Levites of the name of Obed-edom, four of whom
occur nowhere else, the name was probably common in some family still
surviving in his own time. But, in view of the fondness of the Jews for
significant etymology, it is probable that the name is recorded here
because it was exceedingly appropriate. “The servant of Edom” suits the
official who has to surrender his sacred charge to a conqueror because his
own king had worshipped the gods of Edom. Lastly, an additional note
explains that Amaziah’s apostacy had promptly deprived him of the
confidence and loyalty of his subjects; the conspiracy which led to his
assassination was formed from the time that he turned away from following
Jehovah, so that when he sent his proud challenge to Joash his authority
was already undermined, and there were traitors in the army which he led
against Israel. We are shown one of the means used by Jehovah to bring
about his defeat.




Chapter VII. Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz.(408) 2 Chron. xxvi.-xxviii.


After the assassination of Amaziah, all the people of Judah took his son
Uzziah, a lad of sixteen, called in the book of Kings Azariah, and made
him king. The chronicler borrows from the older narrative the statement
that “Uzziah did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to
all that his father Amaziah had done.” In the light of the sins attributed
both to Amaziah and Uzziah in Chronicles, this is a somewhat doubtful
compliment. Sarcasm, however, is not one of the chronicler’s failings; he
simply allows the older history to speak for itself, and leaves the reader
to combine its judgment with the statement of later tradition as best he
can. But yet we might modify this verse, and read that Uzziah did good and
evil, prospered and fell into misfortune, according to all that his father
Amaziah had done, or an even closer parallel might be drawn between what
Uzziah did and suffered and the chequered character and fortunes of Joash.

Though much older than the latter, at his accession Uzziah was young
enough to be very much under the control of ministers and advisers; and as
Joash was trained in loyalty to Jehovah by the high-priest Jehoiada, so
Uzziah “set himself to seek God during the life-time” of a certain
prophet, who, like the son of Jehoiada, was named Zechariah, “who had
understanding or gave instruction in the fear of Jehovah,”(409) _i.e._, a
man versed in sacred learning, rich in spiritual experience, and able to
communicate his knowledge, such a one as Ezra the scribe in later days.

Under the guidance of this otherwise unknown prophet, the young king was
led to conform his private life and public administration to the will of
God. In “seeking God,” Uzziah would be careful to maintain and attend the
Temple services, to honour the priests of Jehovah and make due provision
for their wants; and “as long as he sought Jehovah God gave him
prosperity.”

Uzziah received all the rewards usually bestowed upon pious kings: he was
victorious in war, and exacted tribute from neighbouring states; he built
fortresses, and had abundance of cattle and slaves, a large and
well-equipped army, and well-supplied arsenals. Like other powerful kings
of Judah, he asserted his supremacy over the tribes along the southern
frontier of his kingdom. God helped him against the Philistines, the
Arabians of Gur-baal, and the Meunim. He destroyed the fortifications of
Gath, Jabne, and Ashdod, and built forts of his own in the country of the
Philistines. Nothing is known about Gur-baal; but the Arabian allies of
the Philistines would be, like Jehoram’s enemies “the Arabians who dwelt
near the Ethiopians,” nomads of the deserts south of Judah. These
Philistines and Arabians had brought tribute to Jehoshaphat without
waiting to be subdued by his armies; so now the Ammonites gave gifts to
Uzziah, and his name spread abroad “even to the entering in of Egypt,”
possibly a hundred or even a hundred and fifty miles from Jerusalem. It is
evident that the chronicler’s ideas of international politics were of very
modest dimensions.

Moreover, Uzziah added to the fortifications of Jerusalem; and because he
loved husbandry and had cattle, and husbandmen, and vine-dressers in the
open country and outlying districts of Judah, he built towers for their
protection. His army was of about the same strength as that of Amaziah,
three hundred thousand men, so that in this, as in his character and
exploits, he did according to all that his father had done, except that he
was content with his own Jewish warriors and did not waste his talents in
purchasing worse than useless reinforcements from Israel. Uzziah’s army
was well disciplined, carefully organised, and constantly employed; they
were men of mighty power, and went out to war by bands, to collect the
king’s tribute and enlarge his dominions and revenue by new conquests. The
war material in his arsenals is described at greater length than that of
any previous king: shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows and
stones for slings. The great advance of military science in Uzziah’s reign
was marked by the invention of engines of war for the defence of
Jerusalem; some, like the Roman _catapulta_, were for arrows, and others,
like the _ballista_, to hurl huge stones. Though the Assyrian sculptures
show us that battering-rams were freely employed by them against the walls
of Jewish cities,(410) and the _ballista_ is said by Pliny to have been
invented in Syria,(411) no other Hebrew king is credited with the
possession of this primitive artillery. The chronicler or his authority
seems profoundly impressed by the great skill displayed in this invention;
in describing it, he uses the root ḥāshabh, to devise, three times in
three consecutive words. The engines were “_ḥishshebhōnôth maḥăshebheth
ḥôshēbh_”—“engines engineered by the ingenious.” Jehovah not only provided
Uzziah with ample military resources of every kind, but also blessed the
means which He Himself had furnished; Uzziah “was marvellously helped,
till he was strong, and his name spread far abroad.” The neighbouring
states heard with admiration of his military resources.

The student of Chronicles will by this time be prepared for the invariable
sequel to God-given prosperity. Like David, Rehoboam, Asa, and Amaziah,
when Uzziah “was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction.” The
most powerful of the kings of Judah died a leper. An attack of leprosy
admitted of only one explanation: it was a plague inflicted by Jehovah
Himself as the punishment of sin; and so the book of Kings tells us that
“Jehovah smote the king,” but says nothing about the sin thus punished.
The chronicler was able to supply the omission: Uzziah had dared to go
into the Temple and with irregular zeal to burn incense on the altar of
incense. In so doing, he was violating the Law, which made the priestly
office and all priestly functions the exclusive prerogative of the house
of Aaron and denounced the penalty of death against any one who usurped
priestly functions.(412) But Uzziah was not allowed to carry out his
unholy design; the high-priest Azariah went in after him with eighty
stalwart colleagues, rebuked his presumption, and bade him leave the
sanctuary. Uzziah was no more tractable to the admonitions of the priest
than Asa and Amaziah had been to those of the prophets. The kings of Judah
were accustomed, even in Chronicles, to exercise an unchallenged control
over the Temple and to regard the high-priests very much in the light of
private chaplains. Uzziah was wroth; he was at the zenith of his power and
glory; his heart was lifted up. Who were these priests, that they should
stand between him and Jehovah and dare to publicly check and rebuke him in
his own temple? Henry II.’s feelings towards Becket must have been mild
compared to those of Uzziah towards Azariah, who, if the king could have
had his way, would doubtless have shared the fate of Zechariah the son of
Jehoiada. But a direct intervention of Jehovah protected the priests, and
preserved Uzziah from further sacrilege. While his features were convulsed
with anger, leprosy brake forth in his forehead. The contest between king
and priest was at once ended; the priests thrust him out, and he himself
hasted to go, recognising that Jehovah had smitten him. Henceforth he
lived apart, cut off from fellowship alike with man and God, and his son
Jotham governed in his stead. The book of Kings simply makes the general
statement that Uzziah was buried with his fathers in the city of David;
but the chronicler is anxious that his readers should not suppose that the
tombs of the sacred house of David were polluted by the presence of a
leprous corpse: he explains that the leper was buried, not in the royal
sepulchre, but in the field attached to it.

The moral of this incident is obvious. In attempting to understand its
significance, we need not trouble ourselves about the relative authority
of kings and priests; the principle vindicated by the punishment of Uzziah
was the simple duty of obedience to an express command of Jehovah. However
trivial the burning of incense may be in itself, it formed part of an
elaborate and complicated system of ritual. To interfere with the Divine
ordinances in one detail would mar the significance and impressiveness of
the whole Temple service. One arbitrary innovation would be a precedent
for others, and would constitute a serious danger for a system whose value
lay in continuous uniformity. Moreover, Uzziah was stubborn in
disobedience. His attempt to burn incense might have been sufficiently
punished by the public and humiliating reproof of the high-priest. His
leprosy came upon him because when thwarted in an unholy purpose he gave
way to ungoverned passion.

In its consequences we see a practical application of the lessons of the
incident. How often is the sinner only provoked to greater wickedness by
the obstacles which Divine grace opposes to his wrongdoing! How few men
will tolerate the suggestion that their intentions are cruel, selfish, or
dishonourable! Remonstrance is an insult, an offence against their
personal dignity; they feel that their self-respect demands that they
should persevere in their purpose, and that they should resent and punish
any one who has tried to thwart them. Uzziah’s wrath was perfectly
natural; few men have been so uniformly patient of reproof as not
sometimes to have turned in anger upon those who warned them against sin.
The most dramatic feature of this episode, the sudden frost of leprosy in
the king’s forehead, is not without its spiritual antitype. Men’s anger at
well-merited reproof has often blighted their lives once for all with
ineradicable moral leprosy. In the madness of passion they have broken
bonds which have hitherto restrained them and committed themselves beyond
recall to evil pursuits and fatal friendships. Let us take the most
lenient view of Uzziah’s conduct, and suppose that he believed himself
entitled to offer incense; he could not doubt that the priests were
equally confident that Jehovah had enjoined the duty on them, and them
alone. Such a question was not to be decided by violence, in the heat of
personal bitterness. Azariah himself had been unwisely zealous in bringing
in his eighty priests; Jehovah showed him that they were quite
unnecessary, because at the last Uzziah “himself hasted to go out.” When
personal passion and jealousy are eliminated from Christian polemics, the
Church will be able to write the epitaph of the _odium theologicum_.

Uzziah was succeeded by Jotham, who had already governed for some time as
regent. In recording the favourable judgment of the book of Kings, “He did
that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that his
father Uzziah had done,” the chronicler is careful to add, “Howbeit he
entered not into the temple of Jehovah”; the exclusive privilege of the
house of Aaron had been established once for all. The story of Jotham’s
reign comes like a quiet and pleasant oasis in the chronicler’s dreary
narrative of wicked rulers, interspersed with pious kings whose piety
failed them in their latter days. Jotham shares with Solomon the
distinguished honour of being a king of whom no evil is recorded either in
Kings or Chronicles, and who died in prosperity, at peace with Jehovah. At
the same time it is probable that Jotham owes the blameless character he
bears in Chronicles to the fact that the earlier narrative does not
mention any misfortunes of his, especially any misfortune towards the
close of his life. Otherwise the theological school from whom the
chronicler derived his later traditions would have been anxious to
discover or deduce some sin to account for such misfortune. At the end of
the short notice of his reign, between two parts of the usual closing
formula, an editor of the book of Kings has inserted the statement that
“in those days Jehovah began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria
and Pekah the son of Remaliah.” This verse the chronicler has omitted;
neither the date(413) nor the nature of this trouble was clear enough to
cast any slur upon the character of Jotham.

Jotham, again, had the rewards of a pious king: he added a gate to the
Temple, and strengthened the wall of Ophel(414), and built cities and
castles in Judah; he made successful war upon Ammon, and received from
them an immense tribute—a hundred talents of silver, ten thousand measures
of wheat, and as much barley—for three successive years. What happened
afterwards we are not told. It has been suggested that the amounts
mentioned were paid in three yearly instalments, or that the three years
were at the end of the reign, and the tribute came to an end when Jotham
died or when the troubles with Pekah and Rezin began.

We have had repeated occasion to notice that in his accounts of the good
kings the chronicler almost always omits the qualifying clause to the
effect that they did not take away the high places. He does so here; but,
contrary to his usual practice, he inserts a qualifying clause of his own:
“The people did yet corruptly.” He probably had in view the unmitigated
wickedness of the following reign, and was glad to retain the evidence
that Ahaz found encouragement and support in his idolatry; he is careful,
however, to state the fact so that no shadow of blame falls upon Jotham.

The life of Ahaz has been dealt with elsewhere. Here we need merely repeat
that for the sixteen years of his reign Judah was to all appearance
utterly given over to every form of idolatry, and was oppressed and
brought low by Israel, Syria, and Assyria.




Chapter VIII. Hezekiah: The Religious Value Of Music. 2 Chron.
xxix.-xxxii.


The bent of the chroniclers mind is well illustrated by the proportion of
space assigned to ritual by him and by the book of Kings respectively. In
the latter a few lines only are devoted to ritual, and the bulk of the
space is given to the invasion of Sennacherib, the embassy from Babylon,
etc., while in Chronicles ritual occupies about three times as many verses
as personal and public affairs.

Hezekiah, though not blameless, was all but perfect in his loyalty to
Jehovah. The chronicler reproduces the customary formula for a good king:
“He did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that
David his father had done”; but his cautious judgment rejects the somewhat
rhetorical statement in Kings that “after him was none like him among all
the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.”

Hezekiah’s policy was made clear immediately after his accession. His zeal
for reformation could tolerate no delay; the first month(415) of the first
year of his reign saw him actively engaged in the good work.(416) It was
no light task that lay before him. Not only were there altars in every
corner of Jerusalem and idolatrous high places in every city of Judah, but
the Temple services had ceased, the lamps were put out, the sacred vessels
cut in pieces, the Temple had been polluted and then closed, and the
priests and Levites were scattered. Sixteen years of licensed idolatry
must have fostered all that was vile in the country, have put wicked men
in authority, and created numerous vested interests connected by close
ties with idolatry, notably the priests of all the altars and high places.
On the other hand, the reign of Ahaz had been an unbroken series of
disasters; the people had repeatedly endured the horrors of invasion. His
government as time went on must have become more and more unpopular, for
when he died he was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings. As idolatry
was a prominent feature of his policy, there would be a reaction in favour
of the worship of Jehovah, and there would not be wanting true believers
to tell the people that their sufferings were a consequence of idolatry.
To a large party in Judah Hezekiah’s reversal of his father’s religious
policy would be as welcome as Elizabeth’s declaration against Rome was to
most Englishmen.

Hezekiah began by opening and repairing the doors of the Temple. Its
closed doors had been a symbol of the national repudiation of Jehovah; to
reopen them was necessarily the first step in the reconciliation of Judah
to its God, but only the first step. The doors were open as a sign that
Jehovah was invited to return to His people and again to manifest His
presence in the Holy of holies, so that through those open doors Israel
might have access to Him by means of the priests. But the Temple was as
yet no fit place for the presence of Jehovah. With its lamps extinguished,
its sacred vessels destroyed, its floors and walls thick with dust and
full of all filthiness, it was rather a symbol of the apostacy of Judah.
Accordingly Hezekiah sought the help of the Levites. It is true that he is
first said to have collected together priests and Levites, but from that
point onward the priests are almost entirely ignored.

Hezekiah reminded the Levites of the misdoings of Ahaz and his adherents
and the wrath which they had brought upon Judah and Jerusalem; he told
them it was his purpose to conciliate Jehovah by making a covenant with
Him; he appealed to them as the chosen ministers of Jehovah and His temple
to co-operate heartily in this good work.

The Levites responded to his appeal apparently rather in acts than words.
No spokesman replies to the king’s speech, but with prompt obedience they
set about their work forthwith; they arose, Kohathites, sons of Merari,
Gershonites, sons of Elizaphan, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun—the chronicler
has a Homeric fondness for catalogues of high-sounding names—the leaders
of all these divisions are duly mentioned. Kohath, Gershon, and Merari are
well known as the three great clans of the house of Levi; and here we find
the three guilds of singers—Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun—placed on a level
with the older clans. Elizaphan was apparently a division of the clan
Kohath,(417) which, like the guilds of singers, had obtained an
independent status. The result is to recognise seven divisions of the
tribe.

The chiefs of the Levites gathered their brethren together, and having
performed the necessary rites of ceremonial cleansing for themselves, went
in to cleanse the Temple; that is to say, the priests went into the holy
place and the Holy of holies and brought out “all the uncleanness” into
the court, and the Levites carried it away to the brook Kidron: but before
the building itself could be reached eight days were spent in cleansing
the courts, and then the priests went into the Temple itself and spent
eight days in cleansing it, in the manner described above. Then they
reported to the king that the cleansing was finished, and especially that
“all the vessels which King Ahaz cast away” had been recovered and
reconsecrated with due ceremony. We were told in the previous chapter that
Ahaz had cut to pieces the vessels of the Temple, but these may have been
other vessels.

Then Hezekiah celebrated a great dedication feast; seven bullocks, seven
rams, seven lambs, and seven he-goats were offered as a sin-offering for
the dynasty,(418) for the Temple, for Judah, and (by special command of
the king) for all Israel, _i.e._ for the northern tribes as well as for
Judah and Benjamin. Apparently this sin-offering was made in silence, but
afterwards the king set the Levites and priests in their places with their
musical instruments, and when the burnt offering began “the song of
Jehovah began with the trumpets together with the instruments of David
king of Israel. And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang,
and the trumpeters sounded,” and all this continued till the burnt
offering was finished.

When the people had been formally reconciled to Jehovah by this
representative national sacrifice, and thus purified from the uncleanness
of idolatry and consecrated afresh to their God, they were permitted and
invited to make individual sacrifices, thank-offerings and burnt
offerings. Each man might enjoy for himself the renewed privilege of
access to Jehovah, and obtain the assurance of pardon for his sins, and
offer thanksgiving for his own special blessings. And they brought
offerings in abundance: seventy bullocks, a hundred rams, and two hundred
lambs for a burnt offering; and six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep
for thank-offerings. Thus were the Temple services restored and
reinaugurated; and Hezekiah and the people rejoiced because they felt that
this unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm was due to the gracious
influence of the Spirit of Jehovah.

The chronicler’s narrative is somewhat marred by a touch of professional
jealousy. According to the ordinary ritual,(419) the offerer flayed the
burnt offerings; but for some special reason, perhaps because of the
exceptional solemnity of the occasion, this duty now devolved upon the
priests. But the burnt offerings were abundant beyond all precedent; the
priests were too few for the work, and the Levites were called in to help
them, “for the Levites were more upright in heart to purify themselves
than the priests.” Apparently even in the second Temple brethren did not
always dwell together in unity.

Hezekiah had now provided for the regular services of the Temple, and had
given the inhabitants of Jerusalem a full opportunity of returning to
Jehovah; but the people of the provinces were chiefly acquainted with the
Temple through the great annual festivals. These, too, had long been in
abeyance; and special steps had to be taken to secure their future
observance. In order to do this, it was necessary to recall the
provincials to their allegiance to Jehovah. Under ordinary circumstances
the great festival of the Passover would have been observed in the first
month, but at the time appointed for the paschal feast the Temple was
still unclean, and the priests and Levites were occupied in its
purification. But Hezekiah could not endure that the first year of his
reign should be marked by the omission of this great feast. He took
counsel with the princes and public assembly—nothing is said about the
priests—and they decided to hold the Passover in the second month instead
of the first. We gather from casual allusions in vv. 6-8 that the kingdom
of Samaria had already come to an end; the people had been carried into
captivity, and only a remnant were left in the land.(420) From this point
the kings of Judah act as religious heads of the whole nation and
territory of Israel. Hezekiah sent invitations to all Israel from Dan to
Beersheba. He made special efforts to secure a favourable response from
the northern tribes, sending letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, _i.e._, to
the ten tribes under their leadership. He reminded them that their
brethren had gone into captivity because the northern tribes had deserted
the Temple; and held out to them the hope that, if they worshipped at the
Temple and served Jehovah, they should themselves escape further calamity,
and their brethren and children who had gone into captivity should return
to their own land.

“So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and
Manasseh, even unto Zebulun.” Either Zebulun is used in a broad sense for
all the Galilean tribes, or the phrase “from Beersheba to Dan” is merely
rhetorical, for to the north, between Zebulun and Dan, lay the territories
of Asher and Naphtali. It is to be noticed that the tribes beyond Jordan
are nowhere referred to; they had already fallen out of the history of
Israel, and were scarcely remembered in the time of the chronicler.

Hezekiah’s appeal to the surviving communities of the northern kingdom
failed: they laughed his messengers to scorn, and mocked them; but
individuals responded to his invitation in such numbers that they are
spoken of as “a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and
Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun.” There were also men of Asher among the
northern pilgrims.(421)

The pious enthusiasm of Judah stood out in vivid contrast to the stubborn
impenitence of the majority of the ten tribes. By the grace of God, Judah
was of one heart to observe the feast appointed by Jehovah through the
king and princes, so that there was gathered in Jerusalem a very great
assembly of worshippers, surpassing even the great gatherings which the
chronicler had witnessed at the annual feasts.

But though the Temple had been cleansed, the Holy City was not yet free
from the taint of idolatry. The character of the Passover demanded that
not only the Temple, but the whole city, should be pure. The paschal lamb
was eaten at home, and the doorposts of the house were sprinkled with its
blood. But Ahaz had set up altars at every corner of the city; no devout
Israelite could tolerate the symbols of idolatrous worship close to the
house in which he celebrated the solemn rites of the Passover. Accordingly
before the Passover was killed these altars were removed.(422)

Then the great feast began; but after long years of idolatry neither the
people nor the priests and Levites were sufficiently familiar with the
rites of the festival to be able to perform them without some difficulty
and confusion. As a rule each head of a household killed his own lamb; but
many of the worshippers, especially those from the north, were not
ceremonially clean: and this task devolved upon the Levites. The immense
concourse of worshippers and the additional work thrown upon the Temple
ministry must have made extraordinary demands on their zeal and
energy.(423) At first apparently they hesitated, and were inclined to
abstain from discharging their usual duties. A passover in a month not
appointed by Moses, but decided on by the civil authorities without
consulting the priesthood, might seem a doubtful and dangerous innovation.
Recollecting Azariah’s successful assertion of hierarchical prerogative
against Uzziah, they might be inclined to attempt a similar resistance to
Hezekiah. But the pious enthusiasm of the people clearly showed that the
Spirit of Jehovah inspired their somewhat irregular zeal; so that the
ecclesiastical officials were shamed out of their unsympathetic attitude,
and came forward to take their full share and even more than their full
share in this glorious rededication of Israel to Jehovah.

But a further difficulty remained: uncleanness not only disqualified from
killing the paschal lambs, but from taking any part in the Passover; and a
multitude of the people were unclean. Yet it would have been ungracious
and even dangerous to discourage their newborn zeal by excluding them from
the festival; moreover, many of them were worshippers from among the ten
tribes, who had come in response to a special invitation, which most of
their fellow-countrymen had rejected with scorn and contempt. If they had
been sent back because they had failed to cleanse themselves according to
a ritual of which they were ignorant, and of which Hezekiah might have
known they would be ignorant, both the king and his guests would have
incurred measureless ridicule from the impious northerners. Accordingly
they were allowed to take part in the Passover despite their uncleanness.
But this permission could only be granted with serious apprehensions as to
its consequences. The Law threatened with death any one who attended the
services of the sanctuary in a state of uncleanness.(424) Possibly there
were already signs of an outbreak of pestilence; at any rate, the dread of
Divine punishment for sacrilegious presumption would distress the whole
assembly and mar their enjoyment of Divine fellowship. Again it is no
priest or prophet, but the king, the Messiah, who comes forward as the
mediator between God and man. Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “Jehovah,
in His grace and mercy,(425) pardon every one that setteth his heart to
seek Elohim Jehovah, the God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed
according to the ritual of the Temple. And Jehovah hearkened to Hezekiah,
and healed the people,” _i.e._, either healed them from actual disease or
relieved them from the fear of pestilence.

And so the feast went on happily and prosperously, and was prolonged by
acclamation for an additional seven days. During fourteen days king and
princes, priests and Levites, Jews and Israelites, rejoiced before
Jehovah; thousands of bullocks and sheep smoked upon the altar; and now
the priests were not backward: great numbers purified themselves to serve
the popular devotion. The priests and Levites sang and made melody to
Jehovah, so that the Levites earned the king’s special commendation. The
great festival ended with a solemn benediction: “The priests(426) arose
and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came
to His holy habitation, even unto heaven.” The priests, and through them
the people, received the assurance that their solemn and prolonged worship
had met with gracious acceptance.

We have already more than once had occasion to consider the chronicler’s
main theme: the importance of the Temple, its ritual, and its ministers.
Incidentally and perhaps unconsciously, he here suggests another lesson,
which is specially significant as coming from an ardent ritualist, namely
the necessary limitations of uniformity in ritual. Hezekiah’s celebration
of the Passover is full of irregularities: it is held in the wrong month;
it is prolonged to twice the usual period; there are amongst the
worshippers multitudes of unclean persons, whose presence at these
services ought to have been visited with terrible punishment. All is
condoned on the ground of emergency, and the ritual laws are set aside
without consulting the ecclesiastical officials. Everything serves to
emphasise the lesson we touched on in connection with David’s sacrifices
at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite: ritual is made for man, and
not man for ritual. Complete uniformity may be insisted on in ordinary
times, but can be dispensed with in any pressing emergency; necessity
knows no law, not even the Torah of the Pentateuch. Moreover, in such
emergencies it is not necessary to wait for the initiative or even the
sanction of ecclesiastical officials; the supreme authority in the Church
in all its great crises resides in the whole body of believers. No one is
entitled to speak with greater authority on the limitations of ritual than
a strong advocate of the sanctity of ritual like the chronicler; and we
may well note, as one of the most conspicuous marks of his inspiration,
the sanctified common sense shown by his frank and sympathetic record of
the irregularities of Hezekiah’s passover. Doubtless emergencies had
arisen even in his own experience of the great feasts of the Temple that
had taught him this lesson; and it says much for the healthy tone of the
Temple community in his day that he does not attempt to reconcile the
practice of Hezekiah with the law of Moses by any harmonistic quibbles.

The work of purification and restoration, however, was still incomplete:
the Temple had been cleansed from the pollutions of idolatry, the heathen
altars had been removed from Jerusalem, but the high places remained in
all the cities of Judah. When the Passover was at last finished, the
assembled multitude, “all Israel that were present,” set out, like the
English or Scotch Puritans, on a great iconoclastic expedition. Throughout
the length and breadth of the Land of Promise, throughout Judah and
Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh, they brake in pieces the sacred pillars,
and hewed down the Asherim, and brake down the high places and altars;
then they went home.

Meanwhile Hezekiah was engaged in reorganising the priests and Levites and
arranging for the payment and distribution of the sacred dues. The king
set an example of liberality by making provision for the daily, weekly,
monthly, and festival offerings. The people were not slow to imitate him;
they brought first-fruits and tithes in such abundance that four months
were spent in piling up heaps of offerings.

“Thus did Hezekiah throughout all Judah; and he wrought that which was
good, and right, and faithful before Jehovah his God; and in every work
that he began in the service of the Temple, and in the Law, and in the
commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and brought
it to a successful issue.”

Then follow an account of the deliverance from Sennacherib and of
Hezekiah’s recovery from sickness, a reference to his undue pride in the
matter of the embassy from Babylon, and a description of the prosperity of
his reign, all for the most part abridged from the book of Kings. The
prophet Isaiah, however, is almost ignored. A few of the more important
modifications deserve some little attention. We are told that the Assyrian
invasion was “after these things and this faithfulness,” in order that we
may not forget that the Divine deliverance was a recompense for Hezekiah’s
loyalty to Jehovah. While the book of Kings tells us that Sennacherib took
all the fenced cities of Judah, the chronicler feels that even this
measure of misfortune would not have been allowed to befall a king who had
just reconciled Israel to Jehovah, and merely says that Sennacherib
purposed to break these cities up.

The chronicler(427) has preserved an account of the measures taken by
Hezekiah for the defence of his capital: how he stopped up the fountains
and watercourses outside the city, so that a besieging army might not find
water, and repaired and strengthened the walls, and encouraged his people
to trust in Jehovah.

Probably the stopping of the water supply outside the walls was connected
with an operation mentioned at the close of the narrative of Hezekiah’s
reign: “Hezekiah also stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon, and
brought them straight down on the west side of the city of David.”(428)
Moreover, the chronicler’s statements are based upon 2 Kings xx. 20, where
it is said that “Hezekiah made the pool and the conduit and brought water
into the city.” The chronicler was of course intimately acquainted with
the topography of Jerusalem in his own days, and uses his knowledge to
interpret and expand the statement in the book of Kings. He was possibly
guided in part by Isa. xxii. 9, 11, where the “gathering together the
waters of the lower pool” and the “making a reservoir between the two
walls for the water of the old pool” are mentioned as precautions taken in
view of a probable Assyrian siege. The recent investigations of the
Palestine Exploration Fund have led to the discovery of aqueducts, and
stoppages, and diversions of watercourses which are said to correspond to
the operations mentioned by the chronicler. If this be the case, they show
a very accurate knowledge on his part of the topography of Jerusalem in
his own day, and also illustrate his care to utilise all existing evidence
in order to obtain a clear and accurate interpretation of the statements
of his authority.

The reign of Hezekiah appears a suitable opportunity to introduce a few
remarks on the importance which the chronicler attaches to the music of
the Temple services. Though the music is not more prominent with him than
with some earlier kings, yet in the case of David, Solomon, and
Jehoshaphat other subjects presented themselves for special treatment; and
Hezekiah’s reign being the last in which the music of the sanctuary is
specially dwelt upon, we are able here to review the various references to
this subject. For the most part the chronicler tells his story of the
virtuous days of the good kings to a continual accompaniment of Temple
music. We hear of the playing and singing when the Ark was brought to the
house of Obed-edom; when it was taken into the city of David; at the
dedication of the Temple; at the battle between Abijah and Jeroboam; at
Asa’s reformation; in connection with the overthrow of the Ammonites,
Moabites, and Meunim in the reign of Jehoshaphat; at the coronation of
Joash; at Hezekiah’s feasts; and again, though less emphatically, at
Josiah’s passover. No doubt the special prominence given to the subject
indicates a professional interest on the part of the author. If, however,
music occupies an undue proportion of his space, and he has abridged
accounts of more important matters to make room for his favourite theme,
yet there is no reason to suppose that his actual statements overrate the
extent to which music was used in worship or the importance attached to
it. The older narratives refer to the music in the case of David and
Joash, and assign psalms and songs to David and Solomon. Moreover, Judaism
is by no means alone in its fondness for music, but shares this
characteristic with almost all religions.

We have spoken of the chronicler so far chiefly as a professional
musician, but it should be clearly understood that the term must be taken
in its best sense. He was by no means so absorbed in the technique of his
art as to forget its sacred significance; he was not less a worshipper
himself because he was the minister or agent of the common worship. His
accounts of the festivals show a hearty appreciation of the entire ritual;
and his references to the music do not give us the technical circumstances
of its production, but rather emphasise its general effect. The
chronicler’s sense of the religious value of music is largely that of a
devout worshipper, who is led to set forth for the benefit of others a
truth which is the fruit of his own experience. This experience is not
confined to trained musicians; indeed, a scientific knowledge of the art
may sometimes interfere with its devotional influence. Criticism may take
the place of worship; and the hearer, instead of yielding to the sacred
suggestions of hymn or anthem, may be distracted by his æsthetic judgment
as to the merits of the composition and the skill shown by its rendering.
In the same way critical appreciation of voice, elocution, literary style,
and intellectual power does not always conduce to edification from a
sermon. In the truest culture, however, sensitiveness to these secondary
qualities has become habitual and automatic, and blends itself
imperceptibly with the religious consciousness of spiritual influence. The
latter is thus helped by excellence and only slightly hindered by minor
defects in the natural means. But the very absence of any great scientific
knowledge of music may leave the spirit open to the spell which sacred
music is intended to exercise, so that all cheerful and guileless souls
may be “moved with concord of sweet sounds,” and sad and weary hearts find
comfort in subdued strains that breathe sympathy of which words are
incapable.

Music, as a mode of utterance moving within the restraints of a regular
order, naturally attaches itself to ritual. As the earliest literature is
poetry, the earliest liturgy is musical. Melody is the simplest and most
obvious means by which the utterances of a body of worshippers can be
combined into a seemly act of worship. The mere repetition of the same
words by a congregation in ordinary speech is apt to be wanting in
impressiveness or even in decorum; the use of tune enables a congregation
to unite in worship even when many of its members are strangers to each
other.

Again, music may be regarded as an expansion of language: not new dialect,
but a collection of symbols that can express thought, and more especially
emotion, for which mere speech has no vocabulary. This new form of
language naturally becomes an auxiliary of religion. Words are clumsy
instruments for the expression of the heart, and are least efficient when
they undertake to set forth moral and spiritual ideas. Music can transcend
mere speech in touching the soul to fine issues, suggesting visions of
things ineffable and unseen.

Browning makes Abt Vogler say of the most enduring and supreme hopes that
God has granted to men, “’Tis we musicians know”; but the message of music
comes home with power to many who have no skill in its art.




Chapter IX. Manasseh: Repentance And Forgiveness. 2 Chron. xxxiii.


In telling the melancholy story of the wickedness of Manasseh in the first
period of his reign, the chronicler reproduces the book of Kings, with one
or two omissions and other slight alterations. He omits the name of
Manasseh’s mother; she was called Hephzi-bah—“My pleasure is in her.” In
any case, when the son of a godly father turns out badly, and nothing is
known about the mother, uncharitable people might credit her with his
wickedness. But the chronicler’s readers were familiar with the great
influence of the queen-mother in Oriental states. When they read that the
son of Hezekiah came to the throne at the age of twelve and afterwards
gave himself up to every form of idolatry, they would naturally ascribe
his departure from his father’s ways to the suggestions of his mother. The
chronicler is not willing that the pious Hezekiah should lie under the
imputation of having taken delight in an ungodly woman, and so her name is
omitted.

The contents of 2 Kings xxi. 10-16 are also omitted; they consist of a
prophetic utterance and further particulars as to the sins of Manasseh;
they are virtually replaced by the additional information in Chronicles.

From the point of view of the chronicler, the history of Manasseh in the
book of Kings was far from satisfactory. The earlier writer had not only
failed to provide materials from which a suitable moral could be deduced,
but he had also told the story so that undesirable conclusions might be
drawn. Manasseh sinned more wickedly than any other king of Judah: Ahaz
merely polluted and closed the Temple, but Manasseh “built altars for all
the host of heaven in the two courts of the Temple,” and set up in it an
idol. And yet in the earlier narrative this most wicked king escaped
without any personal punishment at all. Moreover, length of days was one
of the rewards which Jehovah was wont to bestow upon the righteous; but
while Ahaz was cut off at thirty-six, in the prime of manhood, Manasseh
survived to the mature age of sixty-seven, and reigned fifty-five years.

However, the history reached the chronicler in a more satisfactory form.
Manasseh was duly punished, and his long reign fully accounted for.(429)
When, in spite of Divine warning, Manasseh and his people persisted in
their sin, Jehovah sent against them “the captains of the host of the king
of Assyria, which took Manasseh in chains, and bound him with
fetters,(430) and carried him to Babylon.”

The Assyrian invasion referred to here is partially confirmed by the fact
that the name of Manasseh occurs amongst the tributaries of Esarhaddon and
his successor, Assur-bani-pal. The mention of Babylon as his place of
captivity rather than Nineveh may be accounted for by supposing that
Manasseh was taken prisoner in the reign of Esarhaddon. This king of
Assyria rebuilt Babylon, and spent much of his time there. He is said to
have been of a kindly disposition and to have exercised towards other
royal captives the same clemency which he extended to Manasseh. For the
Jewish king’s misfortunes led him to repentance: “When he was in trouble,
he besought Jehovah his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of
his fathers, and prayed unto him.” Amongst the Greek Apocrypha is found a
“Prayer of Manasses,” doubtless intended by its author to represent the
prayer referred to in Chronicles. In it Manasseh celebrates the Divine
glory, confesses his great wickedness, and asks that his penitence may be
accepted and that he may obtain deliverance.

If these were the terms of Manasseh’s prayers, they were heard and
answered; and the captive king returned to Jerusalem a devout worshipper
and faithful servant of Jehovah. He at once set to work to undo the evil
he had wrought in the former period of his reign. He took away the idol
and the heathen altars from the Temple, restored the altar of Jehovah, and
re-established the Temple services. In earlier days he had led the people
into idolatry; now he commanded them to serve Jehovah, and the people
obediently followed the king’s example. Apparently he found it
impracticable to interfere with the high places; but they were so far
purified from corruption that, though the people still sacrificed at these
illegal sanctuaries, they worshipped exclusively Jehovah, the God of
Israel.

Like most of the pious kings, his prosperity was partly shown by his
extensive building operations. Following in the footsteps of Jotham, he
strengthened or repaired the fortifications of Jerusalem, especially about
Ophel. He further provided for the safety of his dominions by placing
captains, and doubtless also garrisons, in the fenced cities of Judah. The
interest taken by the Jews of the second Temple in the history of Manasseh
is shown by the fact that the chronicler is able to mention, not only the
“Acts of the Kings of Israel,” but a second authority: “The History of the
Seers.” The imagination of the Targumists and other later writers
embellished the history of Manasseh’s captivity and release with many
striking and romantic circumstances.

The life of Manasseh practically completes the chronicler’s series of
object-lessons in the doctrine of retribution; the history of the later
kings only provides illustrations similar to those already given. These
object-lessons are closely connected with the teaching of Ezekiel. In
dealing with the question of heredity in guilt, the prophet is led to set
forth the character and fortunes of four different classes of men.
First(431) we have two simple cases: the righteousness of the righteous
shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
These have been respectively illustrated by the prosperity of Solomon and
Jotham and the misfortunes of Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, and Ahaz. Again,
departing somewhat from the order of Ezekiel—“When the righteous turneth
away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according
to all the abominations of the wicked man, shall he live? None of his
righteous deeds that he hath done shall be remembered; in his trespass
that he hath trespassed and in his sin that he hath sinned he shall
die”—here we have the principle that in Chronicles governs the Divine
dealings with the kings who began to reign well and then fell away into
sin: Asa, Joash, Amaziah, and Uzziah.

We reached this point in our discussion of the doctrine of retribution in
connection with Asa. So far the lessons taught were salutary: they might
deter from sin; but they were gloomy and depressing: they gave little
encouragement to hope for success in the struggle after righteousness, and
suggested that few would escape terrible penalties of failure. David and
Solomon formed a class by themselves; an ordinary man could not aspire to
their almost supernatural virtue. In his later history the chronicler is
chiefly bent on illustrating the frailty of man and the wrath of God. The
New Testament teaches a similar lesson when it asks, “If the righteous is
scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?”(432) But in
Chronicles not even the righteous is saved. Again and again we are told at
a king’s accession that he “did that which was good and right in the eyes
of Jehovah”; and yet before the reign closes he forfeits the Divine
favour, and at last dies ruined and disgraced.

But this sombre picture is relieved by occasional gleams of light. Ezekiel
furnishes a fourth type of religious experience: “If the wicked turn from
all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all My statutes, and do that
which is lawful and right, he shall live; he shall not die. None of his
transgressions that he hath committed shall be remembered against him; in
his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in
the death of the wicked, saith the Lord Jehovah, and not rather that he
should return from his way and live?”(433) The one striking and complete
example of this principle is the history of Manasseh. It is true that
Rehoboam also repented, but the chronicler does not make it clear that his
repentance was permanent. Manasseh is unique alike in extreme wickedness,
sincere penitence, and thorough reformation. The reformation of Julius
Cæsar or of our Henry V., or, to take a different class of instance, the
conversion of St. Paul, was nothing compared to the conversion of
Manasseh. It was as though Herod the Great or Cæsar Borgia had been
checked midway in a career of cruelty and vice, and had thenceforward
lived pure and holy lives, glorifying God by ministering to their
fellow-men. Such a repentance gives us hope for the most abandoned. In the
forgiveness of Manasseh the penitent sinner receives assurance that God
will forgive even the most guilty. The account of his closing years shows
that even a career of desperate wickedness in the past need not hinder the
penitent from rendering acceptable service to God and ending his life in
the enjoyment of Divine favour and blessing. Manasseh becomes in the Old
Testament what the Prodigal Son is in the New: the one great symbol of the
possibilities of human nature and the infinite mercy of God.

The chronicler’s theology is as simple and straightforward as that of
Ezekiel. Manasseh repents, submits himself, and is forgiven. His captivity
apparently had expiated his guilt, as far as expiation was necessary.
Neither prophet nor chronicler was conscious of the moral difficulties
that have been found in so simple a plan of salvation. The problems of an
objective atonement had not yet risen above their horizon.

These incidents afford another illustration of the necessary limitations
of ritual. In the great crisis of Manasseh’s spiritual life, the Levitical
ordinances played no part; they moved on a lower level, and ministered to
less urgent needs. Probably the worship of Jehovah was still suspended
during Manasseh’s captivity; none the less Manasseh was able to make his
peace with God. Even if they were punctually observed, of what use were
services at the Temple in Jerusalem to a penitent sinner at Babylon? When
Manasseh returned to Jerusalem, he restored the Temple worship, and
offered sacrifices of peace-offerings and of thanksgiving; nothing is said
about sin-offerings. His sacrifices were not the condition of his pardon,
but the seal and token of a reconciliation already effected. The
experience of Manasseh anticipated that of the Jews of the Captivity: he
discovered the possibility of fellowship with Jehovah, far away from the
Holy Land, without temple, priest, or sacrifice. The chronicler, perhaps
unconsciously already foreshadows the coming of the hour when men should
worship the Father neither in the holy mountain of Samaria nor yet in
Jerusalem.

Before relating the outward acts which testified the sincerity of
Manasseh’s repentance, the chronicler devotes a single sentence to the
happy influence of forgiveness and deliverance upon Manasseh himself. When
his prayer had been heard, and his exile was at an end, then Manasseh knew
and acknowledged that Jehovah was God. Men first begin to know God when
they have been forgiven. The alienated and disobedient, if they think of
Him at all, merely have glimpses of His vengeance and try to persuade
themselves that He is a stern Tyrant. By the penitent not yet assured of
the possibility of reconciliation God is chiefly thought of as a righteous
Judge. What did the Prodigal Son know about his father when he asked for
the portion of goods that fell to him or while he was wasting his
substance in riotous living? Even when he came to himself, he thought of
the father’s house as a place where there was bread enough and to spare;
and he supposed that his father might endure to see him living at home in
permanent disgrace, on the footing of a hired servant. When he reached
home, after he had been met a great way on with compassion and been
welcomed with an embrace, he began for the first time to understand his
father’s character. So the knowledge of God’s love dawns upon the soul in
the blessed experience of forgiveness; and because love and forgiveness
are more strange and unearthly than rebuke and chastisement, the sinner is
humbled by pardon far more than by punishment; and his trembling
submission to the righteous Judge deepens into profounder reverence and
awe for the God who can forgive, who is superior to all vindictiveness,
whose infinite resources enable Him to blot out the guilt, to cancel the
penalty, and annul the consequences of sin.


    “There is forgiveness with Thee,
    That Thou mayest be feared.”(434)


The words that stand in the forefront of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be
Thy name,” are virtually a petition that sinners may repent, and be
converted, and obtain forgiveness.

In seeking for a Christian parallel to the doctrine expounded by Ezekiel
and illustrated by Chronicles, we have to remember that the permanent
elements in primitive doctrine are often to be found by removing the
limitations which imperfect faith has imposed on the possibilities of
human nature and Divine mercy. We have already suggested that the
chronicler’s somewhat rigid doctrine of temporal rewards and punishments
symbolises the inevitable influence of conduct on the development of
character. The doctrine of God’s attitude towards backsliding and
repentance seems somewhat arbitrary as set forth by Ezekiel and
Chronicles. A man apparently is not to be judged by his whole life, but
only by the moral period that is closed by his death. If his last years be
pious, his former transgressions are forgotten; if his last years be evil,
his righteous deeds are equally forgotten. While we gratefully accept the
forgiveness of sinners, such teaching as to backsliders seems a little
cynical; and though, by God’s grace and discipline, a man may be led
through and out of sin into righteousness, we are naturally suspicious of
a life of “righteous deeds” which towards its close lapses into gross and
open sin. “Nemo repente turpissimus fit.” We are inclined to believe that
the final lapse reveals the true bias of the whole character. But the
chronicler suggests more than this: by his history of the almost uniform
failure of the pious kings to persevere to the end, he seems to teach that
the piety of early and mature life is either unreal or else is unable to
survive as body and mind wear out. This doctrine has sometimes,
inconsiderately no doubt, been taught from Christian pulpits; and yet the
truth of which the doctrine is a misrepresentation supplies a correction
of the former principle that a life is to be judged by its close. Putting
aside any question of positive sin, a man’s closing years sometimes seem
cold, narrow, and selfish when once he was full of tender and considerate
sympathy; and yet the man is no Asa or Amaziah who has deserted the living
God for idols of wood and stone. The man has not changed, only our
impression of him. Unconsciously we are influenced by the contrast between
his present state and the splendid energy and devotion of self-sacrifice
that marked his prime; we forget that inaction is his misfortune, and not
his fault; we overrate his ardour in the days when vigorous action was a
delight for its own sake; and we overlook the quiet heroism with which
remnants of strength are still utilised in the Lord’s service, and do not
consider that moments of fretfulness are due to decay and disease that at
once increase the need of patience and diminish the powers of endurance.
Muscles and nerves slowly become less and less efficient; they fail to
carry to the soul full and clear reports of the outside world; they are no
longer satisfactory instruments by which the soul can express its feelings
or execute its will. We are less able than ever to estimate the inner life
of such by that which we see and hear. While we are thankful for the sweet
serenity and loving sympathy which often make the hoary head a crown of
glory, we are also entitled to judge some of God’s more militant children
by their years of arduous service, and not by their impatience of enforced
inactivity.

If our author’s statement of these truths seem unsatisfactory, we must
remember that his lack of a doctrine of the future life placed him at a
serious disadvantage. He wished to exhibit a complete picture of God’s
dealings with the characters of his history, so that their lives should
furnish exact illustrations of the working of sin and righteousness. He
was controlled and hampered by the idea that underlies many discussions in
the Old Testament: that God’s righteous judgment upon a man’s actions is
completely manifested during his earthly life. It may be possible to
assert an _eternal_ providence; but conscience and heart have long since
revolted against the doctrine that God’s justice, to say nothing of His
love, is declared by the misery of lives that might have been innocent, if
they had ever had the opportunity of knowing what innocence meant. The
chronicler worked on too small a scale for his subject. The entire Divine
economy of Him with whom a thousand years are as one day cannot be even
outlined for a single soul in the history of its earthly existence. These
narratives of Jewish kings are only imperfect symbols of the infinite
possibilities of the eternal providence. The moral of Chronicles is very
much that of the Greek sage, “Call no man happy till he is dead”; but
since Christ has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel,
we no longer pass final judgment upon either the man or his happiness by
what we know of his life here. The decisive revelation of character, the
final judgment upon conduct, the due adjustment of the gifts and
discipline of God, are deferred to a future life. When these are
completed, and the soul has attained to good or evil beyond all reversal,
then we shall feel, with Ezekiel and the chronicler, that there is no
further need to remember either the righteous deeds or the transgressions
of earlier stages of its history.




Chapter X. The Last Kings Of Judah. 2 Chron. xxxiv.-xxxvi.


Whatever influence Manasseh’s reformation exercised over his people
generally, the taint of idolatry was not removed from his own family. His
son Amon succeeded him at the age of two-and-twenty. Into his reign of two
years he compressed all the varieties of wickedness once practised by his
father, and undid the good work of Manasseh’s later years. He recovered
the graven images which Manasseh had discarded, replaced them in their
shrines, and worshipped them instead of Jehovah. But in his case there was
no repentance, and he was cut off in his youth.

In the absence of any conclusive evidence as to the date of Manasseh’s
reformation, we cannot determine with certainty whether Amon received his
early training before or after his father returned to the worship of
Jehovah. In either case Manasseh’s earlier history would make it difficult
for him to counteract any evil influence that drew Amon towards idolatry.
Amon could set the example and perhaps the teaching of his father’s former
days against any later exhortations to righteousness. When a father has
helped to lead his children astray, he cannot be sure that he will carry
them with him in his repentance.

After Amon’s assassination the people placed his son Josiah on the throne.
Like Joash and Manasseh, Josiah was a child, only eight years old. The
chronicler follows the general line of the history in the book of Kings,
modifying, abridging, and expanding, but introducing no new incidents; the
reformation, the repairing of the Temple, the discovery of the book of the
Law, the Passover, Josiah’s defeat and death at Megiddo, are narrated by
both historians. We have only to notice differences in a somewhat similar
treatment of the same subject.

Beyond the general statement that Josiah “did that which was right in the
eyes of Jehovah” we hear nothing about him in the book of Kings till the
eighteenth year of his reign, and his reformation and putting away of
idolatry is placed in that year. The chronicler’s authorities corrected
the statement that the pious king tolerated idolatry for eighteen years.
They record how in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen, he
began to seek after the God of David; and in his twelfth year he set about
the work of utterly destroying idols throughout the whole territory of
Israel, in the cities and ruins of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even
unto Naphtali, as well as in Judah and Benjamin. Seeing that the cities
assigned to Simeon were in the south of Judah, it is a little difficult to
understand why they appear with the northern tribes, unless they are
reckoned with them technically to make up the ancient number.

The consequence of this change of date is that in Chronicles the
reformation precedes the discovery of the book of the Law, whereas in the
older history this discovery is the cause of the reformation. The
chronicler’s account of the idols and other apparatus of false worship
destroyed by Josiah is much less detailed than that of the book of Kings.
To have reproduced the earlier narrative in full would have raised serious
difficulties. According to the chronicler, Manasseh had purged Jerusalem
of idols and idol altars; and Amon alone was responsible for any that
existed there at the accession of Josiah: but in the book of Kings Josiah
found in Jerusalem the altars erected by the kings of Judah and the horses
they had given to the sun. Manasseh’s altars still stood in the courts of
the Temple; and over against Jerusalem there still remained the high
places that Solomon had built for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom. As the
chronicler in describing Solomon’s reign carefully omitted all mention of
his sins, so he omits this reference to his idolatry. Moreover, if he had
inserted it, he would have had to explain how these high places escaped
the zeal of the many pious kings who did away with the high places.
Similarly, having omitted the account of the man of God who prophesied the
ruin of Jeroboam’s sanctuary at Bethel, he here omits the fulfilment of
that prophecy.

The account of the repairing of the Temple is enlarged by the insertion of
various details as to the names, functions, and zeal of the Levites,
amongst whom those who had skill in instruments of music seem to have had
the oversight of the workmen. We are reminded of the walls of Thebes,
which rose out of the ground while Orpheus played upon his flute.
Similarly in the account of the assembly called to hear the contents of
the book of the Law the Levites are substituted for the prophets. This
book of the Law is said in Chronicles to have been given by Moses, but his
name is not connected with the book in the parallel narrative in the book
of Kings.

The earlier authority simply states that Josiah held a great passover;
Chronicles, as usual, describes the festival in detail. First of all, the
king commanded the priests and Levites to purify themselves and take their
places in due order, so that they might be ready to perform their sacred
duties. The narrative is very obscure, but it seems that either during the
apostacy of Amon or on account of the recent Temple repairs the Ark had
been removed from the Holy of holies. The Law had specially assigned to
the Levites the duty of carrying the Tabernacle and its furniture, and
they seem to have thought that they were only bound to exercise the
function of carrying the Ark; they perhaps proposed to bear it in solemn
procession round the city as part of the celebration of the Passover,
forgetting the words of David(435) that the Levites should no more carry
the Tabernacle and its vessels. They would have been glad to substitute
this conspicuous and honourable service for the laborious and menial work
of flaying the victims. Josiah, however, commanded them to put the Ark
into the Temple and attend to their other duties.

Next, the king and his nobles provided beasts of various kinds for the
sacrifices and the Passover meal. Josiah’s gifts were even more munificent
than those of Hezekiah. The latter had given a thousand bullocks and ten
thousand sheep; Josiah gave just three times as many. Moreover, at
Hezekiah’s passover no offerings of the princes are mentioned, but now
they added their gifts to those of the king. The heads of the priesthood
provided three hundred oxen and two thousand six hundred small cattle for
the priests, and the chiefs of the Levites five hundred oxen and five
thousand small cattle for the Levites. But numerous as were the victims at
Josiah’s passover, they still fell far short of the great sacrifice(436)
of twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep which
Solomon offered at the dedication of the Temple.

Then began the actual work of the sacrifices: the victims were killed and
flayed, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar; the burnt offerings
were distributed among the people; the Passover lambs were roasted, and
the other offerings boiled, and the Levites “carried them quickly to all
the children of the people.” Apparently private individuals could not find
the means of cooking the bountiful provision made for them; and, to meet
the necessity of the case, the Temple courts were made kitchen as well as
slaughterhouse for the assembled worshippers. The other offerings would
not be eaten with the Passover lamb, but would serve for the remaining
days of the feast.

The Levites not only provided for the people, for themselves, and the
priests, but the Levites who ministered in the matter of the sacrifices
also prepared for their brethren who were singers and porters, so that the
latter were enabled to attend undisturbed to their own special duties; all
the members of the guild of porters were at the gates maintaining order
among the crowd of worshippers; and the full strength of the orchestra and
choir contributed to the beauty and solemnity of the services. It was the
greatest Passover held by any Israelite king.

Josiah’s passover, like that of Hezekiah, was followed by a formidable
foreign invasion; but whereas Hezekiah was rewarded for renewed loyalty by
a triumphant deliverance, Josiah was defeated and slain. These facts
subject the chronicler’s theory of retribution to a severe strain. His
perplexity finds pathetic expression in the opening words of the new
section, “After all this,” after all the idols had been put away, after
the celebration of the most magnificent Passover the monarchy had ever
seen. After all this, when we looked for the promised rewards of piety—for
fertile seasons, peace and prosperity at home, victory and dominion
abroad, tribute from subject peoples, and wealth from successful
commerce—after all this, the rout of the armies of Jehovah at Megiddo, the
flight and death of the wounded king, the lamentation over Josiah, the
exaltation of a nominee of Pharaoh to the throne, and the payment of
tribute to the Egyptian king. The chronicler has no complete explanation
of this painful mystery, but he does what he can to meet the difficulties
of the case. Like the great prophets in similar instances, he regards the
heathen king as charged with a Divine commission. Pharaoh’s appeal to
Josiah to remain neutral should have been received by the Jewish king as
an authoritative message from Jehovah. It was the failure to discern in a
heathen king the mouthpiece and prophet of Jehovah that cost Josiah his
life and Judah its liberty.

The chronicler had no motive for lingering over the last sad days of the
monarchy; the rest of his narrative is almost entirely abridged from the
book of Kings. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah pass over the
scene in rapid and melancholy succession. In the case of Jehoahaz, who
only reigned three months, the chronicler omits the unfavourable judgment
recorded in the book of Kings; but he repeats it for the other three, even
for the poor lad of eight(437) who was carried away captive after a reign
of three months and ten days. The chronicler had not learnt that kings can
do no wrong; on the other hand, the ungodly policy of Jehoiachin’s
ministers is labelled with the name of the boy-sovereign.

Each of these kings in turn was deposed and carried away into captivity,
unless indeed Jehoiakim is an exception. In the book of Kings we are told
that he slept with his fathers, _i.e._, that he died and was buried in the
royal tombs at Jerusalem, a statement which the LXX. inserts here also,
specifying, however, that he was buried in the garden of Uzza. If the
pious Josiah were punished for a single error by defeat and death, why was
the wicked Jehoiakim allowed to reign till the end of his life and then
die in his bed? The chronicler’s information differed from that of the
earlier narrative in a way that removed, or at any rate suppressed the
difficulty. He omits the statement that Jehoiakim slept with his fathers,
and tells us(438) that Nebuchadnezzar bound him in fetters to carry him to
Babylon. Casual readers would naturally suppose that this purpose was
carried out, and that the Divine justice was satisfied by Jehoiakim’s
death in captivity; and yet if they compared this passage with that in the
book of Kings, it might occur to them that after the king had been put in
chains something might have led Nebuchadnezzar to change his mind, or,
like Manasseh, Jehoiakim might have repented and been allowed to return.
But it is very doubtful whether the chronicler’s authorities contemplated
the possibility of such an interpretation; it is scarcely fair to credit
them with all the subtle devices of modern commentators.

The real conclusion of the chronicler’s history of the kings of the house
of David is a summary of the sins of the last days of the monarchy and of
the history of its final ruin in xxxvi. 14-20.(439) All the chief of the
priests and of the people were given over to the abominations of idolatry;
and in spite of constant and urgent admonitions from the prophets of
Jehovah, they hardened their hearts, and mocked the messengers of God, and
despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of Jehovah
arose against His people, and there was no healing.

However, to this peroration a note is added that the length of the
Captivity was fixed at seventy years, in order that the land might “enjoy
her sabbaths.” This note rests upon Lev. xxv. 1-7, according to which the
land was to be left fallow every seventh year. The seventy years captivity
would compensate for seventy periods of six years each during which no
sabbatical years had been observed. Thus the Captivity, with the four
hundred and twenty previous years of neglect, would be equivalent to
seventy sabbatical periods. There is no economy in keeping back what is
due to God.

Moreover, the editor who separated Chronicles from the book of Ezra and
Nehemiah was loath to allow the first part of the history to end in a
gloomy record of sin and ruin. Modern Jews, in reading the last chapter of
Isaiah, rather than conclude with the ill-omened words of the last two
verses, repeat a previous portion of the chapter. So here to the history
of the ruin of Jerusalem the editor has appended two verses from the
opening of the book of Ezra, which contain the decree of Cyrus authorising
the return from the Captivity. And thus Chronicles concludes in the middle
of a sentence which is completed in the book of Ezra: “Who is there among
you of all his people? Jehovah his God be with him, and let him go up....”

Such a conclusion suggests two considerations which will form a fitting
close to our exposition. Chronicles is not a finished work; it has no
formal end; it rather breaks off abruptly like an interrupted diary. In
like manner the book of Kings concludes with a note as to the treatment of
the captive Jehoiachin at Babylon: the last verse runs, “And for his
allowance there was a continual allowance given him of the king, every day
a portion, all the days of his life.” The book of Nehemiah has a short
final prayer: “Remember me, O my God, for good”; but the preceding
paragraph is simply occupied with the arrangements for the wood offering
and the first-fruits. So in the New Testament the history of the Church
breaks off with the statement that St. Paul abode two whole years in his
own hired house, preaching the kingdom of God. The sacred writers
recognise the continuity of God’s dealings with His people; they do not
suggest that one period can be marked off by a clear dividing line or
interval from another. Each historian leaves, as it were, the loose ends
of his work ready to be taken up and continued by his successors. The Holy
Spirit seeks to stimulate the Church to a forward outlook, that it may
expect and work for a future wherein the power and grace of God will be no
less manifest than in the past. Moreover, the final editor of Chronicles
has shown himself unwilling that the book should conclude with a gloomy
record of sin and ruin, and has appended a few lines to remind his readers
of the new life of faith and hope that lay beyond the Captivity. In so
doing, he has echoed the key-note of prophecy: ever beyond man’s
transgression and punishment the prophets saw the vision of his
forgiveness and restoration to God.






FOOTNOTES


    1 Cf. _Ezra_; _Nehemiah_; _Esther_, by Professor Adeney, in
      “Expositor’s Bible.”

    2 Ezra iii. 12.

    3 Isa. lxvi. 22.

    4 Quoted for _Asa_ (2 Chron. xvi. 11); _Amaziah_ (2 Chron. xxv. 26);
      _Ahaz_ (2 Chron. xxviii. 26).

    5 Quoted for _Jotham_ (2 Chron. xxvii. 7); _Josiah_ (2 Chron. xxxv.
      26, 27).

    6 Quoted for _Manasseh_ (2 Chron. xxxiii, 18).

    7 Quoted for _David_ (1 Chron. xxix. 29).

    8 Quoted for _David_ (1 Chron. xxix. 29) and _Solomon_ (2 Chron. ix.
      29).

    9 Quoted for _David_ (1 Chron. xxix. 29).

   10 Quoted for _Rehoboam_ (2 Chron. xii. 15).

   11 Quoted for _Jehoshaphat_ (2 Chron. xx. 34).

   12 Quoted for _Manasseh_ (2 Chron. xxxiii. 19). “Seers,” A.V., R.V.
      Marg., with LXX.; R.V., with Hebrew text, “Hozai.” The passage is
      probably corrupt.

   13 Quoted for _Solomon_ (2 Chron. ix. 29).

   14 Quoted for _Hezekiah_ (2 Chron. xxxii. 32).

   15 Quoted for _Joash_ (2 Chron. xxiv. 27).

   16 Quoted for _Abijah_ (2 Chron. xiii, 22).

   17 Quoted for _Uzziah_ (2 Chron. xxvi. 22).

   18 Quoted for _Solomon_ (2 Chron. ix. 29).

   19 Cf. pp. 17, 18.

   20 2 Chron. xx. 34.

   21 Chron. xxxii. 32.

   22 R.V. marg.

   23 R.V.

_   24 E.g._, the wars of Jotham (2 Chron. xxvii. 7).

   25 2 Chron. xiii. 22; xxiv. 27. The LXX., however, does not read
      “Midrash” in either case; and it is quite possible that glosses have
      attached themselves to the text of Chronicles.

   26 Cf. 2 Sam. vi. 12-20 with 1 Chron. xv., xvi.

   27 Cf. 2 Kings xi.; 2 Chron. xxiii.

   28 The last two classes are not easily distinguished; but the additions
      which introduce the Levitical system into earlier history are
      clearly the work of the chronicler or his immediate predecessor, if
      such a predecessor be assumed, or were found in somewhat late
      sources. This is also probably true of other explanatory matter.

   29 Cf. 2 Sam. iv. with 1 Chron. viii. 34, also 2 Sam. vii. 7 with 1
      Chron. xvii. 6, and 2 Sam. xvii. 25 with 1 Chron. ii. 17. In both
      these instances Chronicles preserves the correct text.

   30 Cf. Book II., Chap. IV.

   31 Oehler, _Old Testament Theology_, i. 283 (Eng. trans.).

   32 Nestle, _Die Israelitischen Eigennamen_, p. 27. The present chapter
      is largely indebted to this standard monograph.

   33 Nestle.

   34 1 Chron. vii. 14.

   35 Philo, _De Cong. Quær. Erud. Grat._, 8.

   36 Hiller’s _Onomasticon ap._, Nestle 11.

   37 vii. 8.

   38 i. 35.

   39 xviii. 15.

   40 i. 20.

   41 viii. 36.

   42 ii. 18.

   43 iii. 20.

   44 iv. 3.

   45 Bertheau, i. 1.

   46 iv. 22.

   47 iv. 22.

   48 The translation of these words is not quite certain.

   49 Nestle, p. 68.

   50 Num. i. 10.

   51 Num. i. 12.

   52 Num. i. 6.

   53 Cf. p. 40.

   54 xi. 30; vii. 25 (Nestle).

   55 Nestle.

   56 Joel i. 15; Isa. xiii. 6. It is not necessary here to discuss either
      the etymological or the theological history of these words in their
      earliest usage, nor need we do more than recall the fact that
      Jehovah was the term in common use as the personal name of the God
      of Israel, while El was rare and sometimes generic.

   57 Ezra ii. 61-63; Neh. vii, 63-65.

   58 Acts xvii. 26.

   59 Col. iii. 11.

   60 Josh. xiv. 6.

   61 1 Sam. xxvii 10.

   62 Ver. 55.

   63 The occurrence of Caleb the son of Jephunneh in iv, 15, vi. 56, in
      no way militates against this view: the chronicler, like other
      redactors, is simply inserting borrowed material without correcting
      it. _Chelubai_ in ii. 9 stands for _Caleb_; cf. ii. 18.

   64 viii. 33-40; ix. 35-44. We have used Mephibosheth as more familiar,
      but Chronicles reads Meribbaal, which is more correct.

   65 Psalm lxxviii. 59, 60, 67-69.

   66 iv. 14, 21-23.

   67 1 Chron. xv.

   68 Cf. 2 Chron. xxix. 12 and xxx. 22.

   69 2 Chron. xvii. 8.

   70 Exod. xxv-xxxix.; 1 Kings vi.; 1 Chron. xxix.; 2 Chron. iii., v.

   71 1 Chron. xv. 4-10.

   72 1 Chron. xii. 23-37.

   73 John iii. 8.

   74 i. 10.

   75 i. 19.

   76 i. 46.

   77 Cf. Gen. xxxvi. 24 and 1 Chron. i. 40.

_   78 I.e._, Achan (ii. 3, 7).

   79 1 Sam. ii. 7, 8.

   80 Vv. 17, 18, as they stand, do not make sense. The second sentence of
      ver. 18 should be read before “and she bare Miriam” in ver. 17.
      Mered and Bithiah formed a tempting subject for the rabbis, and gave
      occasion for some of their usual grotesque fancies. Mered has been
      identified by them both with Caleb and Moses.

   81 Deut. vii. 3; Josh. xxiii. 12; Ezra ix. 1, x.; Neh. xiii. 23.

   82 iv. 9, 10.

   83 The reading on which this translation is based is obtained by an
      alteration of the vowels of the Masoretic text; cf. Bertheau, i. 1.

   84 Gen. xxviii. 20; xxxiii. 20.

   85 This translation is obtained by slightly altering the Masoretic
      text.

   86 iv. 41; cf. R.V.

   87 1 Sam. xv.

   88 Judges i. 17.

   89 Judges i. 22-26.

   90 Judges xviii.

   91 Vv. 7-10, 18-22.

   92 Deut. xxxiii. 20; 1 Chron. xii. 8, 21.

   93 Gen. xxv. 15.

   94 Gen. xvi. 12.

_   95 Lay of the Last Minstrel_, iv. 3.

   96 Vv. 25, 26. Note the curious spelling _Tilgath-pilneser_ for the
      more usual _Tiglath-pileser_.

   97 Cf. Bertheau, i. 1.

   98 In Josh. xix. 42, xxi. 24, Aijalon is given to Dan; in Judges i. 34
      it is given to Dan, but we are told that Amorites retained
      possession of it, but became tributary to the house of Joseph; in 2
      Chron. xi. 10 it is given to “Judah and Benjamin.” As a frontier
      town, it frequently changed hands.

   99 2 Chron. xvi. 9.

  100 2 Chron. xx. 20.

  101 2 Chron. xxix. 6.

  102 1 Chron. vi. 31-48, xv. 16-20; cf. psalm titles.

  103 1 Chron. vi. 33, 37; cf. Psalm lxxxviii. (title).

  104 1 Chron. xvi. 38, 42.

  105 1 Chron. ix. 26-32; cf. 1 Chron. xxiii. 24-32.

  106 2 Chron. xxix.-xxxi.; xxxiv.; xxxv.

  107 2 Chron. xxix. 27, 28.

  108 Num. iv. 3, 23, 35.

  109 1 Chron. xxiii. 24, 27. Probably “twenty” should be read for
      “thirty” in ver. 3.

  110 1 Chron. xxiv. 6.

  111 2 Chron. xxxiv. 13; xxxv. 3.

  112 2 Chron. xxxv. 3; cf. 1 Chron. xxiii 26.

  113 1 Chron. xxvi. 29.

  114 2 Chron. xvii. 7, 9.

  115 Wellhausen, _History of Israel_, p. 191; cf. 2 Chron. xix. 4-11.

  116 1 Chron. ix. 31, 32.

  117 Ezra ii. 36-39.

  118 1 Chron. xxiv. 1-19.

  119 Luke i. 5.

_  120 Bell. Jud._, IV. iii. 8.

  121 1 Chron. xxiv. 20-31; 2 Chron. xxxi. 2.

  122 1 Chron. xxv.

  123 1 Chron. xxvi.; Ezra vi. 18; Neh. xi. 36.

  124 Recently a complaint was received at the General Post-office that
      some newspapers sent from France had failed to arrive. It was stated
      that the names of the papers were—_Il me manque_; _Plusieurs;
      Journaux_; _i.e._, I am short of “Several” “Papers.”

  125 1 Chron. ix. 3.

  126 Luke ii. 36.

  127 Levi of course excepted.

  128 1 Chron. iii.

  129 ii. 55.

  130 iv. 21-23.

  131 Maspero, _Ancient Egypt and Assyria_, p. 60.

  132 Craddock, _Despot of Bromsgrove Edge_. Teck Jepson is, of course, an
      imaginary character, but none the less representative.

  133 Cave, _Scripture Doctrine of Sacrifice_, p. 163.

  134 George Eliot, _Janet’s Repentance_, chap. xix.

  135 2 Chron. xii. 1, 6.

  136 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18.

  137 Ezra ii. 2.

  138 Isa. xlix. 6.

  139 Isa. ix. 7.

  140 Isa. xvi. 5.

  141 Isa. xxxvii. 35.

  142 Isa. xxxviii. 5.

  143 Acts ii 29.

  144 Hos. iii. 5.

  145 Amos ix. 11.

  146 Micah v. 2.

  147 Jer. xxiii. 5, 6; cf. xxxiii. 15 and Isa. iv. 2, xi. 1. The Hebrew
      word used in the last passage is different from that in the
      preceding.

  148 Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24; xxxvii. 24, 25.

  149 Zech. iii. 8; the text in vi. 12 is probably corrupt.

  150 Hag. ii. 23.

  151 Zech. xii. 8.

  152 Written after the death of Pompey.

  153 Schultz, _Old Testament Theology_, ii. 444.

  154 An incidental reference is made to these facts in 1 Chron. xii. 19.

  155 2 Sam. iii. 39.

  156 2 Sam. v. 21; 1 Chron. xiv. 12.

  157 Deut. xxiv. 16, quoted in 2 Chron. xxv. 4.

  158 2 Sam. xxi. 19; 1 Chron. xx. 5.

  159 1 Chron. x. 14.

  160 Cf. xi. 1-9; xii. 23-xiii. 14; xv.

  161 1 Chron. xi. 2.

  162 1 Chron. ii. 15.

  163 1 Chron. xii. 1, 19. There is no certain indication of the date of
      the events in xi. 10-25. The fact that a “hold” is mentioned in xi.
      16, as in xii. 8, 16, is not conclusive proof that they refer to the
      same period.

  164 xii. 20.

  165 1 Chron. xxix. 27.

  166 xi. 10-47; xx. 4-8.

  167 xiii. 14-xvi.

  168 xvii.

  169 xviii.; xx. 3.

_  170 I.e._, virtually Jehovah our God and the only true God.

  171 For a more detailed treatment of this incident see chap. ix.

  172 xxi.-xxix.

  173 xxix. 20-22, 28.

  174 xvi. 8-36.

  175 xvii. 16-27.

  176 For a short exposition of this passage see Book. IV., Chap. i.

  177 1 Chron. xi. 15-19.

  178 xxix. 20.

  179 Rom. xiv. 22.

  180 2 Sam. xii. 31; 1 Chron. xx. 3.

  181 Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, i. 205.

  182 x. 14; xi. 3.

  183 xii. 38.

  184 xxix. 1, 22.

  185 xiii. 2-4.

  186 1 Sam. xxiii. 9-13; xxx. 7, 8.

  187 xxv. 1, 2.

  188 xiii. 1.

  189 xxviii. 1.

  190 xxix. 22.

  191 But cf. 2 Chr. xxvi.

  192 Cf. xvii. 4-15 and xxviii. 2-10.

  193 xiii. 1-14.

  194 The casual reference in Jer. lii. 20 is only an apparent exception.
      The passage is really historical, and not prophetic.

  195 Deut. xvii. 16, 17; cf. 2 Chron. i. 14-17 and 1 Kings xi. 3-8.

  196 Psalms lxxii. and cxxvii. are attributed to him, the latter,
      however, only in the Hebrew Bible.

  197 Ecclus. xlvii. 12-21.

  198 Matt. xii. 42.

  199 Matt. vi. 29.

  200 Acts vii. 47.

  201 1 Chron. xxix. 25.

  202 2 Chron. ix. 22, 23.

  203 2 Chron. viii. 11.

  204 Neh. xiii. 26.

  205 Such changes occur throughout, and need not be further noticed
      unless some special interest attaches to them.

  206 Kings v. 13; ix. 22, which seems to contradict this, is an editorial
      note.

  207 2 Chron. ii. 2, 17, 18; viii. 7-10.

  208 1 Kings ix. 11, 12.

  209 2 Chron. viii. 1, 2, R.V.

  210 1 Chron. xxii. 9.

  211 1 Chron. xxix. 23, 24.

  212 2 Chron. i. 7-13.

  213 2 Chron. i. 14-17.

  214 v. 11, 12, peculiar to Chronicles.

  215 vi. 41, 42, peculiar to Chronicles, apparently based on Psalm
      cxxxii. 8-10.

  216 1 Chron. xxi. 26; 2 Chron. vii. 1-3, both peculiar to Chronicles.

  217 vii. 8-10, mostly peculiar to Chronicles. The text in 1 Kings viii.
      65 has been interpolated from Chronicles.

  218 vii. 13-15, peculiar to Chronicles.

  219 viii. 3, 4, peculiar to Chronicles. Hamath is apparently referred to
      as a possession of Judah in 2 Kings xiv. 28.

  220 viii. 12-16, peculiar in this form to Chronicles, but based upon 1
      Kings ix. 25.

  221 ix., as in 1 Kings x. 1-13.

  222 ix. 31.

  223 ix. 28.

  224 It is not suggested that the chronicler intended to convey this
      impression, or that it would be felt by most of his readers.

  225 xiv. 3, 5, contradicting 1 Kings xv. 14 and apparently 2 Chron. xv.
      17.

  226 xv. 8-14, peculiar to Chronicles.

  227 xv. 18, 19.

  228 xvii. 6 contradicts 1 Kings xxii. 43 and 2 Chron. xx. 33.

  229 xvii. 7-9, peculiar to Chronicles.

  230 xxiv. 1-14.

  231 xxi. 11, peculiar to Chronicles.

  232 xxv. 4.

  233 2 Chron. xxviii. 24-xxxi., mostly peculiar to Chronicles; but
      compare Kings xviii. 4-7, which mentions the taking away of the high
      places.

  234 xxxiii. 16.

  235 xxxiv.; xxxv.

  236 xxx. 2.

  237 xxii. 1; xxiii. 1-15; xxvi. 1; xxxiii. 25; xxxvi. 1.

  238 xxv. 12.

  239 xvi. 12.

  240 xx. 37.

  241 xxiv. 20-27.

  242 xxv. 14-27.

  243 xxvi. 16-23.

  244 xxxii. 25-33.

  245 xxxv. 20-27.

  246 Milton, Hymn to the Nativity.

  247 Tennyson, In Memoriam.

  248 2 Chron. ix. 1.

  249 Prov. xxxi. 1-9.

  250 Articles XXI. and XXXVII.

  251 Eph. ii. 12.

  252 2 Chron. xii. 12, peculiar to Chronicles.

  253 1 Kings xv. 3.

  254 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-20, peculiar to Chronicles.

  255 2 Kings xxiii. 32.

  256 2 Kings xvi. 5.

  257 Isa. viii. 2.

  258 2 Chron. xxxiii. 9.

  259 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5, 8, 11.

  260 2 Chron. xxviii. 5-15, peculiar to Chronicles; cf. 2 Kings xvi. 5,
      6.

  261 2 Chron. xxviii. 16-25, peculiar to Chronicles; cf. 2 Kings xvi.
      7-18.

  262 xxviii. 27, peculiar to Chronicles.

  263 2 Chron. xi. 13, 14, xxix. 34, xxx. 27, all peculiar to Chronicles.
      In xxx. 27 the text is doubtful; many authorities have “the priests
      and the Levites.”

_  264 I.e._, in the view given us by the chronicler of the period of the
      monarchy, after the Return the priests were far more numerous than
      the Levites.

  265 1 Chron. xxvi. 30-32.

  266 2 Chron. xix. 4-11.

  267 2 Chron. xv. 3. In the older literature the phrase would bear a more
      special and technical meaning.

  268 Exod. xxxii. 26-35.

  269 Num. xxv. 3.

  270 Psalm cvi. 30, 31.

  271 1 Chron. xii. 23-28.

  272 1 Chron. xxvii. 5; cf. however, R.V. marg.

  273 2 Chron. xiii. 12.

  274 2 Chron. xxiii. 7. All the passages referred to in this paragraph
      are peculiar to Chronicles.

  275 Neh. iv. 17.

  276 1 Macc. v. 67.

  277 1 Chron. xiii. 8; xvi. 2.

  278 1 Chron. xxix. 10-19.

  279 2 Chron. vi.

  280 2 Chron. xx. 4-13; xxx. 6-9, 18-21, 27.

  281 2 Chron. xxxv.

  282 1 Chron. xiii. 10.

  283 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-23.

  284 2 Chron. xxxi. 3-5.

  285 Mal. i. 8; iii. 4, 10.

  286 2 Chron. xxxi. 10.

  287 Exod. xv. 3.

  288 Psalm lxxiv. 8, 9. This psalm is commonly regarded as Maccabæan, but
      may be as early as the chronicler or even earlier.

  289 1 Macc. iv. 46.

  290 Ezra ii. 63.

  291 2 Chron. xxix. 25, peculiar to Chronicles.

  292 2 Chron. xii. 5-8, peculiar to Chronicles.

  293 2 Chron. xv.-xvi. 10, peculiar to Chronicles.

  294 2 Chron. xix. 2, 3, xx. 14-18, 37, all peculiar to Chronicles.

  295 xxi. 12-15, peculiar to Chronicles.

  296 xxiv. 18-22, peculiar to Chronicles.

  297 xiv. 15, 16, peculiar to Chronicles.

  298 2 Kings xix. 5-7, 20-34.

  299 xxxii. 20.

  300 xxxiii. 10, 18.

  301 xxxv. 21, 22, 25, peculiar to Chronicles.

  302 1 Esdras i. 28.

  303 Ezra v. 1; vi. 14.

  304 Neh. vi. 14.

  305 1 Chron. xii. 18, peculiar to Chronicles.

  306 Acts ii. 30.

  307 2 Kings iv. 42.

  308 Abbott, _Through Nature to Christ_, p. 295.

  309 Jer. xv. 10.

  310 Deut. xviii. 18.

  311 Ecclus. xlix. 10.

  312 R.V. “delight in” is somewhat too strong.

  313 It is, however, possible that the text in Samuel is a corruption of
      text more closely parallel to that of Chronicles.

  314 Noldius and R. Salom. _apud_ Bertheau i. 1.

  315 Josh. xviii. 28; Judges i. 21, as against Josh. xv. 63; Judges i. 8,
      which assign the city to Judah.

  316 1 Chron. xxvii. 23, 24.

  317 Ver. 7 is apparently a general anticipation of the narrative in vv.
      9-15.

  318 Josh. v. 13.

  319 Schultz, _Old Testament Theology_, ii. 270.

  320 Exod. iv. 21; Josh. xi. 20; 1 Sam. xix. 9, 10; 2 Sam. xxiv. 1; 1
      Kings xxii. 20-23.

  321 Prov. xvi. 4; Lam. iii. 38; Isa. xlv. 7.

  322 Zech. iii. 1.

  323 Jer. vii. 12-14; xxvi. 6.

  324 1 Chron. xxviii. 19.

  325 Heb. vii. 14.

  326 Hos. xii. 13.

  327 Schultz, _Old Testament Theology_, ii. 353.

  328 2 Chron. xxx. 6; 1 Kings xviii. 36.

  329 1 Chron. xvi. 13, 17; Gen. xxxii. 28.

  330 Gen. xxiii. 4; cf. Psalms xxxix. 13, cxix. 19.

  331 Job viii. 9.

  332 Called, however, at that time Antonia.

  333 viii. 9.

  334 xi. 5-xii. 1, peculiar to Chronicles.

  335 xii. 2-8, 12, peculiar to Chronicles.

  336 xii. 14, peculiar to Chronicles.

  337 Ecclus. xlvii. 23.

  338 xiii. 3-22, peculiar to Chronicles.

  339 Josh. xviii. 22.

  340 Judges ix. 8.

  341 Num. xviii. 19.

  342 2 Chron. x. 15.

  343 This verse must of course be understood to give his whole family
      history, and not merely that of his three years’ reign.

  344 xiv. 1, 7, peculiar to Chronicles.

  345 xiv. 3-9, peculiar to Chronicles.

  346 1 Chron. xii., etc.; 2 Chron. xi. 5 ff., xvii. 12 ff., xxvi. 9 ff.
      xxvii. 4 ff., xxxiii. 14.

  347 xiv. 9-15.

  348 So R.V. marg.; R.V. text (with which A.V. is in substantial
      agreement): “There fell of the Ethiopians so many that they could
      not recover themselves”; _i.e._, the routed army were never able to
      rally.

  349 The second reformation is dated early in Asa’s fifteenth year, and
      Abijah only reigned three years.

  350 xv., based upon 1 Kings xv. 13-15, but the great bulk of the chapter
      is peculiar to Chronicles; the original passage from Kings is
      reproduced, with slight changes in vv. 16-18.

  351 2 Sam. xii. 9-11. “Barak” with LXX. and Peshite; Masoretic text has
      “Bedan.”

  352 Judges v. 6, 7; vi. 11; viii. 15-17; ix.; xii. 1-7; xx.; xxi.

  353 Cf. 1 Kings xv. 12.

  354 1 Chron. ix. 3.

  355 Exod. xxii. 20; Deut. xiii. 5, 9, 15.

  356 1 Kings xv. 16, 32, 33.

  357 xvi. 7-10, peculiar to Chronicles.

  358 Isa. vii. 17.

  359 Isa. xxxi. 1; xxx. 3.

  360 Jer. ii. 36.

  361 Zech. iv. 10.

  362 The date, as before, is peculiar to Chronicles.

  363 xvi. 12_b_, peculiar to Chronicles.

_  364 Time and Tide_, xii. 67.

  365 George Eliot, _Romola_, xxi.

  366 Part II., Chap. IX.

  367 xvii., peculiar to Chronicles.

  368 1 Chron. xviii. 1-3.

  369 xix. 1-3, peculiar to Chronicles.

  370 xix. 4-11, peculiar to Chronicles.

  371 Milman, _Latin Christianity_, Book XI., Chap. I.

  372 xx. 1-30, peculiar to Chronicles.

  373 So R.V. marg., with the LXX. The Targum has “Edomites,” the A.V. is
      not justified by the Hebrew, and the R.V. does not make sense.

  374 Cf. 1 Chron. iv. 41, R.V.; and 2 Chron. xxvi. 7.

  375 One Hebrew manuscript is quoted as having this reading. A.R.V., with
      the ordinary Masoretic text, have “Syria”; but it is simply absurd
      to suppose that a multitude from beyond the sea from Syria would
      first make their appearance on the western shore of the Dead Sea.

  376 2 Chron. iv. 9.

  377 Ver. 9; cf. 2 Chron. vi. 28, and the whole paragraph (vv. 22-30) of
      which our verse is a brief abstract.

  378 Not Ziz, as A.R.V.

  379 הדרת קדש, literally, as A.R.V., “beauty of holiness”; _i.e._, sacred
      robes. Translate with R.V. marg. “praise in the beauty of holiness,”
      not, as A.R.V., “praise the beauty of holiness.”

  380 Exod. xiv. 30.

  381 With R.V. marg.

  382 The identification of the valley of Berachah with the valley of
      Jehoshaphat, close to Jerusalem and mentioned by Josephus, is a mere
      theory, quite at variance with the topographical evidence.

  383 Kings xxii. 48, 49.

  384 2 Chron. xxiv. 24, peculiar to Chronicles.

  385 Psalm xx. 7.

  386 1 Macc. ii. 35-38.

  387 xxi. 2-4, peculiar to Chronicles.

  388 Vv. 5-10; cf. 2 Kings viii. 17-22.

  389 xxi. 11-19, peculiar to Chronicles.

  390 So R.V. marg., with LXX. and Vulgate A.R.V. have “mountains,” with
      Masoretic text.

  391 Jer. xxix.; xxxvi.

  392 Green’s _Shorter History_, p. 404.

  393 xxii. 1_b_, peculiar to Chronicles.

  394 The Hebrew original of the A.R.V., “departed without being desired,”
      is as obscure as the English of our versions. The most probable
      translation is, “He behaved so as to please no one.” The A.R.V.
      apparently mean that no one regretted his death.

  395 We need not discuss in detail the question of Ahaziah’s age at his
      accession. The age of forty-two, given in 2 Chron. xxii. 2, is
      simply impossible, seeing that his father was only forty years old
      when he died. The Peshito and Arabic versions have followed 2 Kings
      viii. 26, and altered forty-two to twenty-two; and the LXX. reads
      twenty years. But twenty-two years still presents difficulties.
      According to this reading, Ahaziah, Jehoram’s youngest son, was born
      when his father was only eighteen, and Jehoram having had several
      sons before the age of eighteen, had none afterwards.

  396 xiii. 7_a_, peculiar to Chronicles.

  397 Cf. p. 20.

  398 Cf. xxv. 2 with 2 Kings xiv. 4, xxvi. 4 with 2 Kings xv. 4, xxvii. 2
      with 2 Kings xv. 34, where similar statements are omitted by the
      chronicler.

  399 2 Kings xii. 9.

  400 Exod. xxx. 11-16.

  401 Neh. x. 32.

  402 xxiv. 14-22, peculiar to Chronicles.

  403 Curiously enough, Jehoiada’s name does not occur in the list of
      high-priests in 1 Chron. vi. 1-12.

  404 1 Chron. xxviii. 9; 2 Chron. vii. 19, xii. 5, xiii. 10, xv. 2, xxi.
      10, xxviii. 6, xxix. 6, xxxiv. 25.

  405 Cf. 2 Kings xii. 17, 18, of which this narrative is probably an
      adaptation.

  406 xxv. 5-13, peculiar to Chronicles, except that the account of the
      war with Edom is expanded from the brief note in Kings. Cf. ver.
      11_b_ with 2 Kings xiv. 7.

  407 In the phrase “from Samaria to Beth-horon,” “Samaria” apparently
      means the northern kingdom, and not the city, _i.e._, from the
      borders of Samaria; the chronicler has fallen into the nomenclature
      of his own age.

  408 For the discussion of the chronicler’s account of Ahaz see Book
      III., Chap. VII.

  409 So R.V. marg., with LXX., Targum, Syriac and Arabic versions,
      Talmud, Rashi, Kimchi, and some Hebrew manuscripts (Bertheau, i. 1).
      A.R.V., “had understanding in the visions” (R.V. vision) “of God.”
      The difference between the two Hebrew readings is very slight. Vv.
      5-20, with the exception of the bare fact of the leprosy are
      peculiar to Chronicles.

  410 Cf. Ezek. xxvi. 9.

  411 Pliny, vii. 56 _apud_ Smith’s _Bible Dictionary_.

  412 Num. xviii. 7; Exod. xxx. 7.

  413 Kimchi interprets “those days” as meaning “after the death of
      Jotham.”

  414 The reference to the wall of Ophel is peculiar to Chronicles:
      indeed, Ophel is only mentioned in Chronicles and Nehemiah; it was
      the southern spur of Mount Moriah (Neh. iii. 26, 27). Vv. 3_b_-7 are
      also peculiar to Chronicles.

  415 This is usually understood as Nisan, the first month of the
      ecclesiastical year.

  416 xxix. 3-xxxi. 21 (the cleansing of the Temple and accompanying
      feast, Passover, organisation of the priests and Levites) are
      substantially peculiar to Chronicles, though in a sense they expand
      2 Kings xviii. 4-7, because they fulfil the commandments which
      Jehovah commanded Moses.

  417 Exod. vi. 18, 22; Num. iii. 30, mention Elizaphan as a descendant of
      Kohath.

  418 So Strack-Zockler, i. 1.

  419 Lev. i. 6.

  420 According to 2 Kings xviii. 10, Samaria was not taken till the sixth
      year of Hezekiah’s reign. It is not necessary for an expositor of
      Chronicles to attempt to harmonise the two accounts.

  421 Cf xxx. 11, 18.

  422 xxx. 14; cf. 2 Kings xviii. 4. The chronicler omits the statement
      that Hezekiah destroyed Moses’s brazen serpent, which the people had
      hitherto worshipped. His readers would not have understood how this
      corrupt worship survived the reforms of pious kings and priests who
      observed the law of Moses.

  423 Cf. xxix. 34, xxx. 3.

  424 Lev. xv. 31.

  425 So Bertheau, i. 1, slightly paraphrasing.

  426 A.R.V., with Masoretic text, “the priests the Levites”; LXX., Vulg.
      Syr., “the priests and the Levites.” The former is more likely to be
      correct. The verse is partly an echo of Deut. xxvi. 15, so that the
      chronicler naturally uses the Deuteronomic phrase “the priests the
      Levites”; but he probably does so unconsciously, without intending
      to make any special claim for the Levites: hence I have omitted the
      word in the text.

  427 xxxii. 2-8, peculiar to Chronicles.

  428 xxxii. 30.

  429 xxxiii. 11-19, peculiar to Chronicles.

  430 So R.V.: A.V., “among the thorns”; R.V. marg., “with hooks”, if so
      in a figurative sense. Others take the word as a proper name: Hohim.

  431 Ezek. xviii. 20.

  432 Peter iv. 18.

  433 Ezek. xviii. 21-23.

  434 Psalm cxxx. 4, probably belonging to about the same period as
      Chronicles.

  435 1 Chron. xxiii. 26, peculiar to Chronicles.

  436 2 Chron. vii. 5. The figures are peculiar to Chronicles; 1 Kings
      viii. 5 says that the victims could not be counted.

  437 Jehoiachin. The ordinary reading in 2 Kings xxiv. makes him
      eighteen.

  438 2 xxxvi. 6_b_, peculiar to Chronicles.

  439 Mostly peculiar to Chronicles.