PENb
Torah as Recasted Historical Narrative (1–2 Chronicles)
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A side-by-side comparison of Samuel–Kings and 1–2 Chronicles shows that most of the material is word-for-word identical. Why should the Bible bother to repeat itself? And, how does the later author-editor use his earlier biblical source? What literary conventions were considered “kosher” for biblical narrators? The only way to answer these questions is to engage in a close reading of the texts. We will discover that the smallest of textual changes can reflect profound theological developments and lessons.
Although Sam-Kgs and Chronicles are synoptic accounts, the Deuterononmistic History ends in the exile and so focuses on a sin-judgment pattern. The Chronicler's History concludes with the postexilic restoration and so focuses on an obedience-blessing pattern and recasts the characters and events.
Before looking at details, we need to consider the wider picture of why these historical panoramas were written. What were their thematic purposes? Samuel–Kings is part of a larger literary corpus called the Deuteronomistic History: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, and 1–2 Kings. Joshua, Judges, and 1–2 Kings in particular resonate with the terminology and theological distinctiveness of the book of Deuteronomy.
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The Deuteronomistic History ends with Judah living in the Babylonian exile. Why are the people of God living in exile, alienated from their land and without king and temple? From this historical standpoint we can understand this history’s recurring themes of human disobedience and divine judgment. In fact, the Deuteronomic curses climax with threats of an invading nation, who will besiege and then scatter the Israelites “among all peoples” (Deut 28:49, 52, 64). Thus, the Deuteronomistic history highlights Israel’s failure to comply stipulations of Yahweh’s covenant, documented in the book of Deuteronomy. In light of the terms of the contract, Yahweh’s judgment was just.
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Although the Chronicler’s history covers the same historical period as Samuel–Kings, it goes one step further by concluding with the decree of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great.
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up” (2 Chr 36:22–23, NRSV).
From this historical standpoint the exile is now behind the people of God. What is critical in this new chapter of their history is their return to the land and the restoration of their temple. The question facing the Chronicler and his audience is the reverse of the Deuteronomistic History: how can we obtain God’s blessing? He retells the history of Israel’s monarchy to illustrate acts of human obedience that lead to divine blessing.
Info Box: Whose house and whose kingdom? (2 Sam 7:16 // 1 Chr 17:14)
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One of the most important OT passages is the Dynastic Oracle in 1 Samuel 7, which hinges on a word play with “house.” Because David now lives in a “house,” that is, a royal palace (2 Sam 7:1–2), he desires to build for Yahweh a “house,” that is, a palace/temple (2 Sam 7:5–7, 13).
Yahweh, not to be out-given, promises to build for David “house,” that is, a royal household/dynasty (2 Sam 7:11, 16). The Chronicler renders the climactic, closing verse differently than that found in 2 Samuel.
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“Your house and your kingdom (mamlakah) shall be steadfast to remote time before me; your throne will be established to remote time” (2 Sam 7:16).
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“I will station him in my house and in my kingdom (malkuÌ‚t) to remote time; and his throne will be established to remote time” (1 Chr 17:14).
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The textual changes are slight (including an updating of how "kingdom" is spelled), but the meaning is profoundly altered. The promise no longer concerns David’s house and David’s kingdom, but Yahweh’s house and Yahweh’s kingdom. Although one might infer that the promise of permanence shifts from David’s house/dynasty to Yahweh’s house/temple, the phrase joined with “and” is a figure of speech called hendiadys, whereby conjoined nouns (i.e., house and king), actually denote a noun modified by an adjective (i.e., a royal house). The promised shifts from David’s royal dynasty to Yahweh’s.
Thus, the Chronicler radically re-signifies how “kingdom” is to be understood in the postexilic period: Israel is no longer to focus on the geopolitical kingdom of the Davidic dynasty, but on Yahweh’s transcendent kingdom. It is the Chronicler who uniquely clarifies to whom the kingdom ultimately belongs. Solomon will “sit on the throne of the kingdom of Yahweh over Israel” (1 Chr 28:5; cf. 29:23). It is “the kingdom of Yahweh in the hand of the sons of David” (2 Chr 13:8). Hence, the first psalms to mention Yahweh’s “kingdom” are postexilic (Ps 103:19; 145:11–13).
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What is remarkable is that the Chronicler would edit divine speech, the words of God. Why would he do so? Since 2 Samuel 7 was first composed, David’s kingdom collapsed under the weight of the Babylonian invasion in 587 BCE. One might be tempted to explain this failure on the basis of the continued disobedience of David’s successors (i.e., the interpretation found in the Deuteronomistic history), but even the Chronicler retains the key promise, “My loyalty I will not remove from him as I removed it from the one who was before you” (i.e., Saul, 1 Chr 7:13 // 2 Sam 7:15). Instead, the Chronicler likely engaged in exegesis of his primary text, 2 Samuel 7. The second half of the chapter contains a prayer of David, wherein he acknowledges that Israel is “your people” (not David’s) and that “Yahweh of hosts is God over Israel” (2 Sam 7:24–26). David is simply “your servant.”
Thus, David is merely a vice-regent under Yahweh. David’s kingdom is ultimately Yahweh’s kingdom. In this sense, one could argue that while the Chronicler does not accurately transmit the actual words of God, he more accurately interprets the theology implicit in those words.
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Info Box: David brings the ark into Jerusalem (2 Sam 5:17–6:15 // 1 Chr 13–16)
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David did not have an easy road to the throne over the kingdom of Israel. The natural successor to king Saul would be a son of Saul. Such was the thinking of Saul’s commander-in-chief, Abner, who had one of Saul’s sons, Ish-bosheth (Esh-baal in 1 Chr 8:33; 9:39) installed as king over the northern tribes of Israel (1 Sam 2:8–10).
At first David was king over only Judah (2 Sam 2:1–4, 11). After several incidents of political intrigue, Ish-bosheth is assassinated and David becomes king over all Israel (2 Sam 4–5). Next, he needs a capital city. If he chooses one in the territory of his tribe Judah, the Northerners will accuse him of showing favoritism. If he chooses one in the north, his own tribe will feel betrayed.
Thus, he shrewdly decides on a neutral city, Jebus/Jerusalem, near the border of the northern tribe of Benjamin and the southern tribe of Judah. David and his men capture the portion of Jerusalem that is called “the Stronghold of Zion,” which he (humbly) renames “the City of David” (2 Sam 5:7–9). Having made it his political capital, he seems intent to make it his religious capital, by bringing the ark of the covenant there.
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He attempts to do so by transporting it on an ox cart, but when the oxen stumble, the ark begins to tumble (2 Sam 6:1–11). A man named Uzzah reaches out to stabilize it, but God strikes him down. David was both angry and afraid and so aborts the mission. He deposits the ark at “the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.” Three months later,
“It was told to king David, ‘Yahweh is blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him on account of the ark of God’” (2 Sam 6:12a).
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This news is apparently what motivated David to make a second dangerous attempt. The narrator tells us,
“When the bearers of the ark of Yahweh had marched six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling” (2 Sam 6:13).
The animal pair that David sacrifices in the 2 Samuel account, an ox and a fatling, is unattested, and therefore unsanctioned, in priestly literature. Outside the Bible, these animals are a regular favorite food of the gods in the Ugaritic texts (KTU 1.1:4:31; 1.3:4:41–42; 1.4:5:45; 1.4:6:40–42; 1.22:1:12–13).
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The Chronicler tells a very different story and recasts David, not as an opportunist, but as a pious Jew. First, he changes the chronological order of events. After David’s first attempt to bring the ark into Jerusalem, he transposes the earlier account in 2 Samuel 5:17–25 (// 1 Chr 14:8–16), where David twice defeats the Philistines. Each time he “inquired of Yahweh” (2 Sam 5:19, 23 // 1 Chr 14:10, 14). In 1–2 Samuel, he apparently does so by means of the priestly ephod (1 Sam 23:1–2; 30:7–8). This means of divining the divine will is not mentioned in 1–2 Chronicles. The Chronicler by transposing sequence of events gives David access to the ark of the covenant before he needs to inquire of Yahweh in his defeat of the Philistines. According to the Priestly strand in the Pentateuch (P), the ark is the preferred means of divine communication (Exod 25:22; Num 7:89).
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Second, the Chronicler alters David’s motivation for the second attempt to bring the ark into Jerusalem. He omits the report that the household retaining the ark of the covenant for three months has been blessed (2 Sam 6:12a). Instead, the Chronicler inserts 24 verses of material that carefully distinguishes the respective roles of the priestly sons of Aaron and the Levites, who are charged with carrying the ark. David says,
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“because from the first time you did not (bring up the ark) Yahweh our God made an outburst against us because we did not seek him according to the judgment” (1 Chr 15:13).
The narrator then tells us,
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“the Levites carried the ark of God, as Moses commanded according to the word of Yahweh, with the carrying poles upon their shoulders” (1 Chr 15:15).
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So, in the Chronicler’s account what motivates David to make the second attempt is not a report that the retainer of the ark has been blessed; David becomes motivated once he consults his Bible (rather than an oracular word). In the books of Moses he discovers the instructions for how the ark is to be transported.
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