1 & 2 Chronicles

August H. Konkel

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781513800011
• eBook ISBN: 9781513800479
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Purity, worship, obedience, and hope: 1 & 2 Chronicles called the early Hebrew people to faithful practice of these things, and they issue the same call to readers today. As August H. Konkel writes in the 30th commentary in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, the Chronicler provided a unifying vision of the community’s rich traditions in an era of despondency and apathy. Exile had robbed the people of Israel of their wealth, and their return to the land of Judah had created resentment with the surrounding peoples. Struggling to maintain their faith amid intense social pressures, the Hebrew people needed to look to their past for lessons for the present. As two of the most overlooked books in the Christian canon, 1 & 2 Chronicles are exemplary resources for those who seek to be the people of God today.

1 & 2 Chronicles is the thirtieth volume in The Believers Church Bible Commentary Series. Accessible to lay readers, useful in preaching and pastoral care, helpful for Bible study groups and Sunday school teachers, and academically sound, the commentary foregrounds an Anabaptist reading of Scripture. Relying on a unique format that includes sections on The Text in Biblical Context and The Text in the Life of the Church, the commentary series is a cooperative project of Brethren in Christ Church, Brethren Church, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Brethren Church, Mennonite Church Canada, and Mennonite Church USA. Published for all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today, the series is based on the conviction that God is still speaking to all who will listen, and that the Holy Spirit makes the Word a living and authoritative guide for all who want to know and do God's will.

Introduction to
1 & 2 Chronicles

Chronicles was written to inspire hope. It is said that if you lose all your wealth, you lose a lot; if you lose all your friends, you lose a lot more; if you lose hope, you have lost everything. Exile had robbed the people of Israel of their wealth; their return to the land of Judah had created much resentment with the surrounding peoples. Despondency and apathy threatened to completely destroy this struggling people.

Hope for the author (or authors) of Chronicles (referred to as the Chronicler in this commentary) lay in the promises of the past. World empires had all but obliterated the visible presence of the people of Israel and Judah. The Persians, beginning with Cyrus, had made possible a return (2 Chron 36:22–23), but its beginnings were disappointing, to the point of disillusionment. It was almost twenty years before the preaching of Haggai and the night visions of Zechariah were successful in generating an effort to lay the foundation for a new temple (Hag 1:1–2; 2:18–19; Zech 1:7–6:15) [Chronology in Chronicles, p. 460]. The results of all the effort left some in sorrowful tears (Ezra 3:12–13). The rebuilding of the temple (ca. 515 BCE) did not portend the promise of the kingdom proclaimed in their confessions (e.g., Ps 2:7–12), or in the assurances of the prophets (e.g., Isa 54:1–13).

If this struggling community of the Persian period (ca. 539–330 BCE) were to face the future, it first needed to look to the past. Nothing in the present could inspire hope for the future. The past, however, held lessons for how they might live for the future. The Chronicler intended to inspire hope for the community by his understanding of the past. In the Hebrew text, Chronicles is called “the words (or events) of the days (or times),” that is, a history. In the prologue of the Latin translation, Jerome called it chronikon, defined as a universal history beginning with creation. Chronicles is a register of events, an account of ancient times going back to the beginning of humanity. Like the Hebrew title, it correctly defines the genre of the work.

The most condensed way in which a history can be written is simply to list names of people and places. This is the method of the Chronicler for the first nine chapters, which cover the history of Israel from Adam to the province of Yehud established in the Persian Empire (roughly equal to the Judea of Jesus’ day). Commentary on the names and places is minimal, mostly achieved by the way in which material is organized. Such a history carries significance only if readers can contextualize the names. Readers must have some familiarity with the narrative from which they are drawn and to which they relate. The names and places of the first nine chapters, for the most part, are identified in Scripture. These must have been well understood by those for whom the Chronicler wrote. There is a tendency to ignore these chapters; it takes a lot of work to coax from them a history meaningful and coherent to a contemporary reader. However, the reward for the work invested is enormous. These chapters yield many details of the history of Israel that are otherwise completely unknown. The Chronicler provides us with the history of a people and a nation, but not the history of a political state or country. The history of such a nation can be much more constructive than the political events of statehood. The method of the Chronicler has the potential to be most instructive to citizens of the kingdom of God.

The Greek translation labels this history paraleipomena, “the things/events omitted.” This title considers Chronicles to be a secondary complement to Kings, an attitude that often is still prevalent. In Christian Bibles, Chronicles follows Kings and is usually read as a kind of supplement. The Hebrew codices (books rather than scrolls) place Chronicles in the third (concluding) section called the Writings, usually as the very last book of their Scriptures [Hebrew Canon, p. 467]. In the Leningrad Codex, however, which is used as the base text for most translations, Chronicles is the first book of the third section. Chronicles follows what is called the Latter Prophets (Isaiah to Malachi) and precedes Psalms. As the first book of the third section, it introduces the people of Israel’s history that revered this collection of psalms, wisdom, and other writings. It defines Israel and their fundamental hope.

Chronicles describes the history of Israel from the beginning to a new beginning: from the inception of human existence with Adam, through the destruction of the first commonwealth during the reign of Zedekiah (587 BCE), to the commencement of a new community with the directive of Cyrus (539 BCE) to restore the temple in Jerusalem (Japhet 1993: 8). Chronicles reviews the whole of the past so the way to the future may be understood. It is uniquely created from many different sources. Chronicles explains why a people with no influence or status should consider their presence and faith to have a profound influence for the future.

Chronicles and History Writing

History writing is one kind of historiography [History Writing, p. 469]. History writing is not primarily an accurate reporting of past events (Van Seters: 4). It considers the reasons for recalling the past and the significance given to those events; it examines the causes of present circumstances. In ancient history writing, such as that of the Bible, such causes are primarily moral; since God controls history, faithfulness to the covenant is a primary evaluation. Lessons for the present are to be learned from actions done in the past. History writing is also corporate in nature: it is the accounting of the deeds of the people. Because history is a search for the causes of present circumstances, histories must always continue to be written.

The Chronicler employed a number of techniques in his history: he creates new meaning from texts through what may be called midrash, interprets his sources with careful exegetical work, and has his own theological perspective through which he interprets past events. Each of these are literary methods employed, but the work as a whole cannot be characterized by one of these techniques. Through the use of all of these methods, the Chronicler creates a history from his sources (Kalimi 2005b: 39); he expresses his theology and philosophy of the past. The Chronicler found it necessary to compose a history subsequent to that in the corpus of Genesis to Kings, whatever form that may have had in his day. He provides a distinct identity of Israel, as relevant from its origins, and a defense for the continuance of Yehud. The Chronicler appears to be fully conscious of his methods in writing his history to provide hope for the future. He evidently is convinced that all of his interpretations are the reality of what God was doing in the world and that they speak to the truth of what God will do in the world [Tendenz in Chronicles, p. 476].

While the Chronicler has great respect for his spiritual heritage, often quoting his sources virtually verbatim at considerable length, he does not hesitate to present a picture that is a remarkable contrast to the earlier version. Two notable examples are his depictions of the monarchs Solomon and Manasseh. In Kings, Solomon’s reign ends in disaster, dividing the nation into two states. In Chronicles, Solomon is ordained and commissioned by David as the one who brings into fruition all the promises vested in David, particularly his desire to build the temple. There is no mention of the contentious issue of succession that dominates in Kings, or the fact that only a minority of Israel would ever worship at the temple that Solomon built. Kings portrays Manasseh as a king so sinful that even a good king like Josiah could never reverse the damage done: the exile from Manasseh’s time onward was inevitable. The Chronicler, on the other hand, portrays Manasseh as a repentant king, who did much to empower the state of Judah. The Chronicler never contests the valuation of events found in his sources when he differs from them. Given that knowledge of his sources was essential to understanding much of his history, it is obvious he did not try to obscure or deny that history. However, his times required a reassessment of the story of the past. For him, the questions to be answered were of a completely different nature.

The Chronicler had to establish and validate living relationships in his time. He lived in a small ethnic community in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity during the later days of the mighty Persian Empire (ca. 420–350 BCE), perhaps just before the advent of the Hellenistic period (associated with Alexander the Great’s conquests). This community often suffered the scorn and humiliation of resentful surrounding peoples. It also struggled to maintain its own identity of faith and way of life as surrounding social pressures threatened to absorb it completely. The struggles of Ezra and Nehemiah are testimony to the troublesome problem of intermarriage with wives involved in religions of the surrounding peoples (Ezra 9:1–3). The leadership of the community engaged in intermarriage to the point that the very continuity of the priesthood was threatened. Drastic and painful measures were taken, even to the point of separating marriages with children.

The Chronicler believed his community was critically significant in realizing the kingdom promised to David; it needed to discern its function in order to fulfill its purpose. His genealogies, which are not family trees, were very important to him because they answered two essential questions of history: Whose story needs to be told? Where do these people live? The Chronicler believed his community was the presence of the kingdom of Yahweh as it is described by David (1 Chron 28:5); it needed to understand its own identity in order to appreciate its importance in covenant fulfillment [Genealogy, p. 461].

The Community of Yehud

The Babylonians conquered Judah in the days of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Ezekiel the priest was among the exiles of the first raid of Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE [Chronology in Chronicles, p. 460]. Jeremiah lived through the desolation of Jerusalem and the deportation of its leaders in 586 BCE. Within a generation, Babylonian power eroded through its own internal decay. To the east, Cyrus the Great established a new empire, uniting the Medes and the Persians. Babylon fell without resistance, and the Persian Empire extended westward in 539 BCE. In keeping with imperial policy, Cyrus made provisions for the exiles to return to Judah, to rebuild the temple, and to establish a province around the city of Jerusalem.

In Chronicles, it is particularly important to know that Cyrus did not restore Judah. Judah as a political territory never existed again after the time of the exile. Persian seal impressions and coins call this community Yehud (Aharoni et al.: 129). In both his genealogies and his language, the Chronicler adamantly maintains that all Israel resides in the province of Yehud [Genealogy, p. 461]. This province extended from the northern tip of the Dead Sea to the north of Bethel, west as far as Gezer, south to Azekah and Adullam, and east to En Gedi, on the west shore of the Dead Sea.

In all the late portions of the Bible, the province established by the Persians is consistently designated by the term Yehud (e.g., Dan 2:25; 5:13; 6:14; Esther 9:15; Ezra 5:1, 8; 7:14). Most of the references to Yehud are in the Aramaic portions of Scripture. Aramaic was the international language of this period; the above portions of Scripture are all in foreign contexts or correspondence.

The people who lived in Yehud came to be called (individually) Yehudi in Hebrew (e.g., 1 Chron 4:18; Neh 5:1, 8), Yehuday in Aramaic (Ezra 6:7), and Ioudaios in Greek. Transliteration of the Greek term in French and Latin led to the word Jew in English. People of Israel before the time of the New Testament were hesitant to use the term Yehudi (Gasque). The Dead Sea Scrolls, the apocryphal books written in Hebrew, the Mishnah, the Hebrew part of the Talmud, and the coins minted during the rebellions against Rome—all tend to use the designation “Israel” for the people as well as the land. A New Testament example is “king of Israel” in Mark 15:32. The term Jew(Ioudaios) has distinct uses in the Synoptics, John, Acts, and Paul. In this commentary, Israel rather than Jew will be used for the people of God, and Yehud will be used when referring to the postexilic Persian province.

As told in Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra-Nehemiah, there were many struggles in trying to establish the new community of Yehud. The people seem to have suffered from a certain amount of disillusionment. Economic struggles delayed the building of the temple for over twenty years (Hag 1:1–2; Ezra 3:1–13). There was antagonism about rebuilding the city, especially from the Ammonites in Transjordan (Neh 4:1–8). In the middle of the fifth century, the walls of Jerusalem were eventually rebuilt under the leadership of Nehemiah, more than one hundred years after the initial return. This provided some protection and a measure of economic independence. Yet there was no hope of political autonomy; the besieged community did not even resemble the limited independence of the last days of the Judean kings. The people needed to be instilled with a sense of security and hope.

Little information is available about the situation in Yehud after Nehemiah. The difficulties of the community are somewhat known from contemporary writings. The painful trials of mixed marriages were still present in the days of Malachi (ca. 450–400 BCE; cf. Mal 2:14–16). The temptation to marry outside of Israel, rejecting the wife of one’s youth, was often irresistible. Foreign marriages gave access to land and wealth that was not available within the confines of Yehud. Adherence to the temple as the social and economic center of the community, as prescribed in the law, continued to arouse resentment and hostility among the surrounding peoples.

The community in Yehud faced profound spiritual questions during the time of the Achaemenid kings [Achaemenid, p. 464]. How could they be true to their ancestral faith as a subordinate people, permanently under the control of an imperial power? How can a subject people be the people of God? What did the promise of the eternal throne of David mean under these circumstances? One answer, which found expression in Greek and Roman times, was a nationalist pressure to rebel, to establish political independence. Those who followed the perspective of Chronicles recognized a reality unrelated to political independence. Israel existed whether or not Yehud was an independent state. The people of Israel were concerned with the problems of conflict between political demand and faithfulness to God’s promises. Faithfulness demanded a continuous sensitivity to carry out God’s will for his people regardless of political status.

The Composition of Chronicles

Authorship and Date

In Hebrew codices, Chronicles is written as a single composition, as are Samuel, Kings, and Ezra-Nehemiah. These likely were divided, at least in the case of Samuel and Kings, due to the difficulty of holding all their contents on one scroll. Current divisions of chapters and books as found in translations first began in the late medieval period. Chronicles contains no direct information about the time and authorship of its composition. Other great histories were more forthcoming. Herodotus, the Greek historian of the classical period (440 BCE), begins his history as follows:

Herodotus, from Halicarnassus, here displays his enquiries, that human achievement may be spared the ravages of time, and that everything great and astounding, and all the glory of those exploits which served to display Greeks and barbarians alike to such effect, be kept alive—and additionally, and most importantly, to give the reason they went to war. (Holland: 3)

In the late Hellenistic period, Dionysius of Halicarnassus prefaced his Roman Antiquities with remarks concerning himself, mentioned records and narratives used as sources, described the periods and subjects of his history, and identified the form he would give to his work. His preface concludes with his name, his father’s name, and his place of birth (1 1.1–8.4; Cary: 3–27). If the book of Kings is something of an analogy in composition, it is likely that more than one person was involved in writing Chronicles—and the composition probably expanded over time. Great effort has been given to identifying times and stages of development in Chronicles, but the goal remains elusive. Equally obscure is the identity of the composer(s) and the occasion that inspired this great work. The question is further complicated by the relationship of Chronicles to the Ezra compositions [Chronicles and the Ezra Compositions, p. 457]. Some argue that 1 Esdras is a stage of the process before Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah came to be two separate compositions as we know them.

Clues to the occasion for writing Chronicles must by sought from its contents. On this basis, the earliest possible date of its completion as it now stands (terminus a quo) is during the latter part of the Persian Empire, probably in the first half of the fourth century (400–350 BCE) [Chronology in Chronicles, p. 460]. The genealogy of Jehoiachin (1 Chron 3:17–24) requires a date at least six generations later than Zerubbabel and possibly more (Kalimi 2005b: 57–58). Zerubbabel was ruler during the restoration of the temple in the days of Darius king of Persia (Zech 4:9). The second year of Darius (Zech 1:1) was 520 BCE. Biologically, a generation is about twenty years long (when the first child is born), making the earliest possible date for this genealogy about 400 BCE. Chronicles does not show evidence of Hellenistic influence linguistically or ideologically. The latest possible date of its completion (terminus ad quem) is probably before the first half of the fourth century BCE, but this cannot be established absolutely.

The Chronicler likely lived in or near Jerusalem and appears to have been an ardent supporter of the temple and its services. His work gives prominence to the Levites, a hint that he was among their number. Being a Levite would adequately explain his access to the material he used to compose his history. Temple archives could have been the source of some of his information, such as census reports, building records, and old prophetic materials. The Chronicler has been described as part of the ruling and priestly classes in Jerusalem, who used the imminent or actual demise of the Persians to think big (J. Dyck: 162–64). The ethnic elements included in the genealogical lists suggest that the leadership elite of the fourth century were much more inclusive in their thinking than the returnees of a century earlier [Genealogy, p. 461].

Sources of the Chronicler

Every historian begins with sources that are selected, sorted, and evaluated. The sources available to the historian are therefore of critical importance, but selection and interpretation of these sources are determinative for the impact of the history. The Chronicler uses what came to be canonical Scripture as a substantial source. Significant portions of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Samuel and Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, Ruth, and some psalms are quoted, and parallel texts appear in Isaiah and Jeremiah. When the Chronicler uses these sources, they seem to have been compiled already as we have them. Arguments that the author of Chronicles did not use Samuel-Kings as a major source in his composition have not proved convincing [Sources for Chronicles, p. 472].

From the evidence of the scrolls of Qumran and the Greek text of Chronicles, as the commentary shows (e.g., 1 Chron 21), it is certain that the text form used by the Chronicler is not the same as the standard Hebrew text [Greek Text of Chronicles, p. 468; Masoretic Text, p. 470]. Caution must be exercised when proposing changes the Chronicler might have made to his text. As any historian, the Chronicler interpreted his texts for the purposes of his work, but some differences with the books of Samuel and Kings are best attributed to a variant form of those texts [Vorlage, p. 468].

Methods of the Chronicler

There are various aspects to the way the Chronicler did his work. The Chronicler has been called a midrashist in the sense of one creating new meaning by commenting on ancient texts. Julius Wellhausen was most influential in his depiction of Chronicles as midrash (Kalimi 2005b: 20–23). Wellhausen regarded midrash as a corruption of sources, an artificial reconstruction of ancient records like ivy growing over the dead trunk of a tree. He regarded midrash as twisted and perverted, bringing...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Abbreviations
• Pronunciation Guide
• Series Foreword
• Author’s Preface
• Introduction to 1 & 2 Chronicles
• Part 1: Nation of Promise, 1 Chronicles 1:1–9:34
• Part 2: Founding the Kingdom, 1 Chronicles 9:35–20:8
• Part 3: Preparations for the Temple,1 Chronicles 21:1–29:30
• Part 4: The Reign of Solomon, 2 Chronicles 1:1–9:31
• Part 5: Israel until the Exile of the North, 2 Chronicles 10:1–28:27
• Part 6: Healing under Hezekiah, 2 Chronicles 29:1–32:33
• Part 7: Humiliation and Hope, 2 Chronicles 33:1–36:23
• Outline of 1 & 2 Chronicles
• Essays
• Map of Palestine for Chronicles
• Map of the Ancient Near East for Chronicles
• Bibliography
• Selected Resources
• Index of Ancient Sources
• The Author