Chronicling the Chronicler: The Book of Chronicles and Early Second Temple Historiography 9781575068725

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Chronicling the Chronicler

Chronicling the Chronicler The Book of Chronicles and Early Second Temple Historiography

Edited by

Paul S. Evans and Tyler F. Williams

Winona Lake, Indiana E isenbrauns 2013

To Our Children Chaim Randall Evans and Talyah Lee Evans and Sydney May Williams, Teresa Katheryn Williams, and Isaac Nelson Williams

© Copyright 2013 Eisenbrauns Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chronicling the Chronicler : the Book of Chronicles and early second temple historiography / edited by Paul S. Evans and Tyler F. Williams.    p. cm. “Essays in this volume are largely revised papers which were originally presented as part of the Ancient Historiography Seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and they investigate particular texts of Chronicles, examine central themes, and consider future prospects for Chronicles study.”—Publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57506-290-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1.  Bible. Chronicles—Criticism, interpretation, etc.  2.  Bible. Chronicles—Historiography.  I.  Evans, Paul S., editor.  II.  Williams, Tyler F., editor. BS1345.52.C47 2013 222′.606—dc23 2013041061 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ™♾

Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  vii Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1 Paul S. Evans

Part 1 Texts and Studies The Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9: Purposes, Forms, and the Utopian Identity of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9 Steven Schweitzer Reading the Lists: Several Recent Studies of the Chronicler’s Genealogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29 Keith Bodner Seeking Saul in Chronicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43 P. J. Sabo Let the Crime Fit the Punishment: The Chronicler’s Explication of David’s “Sin” in 1 Chronicles 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  65 Paul S. Evans Of Jebus, Jerusalem, and Benjamin: The Chronicler’s Sondergut in 1 Chronicles 21 against the Background of the Late Persian Era in Yehud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  81 Louis Jonker Historia or Exegesis? Assessing the Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Paul S. Evans Reading Chronicles and Reshaping the Memory of Manasseh . . . . . . 121 Ehud Ben Zvi The Cohesiveness of 2 Chronicles 33:1–36:23 as a Literary Unit Concluding the Book of Chronicles . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Shannon E. Baines v

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Part 2 Central Themes “To Him You Must Listen”: The Prophetic Legislation in Deuteronomy and the Reformation of Classical Tradition in Chronicles . . . . . . . 161 Gary N. Knoppers Divine Retribution in Herodotus and the Book of Chronicles . . . . . . . 195 John W. Wright Gazing through the Cloud of Incense: Davidic Dynasty and Temple Community in the Chronicler’s Perspective . . . . . . . . . . 215 Mark J. Boda Toward a Sense of Balance: Remembering the Catastrophe of Monarchic Judah / (Ideological) Israel and Exile through Reading Chronicles in Late Yehud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Ehud Ben Zvi

Part 3 Future Prospects Response: Reflections on the Book of Chronicles and Second Temple Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Christine Mitchell Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Index of Authors  311 Index of Scripture  316

Acknowledgments The editors are indebted to several people for their contributions toward the completion of this volume. First, we express our appreciation to the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies for its support of the Ancient Historiography Seminar and thank both members and invited guests for their contributions to the discussion. Second, we would like to thank three capable research assistants from McMaster Divinity College, Tony Pyles, Dustin Boreland, and Alexander Breitkopf, for their careful editorial work at several stages in the preparation of this manuscript. We also thank Jim Eisenbraun for accepting this volume for publication and thank all those at Eisenbrauns who have spent many hours preparing and improving the manuscript. Finally, and above all, our thanks goes to our wives, who have so faithfully supported us throughout our academic endeavors, and we dedicate this volume to our children. Paul S. Evans and Tyler F. Williams

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Abbreviations General and Classical Ag. Ap. Josephus, Against Apion Ant. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities Ant. rom. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates romanae AP Aramaic papyri b. Babylonian Talmud Bell. Cat. Sallust, Bellum catalinae Bell. Jug. Sallust, Bellum jugurthinum Chr. Chronicler Epist. Jerome, Epistulae ET English translation HB Hebrew Bible Hist. Herodotus, Histories Hist. conscr. Lucian, Quomodo Historia conscribenda sit J.W. Josephus, Jewish War LXX Septuagint MT Masoretic Text nasb New American Standard Bible niv New International Version nrsv New Revised Standard Version NT New Testament OT Old Testament Pomp. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium Geminum SP Samaritan Pentateuch Thuc. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide

Reference Works AB ABD AOTC BAR BASOR BBB BBET BBR BEATAJ BETL

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman et al. 6 vols. New York, 1992 Apollos Old Testament Commentary Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bonner Biblische Beiträge Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie Bulletin for Biblical Research Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium

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Abbreviations

Bib Biblica BibJS Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego BibS(N) Biblische Studien (Neukirchen, 1951–) BJS Brown Judaic Studies BN Biblische Notizen BSac Bibliotheca Sacra BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament BZ Biblische Zeitschrift BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology CBC Cornerstone Biblical Commentary CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CBR Currents in Biblical Research COHP Contributions to Oriental History and Philology ConBOT Coniectanea biblica: Old Testament Series COS The Context of Scripture. Edited by W. W. Hallo. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997–2003 CTM Concordia Theological Monthly DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert ErIsr Eretz-Israel ESHM European Seminar on Historical Methodology EvTh Evangelische Theologie FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FOTL Forms of the Old Testament Literature FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments FThSt Freiburger theologische Studien FTS Frankfurter theologische Studien GTS Gettysburg Theological Studies HAE Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig. 3 vols. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch­gesellschaft, 1995– 2003 HALOT The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, and J. J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000 HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology HCOT Historical Commentary on the Old Testament HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HTR Harvard Theological Review IBC Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching ICC International Critical Commentary IDB The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962 IEJ Israel Exploration Journal IJT Indian Journal of Theology

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Int Interpretation IOS Israel Oriental Studies JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBQ Jewish Bible Quarterly JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JSJSup Journal for the Study of Judaism: Supplement Series JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies KAI Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. H. Donner and W. Röllig. 3 vols. 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966–69 KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament KVHS Korte verklaring der Heilige Schrift LD Lectio Divina LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies LTQ Lexington Theological Quarterly MNTS McMaster New Testament Series M-QSHR McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion NAC New American Commentary NCB New Century Bible NCBC New Cambridge Bible Commentary NEchtB Neue Echter Bibel NIBCOT New International Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament NIDOTTE New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Edited by W. A. VanGemeren. 5 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997 OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta OLP Orientalia lovaniensia periodica OTE Old Testament Essays OTL Old Testament Library OTS Old Testament Studies OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly PFES Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society Proof Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History RB Revue biblique ResQ Restoration Quarterly RTP Revue de théologie et de philosophie SAA State Archives of Assyria SBLAIL Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Israel and Its Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SBLEJL Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and Its Literature SBLMS Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series

xii SBLSP SBLWAW SBT SBTS SHCANE SHR SJLA SJOT SR SSN TA TBC TBT TLOT TOTC TQ TynBul VT VTSup WBC WMANT WTJ YNER ZAW ZDPV

Abbreviations Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World Studies in Biblical Theology Sources for Biblical and Theological Study Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East Studies in the History of Religions Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studies in Religion Studia semitica neerlandica Tel Aviv Torch Bible Commentaries The Bible Today Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament. Edited by E. Jenni, with assistance from C. Westermann. Translated by M. E. Biddle. 3 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997 Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries Theologische Quartalschrift Tyndale Bulletin Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum: Supplement Series Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Westminster Theological Journal Yale Near Eastern Researches Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins

Introduction Paul S. Evans McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University The fifth meeting of the Ancient Historiography Seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (CSBS) met in 2010 at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. The theme was The Book of Chronicles and Early Second Temple Historiography, and a number of CSBS members as well as two invited guests contributed preliminary papers for discussion at the meeting. The sixth and final meeting of the seminar was held in 2011 at the University of Fredericton, New Brunswick, and considered broader questions on historiography but included three more papers focused on the book of Chronicles. All but two of the essays in this volume are revised versions of these seminar papers on Chronicles from these two meetings.1 Although these essays publish the deliberations of the Ancient Historiography Seminar, they represent many different perspectives, methodologies, and conclusions regarding the Chronicler’s work. Thus, this fourth and final volume emerging from the work of the seminar contributes to the ongoing conversation regarding the book of Chronicles and by no means offers a unified perspective, definitive answers, or an achieved consensus about the many important questions and texts examined herein. The essays in this volume are divided into three parts. In the first part, “Texts and Studies,” articles focus on particular texts in Chronicles and are arranged in the order in which the respective texts appear in Chronicles. Two of the essays are focused on the same texts but employ different methodologies and ask different questions of these texts. The first essay, by Steven Schweitzer, looks at the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9 and finds that their main purpose was to provide the identity of the people of Israel. Drawing on utopian literary theory, Schweitzer suggests that this depiction of Israel in the genealogies does not function to maintain the status quo in the Chronicler’s time but, rather, analyzes the present and pictures 1.  Of these two additional contributors, one (P. S. Evans, “Let the Crime Fit the Punishment”) presented his article at the 2012 annual meeting of the CSBS, and another (S. Schweitzer, “The Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9”) was invited by the editors of this volume to supplement this conversation on Chronicles with his perspective.

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a better, alternative reality. The Chronicler’s depiction of the identity of Israel in the genealogies: (1) underscores the religious definition of Israel more than the genealogical, (2) has a wider view of Israel than comprising only the returnees from exile, (3) does not view the land as determinative for defining the people of Israel, and (4) does not depict an ideal Israel that existed at any one particular time but reflects cross-sections of Israel’s history throughout which Israel frequently changes. Thus, the genealogies present a better alternative reality to the Chronicler’s present—a utopian Israel that transcends the past and present—and that opens up new future possibilities. The next essay, by Keith Bodner, also focuses on the Chronicler’s genealogies and surveys recent literary approaches to this material, underscoring these scholars’ contribution to the study of these chapters. Taking a similar approach to Schweitzer’s, Bodner focuses on Simeon’s lineage in 1 Chronicles 4 and revisits the interpretive problem of the reference in 1 Chr 4:43 to the Simeonites’ destroying the remnant of Amalekites “who escaped.” Although historical approaches have debated about whether this notice is anachronistic and about what would have initiated this military conflict, Bodner ignores questions of this sort and instead suggests that 1 Sam 30:17 is a likely intertext for 1 Chr 4:43. 1 Sam 30:17 records David’s victories over Amalek but also notes that some Amalekites escaped on camels. In light of this, Bodner suggests that 1  Chr 4:43 invites the reader to conclude that a small group of Simeonites finished a task—the elimination of the Amalekites—that eluded even Israel’s greatest king, David. Peter Sabo, in “Seeking Saul in Chronicles,” revisits the “riddle” of the Saul narrative in 1 Chronicles 10. However, he does not attempt to solve the riddle but instead reflects at length on why scholars continually attempt to do so, comparing this scholarly compulsion with the psychoanalytical concept of transference. In psychoanalysis, transference is the unconscious direction of the emotions from the analysand to the analyst wherein, instead of recounting the past together, they are repeating the past through their behavior toward each another. This repetition of the past is viewed as a way of working through pertinent issues and a step toward wellness. Sabo applies this concept to the encounter between a text and a reader, asserting that “reading” is a repetition of the text’s being analyzed and that scholars reenact the text they are analyzing. This transferential compulsion to repeat narratives results in the creating of endless new readings and actually undercuts any idea of meaning as being grounded in a text. Sabo concludes that this situation is something scholars must learn to live with rather than being a problem they must solve. Paul Evans’s essay, “Let the Crime Fit the Punishment,” investigates what “crime” the Chronicler understood David to have committed in his census of 1  Chronicles 21 that deserved the subsequent “punishment” of a devastating plague. Evans suggests that the Chronicler read his Vorlage, 2 Samuel

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24, through the lens of Exod 30:11–16, which requires a kōper payment be collected during a census lest a plague come upon the people. The hermeneutical key to understanding the Chronicler’s use of this legislation is found in 2 Chronicles 24, where the Chronicler explicitly appeals to the kōper legislation in the context of the repair of the temple. Evans suggests that the Chronicler viewed the kōper law as only relevant in contexts of sanctuary construction, thereby explaining why other censuses in Chronicles are not viewed negatively. Furthermore, the Chronicler inferred the relevance of this legislation to David’s census by intentionally creating a new literary context of imminent temple construction. The Chronicler thereby associated this kōper legislation, which mentions an improper “census” followed by a “plague,” with David’s failed census in order to clarify the sin of the census. Louis Jonker, “Of Jebus, Jerusalem, and Benjamin,” also focuses on 1 Chronicles 21 but first investigates the presence of Benjamin in Chronicles in hopes of glimpsing the dynamics of identity negotiation during the late Persian era, when significant tensions existed between Benjaminite Mizpah and Judahite Jerusalem. Jonker finds that the majority of Benjaminite terms present in Chronicles are not taken from his Vorlage but belong to his Sondergut, suggesting that the Benjaminite presence in Chronicles is quite intentional and clearly serves the Chronicler’s purposes. Jonker then turns to 1 Chronicles 21 and observes the diverse function of the Benjaminite presence in this chapter. At times, Benjamin is used in the service of a Jerusalemite claim (Joab’s exclusion of Benjamin and Levi from the census protects Jerusalem from being implicated in this negative incident), while in other instances Benjamin is used in contrast to Jerusalem (the Jebusite origins of the city are emphasized in order to counter Benjaminite claims on the territory). Jonker concludes that since identity negotiation takes place in continuity and discontinuity with other social groups the diversity in the use of Benjamin in Chronicles is understandable in the late Persian era context. In his essay “Historia or Exegesis?,” Paul Evans examines the Chronicler’s reworking of 2  Kings 18–19 in 2  Chronicles 32 in order to assess both the Chronicler’s method and the historical value of his narrative. Regarding the Chronicler’s method, though most have explained Chronicles’ divergences as either creative changes by the Chronicler directly related to his ideology or simply as due to his reliance on unknown sources, Evans argues that in 2 Chronicles 32 the Chronicler was following the perceived lead of his Vorlage. Evans examines the main divergences between 2 Chronicles 32 and 2 Kings 18–19 and argues that each of the distinctive features of the Chronicler’s narrative appears to be founded on his interpretation of the sources he employed (e.g., Sennacherib’s failure to conquer Judah’s fortified cities in 2 Chr 32:1 was suggested by Assyrian abandonment of Lachish and Libnah in 2  Kgs 19:8–9). Regarding historical value (though somewhat undermined by the Chronicler’s

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exegetical method), some nonsynoptic material in the 2 Chronicles 32 is found to be of some value for historical reconstruction. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Reading Chronicles and Reshaping the Memory of Manasseh,” looks at the Chronicler’s Manasseh (not the historical person and not the possible sources behind his account) in order to explore how he influenced the postexilic community’s own narrative. Ben Zvi argues that Manasseh was invoked as partially embodying Israel (and also as a site of memory for Yehudite Israel). Therefore, his repentance was not created to make sense of his long life (as some have argued) but to show the possibility of repentance. If someone as wicked as Manasseh (one of the worst sinners) may repent and his repentance be accepted by Yhwh, then there is hope for the postexilic community. Furthermore, Manasseh returned from his exile not only to live in the land but to rule it. Therefore, Manasseh also inspires hope for a future to those living in but not yet ruling the land. Shannon Baines looks at the conclusion to the book of Chronicles in her essay “The Cohesiveness of 2 Chronicles 33:1–36:23.” She follows the lead of scholarship in observing that, in the book of Chronicles, Hezekiah—not Josiah—is the ideal king in the post-Solomonic era. Furthermore, Baines views the Hezekiah narratives as the “climax” of the book of Chronicles and argues that the subsequent narratives of the book (2 Chr 33:1–36:23) actually form a single literary unit and should be interpreted together. To Baines, this literary unit is created through (1) the intentional omission of the queen mothers’ names in narratives following the Hezekiah narrative, (2) the repetition of the theme of exile throughout this literary unit, and (3) a threefold inclusio that begins and ends the literary unit. Baines then suggests that interpreting these chapters as one unit aids the reader in perceiving the message of this text to its postexilic audience and underscores the conclusion to the book of Chronicles as the hope of a new beginning. Essays in the second section of this volume, “Central Themes,” investigate particular themes or motifs in Chronicles. In the first essay, “To Him You Must Listen,” Gary Knoppers examines prophecy in Chronicles, which, as many have noted, diverges in significant ways from prophecy in Samuel–Kings. However, while many have explained these divergences as being due to the influence of the classical prophets on Chronicles, Knoppers suggests they were also partly due to Chronicles’ return to the model presented in Deuteronomy itself (which Knoppers demonstrates through a comparison of both texts). However, he also finds that Chronicles innovates beyond Deuteronomy in several ways. Chronicles presents a wide variety of prophets at work in Israel’s history, with both vocational prophets and pro tem prophets communicating Yhwh’s revelation to his people. Knoppers explains the abundance of prophetic figures in Chronicles when compared with Samuel–Kings as Chronicles’ attempt to bring monarchical history into conformity with the arrangements for prophecy

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outlined in Deuteronomy. In this way, Chronicles classicizes the prophetic legacy and draws the foundational period under Moses and the monarchical era closer together. Finally, Knoppers explores the social function of Chronicles’ refashioning of prophecy, concluding that the prophetic corpus and a continuous line of prophecy was one aspect of the Judean community’s self-definition that distinguished them from their northern, Samarian counterparts, who instead self-identified as protectors of the Torah. In his essay, John Wright compares the motif of divine retribution in Herodotus and the book of Chronicles. Wright first surveys divine retribution in Herodotus, finding it closely linked to (1) sacrilegious behavior, which would be punished by the offended deity, (2) disregarding prophetic oracles, and (3) human attempts to rise above the human realm into the divine, which would be counteracted to uphold the cosmic order (the superiority of gods over humanity). Wright also observes that individual human acts are not met with divine retribution. Instead, human retribution is necessary to protect the human realm from injustice. Wright then surveys divine retribution in Chronicles, finding that, as in Herodotus, retribution is linked to (1) sacrilegious behavior, and (2) disregarding prophetic oracles. Also, as in Herodotus, divine retribution is meted out, not for individual human acts, but only for improper responses to God’s authority. However, Chronicles differs from Herodotus in that there is no divine retribution for human attempts to rise into the divine realm. This is due to the radically different underlying ontology in which no human can ascend to the divine level, since there is a qualitative difference between humans and Yahweh in Chronicles. In “Gazing through the Cloud of Incense,” Mark Boda revisits the muchdebated issue of the Chronicler’s perspective on the Davidic Dynasty and the future hope in Chronicles. Boda surveys the range of scholarship on the issue and argues that the various viewpoints noted throughout recent interpretations of Chronicles are valid and represent complementary aspects of the Chronicler’s work. Regarding the Davidic Dynasty, Boda finds evidence for both a communal as well as a royalist shape in Chronicles. He highlights the clear emphasis on the community and its success without a royal Davidide but argues that the Chronicler never dissolves the Davidic promises fully into the community. Instead, he continues to maintain some royalist hope for the future. This royalist hope may have been envisioned as the means by which the community could move from their present “survival mode” to grander success in the future. Regarding future hope in Chronicles, Boda argues that, while the Chronicler’s work clearly functioned as legitimation of present structures, it was also oriented toward the future, because the Chronicler looked for a future when Israel would fully realize the central values of the kingdom of God. In his essay “Toward a Sense of Balance,” Ehud Ben Zvi questions how Chronicles may have contributed to a process of balancing the relative

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mindshare of the Yehudite community’s memories about the exile and the catastrophe that led up to it. He notes that reading activates memory within a community; thus, the more the Yehudite community read about a certain event, the stronger the tendency was to remember the event. Conversely, the less a memory was mentioned in its texts, the less mindshare it would hold in the community. Ben Zvi observes that Chronicles has very few references to exile, which contrasts with the Yehudite community’s obsession with exile (as evinced in the prophetic books and the Deuteronomistic historical collection). Therefore, by giving little narrative space to the exile, Chronicles implies that it was not worth remembering to a great extent. Since Chronicles held that nothing essential changed because of the catastrophe and that there was essential continuity between the preexilic and postexilic communities, Chronicles attempted to convey a sense of balance regarding the exile and therefore diminish its mindshare within the Yehudite community. Finally, in the third part of this volume, “Future Prospects,” Christine Mitchell responds to the contributions by offering some critique along with her reflections on the future of Chronicles study, suggesting possible directions for further research and areas for potential contributions. On this note, it is our hope as editors that the publication of these essays may contribute to the ongoing research of this once neglected biblical book and stimulate further research.

The Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9: Purposes, Forms, and the Utopian Identity of Israel Steven Schweitzer Bethany Theological Seminary The opening nine chapters of Chronicles contain an extensive amount of genealogical information, with several purposes, and in various forms, interspersed with narrative comments. This content contributes directly to the formation of the ideological construct of the identity of Israel in Chronicles. This essay outlines several purposes of genealogies, some of the forms employed, suggests another way of approaching the genealogical data, and finally provides reflections on the identity of the people of Israel that is depicted in this variegated material. 1

Purposes of Genealogies As has been demonstrated with numerous examples by Gary Knoppers, the comparative data from the Hellenistic world more so than those from the ancient Near East provide illuminating evidence for understanding both the purposes and forms of the genealogical material in Chronicles. 2 Indeed, 1.  Many of these points are developed in more detail in my chapter on the genealogies in my book Reading Utopia in Chronicles (LHBOTS 442; London: T. & T. Clark, 2007) 31–75. 2.  G. N. Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 253–59. Knoppers draws heavily on the analysis by M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). Many of the positions held by West have been strengthened by additional arguments and evidence in R. Thomas, “Genealogy and Family Tradition: The Intrusion of Writing,” in Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 18; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 155–95. She emphasizes the importance of genealogies for prestige and status (pp. 156, 177), the reflection of current sociopolitical relations in genealogical relations (pp. 175–76), the role of eponymous ancestors (p. 176), the lack of concern in Hellenistic genealogy for tracing lines of descent down to the present (pp. 181–82, 195), and the complex relationship that the literary forms have with their oral sources (pp. 184–95).

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Chronicles shares many of the same concerns as the Hellenistic genealogies and demonstrates the importance of genealogies in that time period. Drawing on the reasoned conclusions by Knoppers, I find that the genealogies in the Hellenistic world and in Chronicles do indeed appear to be remarkably similar. It may not be entirely surprising that genealogies from approximately the same historical era should exhibit similar functions and purposes. 3 Further, the fact that genealogies in general from a variety of historical contexts share similar features and serve similar ends has been well established in previous scholarly research. The similarities between Chronicles and the Hellenistic material both confirm and are confirmed by the leading scholarly studies on genealogies. However, these studies are not specifically focused on the Hellenistic data, nor do they have the material in Chronicles as their main thrust. Two of these analyses have been notably influential on subsequent critical discussion of genealogies: the seminal work by Marshall Johnson and the exhaustive study by Robert Wilson. 4 Johnson’s main concern is to provide a context for understanding the genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew (1:1–17) and Luke (3:23–38). This context is constructed by an analysis of the genealogical material in the HB, particularly the pentateuchal sources and the material in Chronicles and Ezra– Nehemiah. In his assessment of the material in Chronicles, Johnson divides the data into three categories: the “core material,” “geographical data,” and “other notes.” 5 This third category largely consists of the narrative elements that are not formally genealogical or geographical in nature. Johnson concludes that the core material derives mainly from the pentateuchal sources and is used to construct “a picture of the complete kingdom of God” under the label of “all Israel.” 6 To this biological construct is added the geographical material that thus associates the people with their “promised” land in an intimate interrelationship, so that “people and land are essentially one.” 7 Regarding the third category, Johnson rejects the common view that the narrative elements in the genealogies are interpolations with recourse to comparative data: Safaitic inscriptions from the region around Damascus, which date to some point during 3.  The precise date of Chronicles is a matter of dispute, while there is broad agreement on the general window of the fourth century b.c.e. Apart from the complexity of the postexilic segment of the Solomonic genealogy in 1 Chr 3:17–24, there is nothing that requires dating the book past the transitional period from the Persian to Hellenistic eras (Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9, 116). 4.  M. D. Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies: With Special Reference to the Setting of the Genealogies of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) 3–82; and R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (YNER 7; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 5.  Johnson, Purpose, 55–68. 6.  Ibid., 56–57. 7.  Ibid., 57–60; here p. 57.

The Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9

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the first centuries b.c.e. and c.e. Johnson’s evidence is useful for him, because he intends to address the NT genealogies, but is not the best comparative data for Chronicles; he even admits that the late inscriptions do not fully account for the variety of narrative notations found in Chronicles. Instead, Johnson emphasizes the military and tribal nature of many of the notations and concludes that the Chronicler’s “faithfulness to the details of his sources where he had no theological reason to change them, a procedure seen in his treatment of the biblical texts available to him, is sufficient to explain his inclusion of the military and historical notes.” 8 However, the Hellenistic data suggest another more direct possibility than positing a consistent use of sources on the part of the Chronicler: simply put, genealogies often included narrative comments, as the Hellenistic data show. In summarizing his analysis of the genealogies in Chronicles, Johnson first acknowledges the role of genealogies in defining Israel’s identity in contrast to the other peoples who are related to Israel and yet excluded from the distinctive community known as “all Israel,” before he concentrates on the purpose of these lists: the presentation of a “theocracy par excellence” that focuses on the lines of Judah and Levi—the ancestors of David and the priests—that is, the monarchy and the temple that it instituted. Although Johnson notes the important role of legitimacy for individuals in the preservation and construction of genealogies (particularly for the priesthood), he demurs from the commonly held belief that this is the most important (if not the only) function of the genealogical material. Rather than providing legitimacy for the Chronicler’s “contemporary officiants,” he suggests that it is the grounding of the temple worship as a Davidic institution, a claim to continuity with the past that takes precedence in the lengthy enumeration of the people of Israel. 9 Thus, Johnson’s study touches on the most common understandings of the purposes of genealogies: legitimacy of the present, claims to continuity with the past, distinguishing between different groups by drawing ethnic boundaries, and defining the internal organizational relationships of a single group. Wilson’s study of the genealogies in the HB echoes these four purposes for genealogies, although approaching the issue from a very different perspective from Johnson. While Johnson discusses the literary functions of genealogies with only the rare example of the Safaitic inscriptions for comparative data, Wilson focuses on the anthropological study of the oral nature of genealogies in preliterate and literate tribal societies and on the comparative ancient Near Eastern “genealogical” data. After constructing a model from this extensive analysis in order to approach the genealogies of the HB, Wilson employs it in addressing the genealogies of Genesis. 8.  Ibid., 61–68; here p. 68. 9.  Ibid., 74–82; here p. 79.

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In this model, Wilson has laid out terminology, drawn from anthropologists working in this area, that now dominates the study of genealogies by biblical scholars. 10 According to Wilson: genealogies may take either the form of a list or the form of a narrative; they may be either linear or segmented in terms of relational descent; 11 within these two structures, they exhibit three main formal characteristics: breadth through segmentation, depth through linearity, and fluidity—contraction or expansion in either breadth or depth over time; 12 they function in one (or more) of three spheres: domestic, politico-jural, and religious; 13 the function of the genealogy in nearly any given context is dependent on the form (and not only content) that the genealogy takes; 14 it is typical for genealogies to extend 3–5 generations but extremely rare to extend beyond 10 or 12 generations, with the only exception being the material in 1 Chronicles 2–9; 15 legitimacy of present positions or conditions is the primary concern of a genealogy; 16 and there is overwhelming evidence for two phenomena: the relative fixation of the beginning and end of the genealogy, and the related feature of telescoping—the loss of the middle section(s) of the genealogy so that several generations may be missing in a condensed list, which notes only the most memorable or most significant ancestors. 17 To summarize, some of the significant purposes of genealogies are: (1) group definition, both internally through organizational hierarchy and associations and externally through lines of demarcation; (2) preservation of history; (3) explanation of current social, political, or religious structures, often with the intention of maintaining the status quo; and (4) assertion of claims to continuity with the past or to the authoritative interpretation of that past that may either support or challenge the status quo. 18 All four of these functions of genealogies 10.  Nearly every subsequent treatment of the genealogies in Chronicles, whether article, monograph, or commentary cites Wilson’s work and uses his categories and terminology in discussing these lists. 11.  Wilson, Genealogy and History, 9. 12.  Ibid., 19–21, 21–26, 27–37. 13.  Ibid., 38–40, 40–44, 44–45. 14.  Ibid., 46–55. 15.  Ibid., 197. 16.  Ibid., 37–45. 17.  Ibid., 32–35. 18.  This seeming inconsistency over whether genealogies are designed to support or contend with existing power structures is not unique to genealogies; historiographical texts also exhibit the possibility of functioning either to “foster or to overthrow particular perspectives or ideologies,” according to M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995) 137. Thus, what one individual/group may perceive as supporting the status quo may be interpreted by another individual/group, typically of a different social location, as a call for change. In the case of Chronicles, scholars have assumed that the work is one of legitimacy rather than critique.

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can be and have been easily identified in the content, form, and structure of the material in 1 Chronicles 1–9.

Forms of Genealogies: The Function of 1 Chronicles 1–9 as a Literary Preface I turn to the forms of the genealogical material in Chronicles. One of the first issues to require attention is the relationship between these genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1–9 and the narrative that follows in 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chron­ icles 36. 19 Several questions arise: Should these chapters be considered secondary (or even tertiary) in nature, added by a subsequent or multiple redactor(s)? Are the genealogies linked with the narrative, whether original to Chronicles or as additions, whether in terms of content, scope, ideology, theology, or Tendenz? Do the genealogies function as an “introduction” to the narrative, or are they disconnected and evidence of antiquarianism on the part of whoever is responsible for their present location? The view taken here is that the arguments that are presented for an intimate connection and, indeed, a unified and original association between the genealogies and the narratives seem to be built on better evidence from comparative literary examples and the text of Chronicles itself. Thus, it is best to accept the genealogical material as a whole as original to Chronicles and in concert with its overall aims, while holding out the possibility of minor later additions. Scholars who have affirmed the basic unity of Chronicles and that 1 Chronicles 1–9 in particular should not be quickly dismissed as an addition have focused on the issue of content and thematic consistency between the narrative and the genealogical material. In this growing trend, a variety of related terms have been used to express the relationship between these two generic divisions: prologue, introduction, preface, Vorhalle. Thus, the genealogical material is understood to “prepare the reader for the narrative that follows” or to “set forth the themes to be developed in the subsequent section” or “provide the historical background for the main story about to be related” or some such function that defers priority of place to the narrative. The case made for the unity of the genealogies and the narrative in terms of purpose, scope, and theme is convincing. In addition to providing the history before Saul and the rise of David in brief outline as a summary of the past, the 19.  Chronicles has been traditionally divided into these two macrosections based on the genre division between the genealogies and the narrative that follows. Almost all commentaries on Chronicles follow this division in their outlines and structures. However, see the comments by J. W. Wright that such a distinction is essentially “not helpful” in either a structural sense or in terms of content (“The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture [ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999] 136–55, esp. pp. 153–54).

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major themes of Chronicles are found in these lists and accompanying narrative asides—monarchy, cult, the identity of “Israel” both internally and externally, retribution and blessing, “seeking Yhwh”—and in terms consistent with the idealism in the presentation of the narrative. In addition to this thematic connection, John Wright has argued that in a structural sense the genealogies are the book. Formally, what is usually called the “narrative” of the book of Chronicles (1 Chron. 10–2 Chron. 36) is actually the slower paced repetition of what has already been narrated in 1 Chron. 1.1–9.34 itself. While details emerge in its retelling, 1 Chron. 1.1–9.34 narrates the fundamental structure of the book. Thus, to distinguish between the genealogies and the “narrative” is not helpful. 20

Wright’s narratological reading presents the genealogies not only as being intimately connected with the narrative but as being the book in microcosm. This obviously not only enhances the importance of the genealogies but also forces a reassessment of the function of the genealogies as a lengthy introduction dissimilar in form but not overall content to the narrative that follows. The clarification of this reassessment may proceed with attention to some considerations from Hellenistic historiography. Part of the difficulty in determining the purpose of the biblical histories (whether discussing the so-called “Primary History,” DtrH, Chronicles, or Ezra–Nehemiah) is that “no biblical historical book contains a statement of purpose, like that found in Herodotus or Thucydides.” 21 This difference is particularly important for scholars who have argued that the best source of comparison for Chronicles is the Hellenistic historiographical tradition. If Chronicles follows or fits this tradition, why does it lack the most basic distinctive characteristic of this tradition—a statement of purpose typically expressed in a preface? Nearly all extant historical works following in the Hellenistic tradition contain a preface that outlines the scope and theme of the work: whether the time period to be surveyed, the major themes to be addressed, the main protagonist(s) involved, the chief conflict to be resolved, or another theme. 22 However, 20.  Ibid., 154. 21.  Brettler, Creation of History, 135. The claims for authority typically made by these authors, nearly always in a preface and always with the explicit intent to supercede previously written histories stand in marked contrast to all examples of historiography in the HB (but see 2 Macc 2:19–32). See the discussion of this phenomenon in the Hellenistic historiographies by John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) esp. pp. 1–7, 62, 117. 22.  Herodotus, Hist. 1.1–5, 2.99; Thucydides 1.1.1–2, 1.20.1, 1.21.1–2, 1.22.1–4; Polybius, 1.1.1–5.1, 1.12.5–1.14.9, 4.1.1–4.2.4, 12.4c–28a.10; Lucian, Hist. conscr. 4b–5a, 7b–10, 13b–14a, 16–17, 20, 22–24a, 27, 30a, 31–32, 34, 37–63; Diod. Sic. 1.1.1–1.4.7, 1.6.1–3, 4.1.1–6, 5.1.1–4, 20.1.1–20.2.2; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 1.1.1–1.2.4, 1.5.1–4, 1.6.1–2, 1.8.1–4; idem, Thuc. 2–3, 5–9, 10.1, 11–12, 13.1, 16, 19–20, 22–24, 35, 50–52; idem, Pomp. 3–6; Sallust, Bell. Cat. 1.1–4, 4.1–4; idem, Bell. Jug. 1.1–4, 4.1–5, 4.9, 5.1–3, 17.1–7; Josephus, Ant. Preface 1.1–26, 14.1–

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Hellenistic historiography does provide a different approach to the issue of a preface that has gone largely unnoticed and may help to elucidate the type of functional preface that is found in Chronicles. The example comes from the discussion of common historiographical practice and its abuses in antiquity as articulated by Lucian in his How to Write History, composed ca. 162–65 c.e. Although composed centuries after Chronicles, Lucian’s work provides evidence of the type of historiographical writing being undertaken in the Hellenistic world. 23 Lucian discusses the appropriate forms and strategies to be used by historians in their construction of a historiographical text. As such a didactic work, it both criticizes and lauds earlier works. Among the many interesting comments that Lucian makes about the proper way to write history, the ones of concern for possibly understanding the genealogical material in Chronicles are his musings about the function and form of a preface (τὸ προοίμιον). For Lucian, the preface should be: not “frigid” (ὑπέρψυχρος) or in poor style (Hist. conscr. 16); in the same language, dialect, or style as the main body (16); not overly long or at least not in disproportion to the length of the main body (23, 55); should make only two points—not three like the rhetors (53); and should transition smoothly to the narrative that follows (55). All of these comments by Lucian refer to the content and form of what can be termed “introductory separable prefaces” that stand apart from the main body of the narrative. Lucian, however, discusses another type of preface—the “virtual preface” (ὡς δυνάμει τινὰ προοίμιά; 23, 52). In these two instances, Lucian notes that sometimes authors do not follow the common practice of these “introductory separable prefaces” and, rather, seem to lack an introduction in terms of form. 24 However, in reality, so Lucian contends, the beginning of these works still “clarify what [the historian] is going to say” (52). Thus, Lucian indicates that the beginning of a text may function as a preface even if it fails to take the proper form that is typically employed by Hellenistic historians. The genealogies in Chronicles serve this type of function for the narrative though they lack 3, 16.183–187, 20.154–157, 259–268; idem, J.W. Preface 1.1–30, 7.454–455; idem, Ag. Ap. 1.1–59; 2 Macc 2:19–32; Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–2. 23. While Lucian’s work is obviously not contemporary with Chronicles, it contains views of historiographical methodology that go back to the Hellenistic period (he cites Herodotus and Thucydides in Hist. conscr. 54 and Xenophon in 23); Lucian expresses these opinions pedagogically rather than in practice (as do, e.g., Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides). 24.  This is the understanding of the distinction by the Loeb edition: Lucian, How to Write History (trans. K. Kilburn; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959) 6:1–73; here p. 35 n. 3; compare the emphasis on content by Gert Avenarius, “προοίμιον,” in Lukians Schrift zur Geschichtsschreibung (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1956) 113–18, esp. p. 114; and the explicit discussion of this feature in Xenophon’s Anabasis as well as Lucian’s opinion on the matter in Marincola, Authority and Tradition, 237 nn. 107, 273.

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the form of the standard Hellenistic historiographical preface. 25 If this noted similarity stands as a reasonable explanation of what could be the case with the genealogies in Chronicles, the view expressed by Wright would be confirmed and, more importantly, the form of the genealogies could no longer be cited as a reason for their failure to function as a preface for Chronicles.

The Genealogical Identity of “Israel” in Chronicles: Genealogy as Utopia Taken together, the previous insights clearly demonstrate that one of the major purposes of the genealogical material in Chronicles is to provide the identity of the entity known as “Israel.” Rather than offer another assessment of the preservation of historical information in Chronicles or discuss the types of sources from which the Chronicler most likely drew to construct the genealogies, 26 I will proceed from a different methodological approach: utopian literary theory will be employed to address the picture of reality constructed by these lineages and the critique of present reality accomplished by this construction. Simply put, as I have outlined elsewhere, utopian literary theory asks readers to imagine the better alternative reality created by a text. 27 In this view, Chronicles does not reflect historical reality but instead criticizes it and suggests in its place a different society that may yet exist. Thus, while genealogies may be used as a means of legitimation, this analysis proceeds from the different interpretive option—namely, that lineages may be constructed to challenge the current status quo by presenting a radically different picture of the world as if it were reality. Thus, implicitly for the readers, the historical situation at the time of the Chronicler should be adjusted to conform to the reality expressed by the genealogical utopia as articulated in Chronicles. In the following paragraphs, I begin by laying out some of the 25. Unfortunately, Lucian is the only individual to refer to this literary phenomenon. He does cite the beginning of Xenophon’s Anabasis as an example but mentions “other old writers” without providing names or examples of how their works began or did function as “virtual prefaces” (Hist. conscr. 23). 26.  The type of sources typically listed as being available to and used by the Chronicler for his genealogies include: military census or muster lists, temple archives, oral or written tribal genealogies, resettlement lists (esp. of the type found in Ezra 2//Nehemiah 7), the Torah (esp. the genealogies of Genesis), Joshua (the list of Levitical cities in chap. 21), and Samuel–Kings (which contains some relevant genealogical information). 27.  The methodology and data supporting this alternative way of reading Chronicles is more fully developed in my Reading Utopia in Chronicles. Also see my outline of the method and its application to a prophetic text in my essays “Utopia and Utopian Literary Theory: Some Preliminary Observations,” and “Visions of the Future as Critique of the Present: Utopian and Dystopian Images of the Future in Second Zechariah,” in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature (ed. E. Ben Zvi; PFES 92; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2006) 13–26, 249–67.

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issues addressed by previous scholars and preparing the context for the further development of these points and the use of utopian literary theory in the remainder of the essay. It should be noted that most scholars have made two assumptions from which they proceed in their analysis: (1) that the Chronicler has constructed the genealogical material as propaganda for the state of affairs in his own time; and (2) that any information that seems to work against this view (for example, preserving what seem to be preexilic data without adaptation and describing northern tribes long-since lost) is included out of a sense of “thoroughness,” “conservatism,” or “antiquarianism” on his part and does not reflect authentically his own views but merely demonstrates the Chronicler’s respect for his sources, which he maintains unaltered in these cases. 28 Three examples of how the assumptions mentioned in the previous paragraph have been used in textual interpretation suffice to illustrate the point: (1) the missing genealogies of Dan and Zebulun (compare the first of two Benjaminite genealogies in 1 Chr 7:6–12); (2) the short genealogy of Naphtali in 1 Chr 7:13; and (3) the assimilation of individuals and families to the lines of Judah and Levi (1 Chr 2:3–4:23; 5:27–6:66[6:1–81], respectively). In the first example, although they are listed as “sons of Israel” in 1 Chr 2:1– 2, Dan and Zebulun have no subsequent genealogies in the texts of either the MT or the LXX. This has been explained in one of three ways: (1) as textual corruption (reading Benjamin for Zebulun in 1 Chr 7:6 and corrupting an originally short Danite genealogy [“sons of Dan: Hushim” based on Gen 46:23] at the end of 1 Chr 7:12); (2) as a consistent polemic against the idolatrous tribe of Dan in line with an absolute rejection of idolatry throughout Chronicles; or (3) as an indication that the Chronicler lacked any source material for these two tribes and maintained the silence of his sources in this instance. The second example, the single generation of Naphtali’s four sons without further segmentation or linear development, in the opinion of most scholars, either reflects a muster list or was the only information to which the Chronicler had access, and he therefore limited his comments on the tribe only to what his sources would allow. That the Chronicler should be so careful not to expand on or adapt the material concerning this northern tribe (and Dan and the southern tribe of Benjamin, for that matter) obviously stands in marked contrast to his methodology in relating the descendants of Judah and Levi. 28.  This paradoxical view of the Chronicler’s methodology in using his sources— he is simultaneously a pietistic copyist and a manipulator of the tradition for his own purposes—is reflected throughout scholarly writings; see the description of the Chronicler’s dual method in these same terms by W. Emery Barnes, “The David of the Book of Samuel and the David of the Book of Chronicles,” The Expositor 7th ser. 31 (1909) 49–59; here p. 55.

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These final two tribes—Judah and Levi—have expanded and assimilated many individuals and groups to their genealogical heritage. Thus, for example, Samuel becomes a Levite in 1 Chr 6:7–23[22–38] despite the fact that, on a plain reading, 1 Sam 1:1 provides him with an Ephraimite heritage; the singers Heman, Ethan, and Asaph gain Levitical pedigrees in 1 Chr 6:16–33[31–48], while all other references outside Chronicles to these individuals are vague or silent on their tribal affiliation; and Kenites become Judahites in 1  Chr 2:50b–55 without any extant source to support this sort of connection. In these examples, the Chronicler has been charged with attempting (1) to legitimize Second Temple practice, (2) to clarify that individuals in the source material who act like Levites in reality were of Levitical heritage, or (3) to assimilate non-Israelites into the tribe of Judah as a means of including the individuals or groups that had already become a vital part of the Second Temple period community and that would otherwise be excluded on the basis of genealogical purity. In these cases, in which other texts disagree with the Chronicler’s presentation or are silent on the issue of genealogical heritage, rarely does one find a scholar contending that the Chronicler reflects accurate sources otherwise lost. Rather, since these changes are in line with the perceived Tendenz of the Chronicler in other passages, the conclusion that the Chronicler has adjusted his sources or simply fabricated these lineages is quickly drawn. The circular logic, selectivity, and inconsistency by scholars in assessing the Chronicler’s use of sources according to this method are readily apparent. These inconsistencies should also be compared with the first mention of all 12 tribes in Chronicles. The order of the tribes in the introductory list of 1 Chr 2:1–2 duplicates no other sequential list, although it seems to derive from a similar account in Gen 35:23–26 that is organized by mother: Leah’s sons, Rachel’s sons, Bilhah’s sons, and Zilpah’s sons. However, the inclusion of Dan, son of Bilhah, between Zebulun and Joseph (between Leah and Rachel) is not consistent with the order presented in the apparent source text. This has, of course, led to the conclusion that Dan was originally missing (consistent with the Dan-polemic theory) and that a redactor has inserted Dan incorrectly at this point in the text for some now-unknown reason. Since Williamson has demonstrated that the Dan-polemic theory cannot withstand scrutiny, it becomes unnecessary to postulate that this order is the result of a less-than-competent redactor. 29 Rather than our resorting to this extremely popular means of explaining perceived textual difficulties, we may take another look at the text, which reveals an interesting idea: it may be significant that Dan stands just after Zebulun in the present text of 1 Chr 2:1–2. These are the 2 tribes missing genealogies in the following chapters. They also stand at the center of the list, 29.  H. G. M. Williamson, “A Note on I Chronicles vii.12,” VT 23 (1973) 375–79; idem, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 47–48. That this placement is the result of a “copyist’s error” is a common view; see the commentaries.

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flanked by the other 5 children of Leah and the 2 sons of Rachel, the remaining 1 son of Bilhah, and the 2 sons of Zilpah (for a total of 5). Is this a coincidence? Perhaps this irregular order and the failure to include the 2 tribes of Dan and Zebulun should not too quickly be attributed to multiple and compounded scribal errors. Utopian literary theory suggests that an inconsistency of this sort is not a mistake. Rather, inconsistencies provide an opportunity to reconsider the reality presented in the text. The historical reality of the postexilic period may have been that Zebulun and Dan did not return or had ceased to exist (either of which ideas cannot be known or proven at this time), but this may not account for the failure to record genealogies for these two tribes. Indeed, when noting those who returned to settle in Jerusalem, the Chronicler states that people from only four tribes did so: Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh (1 Chr 9:3), and the Chronicler then relates information only about people from Judah and Benjamin. The apparent source text of Neh 11:3–22 mentions Judah and Benjamin and the subsequent information found in Chronicles but fails to mention Ephraim and Manasseh. Is this an indication of the Chronicler’s adjusting the text to his theological presuppositions or of the Nehemiah text’s being adjusted to conform to its exclusive ideology? No clear answer can be given. The question that should be asked instead is: why list only these tribes? What about Issachar, Naphtali, Asher, or even Simeon, not to mention the twoand-a-half tribes (Reuben, Gad, Manasseh) who were exiled by Assyria never to return (a notice mentioned only in Chronicles; see 1 Chr 5:1–26)? Did no one from these remaining tribes return with people from the four mentioned tribes? Is this merely a reflection of the Chronicler’s “all Israel” ideology? 30 Is it only antiquarianism or conservatism toward the tradition that prompted the inclusion of the genealogies of these other tribes who are thus not part of 30.  It has been supposed that Ephraim and Manasseh stand in as representative of the northern tribes (e.g., R. L. Braun, 1 Chronicles [WBC 14; Waco, TX: Word, 1986] 138, 144; and S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought [trans. A. Barber; BEATAJ 9; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989] 300). However, this use is not consistent in Chronicles, so that at least on one occasion Zebulun is mentioned, while Ephraim is not listed among the tribes responding to the call to worship at Jerusalem under Hezekiah, although it is clear that Ephraim received the same call (2 Chr 30:10–11). In this passage, Ephraim and Manasseh are not a circumlocution for “the faithful in the North.” Indeed, Zebulun and Dan also respond positively to David’s rise to power (1 Chr 12:34–41[33–40]). Each time that either Zebulun or Dan is specifically mentioned in Chronicles, the context is either neutral or positive in nature, but never negative. The same, however, cannot be said of the groups regarding which the Chronicler is supposedly concerned to provide an aura of legitimacy: Judahites, Levites, priests, and the Davidic Monarchy. If the Chronicler wished to criticize the tribes of Zebulun and/or Dan, this was not accomplished clearly in either the narrative or the genealogical material.

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the postexilic Israelite community? What is their value in terms of legitimacy or of maintaining the status quo (the two most common explanations for the Judah and Levi material in 1 Chronicles 1–9)? The mentioning of Ephraim and Manasseh does not serve either of these functions. In fact, Williamson correctly notes that the purpose of the genealogies is not legitimacy at all but “to paint a portrait of the people of God in its ideal extent.” 31 However, this sort of ideal will not be found in textual or oral sources or in the historical situation of the Chronicler’s own day; rather, the presentation of Israel in the genealogies is accomplished by means of depicting a utopia. In Chronicles, “Israel” is a larger entity than the tribes who returned during the Persian period. Israel also includes the tribes that did not return, from either of the exiles (Babylonian and Assyrian), and the tribes (Zebulun and Dan) who had an existence in Israel’s past and may again one day become known to their relatives who resettled in the land of Israel. There is nothing in the genealogies that indicates that these tribes would or could not some day return. 32 If anything, the conclusion of the book (2 Chr 36:22–23) serves as an open call for them to return home. 33 However, while in exile outside the land, these tribes do not cease to be part of “all Israel.” What this indicates is that Israelite identity is not tied to geographical location in Chronicles; not all people in the land are Israelites necessarily, and there are Israelites who live outside the land. 34 It may further suggest that the community should be open to those who may claim a connection with the “Israel” depicted in these chapters of genealogies. The lack of genealogies for Zebulun and Dan and the short genealogy of Naphtali 31.  Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 39; compare the similar terminology of “ideal Israel” used repeatedly by S. De Vries, 1 and 2 Chronicles (FOTL 11; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989) 18–28, 94. 32.  The notice about the Transjordanian tribes’ being in exile “to this day” should not be taken to imply the judgment that they will remain in this condition forever (1 Chr 5:23–26). Rather, this statement indicates that, for the Chronicler, whether in composing the phrase or by preserving it from his source, these tribes still exist even though in a state of exile (see Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9, 392, 469–73, 487); contra S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 142. See also 2 Chr 30:6–9, which explicitly holds out the restoration of the northern tribes as a viable option. 33.  Compare the comments of Japhet regarding the function of this verse as an indication that a future restoration was still expected by the Chronicler (“Periodization: Between History and Ideology. The Neo-Babylonian Period in Biblical Historiography,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period [ed. O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003] 75–89, esp. 84). She further contends that, because of this conception, “the book of Chronicles is more future oriented than any other piece of biblical historiography. The past has laid the foundation for the future, but this is still to come” (ibid.). 34.  Contra idem, Ideology, 333, 351; idem, I and II Chronicles, 74.

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thus would become not means of exclusion from the genealogical tree 35 but, rather, excellent points for further growth and incorporation into the entity known as Israel. It is difficult to see how these genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1–9 could possibly function as means of inclusion and exclusion on the basis of the information that they contain. That is, it has been repeatedly asserted that the genealogies serve to legitimize the situation of the Chronicler’s time, to provide a means by which to allow some individuals to serve as priests or Levites to the exclusion of others, for example. However, this can hardly be the case because only two lists, the Davidic line and that of the leading priest, actually extend to the postexilic period (and even the line of the leading priest does not extend beyond the return in Chronicles). The rest of the lines of descent for all of the tribes in chaps. 2–8 stop well short of the exile. It is only the additional resettlement list of 1 Chr 9:1–34 (apparently lifted and adapted from Neh 11:3–22) that extends other parts of the lines of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi into this era, and then only briefly without detailed or precise genealogical trees connecting these individuals and families back into the past. So, for example, the repeated references to other unnamed sons/children and relatives (‫ בניו‬and ‫ם‬ ‌ ‫ )אחיה‬and the mention of only the “heads of families according to their ancestral houses” (v. 9) in this list leave an ambiguous aura about how this postexilic information would be employed as a device for legitimacy and exclusion. Rather than restricting access or incorporation into the lineages of the postexilic community, this postexilic list provides an opportunity (a “loophole”) for the individuals or groups to attach themselves to these tribes as descendants of these unnamed returnees. It is this entity of “Israel,” not whether the Chronicler has preserved historical information or how he adapted his source material, that is the central concern of the nine chapters of genealogical and geographical information. In his attempt to reformulate identity for the readers of Chronicles, this utopian Israel is Israel; it is the Chronicler’s ideal that existed in the past as a real entity—at least within Chronicles’ portrayal of that reality—and not any identifiable historical context. The concept of identity refers to the attempts of a group at self-definition, typically through the construction of “boundary markers,” (i.e., practices and beliefs that differentiate themselves from others’). These boundary markers may take the form of confessional statements of internal commonality regarding belief systems or adherence to a religious code or a particular world view, 35. So Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 39. Contra Karin Friis Plum, who asserts that exclusion is the purpose of all of the genealogical material in Chronicles (“Genealogy as Theology,” SJOT 1 [1989] 66–92; here p. 86). While this purpose of exclusion is clearly operative in the (in)famous use of genealogies in Ezra 2:62 // Neh 7:64, why should this unique description of the use of genealogies govern the ways of understanding their function?

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or they may be expressed in the practical and external means of clothing, food, dress, culture, and so on. If these boundary markers not only separate individuals or groups on the basis of practice and/or beliefs but also on the basis of ethnic continuities, then cultural differences become tied to genealogical relationship in the attempt at group self-definition. It is at this final point, ethnic identity, that much of the research into identity, specifically in determining the identity associated with the term “Israel” in the Second Temple period has been undertaken. It is clear from even a cursory reading of the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9 that they are engaged in this type of definition of identity: an identity expressed in terms of ethnicity and biological relationship. However, the primary function of 1 Chronicles 2–9 (chap. 1 is concerned with identity of a different sort) 36 is not to explain how this entity of “Israel” is distinct from others in terms of boundary markers. These chapters neither list individuals/groups who are excluded nor describe the practices and beliefs that separate “Israel” from the “Other.” Rather, they are concerned primarily with the internal organization of this “Israel” by expressing interrelationships between people who are or should be considered part of this “Israel.” It has been assumed, as noted above, that the inclusion of elements in these lists of non-Israelites (individuals/groups who should be labeled “Other” and possibly excluded) was undertaken to provide a means of legitimizing their standing at the time of the Chronicler; thus, because of the significant role in which some individuals or groups were functioning already in the historical reality of the Second Temple community despite their ethnic identity, 37 these groups were “baptized” or “transplanted” into the genealogical system in order to provide them with the appropriate genealogical credentials to maintain the status quo and continue in their roles. Thus, the issue of identity has often been reduced by scholars to an issue of legitimacy. However, utopian literary theory reads this evidence in a dramatically different way with different conclusions about the functions and purposes of the genealogies of the “sons of Israel.” The text does not provide an argument for the legitimacy of current social relationships but contends, in direct contrast, that the present society is deficient and should instead be reformed in light of this better alternative reality. Thus, drawing on an above-mentioned example, the inclusion of Kenites into the line of Judah (1 Chr 2:50b–55) would not be a result of the Kenites’ having risen to places of prominence in the Second Temple community and their status as authentic Israelites needing to be indisputably affirmed. 38 Rather, utopian literary theory suggests that the historical importance of Kenites at the 36. See my treatment of this first chapter in my Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 69–70. 37.  On the use of these two terms, see S. S. Tuell, First and Second Chronicles (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 2001) 36; and Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 153, respectively. 38. Contra Braun, 1 Chronicles, 46–47.

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time of the Chronicler is irrelevant to their inclusion in the genealogical lists of the “sons of Israel.” Their significance lies instead in their association as “friends” or allies of “Israel,” or at least as positive examples in Israel’s past to be emulated, regardless of ethnic descent, as they are depicted in various other texts that were most likely available (certainly at least their traditions were known to the Chronicler). 39 The Kenites become a cipher for those in the land, regardless of true descent, who are part of “Israel” in terms of action or example. Numerous scholars have noted that one of the Chronicler’s common methods in using sources is that he does reference in an extended way or explicitly state that he is glossing a familiar point from his source material but seems to assume that the audience will be aware of the larger tradition behind the brief mention. Thus, when the Chronicler notes, “These are the Kenites, who came from Hammath, father of the house of Rechab” (v. 55), the positive portrayal of the Kenites—especially the Rechabites—in other literature is immediately recalled. 40 In Israel’s past, so Chronicles contends, foreigners have either aided or been examples for “Israel,” and they will continue to be so in the present and in the future. Chronicles seems to suggest in the genealogies that, if these foreigners are not accepted by those claiming to be “Israel,” then the correct response is simply to redefine “Israel” to include these individuals. This may seem to be similar to the position of legitimacy rejected above, but important distinctions must be noted: the conclusion just suggested does not require any particular historical situation to account for the inclusion of this particular group into “Israel,” nor does it assume that the purpose is to legitimate the current status of these individuals in the community. Instead, this view contends that the argument is being waged on the level of ideology, and rather than affirming the status quo, it is a criticism of it. “Israel” is not a “closed” entity; it is a fluid group and is capable of constant redefinition. In this case, the redefinition is accomplished through genealogies—and not only in retrospective attempts to justify the present. Any group may be assimilated into the entity of “Israel” regardless of historical genealogical descent; thus, this definition of “Israel” is a utopian construct. From this understanding of the inclusion of foreign elements as not necessarily being motivated by an overwhelming penchant for legitimation, the 39.  See the references to the Kenites in Judg 1:16; chaps. 4–5; 1 Sam 15:6, 30:29; and to the associated group of Rechabites in 2 Kgs 10:15–27; Jeremiah 35. 40.  However, it should be noted that the meaning of this verse is complicated, and there is the possibility that Rechabites are not even intended here; see the articulation of this view by C. H. Knights, “Kenites = Rechabites?: 1 Chronicles ii 55 Reconsidered,” VT 43 (1993) 10–18; idem, “The Text of 1 Chronicles iv 12: A Reappraisal,” VT 37 (1987) 375–77. However, given the relatively few occurrences of “Rechab” in the HB, it is difficult not to see one of them in this case as well.

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depiction of the “sons of Israel” as a whole in these genealogies can be analyzed. As I noted in the previous section, scholars have tended to mine these chapters for whatever bits of historical information may be imbedded in the genealogies. They assume that a historical reality is reflected in the text, even if only as a move for legitimacy in the postexilic community without any preexilic validity. Utopian literary theory abandons the perceived need to link the portrayal of these lists with one historical era or another, and instead it mines the data for the points that transcend the historical reality to construct another alternative reality for “Israel.” In this light, the people of “Israel” is not limited to the “twelve tribes,” nor is it restricted to individuals returning from exile, nor is it even the people in the land of Israel, nor did it exist in an ideal form at any one point in time. First, the “12 tribes” of Israel do not exist as such in the genealogies of Chronicles. Rather, genealogies of the following tribes appear in 1 Chronicles 2–8: Judah, Simeon, Reuben, Gad, half-Manasseh, Levi, Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, half-Manasseh, Ephraim, Asher, Benjamin. If Dan and Zebulun were not originally provided with genealogies, the list of the descendants of the “12 tribes” is extremely irregular, and counting them becomes a complex effort: 41 Should Benjamin be counted as 2 distinct tribes? Do the 2 “half-Manasseh” units count as 1 or 2 tribes? What should be done about names and lineages noted without tribal affiliations but imbedded in these genealogies—do they count as part of the tribe or not, and if so, why are they not better integrated into the genealogies? Japhet’s contention that the traditional number 12 gives way to the “inclusion of every element” for the Chronicler’s presentation is on the right track but does not go far enough. 42 “Israel” in Chronicles is not simply “the twelve” plus those attached to them. Genealogically, the “twelve tribes” did not exist, but “Israel,” in the Chronicler’s notion of “all Israel,” did exist in the past and continues to exist in the Chronicler’s present. Its membership was ever changing in the past and will continue to be in a state of flux in the future. The terms “Israel” and “all Israel” resist fixed definitions in Chronicles. The terms relate to genealogical, social, political, and religious groups. While this “all Israel” is enrolled by genealogies (1  Chr 9:1), it becomes clear that the genealogical definition is less significant than the religious definition as the narrative unfolds. As many scholars have noted, “Israel” is the community of Yhwh centered around the temple and is open to the people from the “Israel” of Judah, the “Israel” of the northern tribes who worship Yhwh, and (though far less recognized) the “Is41.  Compare, for example, the 10 tribes of Tuell, First and Second Chronicles, 29, with the 14 of Japhet, Ideology, 280. See also the unique listing of tribes in 1 Chr 27:16–24 that is missing Gad and Asher and seems to regard “Aaron” as a tribe distinct from Levi. 42.  Ibid., 308.

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rael” of the people who are not genealogically Israelite but are also part of this community. The centrality of this religious definition of the identity of “Israel” does not displace the genealogical entity of “Israel” but shifts the importance away from the claim to genealogical heritage toward the requirement of religious fidelity to Yhwh and the temple. Second, “Israel” is not only the people who returned from exile. Although many other biblical texts seem to indicate that it was only the individuals who returned from exile who could constitute the true people of “Israel”—whether genealogically or religiously—Chronicles denies this limited view. 43 Rather, Chronicles should be viewed as one of the many texts that hold out hope for a future restoration of the northern tribes to the land of Israel from their exile. 44 It was through religious “unfaithfulness” (‫ )מעל‬that the Transjordanian tribes (1 Chr 5:25–26), the Northern Kingdom (2 Chr 30:6–9), Judah (1 Chr 9:1; 2 Chr 36:14–16), and even King Manasseh (2 Chr 33:1–13) were exiled; 45 it was through the “spirit of Yhwh’s” moving in Cyrus that Judah was restored (2 Chr 36:22–23); it was by repentance and humility that Manasseh returned from his exile to regain his throne (2 Chr 33:10–20) and that the remnant of the Northern Kingdom participated effectively in Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chr 30:10–22). How will the Transjordanian tribes and remaining northern tribes still in exile be restored in the future? Chronicles does not specify the means (Yhwh’s intervention or their repentance, or both), though it does not reject the genealogical claims of these tribes as “Israel,” as it retains them in the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9; the book also most likely holds out for those in exile (whether from Babylon or Assyria) to hear the call of Cyrus to return as part of Yhwh’s “people”—whether in this case genealogical or religious—to the temple in Jerusalem (2 Chr 36:22–23). Third, “Israel” is not synonymous with the people residing in the land. Despite Japhet’s claim to the contrary, “Israel” does not continually occupy its land and does not subsume within it the foreignness of non-Israelites so that all those living in the land are de facto part of “Israel.” 46 Although it does not emphasize the exodus and conquest traditions, Chronicles does not completely suppress them either. Japhet notes this exception, 47 but she does not seriously consider the statements in Chronicles that indicate that non-Israelites—in this case in the biological sense—resided in the land, or at least in parts of it, before 43.  See, e.g., Jer 24:1–10; Ezra 4:1–4; Neh 2:19–20; cf. Zech 11:14. 44.  See, e.g., Isa 11:11–16; Ezek 37:15–23; and Zech 10:6–12. 45.  Note here the contrast between the reason given for exile in Chronicles (religious unfaithfulness) and the reason emphasized in Ezra–Nehemiah: intermarriage (Ezra 9:1–7, 12; Neh 9:1–2, 26–31; cf. Neh 13:23–27). 46.  Japhet, Ideology, 351, 363–86; idem, “Conquest and Settlement in Chronicles,” JBL 98 (1979) 205–18, esp. pp. 213–18. 47. Idem, Ideology, 374–86. See, however, Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 81.

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the Israelites did and that these groups continued to exist alongside “Israel” throughout its history. 48 In addition, Chronicles on two occasions notes that “Israel” itself is but a “stranger and alien” in the land, having no permanent attachment to it (1 Chr 16:19; 29:15). While there certainly is an intimate connection between the people and its land in Chronicles, the recognition of foreigners residing within it and the tenuous nature of the existence of “Israel” itself within the land are worth special notice here. The land of “Israel” is not determinative for the people of “Israel.” 49 When the people are exiled to Babylon, leaving the land completely desolate according to Chronicles (2 Chr 36:20–23), this does not change the people’s status as being authentically “Israel.” This “empty land” theology demonstrates that the connection between Yhwh and “Israel” in Chronicles is not about physical location or space. “Israel” transcends space; it is not tied to the land, and it is not restricted to any particular dimensions of the land. Fourth, “Israel” as an ideal did not exist at any one particular time. As noted above, the presentation of the dimensions of the land is not restricted to one spatial description. This is partially due to the fact that in Chronicles “Israel” is presented in atemporal terms. The “Israel” of the genealogies stands outside time. The genealogies do not continue down to the same time period and even reflect cross-sections of different historical periods (e.g., 1 Chr 4:31; 7:2, 13). Thus, no one period can be consulted to provide the answers to the questions who is “Israel,” and what should it look like? The entity changes throughout the genealogies and throughout the narrative, while always remaining “Israel.” Thus, there can be no “return” to a “Golden Age” by simply replicating the depiction of “Israel” that these chapters contain. 50 The book does not say “Israel” can be restored again if only the conditions that existed in the past at its moment of perfection could be replicated somehow; rather, “Israel” is and will continue to exist despite historical circumstances. Its identity is not in jeopardy of being lost; even the exile and the destruction of the temple cannot 48. See the remarks regarding the “former inhabitants there [who] belonged to Ham,” (1 Chr 4:40) and “the men of Gath who were born in the land” (1 Chr 7:21). The label “who were born in the land” is interestingly never applied to biological Israelites in Chronicles but only here to the originally nonbiologically Israelite inhabitants. In addition, there is a recognition of gerim (‫ )גרים‬residing in the land who are not biologically Israelite (contra Japhet, Ideology, 334–51) throughout all of Israel’s history. 49.  Contra idem, I and II Chronicles, 46, 74; compare the nuanced view of Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9, 486–87. 50.  Even the Davidic–Solomonic era does not qualify; see my Reading Utopia in Chronicles. The genealogies do not reflect the conditions of this time period despite the fact that several lines end at this time and the apparent culmination of all this material at the time of Saul. The genealogies contain data explicitly noted as coming during the periods of later kings (1 Chr 5:17) and even down to the exile and beyond (1 Chr 3:16–24; 5:41[6:15 Eng]); contra Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 64.

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eradicate it. 51 The question that Chronicles asks is not “Will Israel continue to exist?” but “How will Israel continue to exist?” or “What will be its ‘quality of life’?” However, there can be consistency or lines of continuity between the past, present, and future. The utopian “Israel” of the genealogies is not a model to be instituted as a system in the present but a pattern from which to assess the present. This can only be accomplished in terms of the seemingly contradictory notions of continuity with the past and openness to continued historical change in the future. 52 Through the purposes, forms, and functions of these genealogies, the Chronicler constructs identity in another world, a better alternative reality to the present: a utopian Israel that transcends the past and present, opening up new possibilities for the future. 51.  The desolation of the land and removal of all of its inhabitants does not destroy “Israel” (2 Chr 36:17–21); in addition, while the cultic objects are preserved, the temple itself is destroyed and the cult is defunct (vv.  18–19). Thus, “Israel” does not cease to exist when its temple does or when it is removed from its land. In many respects, this view of the Chronicler on the continued existence of “Israel” without temple and without land is paralleled by several texts written after the destruction of the Second Temple (e.g., 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra) and by rabbinic literature in particular (cf. Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9, 137). 52.  Compare the point made by De Vries that these genealogies depict Israel so that it “may yet be what it is” (1 and 2  Chronicles, 20, 94); however, the postexilic community cannot replicate these conditions in their present, but they can employ the principles advocated by the genealogical presentation of who they are and how they constitute “Israel.”

Reading the Lists: Several Recent Studies of the Chronicler’s Genealogies Keith Bodner Crandall University

Introduction The eminent Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye is credited with the following remark: “There are only two kinds of readers, those who skip lists and those who relish them.” 1 Among the most complex sorts of list in any literary text, the genealogy must rank fairly high, and the most advanced examples of it in the Bible are the first nine chapters of Chronicles, the last book of the Hebrew canon. The lists at the beginning of Chronicles, it is not delusional to suggest, have often been skipped in the history of biblical studies. But for the reader prepared to relish the list—and I assume that Frye holds this sort of reader in higher regard—there must be some inherent value and reason for attending to a category such as a genealogy, whether the text be biblical or some other genre of classic literature. In the first instance, Frye (of anyone) would be cognizant of the literary possibility and political potency of a genealogy, for one must look no further than the opening scene of Henry V, where a pair of clerical dignitaries argue that the king’s ancestry and lineage provide nascent justification for an invasion of France. Moreover, scholars are increasingly aware of the role of genealogies in the articulation of social memory and the quest for corporate or shared identity. 2 Either way, the late great Frye no doubt would be encouraged by the recent turn in Chronicles study in the Canadian academy and beyond, not least by the heightened attention among scholars to the often underrated genealogical inventory that commences the book. I have two purposes in this short essay. First, there have been a number of recent forays into the genealogical material with a decided interest in literary approaches, and I will canvas three of these studies in this section of the paper. The purpose 1.  Cited in G. Josipovici, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988) 141. 2.  See R. S. Hendel, Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 9–11.

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of this section is to illustrate briefly how literary approaches are increasingly contributing to the study of the genealogies. Second, I will then turn to the presentation of Simeon’s lineage in 1 Chronicles 4 and, in particular, revisit one interpretive problem in which the sort of literary analysis showcased in part one may shed some new light on a familiar problem: what are the Amalekites doing in 1 Chr 4:43?

Part One: Reading the Lists After Cyrus I begin with an article by John Wright that appears as a chapter in the collection The Chronicler as Author, the second installment of the landmark “Chronicler as _____” trilogy. 3 This volume contains 16 essays that represent a range of efforts at probing the literary side of the Chronicler’s enterprise. Within this milieu, Wright’s contribution seeks to apply the categories of modern narratology to Chronicles, mainly because narratology, broadly conceived, provides “a set of tools, as a means to express and specify one’s interpretative reactions to a text.” 4 But even more than only a reader’s reactions, in Wright’s view, narratology is a hermeneutical approach that permits an analytic, disciplined means of accounting for the structural relationships that comprise a narrative text. While readers must constitute these relationships themselves (rather than ‘discover them’ inherent within the text), narratological method permits the possibility of discussing and judging the reading in relation to the text itself. 5

Now it should be said that a frequent criticism of narratological application to the Hebrew Bible among scholars is that—as a methodology—it tends to be top heavy with jargon, bristling neologisms, and if a text is already complex it becomes utterly incoherent after the narratological critic is finished with it. Such accusations, in my view, cannot be leveled at Wright, who defines and explains at every point during his essay. To get more specific, a practical (and quite straightforward) component of narratological analysis is the distinction 3.  Graham et al., The Chronicler as Historian (JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Graham and McKenzie, The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Graham et al., The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein (JSOTSup 371; London; T. & T. Clark, 2003). 4.  J. W. Wright, “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 139, here citing M. Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (trans. C. van Boheemen; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) x. 5.  Ibid., 141.

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between the story and the fabula. The fabula is an abstraction of the basic events of a narrative in their sequential ordering, whereas the story is how those events are actually told by the narrator. 6 The differentiation between the story and the fabula, as can quickly be recognized, has a particular currency when applied to Chronicles. On this score, Wright begins by turning to the seminal work of Sara Japhet, whose commentary notes that “Chronicles describes the history of Israel from beginning to ‘beginning’, that is, from the inception of human existence with Adam, through the destruction of the first commonwealth during the reign of Zedekiah, to the new commencement with the declaration of Cyrus.” 7 This is an important move, Wright intones, because, “By simultaneously abstracting the interpretive concept of ‘beginning’ from both the figure of Adam and Cyrus’s proclamation, she [Japhet] ties the beginning to the end, thus generating [the book’s] main import.” The story of Chronicles, then, officially comes to an end with the decree of Cyrus, as the Persian king utters, “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 36:23). But, as Wright patiently shows, although the decree of Cyrus might bring the story to a conclusion, “it does not constitute the latest chronological point in the fabula of Chronicles. The chronology of Chronicles reaches beyond Cyrus’ decree: 1 Chron. 9.2–34 records a list of the families living within the land following the exile.” 8 Now, as is readily conceded, 1  Chronicles 9 poses a number of chronological problems. One instance is the apparent equation of “temple” and “tent” in a seemingly deliberate straining of chronology, with the text “blurring the distinction between the postexilic reconstruction of life in Yehud and the era before the first temple was built in Jerusalem.” 9 At the same time, it should be noted that chap. 9 is not the only occasion in the genealogies where a postexilic settlement moves into view: “It should come as no surprise,” says Wright, “to find that the one other place in Chronicles that extends the 6.  Cf. S. B. Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978). In my own work, I have applied the distinction between story and fabula within the ark narrative of 1 Samuel 5, noting that the MT and LXX versions have different configurations of the story while retaining the basic events of the fabula (see my “Mouse Trap: A Text-Critical Problem with Rodents in the Ark Narrative,” JTS 59 [2008] 634–49). 7.  Wright, “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles,” 143, citing S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 8. 8.  Ibid., 144. 9.  Ibid., 145. The key line here is probably 1 Chr 9:23, ‘So they and their sons were in charge of the gates of the house of the Lord, for the house of the tent, to be guards’ (‎‫ ;)לבית־יהוה לבית־האהל למׁשמרות‬translations is my own.

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chronological sequence of the fabula into an undesignated time following the exile involves the Davidic family. As is well known, 1 Chron. 3.10–24 extends the Davidic line through Solomon well into the Second Temple period.” 10 Naturally, Wright’s reading elicits numerous interpretive options, but zeroing in on his conclusion merits a more extended quotation: This analysis has argued that the fabula that the book of Chronicles encodes reaches from Adam to the postexilic period, where chronology literally ends. The actors narrow from persons who embrace all of humanity to a more and more specific family, ultimately arriving at David and his descendants, who both cause and experience the progression of events. Location, likewise, begins everywhere (or is it nowhere?) and progressively narrows to focus on a specific place—not merely Jerusalem, but the temple in Jerusalem. The fabula of the book of Chronicles, therefore, is constituted by inverse movements: as the events move the actors and location from the all-encompassing to the particular, events move the chronology from the particular to the all-encompassing. The result is a remarkable claim that the fabula seems to make: history has reached its end in a restored, postexilic Jerusalem temple in the presence of the ruling Davidic family. 11

In this short summary, I am not insisting that one has to absolutely agree with all of Wright’s proposals but, rather, pointing out that his article is a creative reading of the genealogical lists that, when considered on balance, does have a number of implications for the interpretation of the larger work. To my mind, it is useful to consider that the story may end with the decree of Cyrus, but that is certainly not the last chronological word of Chronicles. The “end,” if that is the best definition, is found in the genealogical material at the beginning, with the family of David somehow ruling in Jerusalem. If one conflates chapters three and nine, it is evidently a family that rules not by monarchic fiat but instead by service in the precincts of the place of worship.

Generations That Count Wright’s endeavor to abstract the fabula of Chronicles is complemented by the work of John Jarick, who, through a Festschrift article that he later incorporated into his short commentary develops another interesting reading of the genealogical material. “Lying somewhat camouflaged within the genealogies of the opening chapters of the book of Chronicles,” Jarick begins, “is a generational sequence which may have carried a certain calculating significance for 10.  Ibid., 146. 11.  Ibid., 153. Note the engagement with some of Wright’s thesis in S. J. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2005) 83–88. Note also the not-dissimilar lines of inquiry in G. N. Knoppers, “Shem, Ham and Japheth: The Universal and the Particular in the Genealogy of Nations,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein (ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. Mc­Kenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 13–31.

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the chroniclers who devised it. But at one strand of the sequence the Hebrew scribes responsible for its transmission appear to have erred, and the interpreter needs to look to the witness of the Greek scribes to see the pattern emerge.” 12 And on that mysterious note, Jarick proceeds to reveal this pattern, one that hinges (so he explains with considerable technical detail) on 1  Chr 3:21, a verse in the midst of the Davidic line. It is a fairly unbroken chain until the disruption of v. 21; commentators have long puzzled over the best reading, with the Septuagint providing a serviceable alternative. The key issue is whether or not the generational sequence unfolds in a linear or segmented fashion, because the MT presents a group of brothers, whereas the LXX has sons. Jarick opts for the Greek reading here on a number of grounds: “Thus in v. 21, where the Masoretes read a sequence of ‫‘( בני‬sons of’), it makes better sense to read a sequence of ‫‘( בנו‬his son’) instead, as the septuagintal sequence of υἱὸς αὐτοῦ does. The common scribal slippage between waw and yod sent the Hebrew text slightly astray at v. 21, but the Greek text either predated the error or corrected it.” 13 I might add in passing that this reading is likewise followed by Gary Knoppers with comparable reasoning. 14 Still, the question needs to be asked: “But is there any particular consequence in whether the chroniclers intended to have pass by us in this verse just one generation in a list of six brothers or in fact six succeeding generations in a sequence of father and son and grandson and so on?” 15 With this question, Jarick’s thesis is unveiled: As it happens, a rather interesting aspect emerges here, which seems not to have been noticed by commentators. If we make the reading I have suggested, somewhat against the Masoretic Text but in full accordance with the Septuagint and other versions, then the entire number of generations from David to his lastnamed descendant, Anani (v. 24), is 32, exactly the same number as the generations from Adam to Jesse. . . . Perhaps the neat halving of the total number of generations is a coincidence, or perhaps the septuagintal reading of the problematic verse is misplaced, but if it is not a mistaken piece of text-critical hocus­ pocus then it does suggest that the chroniclers were able to devise a rather clever 12. J. Jarick, “The Implications of LXX 1 Chronicles 3:21 for King David’s Place in the Chronicles Timeline,” in Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. M. F. J. Baasten and W. T. van Peursen; OLA 118; Leuven: Peeters and Department of Oriental Studies, 2003) 479–585, esp. p. 479; cf. idem, 1 Chronicles (Readings; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). 13.  Idem, “The Implications of LXX 1 Chronicles 3:21,” 581. 14.  G. N. Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 322–23. Note, however, the discussion of R. W. Klein, 1 Chronicles (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 109–10; 121. 15.  Jarick, “The Implications of LXX 1 Chronicles 3:21,” 581.

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Keith Bodner balance to their generational matrix, although by not making it explicit they were unable to prevent a simple confusion between waw and yod from masking their achievement. And that achievement seems to have been a calculated placement of David at the centre of the whole span of human history as sketched by the chroniclers in their genealogical record: Adam to Jesse equals 32 generations; David to Anani equals 32 generations. 16

Lest one get all “Bible Code-ish” about this sort of enumerative procedure, Jarick does point out—and cites a few poignant examples—that Chronicles does have a substantial interest in numbers and other reckonings; and assuming that the same parties are responsible for both the genealogies and the subsequent narrative, we can see that they foregrounded this numerical interest early in the game. From this observation about David at the center of both the Chronicler’s genealogy and, by extension, all of history, Jarick ties together his argument: there may be more here than a cleverness on the part of the chroniclers in presenting a finely balanced “before David” and “after David” system. If the “before David” span of generations had been 32, and then the incomparable man arose, what might happen after another 32 generations? The genealogical schematization in the book of Chronicles might have tantalizingly invited the first readers, presumably members of that second 32nd generation, to speculate on whether a “new David” could be destined to arise in their generation. A seemingly innocuous list of names could, therefore, have considerable significance in the interpretation of the book of Chronicles. 17

Cultic Center As a third example in this rather truncated review of some recent research from a more literary perspective on the genealogies of Chronicles, I turn now to the lengthy dissertation-turned-book of James Sparks. After a survey of past scholarship (e.g., Robert Wilson, Manfred Oeming) and research on genealogies, Sparks tenders his own proposition that centers on the structure and purposes of 1 Chronicles 1–9. 18 What is important for understanding the Chronicler’s purposes is not the origins of his genealogical material, but what he does with it. The overall structure rather than the origins of the individual components is the vital factor. . . . Therefore, because the Chronicler’s genealogies should be viewed as a literary construct 16.  Ibid., 581–82. 17.  Ibid., 582. 18. J. T. Sparks, The Chronicler’s Genealogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9 (Academia Biblica 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008). Note his early discussions on R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (YNER 7; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); and M. Oeming, Das Wahre Israel: Die ‘Genealogische Vorhalle’ 1 Chronik 1–9 (BWA[N]T 128; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990).

Several Recent Studies of the Chronicler’s Genealogies

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they must also be investigated in literary terms and searched for literary clues as to their structure and their meaning. 19

The most crucial component of Sparks’s introductory discussion is his treatment of chiasm, because, as we will see, he contends that chaps. 1–9 are chiastically designed. Anticipating a lukewarm response from some members of the scholarly guild who are chiastically circumspect—that is, all too wary of all things chiastic, Sparks nevertheless lays out his brave claim, namely: that the first nine chapters of Chronicles form “a deliberately constructed chiasm which through the placing of ‘the main idea, the thesis, or the turning point . . . at its center,’ reveals the ‘key to meaning’ of both the chiastically structured genealogical section as well as to the Chronicler’s work as a whole.” 20 He further asserts, “It is only through the recognition of the chiastic structure and the deliberate interpretation of the genealogical section as a chiastic structure, that the purpose and function of the genealogical section can be appreciated within the context of the Chronicler’s entire work.” 21 Sparks of course is not the first to argue for some sort of chiastic arrangement within the genealogies, but in his estimation, “no author has yet understood the interpretive implications of this recognition of the structuring of the genealogical section as a chiasm. It is this task,” he says, “which is here attempted.” 22 With the exception of the repetition of Gibeon (1 Chr 9:35–44), his proposal includes all of the genealogical material, beginning with the world before Israel, moving to the center of the cultic sphere in the temple conducted by the sons of Aaron, and ending with the resettled community after the exile (see fig.  1). For Sparks, “it becomes clear that the proper cultic duties (level F), performed by the proper cultic officials (level F′), is [sic] the central theme of the genealogies. This further enables one to see that it is the cult in particular, rather than just the tribe of Levi, that is the theme around which all else in 19.  Ibid., 22–23. 20.  Ibid., 28, citing Y. T. Radday, “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity (ed. J. W. Welch; Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981) 51. 21.  Ibid., 28. 22.  Ibid., 28. Cf. the earlier discussion of Knoppers about the “Zadok” chiasm in the priestly genealogies: “There are twenty-five descendants from Qohath [1 Chron 6:1] to Jehozadaq [1 Chron 6:15]. If Qohath is the first prominent scion of Levi and Jehozadaq the last, the midpoint is Zadoq. Twelve generations of priests precede him . . . and twelve generations of priests succeed him. . . . Commentators have called attention to a possible connection to MT 1 Kgs 6:1, which dates the building of the Temple to four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus (12 generations x 40 = 480), but the Exodus is not in view. Rather, the time of Zadoq marks the halfway point between the Ancestral era and the Babylonian exile. In this stylized line of descent, twelve generations (or 480 years) precede Zadoq and twelve generations (or 480 years) follow him” (I Chronicles, 257–58).

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Keith Bodner A.  1 Chr 1:1−54: The world before Israel   B.  1 Chr 2:1−2: The sons of Israel    C.  1 Chr 2:3−4:23: Judah—the tribe of King David     D.  1 Chr 4:24−5:26: Tribes of Israel in victory and defeat      E.  1 Chr 6:1−47: The descendants of Levi       F.  1 Chr 6:48–49: The cultic personnel in their duties      F′. 1 Chr 6:50−53: The cultic leaders      E′.  1 Chr 6:54−81: The descendants of Levi and their land     D′.  1 Chr 7:1−40: Tribes of Israel in defeat and restoration    C′.  1 Chr 8:1−40: Benjamin—the tribe of King Saul   B′.  1 Chr 9:1a: “All Israel” counted A′.  1 Chr 9:1b−34: Israel reestablished

Fig. 1.  The chiastic structure of 1 Chronicles 1–9, based on Sparks, The Chronicler’s Genealogies, 29.

the genealogies is organized.” 23 One extrapolates from this that 1  Chr 6:49 becomes the center of the center, so to speak: “Yet Aaron and his sons offered sacrifices upon the altar of burnt-offering and upon the altar of incense, for all the work of the most holy place, and to make atonement on behalf of all Israel, according to everything commanded by Moses, the servant of God.” The centrality of atonement, then, cannot be discounted, and with echoes of William Johnstone, Sparks maintains that the place and personnel associated with atonement are paramount: Although it is clear that the Chronicler addresses many themes and ideas not only in the genealogies but the work as a whole, what this structure indicates is of the greatest significance to the Chronicler in his work is: the authorised cultic personnel performing the authorised cultic functions in the authorised cultic place. It is my contention that for the Chronicler all else is secondary to, and supportive of, this overarching theme. 24

Part Two: Simeon and the Amalekites I now transition to the second part of this essay, in which I consider one particular element of Simeon’s lineage in 1 Chronicles 4. To emphasize, my point 23.  Sparks, The Chronicler’s Genealogies, 31. 24. Ibid., 32. Cf. W. Johnstone, “Guilt and Atonement: The Theme of 1 and 2 Chronicles,” in A Word in Season: Essays in Honour of William McKane (ed. J. D. Martin and P. R. Davies; JSOTSup 42; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986) 113–38; revised in Chronicles and Exodus: An Analogy and Its Application (JSOTSup 275; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 90–114.

Several Recent Studies of the Chronicler’s Genealogies

37

so far has not been to analyze or criticize the above scholars carefully but, rather, to illustrate the diversity and show just a few samples of how literary approaches are increasingly being applied—in different ways with unique results—to the tessellated genealogical material. One might demur that each of the three studies I have highlighted has some perceived weaknesses, but there are some real strengths there as well. Thus, Wright underscores the temporal dimension of the first nine chapters; if his understanding of the fabula has validity, then there is a certain inseparability of the genealogies from the rest of Chronicles; as he puts it, “The genealogies are not merely important for the book; in a structural sense they are the book.” 25 Similarly, Jarick accentuates the essential interest in the Davidic line and its centrality within a particular historical framework that forms an integral part of the Chronicler’s “mindscape” (to borrow a term from Ehud Ben Zvi). As for Sparks—whether or not one ultimately buys the chiastic proposition (and I suspect there might be some who hesitate), at least his schema has the graphically striking recognition of the most holy place as the spatial center of Chronicles (and given the obvious concern with the temple in the book)—his undertaking merits further engagement. My present interest inclines in a decidedly more specific direction: after consulting scholars doing this sort of research, are there any insights to be gained as far as Simeon’s listing in 1 Chronicles 4? Recent literary works on the genealogies have stressed time and space, that is, the temporal and spatial dimensions probed in the genealogical material. I would like to apply this sort of thinking to a knotty problem in the list of Simeon: the Amalekite affair at the end of the Simeonite genealogy. In 1 Chr 4:42–43, we read the following anecdote: “From them—from the sons of Simeon—went to the hill of Seir (500 men), with Pelatiah, Neariah, Rephaiah, and Uzziel (the sons of Ishi) as their head. They struck the remnant of the Amalekites who had escaped, and dwelt there until this day.” A barrage of questions assault the reader here, and commentators puzzle over the details: what prompts this campaign, why do the Amalekites make a fleeting appearance, and how should one interpret “to this day”? Edward Curtis and Albert Madsen dutifully report that Julius Wellhausen doubts the historicity of Simeonite aggression, but they add that the “motive, however, for the fabrication of such a story is not readily apparent.” 26 So another scholar says there is a problem with the “anachronistic Amalekites,” and on it goes. 27 25.  Wright, “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles,” 154. 26.  E. L. Curtis and A. A. Madsen, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Chronicles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1910) 117. 27. M. Augustin, “The Role of Simeon in the Book of Chronicles and in Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1990), Division A: The Bible and Its World (ed. D.  Assaf; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990) 141.

38

Keith Bodner

Nonetheless, when time and space in the Simeon list are considered—along the lines submitted by the researchers in the first section of this essay—there may be other options that emerge, especially in light of the extent to which Judah and the Davidic House are interwoven within the Simeonite genealogy of 1 Chronicles 4. In the judgment of Steven McKenzie: It is striking to find a genealogy for Simeon included in 1 Chronicles 1–9, since Simeon had disappeared as a geographic and political entity long before the Chronicler’s time. Its absorption within Judah is already reflected in Josh 19:1–9 and Judg 1:3. The Chronicler’s inclusion of Simeon, then, is part of his idealized portrait of “all Israel” rather than a realistic picture of the postexilic makeup of Israel. 28

As for the genealogy itself, virtually every commentator agrees to some combination of a three-part structure, with a grouping of names in 4:24–27, followed by a list of settlements and cities in vv.  28–33, and concluding with notices of expansion to the west and east along with military exploits in vv. 34–43. To this I add that there are references to Judah/David in each section, beginning with the first. After the listing of names similar to the account in Numbers, in 1 Chr 4:27, we have a list of names that ends on a curious note: “Now Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters, but his brothers did not have many sons. Their entire family did not multiply like the sons of Judah.” These two sons of Leah, then, are enumerated one after the other in the genealogical material, but Simeon is “overshadowed” by Judah. 29 So on the one hand the tribe is numerically weak when compared with Judah, but on the other hand Shimei’s virility foreshadows their survival. The comparative weakness relative to Judah continues in the second section of the genealogy, the listing of place-names. Notable here is the mention of Ziklag—an otherwise obscure town made famous because it 28. S. L. McKenzie, 1–2  Chronicles (Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries; Nashville: Abingdon, 2004) 84. 29. Y. Levin, “From Lists to History: Chronological Aspects of the Chronicler’s Genealogies,” JBL 123 (2004) 611–12. Cf. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 121: “The pith of the passage is found in v. 27: the blessing of prolific offspring granted to Shimei is in explicit contrast to the infecundity of ‘his brothers,’ and to the fortunes of the Simeonites as a whole, who did not ‘multiply like the men of Judah.’” On Judah, see, for instance, T. Willi, “Late Persian Judaism and Its Conception of an Integral Israel according to Chronicles: Some Observations on Form and Function of the Genealogy of Judah in 1 Chronicles 2.3–4.23,” in Second Temple Studies, 2. Temple Community in the Persian Period (ed. T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards; JSOTSup 175; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) 146–62; G. Knoppers, “Intermarriage, Social Complexity, and Ethnic Diversity in the Genealogy of Judah,” JBL 120 (2001) 15–30. See also the discussion of I. Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 315–24.

Several Recent Studies of the Chronicler’s Genealogies

39

is a pawn in the political skullduggery between David and Achish toward the end of 1 Samuel—but even more notable is v. 31b at the end of the place list: “These were their cities until David became king.” Interpreters are divided on the meaning of this sentence, with some maintaining that, “once David’s rule began, the land became his to apportion as he willed” 30 or that some sort of “administrative change” took place during this period that jeopardized the Simeonite holdings. 31 Either way, it appears as though David’s reign marked a turning point for Simeon. According to Jarick, David’s reign is the halfway mark of history for the Chronicler, and coincidentally, it is a decisive juncture for Simeon, with a sense of uncertainty as to how the tribe will fare. As it turns out, the third section of the genealogy indicates that David’s reign is not the end of the Simeonite lineage; far from being absorbed into Judah (as is apparently the case in the Deuteronomistic History), the tribe of Simeon experiences unprecedented growth and expansion during the monarchic period (and beyond) in Chronicles. A key text is 4:41: “These ones—written by name—came in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and they struck their tents. Meunim were found there, and they utterly destroyed them until this day. They lived in their place, since there was pasture for their flocks there.” There is no consensus on the precise identity of the Meunim, but on the basis of passages such as 2 Chr 26:7, it is thought that they were traditional enemies, not unlike the Philistines. 32 Although the tribe was constricted in earlier times, they are flourishing in the era of Hezekiah, even to the point of utterly destroying—that is, “putting to the ban” (‫ )חרם‬a traditional antagonist. This forms what must be an intentional contrast with the infamous Achan son of Carmi in 1 Chr 2:7 in the very midst of Judah’s genealogy: Achan’s unfaithfulness becomes a foil for the Simeonites’ later activities. Military success of this sort conforms to some of the criteria, according to Brian Kelly, of “the Chronistic topos ‘war report with positive outcome,’” and here Kelly points to factors such as: the small number of warriors whose victory indicated it was achieved through God’s help, and their peaceful occupation signifying “rest.” This tribe acted in an exemplary way, observing the herem “in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah” and so enjoyed secure possession of the land. Mention of this ideal reforming king who trusted Yahweh for help against Judah’s enemies (2  Chron. 29–32)

30.  S. S. Tuell, First and Second Chronicles (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 2001) 30–31. 31.  Klein, 1 Chronicles, 149. 32. W. Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, vol. 1: 1 Chronicles –2 Chronicles 9: Israel’s Place among the Nations (JSOTSup 253; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 1:68.

40

Keith Bodner may be an early indication to the Chronicler’s readers of how the divine rewards of military success and territorial expansion may be secured. 33

When these various details are finally considered, one is in a better position to appreciate the capstone of the Simeonite genealogy and the last recorded activity—the anecdote I quoted earlier in 4:43, where we are told that a contingent of 500 Simeonites marched out to the hill of Seir and struck the remnant of the Amalekites who escaped, and lived there “until this day.” There is polite disagreement here among commentators, as Japhet notes: “The raid was undertaken for the sake of settlement, and its motive was probably a need for larger pasture areas to serve a growing population.” 34 Knoppers, however, has a quite different position: “Unlike the previous campaign, this campaign is not justified by the need to search for new grazing land. The long-standing enmity between Israel and Amaleq lies in the background of the story of this conflict (Exod 17:8–16; Num 24:20; Deut 25:17–19; 1 Chr 18:11).” 35 This is a highly suggestive idea, implying that the Simeonites, having now secured their land, take action against the Amalekites based on the long-standing animosity. As opposed to the Meunites, whom Wright elsewhere refers to as part of a group of “suspiciously vague or stereotypical foes,” the Amalekites are very well known in the Hebrew Bible. 36 One recalls the most prominent conflicts with the Amalekites in 1 Samuel; first the Saul debacle in chap. 15 (where the proper rules of ‫ חרם‬are not followed by Israel’s king), and David also battles with the Amalekites (who had just looted Ziklag) in chap. 30. Here in 1 Chr 4:43, we are told that the Simeonites destroyed “the remnant of the Amalekites who escaped,” and for me the most likely intertext is 1 Sam 30:17: “David attacked them from twilight until the evening of the next day. Not one of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled.” It is entirely possible that the reader is invited to conclude that what Israel’s kings failed to do—that is, eliminate the Amalekites—is here accomplished by a group of Simeonites in the genealogies of Chronicles. 37 33.  B. E. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology in Chronicles (JSOTSup 211; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 65. 34.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 125. 35.  Knoppers, I Chronicles, 370. 36.  J. W. Wright, “The Fight for Peace: Narrative and History in the Battle Accounts in Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 154. 37. Note the question of P. B. Dirksen, 1 Chronicles (HCOT; Leuven: Peeters, 2005) 82: “Does ‫‏ה ְַּפ ֵלטָה‬allude to the offspring of the Amalekites who had escaped from David (cf. 1 Sam. 30:17)? We can no longer determine whether this verse reflects an authentic tradition and, if so, to what situation it refers.” To Dirksen’s question about 1 Sam 30:17, I am answering in the affirmative.

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My proposal here merges with a suggestion of Johnstone, who notes that the combination of vv. 41 and 43 may be intended to mean that small and mobile though the population of Simeon may be, it actually outlasts its more illustrious neighbor, Judah. Ousted by the Davidic monarchy to the lands of Ham and Edom, they actually outlive it. Here is a paradigm for the ambiguousness of monarchy for Israel: the two greatest monarchs of the Davidic House, David himself and Hezekiah, as [the Chronicler] himself will later acknowledge, have merely brought dispossession to Simeon; yet, despite their dispossession, this element of Israel survives, long after the monarchy itself has disappeared. 38

But equally important, a small group of Simeonites finish a task that ultimately proved elusive to Israel’s first king (Saul) and greatest king (David). Simeon carves out an identity that survives, rejects, and transcends assimilation. Here, then, is a group that holds fast to its identity even amidst the ravages of displacement, resisting absorption into a bigger and more powerful neighbor. 39 As Sparks put it, “In the context of a relatively small population dominated by an imperial power and having been in recent history under threat from other potential imperial powers (Egypt and Greece) . . . the Chronicler is here emphasizing that the only way to gain or retain land is ongoing faithfulness to Yahweh, while any deviance from this faithfulness will result in disaster or exile.” 40 Returning to Frye, with whom I began, it could well be that reading the lists enables one to understand the plot better and thereby to appreciate better the Chronicler’s unique contribution to the theology of the Hebrew Bible. 38.  Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1:69. With a somewhat related view, where the same phrase in 1 Chr 5:26 is considered, L. C. Allen writes, The southern tribe and the northern tribes across the Jordan have also been blatantly juxtaposed to form a contrasting pair. The passages 4:24–43 and 5:1–26 have parallel conclusions: “to this day.” Both are also matched in their formal content, exhibiting a mixture of genealogy, geography, and history. This parallelism takes an ironic turn at the end: One group survived in the land “to this day,” while the other was exiled from it “to this day.” The polarization throws into relief a homiletic contrast between the deportation suffered by the bad group of tribes and the territorial permanence enjoyed by the evidently good tribe, Simeon. An option confronts the people of God, exemplified by the fate and fortune of these groups. They may either stay loyal to the Lord and keep the land or stray from their allegiance and lose it. The motif of exile often functions in Chronicles as a symbol of spiritual loss that any generation was liable to suffer, should they rebel against the divine will. (Allen, “The First and Second Books of Chron­ icles,” NIB 3:336) 39.  Cf. R. L. Braun, 1 Chronicles (WBC 14; Waco, TX: Word, 1986) 68. 40.  Sparks, The Chronicler’s Genealogies, 179.

Seeking Saul in Chronicles P. J. Sabo University of Alberta Near the end of Freud’s discussion of one of his most perplexing patients, Little Hans, he expresses the unsatisfactory feelings that accompany the inability to solve a difficult issue. He writes, “In an analysis, however, a thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been solved and the spell broken.” 1 A similar feeling must come over biblical scholars concerning the issue of the Saul narrative in Chronicles, for a specter is haunting Chronicles scholarship—the specter of the riddle of the Saul narrative. The riddle is a specter because it is a problem and is not a problem, and it is concerned with both presence and absence. Might it be that all the powers of biblical scholarship have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter? That is, has the specter been conjured away by the exorc-analysis of scholarship? Certainly there have been some valiant attempts, though there is still a desire, as one recent scholar has observed, to “revisit” this issue, as I myself do in this essay. 2 A secondary, related objective is to examine this desire to reanalyze the riddle of the Saul narrative. This repetitive compulsion parallels the psychoanalytical concept of transference, which can be defined, in a very broad sense, as the projection of emotions and feelings of the analysand onto the analyst, and vice versa. When applied to literature, it is the attempt to discover certain aspects of a text that remain silenced in it and are not analyzed in the “so-called rational, scientific, and objective methodologies.” 3 Transferential readings focus on the unconscious aspects of a text, searching for traces of them left in the final form. The closing section of this paper is a summary and critique of one specific example from the Saul narrative in Chronicles that displays the benefits of a transferential reading, Julie Kelso’s O Mother, Where Art Thou? 1. S. Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old,” in Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers, vol. 3: Case Histories (trans. A. Strachey and J. Strachey; New York: Basic Books, 1959) 149–289 (esp. p. 264). 2. L. Jonker, “Revisiting the Saul Narrative in Chronicles: Interacting with the Persian Imperial Context,” OTE 23/2 (2010) 283–305. 3. J. Kelso, O Mother, Where Art Thou? An Irigarayan Reading of the Book of Chronicles (London: Equinox, 2007) 19.

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Conjuring the Specter Perhaps the most explicit evidence that scholars are haunted by the riddle of the Saul narrative in Chronicles is the vast amount of literature devoted to the issue. 4 The wide range of interpretation is further proof that, as Knoppers puts 4.  Studies that have appeared since 2000 that specifically relate to the issue are: Y. Amit, “The Saul Polemic in the Persian Period,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 647–61; idem, “The Delicate Balance in the Image of Saul and Its Place in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Saul in Story and Tradition (ed. C. S. Elrich and M. C. White; FAT 47; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 71–9; S. S. Brooks, Saul and the Monarchy: A New Look (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); G. Hentschel, Saul: Schuld, Reue und Tragik eines “Gesalbten” (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlag, 2003); P. Kuberski, “La Crémation dans la Bible? La Mort de Saül et de ses Fils (1 S 31; 1 Ch 10),” Revue des sciences religeuses 83/2 (2009) 185–200; D. Wagner, Geist und Tora: Studien zur göttlichen Legitimation und Delegitimation von Herrschaft im Alten Testament anhand der Erzählungen über König Saul (Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte 15; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlag, 2005). The two best sources, which also conveniently provide summaries of many of the “major interpretive options,” are: G. Knoppers, “Israel’s First King and ‘The Kingdom of Yhwh in the Hands of the Sons of David’: The Place of the Saulide Monarchy in the Chronicler’s Historiography,” in Saul in Story and Tradition (ed. C. S. Elrich and M. C. White; FAT 47; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 187–213; and L. Jonker, “Revisiting the Saul Narrative in Chronicles: Interacting with the Persian Imperial Context” OTE 23/2 (2010) 283–305. Knoppers, and Jonker following Knoppers, list four major options beside their own: (1) The narrative of Saul was included in order to compare Saul’s failure with David’s glory. See G. von Rad, Das Geschichtsbild des chronistischen Werkes (BWANT 54; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930); and W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher (HAT 21; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1955). (2) The story of Saul should be read on its own in the text, because it functions as an archetype for bad kings in Chronicles. See R. Mosis, Untersuchungen zur Theologie des chronistischen Geschichts-werkes (Freiburg: Herder, 1973) 17–43; and P. Ackroyd, “The Chronicler as Exegete,” JSOT 2 (1977) 2–32. (3) The narrative is to be understood not as a national disaster but, rather, a disaster narrative that focuses solely on Saul and his family. This interpretation emphasizes that Saul and David are not contemporaneous but consecutive rulers. See S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989); idem, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993). (4) The narrative of Saul in Chronicles is intimately tied to the narratives about Saul in Samuel. The reference to the sins of Saul in 1 Chr 10:13–14 refers to specific sins mentioned in Samuel, especially the act of necromancy. See S. Zalewski, “The Purpose of the Story of the Death of Saul in 1 Chronicles X,” VT 39 (1989) 448–67. Knoppers, building on almost all of these hypotheses, offers a synthetic option. He calls attention to two important considerations. One is the Chronicler’s shifted focus from the institution of kingship to the conduct of individual kings. The second consideration is the attempt to draw attention to the Chronicler’s circumstances in Persian-period Yehud, especially the prominence of the tribe of Benjamin during this period. Jonker follows much of Knoppers’s argument, though he adds valuable insight from Persian royal ideological discourses. Other important studies on the issue include: C. Mitchell, “The Dialogisms of Chron-

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45

it, “the chapter dealing with Saul’s final battle has itself become the scene of considerable scholarly conflict.” 5 Knoppers’s comment implies that scholars, whether they are aware of it or not, reenact the very text they seek to interpret—an idea that is a major theme of this paper. But before we delve too far into this issue, let us begin by conjuring up the specter. The riddle is usually formed this way: assuming that the Chronicler was aware of the book of Samuel (or some version of it), one naturally asks why he chose to omit almost all the chapters that deal with Saul. The question is particularly ironic considering the Septuagint’s title for the book, Παραλειπόμενα, meaning ‘what is omitted’. Traditionally, the title is meant to emphasize that Chronicles is a book that fills in the gaps of Samuel–Kings. 6 In other words, Chronicles records what had not yet been recorded. However, the question as it is stated above views Chronicles, or at least 1 Chronicles 10, as a text that filters; it assumes that the Chronicler was fully aware of other narratives about Saul. So, far from filling in a gap, the Chronicler actually created one. The text repressed and silenced what had already been recorded; it omitted rather than including. Knoppers poses the question in a different way: “Given that Chronicles focuses exclusively on the Davidic monarchy centred in Jerusalem, why offer any attention to Saul at all?” 7 Does the formulation of the question make a difference? I think so, or at least I think it is significant that both questions make equal sense. Knoppers asks the question as though the problem is primarily one of presence, while the traditional question is formulated primarily in terms of absence. Like an intangible spirit, the riddle cannot be pinned down. The best readings of 1 Chronicles 10 are those in which both of these questions are held constantly in tension with each other. Nonetheless, however one poses the question, the essential problem appears to be that the death of Saul is a very unusual subject with which to begin the narrative portion of Chronicles. 8 One can only assert, however, that the Saul narrative in Chronicles is unusual if there is a “usual” beginning with which to compare it. I propose that, from a literary perspective, the arbitrary beginning icles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. Mackenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 311–26; J. M. Trotter, “Readers Reading, Readers, and Reading Readers Reading the Account of Saul’s Death in 1 Chronicles 10,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. Mackenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 294–310; and C. Y. S. Ho, “Conjectures and Refutations: Is I Samuel xxxi 1–13 Really the Source of I Chronicles x 1–12?” VT 45 (1995) 82–106. 5. G. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10–29 (AB 12A; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 526. 6.  Mitchell points out that the Septuagint’s title for the book can serve as a metaphor for the tendency of scholarship to view Chronicles as a stitched-together quilt of mismatched textual pieces. See Mitchell, “The Dialogisms of Chronicles,” 311. 7.  Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10–29, 526. 8. See Trotter “Reading, Readers,” 299.

46

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is not a problem at all, for all beginnings are arbitrary. This is not to suggest, as has all too often been the case, that Chronicles is a “sloppy” book—indeed, as Kalimi has shown, the book carefully employs a number of sophisticated literary devices. 9 Rather, I advocate the view that a narrative cannot begin except arbitrarily, by just beginning. 10 In support of this claim, one can follow the points made by Said in his book Beginnings, Miller’s Reading Narrative, or Derrida’s “Hors livre” (a chapter of Dissemination)—all of which acknowledge the impossibility of having what might be known as an adequate or normal beginning. 11 Here is Said’s explanation of the difficulty of the beginnings of histories: The historian . . . wants to write a history of X and therefore he must rationally find a suitable point at which to start his formal work. This is by no means a simple proposition, since in choosing a beginning he confers upon it a certain status based on its ability to intend the whole of what follows from it . . . any such choice is in large part arbitrary (since a real—i.e., empirical, verifiable, concrete—beginning cannot truly be ascertained without either faith or Archimedean instruments, both of which are inapplicable or irrelevant). 12

What makes 1 Chronicles 10 a particularly odd starting point, following this argument, is that the chapter does not necessarily “intend the whole of what follows from it.” Implicit in Said’s comment (and he is well aware of this) is a particularly Western idea of how narratives should progress. The narrative line has traditionally been understood according to the unifying concepts of beginning, middle, and end as laid down by Aristotle in his Poetics. He argued therein that “a beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by casual necessity, but after which something is or naturally comes to be.” 13 Certainly the Saul narrative does not fit this definition. But the attempt to force 1 Chronicles 10 into Aristotle’s definition is an impossible, anachronistic act. 9.  See I. Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005). 10. An excellent example, which can only be described as uncanny, exists in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities. The book ends its narrative with the death of Saul. Thus, commentators have traditionally asserted that Biblical Antiquities is incomplete, because it could not possibly have ended in this arbitrary manner. But again we must ask: “Is there an ending that is not arbitrary?” 11. E. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); J. Hillis Miller, Reading Narrative (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); J. Derrida, Dissemination (trans. B. Johnson; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Of course, this does not mean that the choice of a beginning is irrational. If Chronicles is understood as a (hi)story of Israel, then beginning with the first monarch seems like a perfectly reasonable point of departure. However, again, this rationale does not take away from the arbitrary nature of all beginnings. 12.  Said, Beginnings, 50. 13.  Aristotle, Poetics (trans. S. H. Butcher; New York: Hill and Wang, 1961) 65.

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The greater error is the former, for every form of criticism commits its own anachronism. Modern scholars, Said one of the foremost among them, have exposed the paradoxical nature of beginnings and the fact that no work actually exemplifies the type of beginning that Aristotle describes. Miller points out that the beginning of a narrative must be both inside the story and outside it, prior to its generative base. If it is only inside the narrative, then the story has no base, no origin. If it is only outside the narrative, then it is not really a part of the story. 14 Thus, “any beginning in narrative cunningly covers a gap, an absence at the origin.” 15 Derrida uses the preface of a work as an example of this problem. He suggests that every preface effaces itself; it is a supplement to the “actual” work and therefore will always be a remainder. 16 Reading 1 Chronicles 10 as a beginning is an example of the supplementary nature of beginnings. It is not the beginning of the book but, rather, the beginning of the narrative portion of Chronicles. 17 By calling it a beginning, one has already exposed a gap between two beginnings. Miller notes that “the paradox of beginning is that one must have something solidly present and pre-existent, some generative source or authority, on which the development of a new story may be based. That antecedent foundation needs in its turn some prior foundation, in an infinite regress.” 18 In other words, every beginning is necessarily based on a previous beginning, and so on, ad infinitum; as a result, there is no “true” beginning. In the world of Chronicles alone, it is clear that beginning the narrative with Saul’s death disavows a portion of history already alluded to in the text; indeed, the genealogical section goes all the way back to Adam, which seems like a logical place to begin. In contrast, the narrative portion begins in media res, with the final battle of Saul. Without a doubt, simply by noting what is effaced by starting with Saul’s death helps the reader to understand the riddle better. For instance, the hypothesis that 1 Chronicles 10 was included in order to compare Saul’s failure to David’s glory hardly makes sense, given that the Chronicler could have mentioned the period of the judges, which would have highlighted the contrast with the pre-Davidic era to an even greater degree. 19 But trying to solve the riddle in 14.  Miller, Reading Narrative, 4–8 and 57. 15.  Ibid., 58. 16.  Derrida, Dissemination, 8–9. 17.  Of course, some readers merely skip over the genealogies, and thus chap. 10 really is the beginning of the book; unfortunately, these readers have not heeded the counsel of Northrop Frye, who argues that good readers are those who relish reading lists. 18.  Miller, Reading Narrative, 57. 19.  Examples of this hypothesis, which dominated scholarly opinion up until the middle of the twentieth century, can be found in G. von Rad, Das Geschichtsbild des chronistischen Werkes (BWANT 54; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930); and W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher (HAT 21; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1955).

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this way—namely, by noting all the ways in which the narrative does not begin but very well could have begun—can only go so far. The contribution of this “negative narratology” is that it serves as its own type of foil for those interpretations that do not adequately take into account “what is omitted.” It does not fully provide an answer for the desire of a meaningful beginning. Japhet introduces the riddle of the Saul narrative in the following way: The change of form at this point is an unmistakable indication of the author’s conscious movement from the introduction of his work to its main body. The inevitable question is, therefore: why did he choose to begin at this exact point? Since the Chronicler is a very aware historian, highly attentive to his task, the choice of a beginning must be meaningful. 20

Japhet asks “why?” instead of “why not?” She argues that there must have been something purposeful in the Chronicler’s decision to begin where he did and that he must be trying to communicate something through it. So Japhet, as do many commentators on Chronicles (including myself), searches for answers to the mystery, arguing above all that there must be answers—and a mystery. Harold Bloom, playing on Freudian interpretation, calls this the Hamlet Complex, which he defines as “thinking not too much but much too well.” 21 The complex is characterized by the desire to find sense in everything, to interpret and explain even the smallest details, and Freud embodied this complex. He was constantly creating new mysteries, and the unlaid ghosts of analysis were often conjured by him due to his belief that there was no such thing as an unsolvable case. Scholars who are drawn to 1 Chronicles 10 may suffer from this very complex. 22 One could call it curiosity, or repetition compulsion, but scholarship keeps coming back to the issue of why the story of Saul’s death opens the narrative portion of Chronicles, or why, if the text bothers to mention Saul at all, it includes only the narrative of his death. Each new work, including this one, causes the reader to experience the uncanny phenomenon of déjà vu 20. S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 221 (italics mine). 21. H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994). 22. For Derrida, it appears as though all readers suffer from this complex, because he associates a mystery, a secrecy with literature in general: Literature keeps a secret which does not exist, in some way. Behind a novel or poem, behind what is in effect the wealth of meaning to be interpreted, there is no secret meaning to be sought. . . . Everything is secret in literature, there is no secret behind it, that is the secret of this strange institution about which and in which I am constantly debating. . . . The institution of literature recognises in principle or in essence the right to say everything or not to say whilst saying, that is, the right to flaunt its secret [le droit au secret affiché]. (J. Derrida, Papier Machine [Paris: Galilée, 2000] 398)

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as the issue returns like an unlaid ghost, a revenant if you will. However, this is not something unique to us modern readers; the Chronicler was haunted by the past as well. Indeed, as Kelso asserts: “What is interesting about Chronicles is its manifest concern to ‘return’ to the past in order to effect some change in the present from which it arises.” 23 The Chronicler, too, suffered from the Hamlet Complex in this case, and the text of Chronicles promotes this idea of repetition and returning. Certainly from the perspective of the intended readership, it constructs the history of their monarchic past once again. 24 Repetition and returning may be something that is ubiquitous in all narrative, because one could point out that every telling is already a retelling, and even the most straightforward narrative is a repetition, for it claims to repeat a journey already made. Miller writes: “To narrate is to retrace a line of events that has already occurred, or that is spoken fictively as having already occurred.” 25 J. Wolfreys takes this idea further and argues that “to tell a story is always to invoke ghosts, to open a space through which something other returns . . . ghosts return via narratives, and come back, again and again, across centuries every time a tale is unfolded . . . all stories are, more or less ghost stories . . . all forms of narrative are, in one way or another, haunted.” 26 And so let us return to this ghost story once again.

Analysis I do not intend to offer here a detailed analysis of each verse in 1 Chronicles 10. Neither is it my objective to compare the text of Samuel–Kings with Chronicles, along with the varying ancient versions of each book (LXX, etc.). Studies of this sort have already been carried out. 27 Instead, I focus on some of the key words and themes developed in 1  Chronicles 10, which segue into my discussion of transferential readings of this passage. The narrative begins: “And the Philistines fought against Israel” (1 Chr 10:1). According to the Chronicler, war was the natural state of things, because there is no real explanation for these two peoples’ fighting. Consider again the arbitrary beginning of the narrative, even before Saul is mentioned at all: the 23.  Kelso, O Mother, 3. Of course, “present” as Kelso uses it could refer to the time the text was originally written (generally presumed to be Achaemenid Yehud) or the time each new reader comes to the text. 24.  There is always a connection between repetition and ghosts. Derrida notes that the question of the specter is always “a question of repetition: a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its coming and goings because it begins by coming back” (see J. Derrida, Specters of Marx [trans. P. Kamuf; New York: Routledge, 1994] 11). 25.  Miller, Reading Narrative, 47. 26. J. Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 27.  See n. 4 above.

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reader is thrown from a genealogical list into a battle. 28 Moreover, in comparison with the syntax of other narrative beginnings in the Hebrew Bible (usually ‫)ויהי‬, 1 Chronicles 10 begins with the waw + gentilic noun ‫ופלׁשתים‬, emphasizing its odd beginning. The story continues to recount how the “men of Israel had fled (‫ )וינס‬before the Philistines,” which is reiterated in v. 7: “When all the men of Israel who were in the valley saw that the army had fled (‫ )נסו‬. . . they abandoned their towns and fled (‫)וינסו‬.” The word ‫‘ נפל‬fall’ is also repeated throughout this chapter: in v. 1, the slain “fell (‫ )וינפלו‬on Mount Gilboa”; in v. 4, “Saul fell (‫ )ויפל‬on his sword”; in v. 5, “his armor-bearer fell (‫ )ויפל‬on his sword”; and in v. 8, the Philistines find Saul and his sons “fallen (‫)נפלים‬ on Mount Gilboa.” Israel has fled and fallen, but perhaps the most interesting repetition is reserved solely for Saul and his sons. It is found in the forms of the Hebrew root ‫מות‬, which appears five times in vv. 5–7: When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead (‫)כי מת שאול‬, he also fell on his sword and died (‫)וימת‬. And Saul died (‫ )וימת שאול‬and his three sons and all his house, together, they died (‫)מתו‬. And all the men of Israel saw . . . that Saul and his sons were dead (‫)וכי־מתו שאול ובניו‬.

The strong emphasis on the fact that Saul is dead is evidence in itself that Saul haunts the Chronicler. Indeed, as if these verses did not sufficiently draw attention to it, the death of Saul is repeated at the end of the chapter. In his attempt to exorcise this ghost, the Chronicler offered a short moral (1 Chr 10:13–14), which possibly sought this time to put Saul to rest for good: Saul died (‫ )וימת שאול‬because of his unfaithfulness (‫ )במעלו‬whereby he acted unfaithfully (‫ )מעל‬against Yahweh, in that he did not keep the word of Yahweh, and also for inquiring (‫ )לשאול‬from a medium for guidance (‫)לדרוש‬. He did not seek (‫ )ולא־דרש‬Yahweh, and so he killed him (‫ )וימיתהו‬and transferred the kingdom to the son of Jesse. (1 Chr 10:13–14) 29

Now, much scholarly work has been spent on determining whether these verses—which are the Chronicler’s own work, or at least are not based on Samuel–Kings or any other known source—refer to specific sins of Saul (such as those mentioned in 1 Samuel) 30 or are a general diagnosis of Saul’s behav28.  This abrupt change is often pointed out by commentators, only to be refuted quickly with the reminder that the Chronicler assumes that the reader is familiar with earlier stories of Saul. And while this may be correct, Kelso rightly points out that this need to alleviate the violence of the story indicates just how important the corporeal violence originally was (Kelso, O Mother, 225–26). 29.  I should point out here that the Saul narrative had a rich “afterlife” in literature of later eras, whether in Josephus, rabbinic literature, or patristic literature. An excellent source for exploring this material is Saul in Story and Tradition (ed. C. S. Ehrlich and M. C. White; FAT 47; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 30.  See S. Zalewski, “The Purpose of the Story of the Death of Saul in 1 Chronicles X,” VT 39 (1989) 448–67.

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51

ior, perhaps to be interpreted typologically as the misdeeds of bad kings in Chronicles. 31 In any case, it is clear that the issue surrounding Saul’s misdeeds is based on a play on the root-verbs ‫‘ שאל‬to seek’ and ‫‘ דרש‬to consult or inquire’. Saul’s name is the passive participle form of the verb ‫שאל‬, the playful result being that Saul has “sauled” a medium. 32 Kelso argues that the pun on Saul’s name may work on yet another level: “Instead of Yahweh, [Saul] seeks guidance from someone who has access to the world of Sheol (‫)ׁשאֹול‬,” ְ his very name (‫)ׁשאּול‬ ָ indicating a preference for inquiring of that world of nebulous existence. 33 Saul’s sin is twofold: he is guilty of not seeking Yahweh and also of seeking a different source of knowledge. It appears that there is a bad sort of seeking (‫ )שאל‬and a good sort of seeking (‫ )דרש‬in the mind of the Chronicler. The issue of those who “seek” Yahweh versus those who do not seek him points to 31. Compare R. Mosis, Untersuchungen zur Theologie des chronistischen Geschichts-werkes (Freiburg: Herder, 1973) 17–43; and P. Ackroyd, “The Chronicler as Exegete,” JSOT 2 (1977) 2–32. 32.  See J. Jarick, I Chronicles (2nd ed.; Readings: A New Biblical Commentary; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2007) 88. 33.  Kelso, O Mother, 173. And so the Saul narrative appears to set the stage for what has most commonly been referred to as “the Chronicler’s doctrine of retribution” or “the imperative of reward and punishment.” For to seek any other spirit or deity besides Yahweh (2 Chr 17:3, 25:14–15) is in the eyes of the Chronicler the opposite of seeking Yahweh. There are of course numerous examples of this doctrine at work in the text of Chronicles, and yet there are a fair number of instances that do not show this coherence. For instance, Ahaz, the worst possible king of Judah, is not killed. Granted, he is punished with defeat in war, but the Chronicler explicitly states in 10:14 that Yahweh killed Saul as a result of his misdeeds. This example is particularly important in that authors such as Mosis and Ackroyd, who read the Saul narrative typologically as an example of bad kings in Chronicles, consider Ahaz to be a type of second Saul, similar to viewing Hezekiah as a second type of David. For a more thorough exploration of this matter, see E. Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2006) 20–26. As Ben Zvi points out, the self-image of the authorship and readership of Chronicles stresses their strong self-awareness of the limitations of their knowledge: “These limitations concern not only the literati’s ability to understand their past, or Yhwh, but also involve an inability to predict the effects of human actions on the basis of the past” (Ben Zvi, History, 24). The point here is that the Chronicler’s summary of Saul’s sins and ensuing punishments only makes sense if one follows the divine-retribution reading of the text. But one could just as well ask: “Would Saul have been any better off had he been righteous in the eyes of Yahweh?” Certainly, in Samuel it seems as though Saul was given the kingdom and it was his to lose, but not so in Chronicles. What or who is Yahweh in the text of Chronicles, if not the name for the mystery of the vicissitudes of life? Ben Zvi explains: “The more [the literati] read and reread the book, the more aware they become that Yhwh’s described actions seem to be contingent rather than a result of any categorical imperatives that they can abstract from (hi)story, from any (hi)story” (p. 25).

52

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a primary theme in Chronicles. In 1 Chr 28:9, David gives prominence to this notion: And you, Solomon, my son, know the God of your father and serve him with an undivided heart and willing soul, for Yahweh searches (‫ )דרש‬every mind and understands every plan and thought; if you seek (‫ )דרש‬him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will abandon you.

In 2 Chronicles, this appears to be somewhat of a pattern—namely, that kings who seek Yahweh are rewarded (given success in battle, good health, etc.), whereas kings who do not seek Yahweh die young or suffer defeat. 34 If one follows the path of these Leitwörter, the message of 1 Chronicles 10 sets a precedent for what follows. The key issue for the Chronicler is good seeking and bad seeking; a negative example is set in this first chapter, and the negative results that follow involve fleeing (‫)נוס‬, falling (‫)נפל‬, and ultimately, death (‫)מות‬. In a broader sense, however, ‫ שאל‬and ‫ דרש‬function as synonyms. One could just as well understand the text in vv. 13–14 to be saying that “Saul died because of his unfaithfulness . . . and also for seeking (‫ )לשאול‬a medium, seeking [guidance] (‫)לדרוש‬. He did not seek (‫ )ולא־דרש‬Yahweh.” Saul’s crime was “seeking” but, paradoxically, his salvation from this crime was also “to seek” (again, many commentators have pointed out that this is not the case in 1 Samuel, because Saul seeks Yahweh, but Yahweh does not answer him, forcing Saul to seek out a medium). How can one distinguish between these two types of seeking? Which type of seeking corresponds to ‫שאל‬, and which corresponds to ‫ ?דרש‬There is no simple answer. And this should give the interpreter some cause for concern, for what is interpretation but a seeking out of the meaning of a text? 35 Interpreters of 1 Chronicles 10 are all “sauling” for meaning—but perhaps asking and seeking in the “wrong” way. Without doubt, every interpreter is guilty of this “unfaithfulness,” for every time one attempts to read or interpret the Saul narrative, a type of séance begins, and the very sin that the Chronicler accuses Saul of, necromancy, is committed. That is, if anyone is conjuring up ghosts, if anyone is the necromancer at this moment, it is I. I am the medium, or the guide, leading myself and my reader into a spectral world. I am also King Saul, seeking a ghost in the hope that I might find the answer to the riddle with the full knowledge that this riddle will continue to haunt. 36 However, I can find some consolation in the irony that the Chronicler also was guilty of conjuring up ghosts and “seeking” out their stories. Josipo34.  Of course, there are exceptions; see Ben Zvi, History; and n. 33 above. 35.  In Rabbinic Judaism, biblical commentary came to be known as midrash, a word derived from the root ‫דרש‬. 36.  This is the case in the book of Samuel’s version of Saul and his experience with the underworld, where the ghost of Samuel does not reveal any new information to Saul. David Jobling in his commentary on the book asserts that “dead Samuel has nothing different to say to Saul from what he said when he was alive. In fact 28:17

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vici wonders about the representation of Saul in 1 Samuel in words that have an uncanny relation to this paper: And may we not see in Saul’s desperate calling up of Samuel from the dead, and in the irony of the old prophet’s ghost being able to tell Saul only what he already knew, an image of those scholars who would penetrate behind the veil of the Bible’s words to the truth beneath, only to find what they already knew? 37

Why re-member Saul if we already know the answers we seek? One possible way to think of this is to consider the interpreter to be a member of Jabesh-Gilead, arising to carry the corpse of Saul in order that he might be properly buried, for if the dead are not properly buried, if something goes wrong with their obsequies, they will inevitably return. 38 Colin Davis states, “The business of the dead with the living must be completed; only then can they be buried and they will leave us alone.” 39 However, Davis further elaborates that some texts do not receive a proper burial because one cannot be sure if they are really dead: The texts of the dead are still unread in the sense that their full resources have not yet been brought to light, their capacity to generate fresh insight is not yet exhausted. And so the dialogue with the dead . . . involves a return to their writings, not in order to understand them for the final time but to demonstrate that they can still surprise us with unexpected potential for meaning. Their legacy is assured, and they are in some sense still alive, precisely to the extent that they remain open to interpretation. 40

The Saul narrative in Chronicles fits the description of this sort of text exactly. It still has a sense of mystery surrounding it, a riddle that is yet to be solved, and interpretation is the attempt to solve this riddle, as scholars inevitably put the data of the narrative together in order to make their own coherent story. They follow the path of the Chronicler, who offered his own story of the death of Saul; it should be remembered that Saul has died more than once in the text alludes to, and quotes, ch.15.” See D. Jobling, 1  Samuel (Berit Olam Commentary; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998) 89. 37. G. Josipovici, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988) 28. 38.  In the book of Samuel, there is an interim mourning period for Saul, and David even offers a dirge for him and his sons. One line of this dirge, in particular, stands out as evidence of the attempt made in Samuel to mourn for Saul: ‫בנות ישראל אל־שאול בכינה‬ O Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul. (2 Sam 1:24)

However, in Chronicles the death of Saul is immediately followed by David’s rise. No reference to funerary rites is provided for Saul at all. 39. C. Davis, Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 155. 40.  Ibid., 139–40.

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of the Hebrew Bible, and never in exactly the same way (compare 1 Samuel 31 with 2  Samuel 1). 41 In order for the Chronicler to preserve the past as a resource for the present, he had to reshape the material before him (and this is not the same as obliterating the past), which is, in a sense, a way of trafficking with the dead.

Transference Transference can be defined as the unconscious (re)direction of emotions from one person to another. In the psychoanalytical concept of transference rather than merely recounting the past, the analyst and analysand repeat it through their behavior toward one another. Freud first came to understand this when he realized that the analyst often becomes the father, mother, lover, friend, or rival of the analysand. This is precisely the situation described above, as the interpreter finds himself or herself in the place of Saul or the Chronicler and plays out the very scenes described in the text. Significantly, Freud believed that, through the reenactment of the analysand’s (traumatic) past, his or her repressed memories might come to consciousness and thus cure the neurosis. This is exemplified in one of Freud’s essays titled “Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through,” which suggests that repetition, or at least the type of repetition that occurs in transference, is a way of working through the issues at hand. Furthermore, trafficking with the ghosts of the past can actually help us work through our problems in the present. Literary theory has applied the concept of transference to the encoun41.  See M. Avioz, “The Story of Saul’s Death in 1 Chronicles 10 and Its Sources,” in Thinking Towards New Horizons (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008) 113–19. The purpose of Avioz’s article is to discuss why the Chronicler did not present any part of the version of Saul’s death as it is related in 2 Samuel 1. His conclusion is the following: (1) the Chronicler did not want to have contradictions, (2) the Chronicler wanted to avoid the apologetic needed for David in Samuel, because this might awaken antagonism toward him, (3) the Chronicler wanted to connect the defeat over the Amalekites with David and not Saul, (4) the Chronicler did not want to assign the title “Messiah” to Saul. Again, one sees in Avioz’s methodology the implicit idea that the Chronicler must have been haunted by earlier stories of Saul, even in the very Vorlage that he was using to create his own narrative. Avioz begins his essay by stating: “The Chronicler had to carry out a complicated task of selection when describing the stories of Saul and David. He certainly did not plan on including all descriptions of these two kings, but rather to choose from his Vorlage those descriptions that would best transmit his message to his readers” (p. 113). And after summarizing his conclusion, he offers this remark: “These considerations may teach about the extensive deliberations of the Chronicler in choosing the material that he will describe and reshape” (p. 119). Latent in both of these sentences is an assumption of the psychological process of the Chronicler when interacting with his Vorlage. An analysis that can determine the deliberations of the Chronicler can then also determine the message(s) of Chronicles.

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ter between a reader/critic and a text. Rahskow elaborates on the way that transference may be paralleled to the act of reading: According to the psychoanalytical account of transference, the structures of the unconscious are revealed by the analyst’s encounters with the analysand’s discourses. The analyst, in effect, repeats the experience described by the analysand and thereby gains particular insight into the analysand’s psychical life. Thus transference is a repetition linking the analyst to the analysand. Similarly, reading is a repetition of the text it seeks to analyse. Prior readings, particularly those which have narrative similarity, are not errors to be discarded, but revealing recurrences of textual structures. It is through transference then, that the analysand tries to force or coax the analyst to play out a scene he or she has in mind. As a result, this self-reflexiveness does not produce or induce a closure in which the text is the thing it describes, but rather leads to a multiplicity of representations, a plurality of meanings. And plurality, here, does not mean several meanings, but rather that the text cannot be reduced to a meaning. 42

Rahskow’s explanation points to the crux of the interpretation of the riddle of the Saul narrative in Chronicles. According to her, the benefit of a transferential reading of the text is that it shows that meaning is always multiple, openended, and changing. Moreover, this sort of approach provides a central place for repetition and previous readings. Thus, the vast quantity of interpretations of 1 Chronicles 10 may reveal more about our need for a discourse on beginnings than about the text itself. We must return to the past, to our ghosts, “again and again.” 43 We return because there is no proper and final burial; there is no single, correct interpretation, because the only way to interpret is to (re)enact. Derrida elaborates, “The strange result of this performative repetition, the irrepressible effectuation of this enactment . . . is that interpretation of the archive [of any book] can only illuminate, read, interpret, establish its object, namely a given inheritance, by inscribing itself into it, that is to say by opening it and by enriching it enough to have a rightful place in it.” 44 Derrida, therefore, also ascribes a central role to transference in the act of reading and interpretation. 42. I. Rahskow, The Phallacy of Genesis: A Feminist Psychoanalytical Approach (Louisville: John Knox, 1993) 36. Rahskow also points out that while the relationship of reader and text replicates that of analyst and analysand the roles are not clearly defined as in the psychoanalytical process (due to the obvious differences between a text and a patient). One important result of this, however, is that just as an analysand views the analyst as the “subject supposed to know,” so a reader approaches a text as the place where knowledge and meaning reside. She concludes, “Thus, a reader simultaneously occupies the place of analyst and the place of analysand” (p. 36). 43. See Derrida, Specters of Marx, 10–11. 44.  Idem, Archive Fever (trans. E. Prenowitz; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 67.

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Kelso relates this concept of transference directly to the book of Chronicles as she argues that “the very project of Chronicles seems to be to return to (even confront) ‘the past’ and re-narrate that (traumatic) past in terms that allow for the possibility of a better future.” 45 She finds helpful words to elaborate her point in a quote from Jobling: We need to take such experiences seriously. Those of us who are brought up with the Bible (and this includes everyone who is a product of Western culture) are enmeshed in it in ways that are often unconscious or semi-conscious. We need to find ways of examining these strange associations—these “hauntings”—ways of bringing them to the surface. One reason why we need to come to terms with them in our scholarly work is that they operate at a level far deeper than our intentional scholarship. They inhabit our scholarship, so that we may be playing out internalized biblical scenarios just when we think we are being most objective. . . . If for Freud dreams are the “royal road” to the individual unconscious, for me transference is the royal road to the “biblical unconscious.” So deeply is the Bible inscribed within us that the processes by which we read it are simply the rehearsal at another level of what we find in it. 46

So, while the Bible resists our attempts to read it because it is “too vast, too varied, and ancient,” there is one unique characteristic that helps us: “it is actually about many of the critical and hermeneutical issues” that arise when we try to read it. 47 This mostly unconscious traffic between the text and the reader is a two-way street. I should note, however, that there is one important difference between modern theorists such as Jobling and Rahskow in comparison with Freud: they assert that the ghosts of the past are conjured in transference, not to be exorcised but, rather, to be engaged. Engaging in dialogue with these ghosts accomplishes what for Derrida is the most difficult task of the interpreter. He informs his readers in Specters of Marx: What seems almost impossible is to speak always of the specter, to speak to the specter, to speak with it, therefore especially to make or to let a spirit speak. And the thing seems even more difficult for a reader, an expert, a professor, an interpreter, in short . . . a “scholar.” 48

It is especially difficult for the scholar, because “a traditional scholar does not believe in ghosts—nor in all that could be called the virtual space of spectral­ ity.” 49 In reaction to this tradition, Derrida concludes Specters of Marx with this advice: 45.  Kelso, O Mother, 19. 46.  Jobling, 1 Samuel, 283. 47.  Josipovici, The Book of God, 27. 48.  Derrida, Specters of Marx, 11. 49.  Ibid., 12.

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If he loves justice, at least, the “scholar” of the future, the “intellectual” of tomorrow should learn it, and from the ghost. He should learn to live by learning not how to make conversation with the ghost but how to talk with him, with her, how to let them speak or how to give them speech back, even if it is in oneself, in the other, in the other in oneself: they are always there, specters, even if they do not exist, even if they are no longer, even if they are not yet. 50

This is one of the primary functions of psychoanalysis and transference—that is, to allow the analysand to listen to himself, to open up all of his creative possibilities—in short, to allow him to tell his own story. This leads one to wonder what version of the story Saul himself would offer. How would he narrate his own tale? Where would he begin? It is precisely this task that is left for the scholar: to let such silent specters speak. How will we reshape the past for the purposes of the present? How will we traffic with the dead? And while the task seems impossible, Derrida offers a helpful analogy in another text, Archive Fever: A phantom speaks. What does this mean? In the first place or in a preliminary way, this means that without responding it disposes of a response, a bit like the answering machine whose voice outlives its moment of recording: you call, the other person is dead, now, whether you know it or not, and the voice responds to you, in a very precise fashion, sometimes cheerfully, it instructs you, it can even give you instructions, make declarations to you, address your requests, prayers, promises, injunctions. 51

To read silence is to read the absences of a text; it is a way of reading between the lines, for each text contains traces in its own speech of what is not there. Here is Freud’s own explanation for how a text can communicate precisely what it is intending not to communicate (and it is interesting to note that he is referring specifically to the Bible): Thus almost everywhere there can be found striking omissions, disturbing repetitions, palpable contradictions, signs of things the communication of which was never intended. The distortion of a text is not unlike a murder. The difficulty lies not in the execution of the deed but in the doing away with traces. One could wish to give the word “distortion” [Enstellung] the double meaning to which it has a right although it is no longer used in this sense. It should mean not only “to change the appearance of” but also “to wrench apart,” “to put in another place.” That is why in so many textual distortions we may count on finding the suppressed and abnegated material hidden away somewhere, though in an altered shape and torn out of its original connection. Only it is not always easy to recognize it. 52 50.  Ibid., 221. 51.  Derrida, Archive Fever, 62. 52. S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism (trans. K. Jones; New York: Random House, 1967) 52.

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This points to another possible interpretation of what it means to think of Chronicles as a book about “what is omitted.” One reads the text in order to discover precisely what is not there or what the text has distorted and replaced. This type of reading, which purposefully does not follow the path of the “ordinary historian” is, for Derrida, “the very relevance of psychoanalysis, if it has one.” 53 It does not follow the classical norms of: presence/absence of literal and explicit reference to this or to that, to a this or to a that which one supposes to be identical to themselves, and simply absent, actually absent, if they are not simply present, actually present; how can one not, and why not, take into account the unconscious, and more generally virtual archives? 54

And taking into account the unconscious is precisely what a transferential reading of a text seeks to do, for the essence of the unconscious is the past hidden within the present and also of the present in continuum with the past. 55 53.  Derrida, Archive Fever, 65. 54.  Ibid., 64. 55.  Having concluded this section on transference, I should perhaps point out some of my uneasiness with using this psychoanalytical concept in this context. For one thing, I am not using transference in its most classical sense—namely, imagining the analyst as father or mother. Rather, I use it in a much broader sense: blurring the lines between the analyst and analysand (like Lacan) as well as opening up the roles to those beyond the familiar roles in the Oedipus complex (father, mother, child/son). I hope by using this broad understanding of transference I open up the text to a variety of readings rather than limit it to a single one. A second problem, more troubling than the first, is that I have not entered into my own transference with this text. I have refrained from analyzing what this text means to me personally, idiosyncratically, and what it evokes. David Jobling provides an excellent scholarly example of this in his commentary on 1 Samuel. He notes that his own reading of the book is largely a working out and coming to terms with his academic forefathers. His academic forefathers pushed for a historical-critical-only method, something Jobling was to resist later in his career. He notes how he is haunted by these forefathers as much as Saul is haunted by Samuel. I can only provide a few brief comments on what I have concluded about my own transference with Saul and the retelling of his story in Chronicles. One of the most influential books in my academic journey has been David Gunn’s The Fate of King Saul: The Interpretation of a Biblical Story. Gunn identifies Saul as a thoroughly tragic character, which works against many traditional interpretations of him as nothing but a foil to David. I found in the book an opening to exploring the Bible as literature. However, the problem is that Gunn’s analysis of Saul is based purely on the book of Samuel, perhaps the richest literary text in the Bible, and a book that has been explored in these terms by a host of scholars. Chronicles, on the other hand, does not seem to lend itself so easily to literary interpretations. It does not seem as “raw” as Samuel, and as I have noted above, it omits many of the most moving and emotional passages of the book; conceivably then, Chronicles acts as a resistance to my own academic readings. I am drawn to the book precisely for

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Julie Kelso and Transference In what follows, I focus on one specific transferential reading of 1 Chronicles 10, found in Julie Kelso’s book O Mother, Where Art Thou? Much of what I have already said about the relationship between the book of Chronicles and the psychoanalytical interpretation has been based on the work of Kelso. She adopts the transferential practice of an “I-you” dialogue with the Chronicler, which emphasizes the relationship between the analysand and analyst. Central to this approach is the concept of ongoing dialogue and the idea that the text can, in some way, still speak. Kelso apostrophizes the specter of the Chronicler and seems to represent the “new” scholar of whom Derrida speaks. For example, while discussing 1 Chr 10:3, Kelso directs her comments directly to the Chronicler and states, “I find it difficult to understand you when you say ‎‫ויחל מן־היורים‬,” instead of what would normally be formulated as something such as: “The text is difficult in v. 3.” Indeed, it is almost impossible to talk about texts without reanimating them in some way. We assert that the text is “saying something” and write about narratives, most often, in the present tense as though they are doing right now the actions about which they speak. Perhaps what is most uncanny is that we often substitute a proper name in place of the text, employing statements such as, “the Chronicler remarks. . . .” It is as though the text is merely a conduit, a spirit medium through which the author communicates. 56 Such remarks are evidence of the spectrality of the text itself. It is something that is neither living nor dead; it is something that speaks, survives, has a material presence, and so on but yet is not fully alive. And so, while I do not adopt Kelso’s practice of speaking to the Chronicler in the first person, I am aware that behind my scholarly façade of addressing the text as an object there is another level in which I inevitably speak directly to the Chronicler. this reason. By working through the text, I perhaps subconsciously believe(d) I could free Saul from the Chronicler. Chronicles then serves as a representation of the types of readings that I view myself as opposing. I do not want to belabor the point too much, however. My major agreement with Jobling is that one can use texts and past retellings to work through present issues. And, while I do not want to sound too apologetic, I realize that even this is a debated aspect of transferential readings. Francis Landy has expressed a differing viewpoint to me in private conversation. He wonders whether the past is actually there for the sake of the present, questioning just exactly what the Chronicler wants to teach his audience. Landy would rather assert that one goes back to the past (and re-narrates texts) for the sake of the past. One possible reason for this may be that the dead want to be remembered and thus call us to them, but more likely we want to go back to go to a different world and be seduced by the delights of fiction. 56.  All of these observations are taken from Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings, xii–xiii.

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Beyond speaking to the Chronicler, Kelso legitimately desires that the text talk back to her, a concept as absurd as talking to the dead. 57 She engages in a dialogue with the text through her hermeneutical rethinking of the “complex nature of silence.” 58 That is, she understands silence as a “spoken yet unheard voice” and as a “readable absence,” listening to not just the voice of the text—which endlessly repeats the same words to the analyst—but the voices behind the text that she attempts to give a voice. Thus, for Kelso, to bring the book of Chronicles into a psychoanalytical scene is not to “psychoanalyse” it in the sense of finding a theory at work in the text but, rather, to enter into a “dialogically produced space for analysis of a past in relation to a present produced through the encounter between the two (of us).” 59 This psychoanalytical practice can be paralleled to the idea of speaking to ghosts—in other words, to those who have no voice of their own but can speak only through the living.

Kelso and 1 Chronicles 10 Kelso argues that “the story of the murder of Saul and his sons can be read symptomatically as a narrative of this original repression of the maternal body that generates the properly patrilineal succession of the narratives that follow.” 60 On the surface, the murder of Saul in Chronicles appears to be reminiscent of Freud’s hypothesis regarding the original murder of the father, as set out in Totem and Taboo. However, according to Kelso it should be read with Irigaray’s thesis that the murder of the mother constitutes the origin of patriarchal history, as she insists that this other sacrificial body must be brought out of the crypt—for under the sacrificed victim, another victim is often hidden. 61 57.  A similar example can be found in the work of Roland Barthes, who was perhaps the first to announce the so-called “Death of the Author.” Certainly, he was the first to do so in any systematic and unequivocal way. So in the first sense, Barthes would assert that, “as institution, the author is dead: his civil status, his biographical person have disappeared; dispossessed, they no longer exercise over his work the formidable paternity whose account literary history, teaching, and public opinion had the responsibility of establishing and renewing.” But he is just as quick to point out for himself that, “in the text, in a way, I desire the author: I need his figure . . . as he needs mine” (Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text [trans. R. Miller; New York: Hill & Wang, 1975] 27). This relates to Derrida’s idea that we must speak to and with specters, even if they are not there, or never will be there; for some unexplainable (secret) reason, we (the living) need them (the dead). 58.  Kelso, O Mother, 11. She bases this presupposition largely on the work of Michelle Boulous Walker. 59.  Ibid., 76. The former approach is reductionist, because it confines the text to a single meaning. Unfortunately, this has most often been the application of psychoanalysis to the Bible. 60.  Ibid., 174. 61.  Ibid., 173–74, 226.

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Kelso begins by wondering why the body of Saul presents such a problem in 1 Chronicles 10 and asserts that the problem is almost always related to penetration. One example is the repetition of the root word ‫ חלל‬in v. 1 and v. 8 to describe the “corpses” or “fallen.” As she notes, the word also carries connotations of being pierced or penetrated. Additionally, in v. 3, when the battle weighs heavily upon Saul and the archers find him, the text reads ‫ויחל‬ ‫מן־היורים‬. Kelso observes that the translator must decide whether to translate the phrase ‘and he was wounded from the archers’ or ‘and he became frightened of the archers’, which leads her to wonder, “Has Saul been wounded yet? Has the enemy penetrated him at this early point? Or is Saul simply fearful of what is to come?” 62 A similar problem concerning penetration is found in v. 4, for here Saul is worried that the uncircumcised (‫ )הערלים‬will do something unimaginable to him. The verb here is ‫והתעללו‬, the 3rd-common-plural Hithpael of ‫עלל‬, meaning ‘to act arbitrarily’ or ‘to humiliate’ but could also mean ‘to insert or thrust in’. Again Kelso asks: “Given the semantic range of ‫ עלל‬does Saul fret that the Philistines will humiliate him by raping him in some way?” 63 The connection between penetration and Saul’s body grows within the narrative. He orders his armor-bearer to thrust his sword through him, as if this is a better death, or at least a better type of penetration, than what the Philistines might do to him. However, after the armor-bearer refuses, Saul is forced to penetrate himself (or so we are lead to believe, but as Kelso points out, Yahweh is given the credit for this deed in v. 14). But the key to understanding the passage, according to Kelso, is located in the curious choice of ‫‘ גופה‬body/corpse’ 62.  Ibid., 172. 63.  Ibid. I find a connection here between Kelso’s analysis of the Saul narrative in Chronicles and Yairah Amit’s “The Saul Polemic in the Persian Period,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 647–61. Amit wonders why a Saul polemic arose in the Persian period, given that there could not have been any real expectation that Saul’s descendants would return to the throne. She finds traces of this polemic in parts of Judges, particularly chap. 19—for example, the reference to Jabesh-gilead (Judg 21:1–15 and 1 Samuel 11; 31:11–13/1 Chr 10:11–12) or the spreading of information by means of a dismembered body (Judg 19:29 and 1 Sam 11:7). Amit then wonders why a pro-Saul polemic appeared in certain texts such as Esther, concluding that the “Saul polemic was not a real contest to restore Saul’s descendants to the throne. However, it expressed the tensions between the Judeans and the Benjaminites, the disappointment in and disillusionment about the house of David, and a protest against the claim that the Davidic dynasty was the only legitimate option to power” (p. 658). I must point out that there are also parallels to Saul’s death in Judges 9, because Abimilech also commits a type of suicide and fears that a “woman” might kill him, which serves as an excellent intertext to Kelso’s reading of Saul’s death in Chronicles. In any case, Amit’s article points out the different types of haunting that readers may experience. In texts such as Esther, one reader looked to rewrite the story of Saul in order to bring his story out of the tomb, out of the crypt, and shed a positive light on him and his tribe.

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used in vv. 11–12 but found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, which has a semantic range that includes hollowness and closed-ness. 64 In other words, the Chronicler presented the bodies of Saul and his sons in a word that evokes the male body as an enclosed, empty container, an exterior shell encasing an empty space. This imagery evokes the maternal body—the container for the father’s seed—and is thus necessarily murdered, beheaded, displayed, and paraded by one group of men as victory over another. 65 At times, Kelso stretches her evidence. She does not, for example, point out that ‫ גופה‬is used commonly in Late Biblical Hebrew. Moreover, there is a hint of the crude etymological fallacy that, because the word means “to be hollow” in Arabic, it by implication has the same connotation in Hebrew. Nonetheless, Kelso has presented a persuasive reading. In each dissection of the ambiguous words and phrases in 1 Chronicles 10, Kelso looks for traces of what has been suppressed, repressed, and disavowed. This reading is decidedly not a distortion of the text or, if it is, then it is a distortion in the way that Freud asserted that distortion should be understood. Kelso argues: “All in all, I would say that the question of Saul’s penetration is thoroughly ambiguous. Actually, not only ambiguous, but clearly problematic in that it serves to focus (masculine) anxiety, and significantly, to alter the narrative drive.” 66 Thus, behind the “surface level” or “ordinary” interpretation of these words, lies another tale, one that disrupts this primary narrative and opens up other possible interpretations. Kelso restores the voice of the silent maternal body, a presence behind the text that had been repressed but could be recovered by searching for the traces of its existence in the text. There are other specters still lurking behind the text, waiting for another transferential reader to listen and to give them a voice.

Conclusion: Or a Return to the Beginning Endings are as plagued by paradox as beginnings. Indeed, the Aristotelian concept that endings should ravel up all the loose ends is as complicated as Aris­totle’s concept of beginnings. To consider the ending of a work as a completion of the beginning already shows the complexity involved in both, for one cannot properly understand a beginning without referring to the ending. In essence then, one is always “coming back” to beginnings. This is the very logic of spectrality. Derrida notes that the question of the specter is always: “A question of repetition: a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its coming and goings because it begins by coming back.” 67 The spectral ushers in an endless process of returning, without ever arriving. It is an example of 64.  Kelso, O Mother, 172. 65. Ibid. 66.  Ibid., 173. 67.  Derrida, Specters of Marx, 11.

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the deep connections among repetition, revisiting, remembering, and so on (precisely all the words that are connected with transference) and ghosts. This desire to revisit the texts that haunt us, such as the Saul narrative in Chronicles, is what I have attempted to analyze in this essay. This repetition compulsion, which is the basis of transference, opens up the text to ever new readings and refutes the interpretations that assert that meaning is cemented in the text. Julie Kelso’s examination of the narrative is just one example of the way that one may go about a reading that speaks to the ghosts of the text. 1 Chronicles 10 is not a dead text; it continues to haunt scholars. However, our goal should not be to exorcise this specter but, rather, to learn to live with it.

Let the Crime Fit the Punishment: The Chronicler’s Explication of David’s “Sin” in 1 Chronicles 21 Paul S. Evans McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University

Introduction “Let the punishment fit the crime” is the principle in ethics and law that the severity of a penalty for a crime should be reasonable and proportionate to the severity of the infraction. Proportionality demands that the level of punishment be relative to the severity of the offending behavior. Of course, proportionality is also an important legal principle in ancient Israelite legislation, as can be seen in Exod 21:23–25 (similarly, Deut 19:21), which includes the punishments of “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Based on this principle, fitting punishments for crimes can be determined. Of course, at times, determining the proper punishment for a crime might be difficult—despite the guiding principle of proportionality. In these cases, for Israel, the casuistic or case laws in the Torah provide further guidance for determining appropriate penalties for infractions by providing hypothetical cases that presumably could function as precedents and guide judiciaries further. 1 1.  Recent studies have shown how very little evidence exists that biblical and extrabiblical law codes from the ancient Near East were actually used in legal disputes. E.g., C. L. Meyers, Exodus (NCBC; Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2005) 183; J. W. Marshall, Israel and the Book of the Covenant: An Anthropological Approach to Biblical Law (SBLDS 140; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) 21. See also S. Greengus, “Law in the OT,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume (ed. K. Crim; Nashville: Abingdon, 1976) 532–36. However, in my judgment, it seems reasonable that the case laws functioned in some way as establishing precedents or providing guiding principles in some way. See M. Greenberg, “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” in Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume: Studies in Bible and Jewish Religion (ed. M. Haran; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960) 5–28; J. Goldingay, Israel’s life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) 333. C. B. Anderson notes that “the biblical laws . . . may not have been enforced within a judiciary system” but suggests that they were still quite influential and probably were employed at least for public shaming by the community (Women, Ideology, and Violence: Critical Theory

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In 1 Chronicles 21, the Chronicler 2 was confronted with a situation in which the difficulty was not determining the appropriate punishment for an infraction but determining the appropriate infraction that would merit the punishment of a severe plague—one in which 70,000 male Israelites perish. In other words, the Chronicler needed to explain why David’s census was sinful and why it merited such a penalty. 3 In determining the answer to this question, I argue that the Chronicler, as might be expected, turned to casuistic laws from the Torah to determine the appropriate crime that would deserve such a severe punishment.

The Chronicler’s Narrative of David’s Sinful Census To begin, a few words regarding the census narrative of 1 Chronicles 21 are necessary. It is somewhat surprising that the Chronicler includes the story of the sin of the census from his Vorlage (2 Samuel 24), given his deletion of the majority of David’s other shortcomings in his work. However, several suggestions have been offered to explain why this story remains. 4 Knoppers suggests that the narrative presents David as a model repentant sinner, and thus 1 Chronicles 21 is also a laudatory account of David in its own way. 5 Wright claims that the Chronicler has actually shifted the blame of the census to Joab, though David vicariously takes the blame anyway. 6 Thus, there is no dissonance in the Chronicler’s inclusion of the census narrative. In my opinion, its inclusion likely had something to do with the connection of this narrative with the choosing of the temple site. 7 and the Construction of Gender in the Book of the Covenant and the Deuteronomic Law [London:T. & T. Clark, 2004] 82). 2. By Chronicler, I mean the author(s) of the book of Chronicles. 3.  The Chronicler clearly held to the principle of proportion in divine-human relations. See E. Ben Zvi, “A Gateway to the Chronicler’s Teaching: The Account of the Reign of Ahaz in 2 Chr 28,1–27,” SJOT 7 (1993) 216–49. 4.  E.g., S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 370–90; M. Noth, The Chronicler’s History (JSOTSup 50; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987) 34, 55–56; W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher (HAT 21; Tübingen: Mohr, 1955) 141–49; P. R. Ackroyd, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah (TBC; London: SCM, 1973) 73–77. 5.  G. N. Knoppers, “Images of David in Early Judaism: David as Repentant Sinner in Chronicles,” Bib 76 (1995) 449–70; idem, I Chronicles (2 vols.; AB 12A/1–2; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 755, 763–64. 6.  J. W. Wright, “The Innocence of David in 1 Chronicles 21,” JSOT 60 (1993) 87–105. 7.  This can be seen most clearly in the way that the narrative concludes with David’s choice of Ornan’s threshing floor for the temple site. Many scholars have viewed this as the primary reason that the Chronicler retains the census narrative. See S. J. De Vries, 1 and 2 Chronicles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989) 177–80; R. Braun, 1 Chronicles (Waco, TX: Word, 1986) 212–18; H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 142–51; R. Mosis, Untersuchungen zur Theologie des chronistischen Geschichtswerkes (Freiburg: Herder, 1973) 104–24; W. Ru-

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Of course, this is not the only negative story concerning David in Chronicles. David’s failure to bring the ark to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 13) is still included in Chronicles, as is his failed bid for the right to build the temple itself (1 Chronicles 17). Significantly, both of these accounts that reflect negatively on David are connected to the cult. Regardless of which reason one accepts for the inclusion of the census narrative in Chronicles, the issue why the census was wrong in the first place still needs to be resolved.

Finding the Crime to Fit the Punishment In seeking to explain the sin of the census in 1 Chronicles 21, scholars have put forward several options. Some have suggested that the sin of the census had to do with the hubris of the king. 8 Others argue that the census showed a lack of trust in Yhwh or attempted somehow to usurp his authority. 9 The problem with these explanations is that other censuses occur in Chronicles and are not viewed negatively (even military censuses). 10 Others have suggested that the problem was not with the census per se but in the completion of the census. As mentioned, Wright suggested that the sin was Joab’s refusal to complete the census and count Benjamin and Levi. 11 Of course, Wright’s theory only makes sense if Joab is at fault and not David (which is exactly what Wright maintains) because David ordered a complete census, but Joab did not complete it. However, 1 Chr 21:8 makes it clear that David views the sin as his own: dolph, Chronikbücher (Tübingen: Mohr, 1955) 141–49; A. C. Welch, The Work of the Chronicler, Its Purpose and Its Date (London: Oxford University Press, 1939) 21–24. 8.  E.g., M. J. Evans, 1 and 2 Samuel (NIBCOT 6; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000) 245; A. A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (WBC 11; Dallas: Word, 1989) 284; J. G. Baldwin, 1 and 2 Samuel An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC 8; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988) 295; J. Mauchline, 1 and 2 Samuel (NCBC; London: Oliphants, 1971) 322. 9.  E.g., H. G. M. Williamson notes that this census was “for military purposes . . . and thus represented a turning away from the absolute reliance upon God” (1 and 2 Chronicles, 143). D. G. Firth argues that “David’s sin may be seeking to usurp Yahweh’s authority over Israelite kings” (1 and 2 Samuel [AOTC 8; Nottingham: Apollos, 2009] 541). In this regard, K. A. Ristau suggests that the use of the word ‫ מנה‬is significant. He writes, “This root is typically used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a numbering of a thing (or things) that Yahweh alone counts, and/or humans cannot and in some cases should not count” (“Breaking Down Unity: An Analysis of 1 Chronicles 21:1–22:1,” JSOT 30 [2005] 209). Therefore, the king’s attempting to count what only God can count is assuming the prerogatives of God alone. However, this argument is not compelling, because ‫ מנה‬is used of things that people count on several occasions. E.g., 1 Kgs 20:25 (an army), 2 Kgs 12:11 (an amount of money), and Jer 33:13 (flocks). 10. As Knoppers writes, “Musters are an appropriate feature of national administration (1 Chr 9:1; 11:11; 12:24; 23:3; 27:1–34; 2 Chr 2:1 [ET 2:2]; 17:13–19; 25:5; 26:11–13; 31:12–19)” (I Chronicles, 751). Cf. Wright, “Innocence of David,” 87–105. 11. Ibid.

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“David said to God, ‘I have sinned greatly when I did this thing. But now, please take away the guilt of your servant; for I acted very foolishly.’” As Bailey notes, David “does not refer to the incompletion of the census, nor does he accept, or for that matter mention, Joab’s putative guilt.” 12 Furthermore, the context of the śāṭān’s inciting the census makes Joab’s aversion to David’s command seem laudable. If the enemy/Satan 13 incites the census, then refusing to take the census would be a positive thing. Knoppers suggests that it is the fact that the śāṭān (in his view, a human adversary) incites the taking of a census that makes the act sinful. He writes, “In the context of the larger narrative, the issue becomes not so much the census as that one of David’s enemies has successfully induced him to order such a maneuver.” 14 In other words, the census was not sinful; the punishment was simply due to David’s being manipulated by an enemy. However, in my opinion, Joab’s objection makes little sense in this view. Did Joab know of the instigation of the śāṭān and therefore object? This does not seem to be the case, because his objection gives no sign of this. Furthermore, Joab’s use of the terms ‫‘ אׁשמה‬guilt’ (21:3) and ‫‘ תעב‬abhorrent’ (21:6) seems to point to a different reason for his objection to this census, because these terms usually connote infractions in the cultic area. 15 As Johnstone remarks, the use of these terms “make clear that David’s failure lies in the ritual realm.” 16 Another explanation asserts that the sin of the census is to be found in the negligent manner in which it was carried out; however, in this view, it was not the partial completion of the census that was the problem but David’s failure to have the individuals who were counted pay the half-shekel required in Mosaic legislation in Exod 30:11–16. Yhwh spoke to Moses: When you take a census of the Israelites to register them, at registration they shall each give a ransom [‫ ]כפר‬for their lives to Yhwh when registered, so that no plague may come upon them when registered. (Exod 30:11–12)

This ‫ כפר‬legislation described these contributions as supporting ‫עבדת אהל מועד‬ ‘the work of the tent of meeting’ (Exod 30:16), a phrase used elsewhere to 12. Noel Bailey, “David’s Innocence: A Response to J. Wright,” JSOT 64 (1994) 83–90. 13.  For a discussion of the interpretive options and my arguments for śāṭān as a proper name in this passage, see my “Divine Intermediaries in 1  Chronicles 21: An Overlooked Aspect of the Chronicler’s Theology,” Bib 85 (2004) 545–58. 14.  Knoppers, I Chronicles, 751. 15. For ‫אׁשמה‬, see, e.g., Lev 4:3, 5:24, 22:16. For ‫תעב‬, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif tōʿēbâ et le verbe tʿb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 (1960) 217–37. 16. W. Johnstone, Chronicles and Exodus: An Analogy and Its Application (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 131.

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indicate the Levitic work or construction work on the tabernacle. 17 Since Exod 30:12 explicitly states that failure to pay this ‫ כפר‬when taking a census will result in a ‫‘ נגף‬plague’, and the judgment on David’s census was a ‫‘ מגפה‬plague’ (1 Chr 21:17), the sin of the census is explicated. This interpretation can be found as far back as Josephus, who states that “[David] forgot the commands of Moses, who had said beforehand, that if the multitude were numbered, they were to pay half a shekel to God per head.” 18 Some modern commentators have also appealed to Exodus 30 to explain the sin of David’s census (though they do not reference Josephus). E. A. Speiser notes this interpretation somewhat in passing, noting that, following David’s census, “a devastating pestilence afflicted the land” and that, “[s]ince nothing is said there about a kofer [sic], one is justified in assuming that the omission of that precautionary measure was somehow linked with the subsequent plague.” 19 Speiser was more concerned with explaining the existence of legislation (such as Exod 30:11–16) that attempted to prevent plagues on occasions of censuses than with interpreting 2 Samuel 24 or 1 Chronicles 21. By appealing to evidence from Mari, Speiser argued that at one time in the ancient Near East a census had ominous implications, and this ancient superstition may explain the perceived need for legislation such as Exod 30:11–16. 20 He further suggested that the ancient fear of being counted was also “kept alive by plagues, which must have decimated crowded camps more than once.” 21 While there may be some merit to this speculative historical explanation, it must be acknowledged that this notion is not reflected in the biblical accounts. 22 In fact, 17.  E.g., Num 4:30; 7:5; 8:24; 18:6, 21, 23. U. Cassuto surmises that the reason this ‫ כפר‬legislation was given at this point in Exodus was to designate the funds collected for use in the construction of the tabernacle (Exod 38:25–28) (A Commentary on the Book of Exodus [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967] 393). 18. Josephus, Ant. 7.13 (trans. Thackeray, LCL). 19.  E. A. Speiser, “Census and Ritual Expiation in Mari and Israel,” BASOR 149 (1958) 17–25. 20.  Speiser writes, “There must thus have been a time when the ancient Near Easterner shrank from the thought of having his name recorded in lists that might be put to unpredictable uses. . . . The connection with the cosmic ‘books’ of life and death must have been much too close for one’s peace of mind. It would be natural in these circumstances to propitiate the unknown powers, or seek expiation as a general precaution” (“Census,” 24). See J. A. Sanders, “Census,” IDB 1:547; B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 67. 21.  Speiser, “Census,” 25. K. Luke argued similarly regarding the plague following David’s census, explaining it as the result of the unsanitary conditions in which the multitude gathered for counting lives. K. Luke, “Light from Mari on David’s Census,” IJT 32/3–4 (1983) 70–89. 22.  Speiser’s thesis has also been undermined by K. Luke’s study of the Mari texts, who concludes “that we do not find in [the OT/HB] any allusion to a rite comparable to

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given the temporal and geographical distance between the ancient Near Eastern evidence on which this theory is based and the biblical texts, in my opinion it is more likely that neither the Deuteronomist nor the Chronicler knew of this ancient superstition when composing his work. 23 Recently, Johnstone has revived the ‫ כפר‬explanation of the sin of David’s census in Chronicles, though he fails to acknowledge (or is simply unaware) that others have argued similarly in both the recent and ancient past. 24 However, Johnstone offers some novel arguments in favor of the interpretation. First, aware that the Chronicler does not explicitly cite the legislation in his the one at Mari . . . so that we cannot simply equate the Israelite census with the Mari conscription techniques” (“Light from Mari,” 70–89). 23.  Other explanations for the sin of David’s census have been offered. J. J. Adler argues that David’s sin was his failure to conquer the Jebusite-occupied temple mount, violating the commands of Deut 7:1–2 (“David’s Last Sin: Was It the Census?” JBQ 23 [1995] 91–95; idem, “David’s Census: Additional Reflection,” JBQ 24 [1996] 255–57). However, this theory is very unlikely because no such failure is referenced in the text. In fact, David is explicitly said to have conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites (2 Sam 5:6–8; 1 Chr 11:4–5). K. R. Greenwood has made the unlikely suggestion that the sin of the census was David’s “premature” preparations for the construction of the temple (“Labor Pains: The Relationship between David’s Census and Corvée Labor,” BBR 20 [2010] 467–77). In this view, the purpose of the census of 1 Chronicles 21 was for securing corvée labor for building the temple. Since Solomon was to build the temple, David’s temple preparations were sinful. However, this theory can only be accepted if one accepts that the Chronicler attempts to portray David in an altogether poor light. First, David fails at bringing the ark to Jerusalem (chap. 13), then fails in his bid for permission to build the temple (chap. 17), then sinfully gathers and “sanctifies” (‫)ׁשידקה‬ materials for the temple (18:8, 18–21), then sinfully attempts to secure labor force for building the temple (chap. 21), then sinfully gathers more material for the temple (chaps. 22–29). Furthermore, by this rationale, David’s role in the founding of muscial worship in the temple would be deemed “premature” and therefore sinful as well. Furthermore, Greenwood suggests that David is an unreliable character in Chronicles when he lies to the people (1 Chr 28:3) regarding the reason he was not allowed to build the temple (“Labor Pains,” 476). Presumably then, David’s statement in 1 Chr 28:19 that Yhwh gave him written plans for the temple was also a lie (because they are in the same speech and appear to justify David’s efforts in this regard). In the end, if this line of interpretation is followed, David appears almost uniformly negative in Chronicles— something that goes completely against the grain of the text and the Chronicler’s use of a prophetic title for David, calling him a “man of God” (2 Chr 8:14)—a title referring to David’s role in preparing for temple worship! In fact, since David’s temple preparations are nonsynoptic additions by the Chronicler, one would need to conclude that the Chronicler went out of his way to make David look bad. In my opinion, and based on a solid scholarly consensus, it is far more likely that David’s preparations were viewed positively by the Chronicler, and statements regarding Yhwh’s giving David plans for the temple are to be understood as reliable reporting, thus justifying David’s extensive efforts in this regard. 24.  Johnstone, Chronicles and Exodus, 128–40.

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census narrative, Johnstone argues for the thesis by appealing to 2 Chronicles 24 and the story of Joash’s temple renovations, which alludes to the legislation of Exod 30:11–16. In 2 Chr 24:6, the king asks Jehoiada, “Why have you not sought the Levites to bring from Judah and Jerusalem the tax levied by Moses, the servant of Yhwh, and the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony?” (2 Chr 24:6). Scholars agree that the law alluded to here is Exod 30:11–16. 25 Therefore, the Joash narrative demonstrates that the Chronicler was aware of the ‫ כפר‬legislation and viewed it as integral to ongoing temple maintenance or construction. Second, Johnstone underscores the theological importance of the root ‫פקד‬, which he views as the hermeneutical key to understanding the sin of the census. Since the verb ‫‘( פקד‬to count/muster’) occurs five times in Exod 30:11–16 (vv. 12 [3×], 13, 14), Johnstone leverages the putative significance of the root ‫ פקד‬in the story of Jehoiada and Joash in 2 Chr 23:16–24:14. Though the verb ‫‘( פקד‬to count/muster’) does not occur in this story, words deriving from the same root occur three times. First, in 2 Chr 23:18 Jehoiada entrusts the ‘oversight’ (‫ )פקדה‬of the temple to the Levites. Second, in the next chapter Joash calls Jehoiada to account for not having the Levites collect the ‘levy of Moses’ (‫ )מׂשאת מׁשה‬and commands that the tax be collected and brought to the ‫פקדה‬ of the king (2 Chr 24:11a). In this instance, ‫ פקדה‬is usually translated as the ‘oversight of the king’, ‘officers of the king’, or the king’s ‘overseers’. Finally, the third occurrence of the root is in the mention of the involvement of the ‘officer’ ‫ פקיד‬of the chief priest in collecting the monies (2 Chr 24:11b). Despite the fact that none of these occurrences of the root ‫ פקד‬appears to have a similar meaning to the verb ‫‘( פקד‬to count/muster’) in Exodus 30, Johnstone argues that in 2 Chronicles 23–24 “the significance of ‫ פקד‬is expounded by being brought specifically into relation with Mosaic legislation.” 26 Johnstone asserts that ‫ פקד‬is a technical term for a counting/mustering of the people that is not for military purposes but is undertaken to ensure that the people pay all they owe to God. 27 He points out that the root ‫ פקד‬is used in 1 Chronicles 21, which he believes evinces the Chronicler’s intentional allusion to the ‫ כפר‬legislation and points to the problem with David’s census. However, while the book of Chronicles has 20 occurrences of the root ‫פקד‬, it only appears in 1 Chronicles 21 twice (vv. 5, 6). 28 Not only this, but in his census narrative of 1 Chronicles 21 the Chronicler omits a very important instance of 25.  E.g., E. L. Curtis and A. A. Madsen, The Books of Chronicles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1910) 435; Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 321; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 844. 26.  Johnstone, Chronicles and Exodus, 132. 27.  Ibid., 131, 140. 28.  It occurs once as the verb ‫‘ פקד‬to count’ (v. 6) and once as the noun ‫‘ מפקד‬census/mustering’ (v. 5).

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‫ פקד‬from his Vorlage. In 2 Sam 24:2, David commands Joab to “go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and count (‫ )פקד‬the people. . . .” However, the Chronicler rewrites it as: “Go, number (‫ )ספר‬Israel, from Beersheba to Dan” (1 Chr 21:2). Johnstone is aware of this problem, admitting in a footnote that the significance of the word ‫ פקד‬in 1 Chronicles 21 is thereby “somewhat obscured.” 29 However, this is clearly an understatement, because ‫ פקד‬is key to Johnstone’s thesis because he argues that it is a technical term for a counting of the people, not for military purposes, but for verifying that the people pay their dues to Yhwh. 30 Yet David orders the census without using this all-important word! 31 Clearly the term ‫ פקד‬cannot bear the weight placed on it in Johnstone’s argumentation. 32 Despite these shortcomings, in my opinion the ‫ כפר‬thesis still has merit. As 2 Chronicles 24 demonstrates, the Chronicler was aware of the legislation from Exodus 30. Furthermore, it is quite clear that Mosaic legislation was held in high regard by the Chronicler and influenced his work considerably. 33 Therefore, in light of the Chronicler’s knowledge and expressed high valuation of Mosaic Torah, it is important to consider how the Chronicler’s knowledge and 29.  Johnstone, Chronicles and Exodus, 131 n. 111. 30.  Ibid., 131, 140. 31.  Furthermore, the Chronicler omits another occurrence of ‫ פקד‬in his reworking of 2 Sam 24:4 (1 Chr 21:4), though he uses the cognate ‫ מפקד‬in the next verse (1 Chr 21:5) and adds a nonsynoptic ‫ פקד‬in 1 Chr 21:6 (absent from his Vorlage, 2 Sam 24:9). 32.  For example, ‫ פקד‬is used elsewhere of musterings that are not deemed sinful despite the lack of a ‫ כפר‬payment collected (see 1 Chr 17:14 using ‫ ;פקד‬2 Chr 26:11 using ‫)פקד‬. 33.  For example, there are many references to the Mosaic Torah throughout the Chronicler’s work. He refers to the Law of Moses (2 Chr 23:18; 30:16; 25:4), the book of Moses (2 Chr 25:4; 2 Chr 35:12), ordinances given through Moses (2 Chr 33:8), the Law of Yhwh given through Moses (2 Chr 34:14), or the word of Yhwh by Moses (2 Chr 35:6). A well-known example can be found in 2 Chr 6:16, where the Chronicler alters his Vorlage (1 Kgs 8:25), which reads, “if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me,” but the Chronicler changed it to “if only your children keep to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me.” B. S. Childs, following Willi, concludes that this change was motivated by the Chronicler’s “theology of authoritative scripture” (Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 648). Z. Talshir suggests that the reason for this change is that, when Chronicles was written, “the Torah was the very core of the people’s religious life” (“Several Canon-Related Concepts Originating in Chronicles,” ZAW 113 [2001] 387–403). Both are probably true. The Torah was at the heart of Jewish religion in the Chronicler’s day, and his change of “my way” to “my Torah” probably reflects his theology of Scripture. Or, on another occasion, the Chronicler makes a similar change. In 2 Chr 15:3, the Chronicler changes Hos 3:4 from “for the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim” to “for a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law (‫)תורה‬.” As Japhet convincingly demonstrates, 2 Chr 15:3–4 is based on Hos 5:15 (I and II Chronicles, 720).

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conception of Torah would have affected his reading of Samuel–Kings. More specifically, in light of the Chronicler’s evident knowledge of the ‫ כפר‬legislation of Exod 30:11–16, it is important to consider how this would have informed his interpretation of 2 Samuel 24. In my judgment, it seems likely that the reference in Exod 30:12 to an improper census resulting in a plague would have informed his interpretation of 2 Samuel 24, where both an improper census and a subsequent plague are narrated. Furthermore, this would not be the only time in which Mosaic Torah informed the Chronicler’s reworking of his Vorlage. A clear example of this can be seen in 1 Chronicles 13–15, where another potentially difficult divine punishment is explained in a similar manner. Although his Vorlage, 2 Samuel 6, does not offer any apologetic for Uzzah’s being struck dead by Yhwh for attempting to steady the ark of God during its transport to Jerusalem, the Chronicler explains this divine punishment through an appeal to Mosaic Torah (Exod 25:14–15). In 1 Chr 15:2, David references Mosaic Torah (Deut 10:8), which requires that only Levites carry the ark; then in 1 Chr 15:13, David explains that the failure to have Levites do so was the reason that Yhwh’s anger “burst out” (‫ )פרץ‬against them (clearly referencing the death of Uzzah in 1 Chr 13:11, which says, “Yhwh had burst out [‫ ]פרץ‬against Uzzah”). Furthermore, in David’s second attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem, David’s success is directly attributed to his obedience to Mosaic Torah as the Chronicler states that “the Levites carried the Ark of God—just as Moses commanded, according to the word of Yhwh—with poles on [their shoulders]” (1 Chr. 15:15). The Chronicler’s Vorlage makes no reference to Mosaic Torah or to the use of poles or Levites in bringing the ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:12). This apologetic appeal to Torah to explain Uzzah’s death has significant parallels to the exegetical method employed in 1 Chronicles 21. In both 1 Chronicles 13 (Uzzah’s death) and 1 Chronicles 21 (David’s sinful census), the appropriate Mosaic legislation to explain the transgression in view is not referenced in the passage in question but only later (in 1 Chronicles 15 and 2 Chronicles 24, respectively). In my judgment, reading the Chronicler’s treatment of the mysterious sin of the census in light of his treatment of the mysterious death of Uzzah sheds light on the Chronicler’s method, and places the ‫ כפר‬thesis on more solid ground. However, if the Chronicler did understand the sin of David’s census to be the failure to observe the ‫ כפר‬legislation, several important questions remain. First, as noted above, the Chronicler’s awareness of the ‫ כפר‬legislation is evident from 2 Chronicles 24. However, if 2 Chronicles 24 has this Mosaic legislation in view, why is no census mentioned in the passage? Also, the legislation in Exodus 30 appears to envision a one-time event in the desert and not a yearly tax, as in 2 Chronicles 24. 34 Therefore, some explanation regarding both the accord and the dissonance between these two passages is needed. Second, 34.  Ibid., 843.

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as mentioned earlier, other censuses in Chronicles are not considered sinful, despite the fact that they also fail to mention the ‫ כפר‬payment. Why was the census of 1 Chronicles 21 different? Third, would the Chronicler indeed have viewed David as culpable in failing to follow the ‫ כפר‬legislation? Would David have known of the law and its relevance in his context? Fourth, if the ‫ כפר‬legislation from Exodus 30 is in view in 1 Chronicles 21, then the result of violating the Mosaic legislation was to be a plague. Why then was David given a choice of three different judgments? Fifth, if the sin was the failure of those registered in David’s census to pay the tax, why were Benjamin and Levi not spared from the plague, since they were not counted? 35 Would they not have been spared, since they did not participate in the sin? Each of these questions requires some explanation if the ‫ כפר‬theory is to be taken seriously as the Chronicler’s explanation for the sin of the census in 1 Chronicles 21.

1.  2 Chronicles 24 As noted above, most commentators have concluded that the Chronicler had the ‫ כפר‬legislation from Exodus 30 in view when he composed the 2 Chronicles 24 narrative. 36 Although his Vorlage did not refer to it, nor is a census referred to in the story, the Chronicler was probably following the lead of his source in 2 Kings 12, because it refers to the monies apportioned for temple repairs as “the money for which each person is assessed—the money from the assessment (‫ )רבע‬of persons” (2 Kgs 12:4). 37 Talk of “assessment” implies that a census has been taken. 38 This same word (‫ )רבע‬also appears twice in the ‫כפר‬ legislation itself (Exod 30:13, 14) to refer to those who are counted and pay the ‫ כפר‬tax. As Japhet asserts, 2 Chronicles 24 is an example of the Chronicler’s “exegesis of the older difficult texts . . . he links the initiative of Joash with Moses’ ancient decree.” 39 There are, of course, problems with identifying the Mosaic legislation too closely with what is referred to in 2 Chronicles 24, since the latter states that the tax was to be a yearly donation (2 Chr 24:5), whereas Exodus 30 appears to envision a one-time donation. However, I am not suggesting that Exodus 30 actually referred to a yearly tax, only that the Chronicler was appealing to this ancient legislation in support of Joash’s directives. As Japhet sums up, The point being made in [2 Chronicles 24] is that Joash is not issuing an arbitrary command; he was simply enforcing an old statute, in response to an urgent 35.  Knoppers, I Chronicles, 752. 36. E.g., Curtis, The Books of Chronicles, 435; Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 321; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 844. 37. As Japhet notes, this description of the monies “shows unmistakable affinity to Exod. 30.13; 38.26 and Lev 27.2ff.” (I and II Chronicles, 844). 38.  In fact, the niv simply translates ‫‘ רבע‬census’ in this verse. 39.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 844.

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need in the particular circumstances of his time, following a severe threat to the temple. 40

The last part of Japhet’s statement is significant for my purposes here. It was in the context of the maintenance or reconstruction of the temple that the Chronicler evoked the legislation in 2  Chronicles 24. Since the context of Exod 30:11–16 is the construction of the tabernacle, and the context of 2 Chr 24:6 is temple renovation, the Chronicler viewed the Mosaic legislation as relevant. This may be the hermeneutical key to understanding the Chronicler’s explanation of the sin of the census.

2.  Why Other Censuses in Chronicles Are Not Censured Since it was the context of the construction/maintenance of the temple in 2 Chronicles 24 that led the Chronicler to appeal to the legislation of Exodus 30, this explains why other censuses in Chronicles do not result in divine chastisement. However, the Chronicler’s interpretation of David’s sinful census underscored the importance of the event since it resulted in the choosing of the site for the temple (1 Chr 22:1). As Knoppers states, “The Chronicler shifts attention from the census itself to the circumstances surrounding the census.” 41 In Chronicles, the circumstances surrounding the census were the imminent sanctuary construction. This can be demonstrated through a brief survey of the chapters preceding and immediately following the census narrative of 1 Chronicles 21. In 1  Chronicles 15, David successfully moves the ark to Jerusalem. Because the ark represented the presence of Yhwh and was therefore Israel’s most sacred cultic object, the choice to move it to Jerusalem underscores David’s intent to construct a sanctuary in Jerusalem. In fact, later David refers to his request to build a temple for Yhwh as wanting “to build a resting-place for the Ark of the Covenant of Yhwh” (1 Chr 28:2). The moving of the ark to Jerusalem is clearly a move toward sanctuary construction. In fact, in 1 Chr 15:1 we are told that David actually erects a rudimentary sanctuary by pitching a tent for the ark (mentioned again in 1 Chr 16:1). David even stations Levites and priests in Jerusalem to minister at this tent before the ark (1 Chr 16:4–6). Furthermore, this “tent” is deemed to be an appropriate sanctuary by Yhwh himsel f. This can be seen in 1 Chr 17:5, where Yhwh denies the need for a temple, noting that, since the time of the exodus, he has gone ‘from tent to tent’ (‫)מאהל אל־אהל‬, implying the legitimacy of David’s tent. Though it is well known that following the census narrative (1 Chronicles 22) David undertakes extensive preparations for the building of the temple, 40.  Ibid. 41.  Knoppers, I Chronicles, 752. Similarly, Japhet writes, “While [1 Chronicles 21] is taken from II Sam. 24, its import is determined, to an even greater extent than usual, by its new context” (I and II Chronicles, 371).

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setting aside vast amounts of precious metals for its construction, the Chronicler also portrays him as stockpiling capital in preparation for sanctuary construction prior to the census narrative. For example, in 1 Chr 18:8 we read that “David took a vast quantity of copper; with it Solomon made the sea of bronze and the pillars and the bronze vessels.” In 1 Chr 18:20–21, David ‘consecrates’ (‫ )הקדיׁש‬much silver and gold to Yhwh, implying that they will be used for the temple as well. (This is confirmed by 1 Chr 26:26–27, which clearly states that the things David had “consecrated” went to the maintenance of the temple.) David’s preparations for the temple’s construction occur both before and after the census narrative, creating an envelope of imminent sanctuary construction around the census narrative. Of course, in 1 Chronicles 17 David explicitly expresses his desire to build a temple for Yhwh. Although he is denied this privilege, David’s son is designated as the temple builder (1 Chr 17:11–12). This is reiterated immediately after the census narrative (1 Chr 22:5, 8–10), once again creating an envelope of imminent sanctuary construction around the census narrative. 42 In sum, in order to confer the relevance of the ‫ כפר‬legislation of Exodus 30 on David’s failed census, the Chronicler created a literary context of impending temple construction. 43 Furthermore, the “tabernacle of Yhwh” is cited near the end of the narrative (1 Chr 21:29)—a nonsynoptic addition. Furthermore, the Chronicler explicitly recalls its construction stating, “which Moses had made in the desert” (1 Chr 21:29). Thus, the Chronicler specifically notes the literary context of the ‫ כפר‬legislation of Exodus 30, when Moses made the tabernacle in the desert. This reference to the construction of the first sanctuary supports the thesis that the Chronicler had in mind the ‫ כפר‬legislation of Exodus 30. Although the Exodus 30 text was likely not in the mind of the Deuteronomist, 44 the Chronicler intimated the relevance of this text by creating a context of imminent sanctuary construction and making explicit reference to the original construction of the tabernacle by Moses in the desert.

3.  The Culpability of David In criminal law, culpability implies having some knowledge of the wrongfulness of one’s actions. The principle can also be seen in Mosaic Torah where, for example, different penalties for the owner of a goring ox are dependent on 42.  Furthermore, the Chronicler reduced the narrative space between the census and David’s request to build a temple that he found in his Vorlage—from 17 chapters’ separation (2 Samuel 7, 24) to only 3 (1 Chronicles 17, 21). 43. As Johnstone points out (but seems to miss the significance of), “the building of the temple . . . overlaps in context with the census” (Chronicles and Exodus, 131). 44.  The Deuteronomist does not cite the ‫ כפר‬legislation in his parallel to 2 Chron­ icles 24 (2 Kings 12), nor does he reference the tabernacle in his parallel to 1 Chronicles 21 (2 Samuel 24). Furthermore, there is no context of imminent sanctuary construction in 2 Samuel 24.

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different levels of culpability (Exod 21:28–32). As a student of Torah, presumably the Chronicler was familiar with this principle. Therefore, we may question how the Chronicler found David to be culpable for his actions in 1 Chronicles 21, because it may seem unreasonable to expect the king even to have known about the Mosaic legislation, much less to have realized that it was applicable in his context. However, these objections are not unassailable. First, the Torah itself provides precedents in which people are considered culpable in instances where they seem not to have known better. For example, in the story of the first homicide in Genesis 4, the reason that God was displeased with Cain’s offering is not clear to either the reader or (apparently) to Cain, yet Cain is presented as being culpable (Gen 4:7). Similarly, in Exod 4:24–26, when in obedience to Yhwh Moses is en route to Egypt, Yhwh sets out to kill him, apparently for failing to circumcise his son. Despite the fact that circumcision is not mentioned anywhere else in the book of Exodus, and it is unclear that Moses would have known about the requirement of circumcision, Moses is viewed as being culpable. More importantly, a similar example is found in Chronicles itself with the story of God’s striking Uzzah for attempting to secure the ark from falling off the cart while it was in transport (1 Chronicles 13). Again, it is not clear that Uzzah had any knowledge that this was a bad idea or that what he did violated Mosaic legislation. Nevertheless, the Chronicler presents Uzzah as culpable. In fact, contrary to his Vorlage, the Chronicler later (1 Chr 15:2, 13, 15) explains that God struck Uzzah due to failing to follow Mosaic legislation (Deut 10:8; Exod 25:14–15). Second, as this last instance shows, in the world of Chronicles David knows the Torah. In 1 Chronicles 15, it is David himself who cites Mosaic legislation (v.  2) in explaining the death of Uzzah (v.  13) and he even quotes phrases verbatim from the legislation. 45 With David’s clear knowledge of Torah comes increased culpability. David should have known better. In sum, questions regarding David’s culpability are answered fairly easily within the world of Chronicles. First, the Chronicler’s David knows the Torah. Second, as our survey of the literary context of the census narrative has shown, David himself sought to build the temple and was involved in stockpiling capital to be used in its construction. Clearly, he was aware of this context of impending sanctuary construction. Regarding culpability: David may not have broken Mosaic Torah intentionally, or perhaps may not have broken the Torah knowingly, but in the Chronicler’s view the best that could be said of David’s 45.  For example, in 1 Chr 13:1 David clearly draws on Deut 10:8. His verbatim quotations from Deut 10:8 are: the phrase ‘to carry the ark’ (‫‘ ;)תאׂשל את־ארון‬to serve him’ (‫)לׁשרתו‬. However, a comparison of both verses reveals even more correspondences that clearly show reliance of Chronicles on Deuteronomy.

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actions in his census was that he acted negligently (i.e., he was unaware but should have been aware of breaking the Torah at this point).

4.  Why David Is Given a Choice of Three Punishments If the sin of the census was failure to follow the ‫ כפר‬legislation, why is David offered three different choices instead of simply being punished with a plague (‫)נגף‬, as stated in Exod 30:12. One possibility is that the term ‫ נגף‬was flexible enough to refer to several different divine punishments. The Hebrew word ‫נגף‬ usually refers to a plague; however, this is not always the case, because it can also refer to divine striking that is not pestilence per se. 46 In some instances, it means something like ‘stumbling’ (e.g., in Isa 8:14, ‫ אבן נגף‬is translated as a ‘stone of stumbling’), and the verbal form is often translated ‘to strike’. 47 So there may have been enough flexibility in the term to mean something like divine ‘smiting’. 48 On the other hand, it seems likely that the Chronicler would have connected the ‫ נגף‬of Exodus 30 with the word ‫ מגפה‬used twice in his Vorlage (2 Sam 24:21, 25) for the census narrative, since the word comes from the same root. 49 Additionally, the two words are nearly synonyms. For example, Numbers 17 uses the two words interchangeably: vv. 11, 12 use ‫ ;נגף‬vv. 13, 14, and 15 all use ‫מגפה‬. Of course, it is possible that the Chronicler was constrained by his source at this point and felt compelled to retain the scene in which David chooses the punishment. 50 After all, it had profound implications for David’s trust in Yhwh. What is more, David underscores the mercy of Yhwh in his choice as he states, “Let me fall into the hands of Yhwh, for his mercy is very great; but do not let me fall into human hands” (1 Chr 21:13). 51 Furthermore, Yhwh’s relenting before destroying Jerusalem (1 Chr 21:15) evidently validates David’s choice, because his word regarding Yhwh’s character is proven true. 46.  This word is used of the striking of the firstborn children of Egypt (Exod 12:13), which is not a “pestilence” but a divine death-strike. The word is also used in explaining what might happen to Israelites if they moved too close to the tabernacle (Num 8:19). 47.  For example, “if an ox strikes another” (Exod 21:35). 48.  In fact, Durham in his commentary on Exodus translates the word in Exodus 30 as ‘smiting’ (Exodus [WBC 3; Waco, TX: Word, 1998]). 49.  Of course, when the plague is finally sent in 1 Chronicles 21 (vv. 12, 14), a different word (‫)ּדבֶר‬ ֶ is used for pestilence—as in the Chronicler’s Vorlage (1 Chr 21:12, 14; 2 Sam 24:13, 15). 50. As Knoppers notes, “One has to recognize that the Samuel story may have carried a certain force” (I Chronicles, 752). 51. As Knoppers comments, “David’s reasoning for choosing a divinely administered penalty—divine mercy—is well founded, given the character of Yhwh as ‘a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loyalty and truth [Exod 34:6]’” (ibid., 755).

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In the Chronicler’s view, the presentation of options to David may also underscore the freedom of God not to follow through with predicted punishments in the exact manner in which they were originally stated. After all, many of the divine punishments found in the OT/HB are mitigated somewhat. The eating of the tree in the garden was to result in immediate death (“on the day you eat of it,” Gen 2:17), yet the culprits lived long afterward. Abandonment of Yhwh was to result in the implementation of the curses of Deuteronomy 28, yet in the book of Judges the periods of peace far outweigh the periods of subjugation, despite the continual turning away from God. 52 In other words, Yhwh is free not to punish to the extent that he threatens or in the exact manner that he states. However, all of these explanations are somewhat moot. The result of the census was indeed a plague, so the divine prophecy (Moses is a prophet if ever there was one) of Exodus 30 came true, regardless of what preamble there may have been to the divine punishment.

5.  Why Benjamin and Levi Are Not Spared Knoppers objects to the ‫ כפר‬theory (Johnstone’s version in particular), questioning: if the problem with the census was that the participants did not pay the required tax, “why are Benjamin and Levi not spared since they did not participate in the census at all?” 53 However, it may be that the Chronicler understood these tribes to have been spared in some way. First, some acknowledgment of Benjamin’s innocence in the matter could be indicated by the fact that God stays his hand in regard to Jerusalem (1 Chr 21:15), because the city may have been understood to be within Benjamin’s borders (cf. Josh 18:28). 54 Second, this sparing of Jerusalem might imply the innocence of the Levites as well, given that the ark was now in Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 15), and the Levites had been set apart to minister there (1 Chr 16:5). However, this speculative explanation is unnecessary, given that corporate responsibility was an integral part of ancient Near Eastern identity: Integration and interdependence were important values, and the group was bound together as a unit. As a result, individual behavior would not be viewed in isolation 52.  For example, in the story of Othniel, Israel was subjugated 8 years for its disobedience (Judg 3:8) but enjoyed 40 years of peace following its deliverance (3:11). In the story of Ehud, Israel was subjugated 18 years for disobedience (Judg 3:14) but enjoyed 80 years of peace following its deliverance (3:30). In the story of Deborah, Israel was subjugated 8 years for disobedience (Judg 4:3) but enjoyed 40 years of peace after being delivered (5:31). See R. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges (Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History 1; New York: Seabury, 1980) 167. 53.  Knoppers, I Chronicles, 752. 54.  As hinted at in Josh 18:28 and suggested by P. R. Davies, The Origins of Biblical Israel (LHBOTS 485; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2007) 61.

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Paul S. Evans from the group. When one Israelite sinned, the group shared the responsibility. In addition to reflecting the perspective of society, this corporate responsibility was also a result of the covenant relationship that Israel had with the Lord. The law included many guidelines for individual behavior and when individual violations occurred the benefits of the covenant were in jeopardy for all Israel. 55

Thus it is unlikely that the Chronicler would have had the same objection as Knoppers to the inclusion of these tribes in the punishment. Again, in the Chronicler’s sources, the sins of individuals affected the corporate body. For example, in Joshua 7, when Achan stole what was to be devoted to Yhwh, the whole camp suffered. In fact, in the instance of Achan, Josh 7:1 states, “Yhwh’s anger burned against Israel,” a situation similar to the cause of the plague in the Chronicler’s Vorlage (2 Sam 24:1).

Conclusion When confronted with the difficult task of explaining what sin merited a severe punishment on Israel following David’s census, the Chronicler turned to the casuistic law of Exodus 30 for guidance. Given the Chronicler’s practice of viewing laws that originally pertained to the “tabernacle” as now being applicable to the “temple,” 56 he appropriated the law concerning the raising of funds for the construction of the tabernacle to explain Yhwh’s displeasure, since this particular census was in the context of imminent temple construction. The necessity of a context of sanctuary construction for the application of the ‫ כפר‬legislation explains why other censuses in Chronicles are viewed as unproblematic and positive. Furthermore, the specificity of the law as pertaining to times of sanctuary construction explains why the Chronicler presented the ‫ כפר‬law as relevant in 2 Chronicles 24. If the legislation could be used in 2 Chronicles 24, it is not surprising that Exodus 30 is leveraged in 1 Chronicles 21, where both a census and a plague are referenced. Thus, the Chronicler’s association of this legislation with David’s failed census allowed the Chronicler to make the “crime fit the punishment” regarding the otherwise baffling sin of the census. 57 55.  J. H. Walton et al., The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000) at Joshua 7. They write, “In Hittite literature, for instance, an offense committed by the king could bring punishment on all the people.” Similarly, Ristau notes, “Joab clearly states that the census will bring guilt upon Israel; the people, though seemingly passive objects of royal policy, will be liable for punishment” (“Breaking Down Unity,” 211). 56.  For example, Williamson (1 and 2 Chronicles, 319) suggests that 2 Chronicles 24 refers to the tax of Exodus 30 in order to draw a parallel between the tabernacle and the temple. 57.  An earlier version of this essay was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, and I thank Ehud Ben Zvi, Edith Humphrey, and John Van Seters for their critical feedback and comments on the oral presentation.

Of Jebus, Jerusalem, and Benjamin: The Chronicler’s Sondergut in 1 Chronicles 21 against the Background of the Late Persian Era in Yehud Louis Jonker Stellenbosch University

Introduction The tribe and territory of Benjamin have been topics of lively scholarly discussion in the recent past. 1 Some scholars, such as Philip Davies, are even of the opinion “that Benjamin holds the key to the basic questions of how and why Author’s note:  This contribution stems from the paper I delivered at the Ancient Historiography Seminar of the 2010 annual meeting of the CSBS. I hereby thank the members of this group for their generous reception of a non-Canadian in their deliberations, as well as for their thoughtful input during the discussion of my paper. In particular, I would like to thank Gary Knoppers for reading a draft of my paper and for drawing my attention to the 2010 publication by Naʾaman. 1. The first full-blown discussion of Benjamin was K.-D. Schunck, Benjamin: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Geschichte eines israelitischen Stammes (BZAW 86; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1963). See also his summary article “Benjamin,” ABD 1:671–73. A significant number of publications in recent years have highlighted the importance of this tribal area for the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and have given prominence to the probable rivalry between Judah and Benjamin. See, among others, Y. Levin, “Joseph, Judah and the ‘Benjamin Conundrum’,” ZAW 116 (2004) 223–41; J. Blenkinsopp, “Benjamin Traditions Read in the Early Persian Period,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 629–45; Y. Amit, “The Saul Polemic in the Persian Period,” in ibid., 647–61; P. R. Davies, “The Trouble with Benjamin,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and W. B. Aucker; VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 93–111; H. Samuel, “Benjamin im Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk: Untersuchungen zur Traditionsund Literaturgeschichte eines Stammes in Israel” (unpublished assignment submitted to Profs. R. Lux and A. Berlejung at the University of Leipzig, 2007); G. Hentschel, “Der Bruderkrieg zwischen Israel und Benjamin (Ri 20),” Bib 98 (2008) 17–38; N. Naʾaman, “Saul, Benjamin and the Emergence of ‘Biblical Israel.’ Part 1,” ZAW 121 (2009) 211– 24; idem, “Saul, Benjamin and the Emergence of ‘Biblical Israel.’ Part 2,” ZAW 121

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the biblical historiographical enterprise was initiated.” 2 The Deuteronomistic History stands at the center of the majority of recent studies—and understandably so. But could one perhaps also ask the same question with reference to another biblical historiographical tradition, namely, the book of Chronicles? Does Benjamin also hold the key (or one of the keys) to understanding this historiographical tradition (or at least parts of it)? Could one perhaps see a Benjaminite interest in the Chronicler’s reworking of his source materials? And if so, what could have been the reason for extending the shadow of Benjamin onto late Persian historiographical literature? By posing these questions, I work with the metatheoretical presupposition that the answers to these questions could assist us in observing the reflections on identity-negotiation processes of the late Persian era in this literature. In previous contributions, I have set out my theoretical points of departure from social-identity theory. 3 The notion of “textual identities” enables me to view texts as an essential part of the identity-negotiation processes in given circumstances. Texts do not merely document finalized identities but, rather—in the formulation of these texts—contribute to the processes of identity negotiation. My expectation—with reference to Chronicles—would therefore be that our investigation into the presence of Benjamin in this literature could potentially give us a glimpse of the dynamics of identity negotiation during the late Persian era. 4 (2009) 335–49; idem, “The Israelite-Judahite Struggle for the Patrimony of Ancient Israel,” Bib 91 (2010) 1–23. 2.  Davies, “The Trouble with Benjamin,” 93–94. Although other scholars such as Naʾaman disagree with Davies on the origin of the concept of “biblical Israel” (“Saul, Part 1,” “Saul, Part 2,” and “The Israelite-Judahite Struggle”), these scholars also consider the relationship between Judah and Benjamin (and Israel) to be very important to an understanding of biblical historiographical literature. 3. See my “Textual Identities in the Books of Chronicles: The Case of Jehoram’s History,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 197–217. See also idem, “Refocusing the Battle Accounts of the Kings: Identity Formation in the Books of Chronicles,” in Behutsames Lesen: Alttestamentliche Exegese im inderdisziplinären Methodendiskurs (FS Hardmeier) (ed. S. Lubs et al.; Arbeiten zur Bibel und Ihrer Geschichte; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlag, 2007) 245–74; idem, “Who Constitutes Society? Yehud’s Self-Understanding in the Late Persian Era as Reflected in the Books of Chronicles,” JBL 127 (2008) 707–28; idem, “David’s Officials according to the Chronicler (1 Chr 23–27): A Reflection of Second Temple Self-Categorization?” in Historiography and Identity (Re)Formulation in Second Temple Historiographical Literature (ed. L. C. Jonker; LHBOTS 534; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 65–91. 4.  My assumption about the date of Chronicles is that the book most likely originated sometime during the middle of the fourth century b.c.e., i.e., during the final decades of Persian domination in the Levant. See my “Who Constitutes Society?” 704–5;

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A Very Short Overview of the History and Sphere of Influence of Benjamin Compared with Judah/Jerusalem in the Persian Era In order to gain an impression of the situation that might have been the backdrop for the emergence of literature with a Benjaminite presence, I focus on the relative influence of Benjamin and Judah as reflected in the settlement tendencies in the postexilic phase. My aim is therefore not to provide an exhaustive description of the history of Benjamin and Judah or of the political and cultic significance of Benjaminite towns such as Mizpah, Bethel, and Gibeon, on the one hand, and Judahite Jerusalem, on the other. Settlement patterns and demography in Yehud have been the focus of many archaeological studies and syntheses in recent years. 5 Without trying to reconstruct all the current debates on this issue, I will mainly rely on Oded Lipschits’s reconstruction, which reflects the major points of consensus and which I try to summarize in the following paragraphs. (1) It is difficult to reconstruct where the northern border of the Kingdom of Judah was during the last years before the Babylonian destruction. Lipschits, however, concludes: “The borders of the kingdom of Judah in its last years and idem, “Solomon in an International Arena: The Significance of the King of Peace for Yehud in the Persian Era,” OTE 21 (2008) 653–69 for a fuller argumentation of this view. 5.  A major work is O. Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005). See also, among others, idem, “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement Processes in Palestine, and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century b.c.e.,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 19–52; A. Faust, “Settlement Dynamics and Demographic Fluctuations in Judah from the Late Iron Age to the Hellenistic Period and the Archaeology of Persian-Period Yehud,” in A Time of Change: Judah and Its Neighbours in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods (ed. Y. Levin; LSTS 65; London: T. & T. Clark, 2007) 23–51; D. Edelman, “Settlement Patterns in Persian-Era Yehud,” in ibid., 52–64; I. Finkelstein, “The Settlement History of Jerusalem in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries bce,” RB 115 (2008) 499–515; idem, “Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall of Nehemiah,” JSOT 32 (2008) 501–20; idem, “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (2009); O. Lipschits, “Persian Period Finds from Jerusalem: Facts and Interpretations,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (2009); L. L. Grabbe, “‘They Shall Come Rejoicing to Zion’—or Did They? The Settlement of Yehud in the Early Persian Period,” in Exile and Restoration Revisited: Essays on the Babylonian and Persian Periods in Memory of Peter R. Ackroyd (ed. G. N. Knoppers and L. L. Grabbe, with D. N. Fulton; LSTS 73; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009) 116–27; idem, “Was Jerusalem a Persian Fortress?” in ibid., 128–37; E. Meyers, “Exile and Restoration in Light of Recent Archaeological and Demographic Studies,” in ibid., 166–73; J. A. Middlemas, “Going Beyond the Myth of the Empty Land: A Reassessment of the Early Persian Period,” in ibid., 174–94.

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expanded slightly northward, reaching the Bethel-Oprah line.” 6 This means that the Kingdom of Judah included (part of) the Benjaminite tribal area, which was concentrated around cities such as Gibeah, Gibeon, Mizpah and Bethel. (2) Where the border between the tribal areas of Benjamin and Judah was cannot be established with certainty. There is a consensus among scholars that it must have been very near to Jerusalem. There are some biblical indications (in Josh 18:28 and Judg 1:21) that suggest that Jerusalem was even considered by some, or at some stage, to be part of the Benjaminite territory. This cannot be established with certainty, since archaeological evidence does not allow such detailed conclusions. However, the proximity of this tribal border to Jerusalem and the fact that borders shifted over time most certainly created awareness in Jerusalem of the juxtaposition of Benjamin and Judah. 7 (3) Archaeological evidence shows that Jerusalem was heavily affected by the Babylonian destruction in the first part of the sixth century b.c.e. There was a tremendous drop in population and populated areas. Lipschits indicates that the region closest to Jerusalem suffered most at the end of the Iron Age. Most of the population was displaced at that time. Lipschits relates this drop in population to the Babylonian attack on Jerusalem. The immediate environs of the city suffered tremendous damage during the long siege of the city, so much so that it was not resettled until the Persian period. 8 (4) In contrast to the area around Jerusalem, the Benjaminite territory, it seems, did not suffer the same fate. There is much speculation about why this might have been the case, but it remains speculation. In terms of the settlement patterns observed in archaeological evidence, Lipschits indicates that the major archaeological sites excavated in the Benjamin region do not reveal any evidence of destruction at the beginning of the sixth century b.c.e., apart from a partial destruction at Tell el-Fûl. Occupation continued uninterrupted in all of the excavated areas during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. and, during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e., the four major sites gradually declined in population. Lipschits speculates that this decline may be connected to the transfer of the center of activity to the Jerusalem region after the return to Zion, which resulted in the decline in status of Mizpah, along with the entire Benjamin region. 9 The continuity in demography in Benjamin was mainly concentrated in the core of the region, around the main cities of Mizpah, Gibeon, Gibeah, and Bethel. In general, the region of Benjamin also experienced a demographic decline of about 60% between the end of the Iron Age and the Persian period. 6.  Lipschits, The Fall and Rise, 146. 7.  The way that the proximity of differing groups exercises a mutual influence and the way that the shifting of borders determines the reality of people’s lives can be witnessed in present-day Jerusalem as well. 8.  Lipschits, The Fall and Rise, 218. 9.  Ibid., 245.

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(5) Although there is a consensus that Persian-period Jerusalem occupied a relatively small area with a dramatically decreased population compared with the end of the Iron Age, 10 the provenance of seal impressions (particularly a comparison of the distribution data of the mwṣh and yhwd impressions) indicates that this city gained administrative influence again during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. and that the region of Benjamin lost its importance as an administrative center. 11 The distribution of seal impressions also shows that it was particularly Mizpah, the Benjaminite town that served as administrative center for a period of many decades (from the time of Gedaliah), that lost its influence to the benefit of Jerusalem. 12 This very short overview gives an impression of the sociopolitical and sociodemographic conditions during the Persian era. One may assume with confidence that these conditions helped to shape the literature that originated in that time.

Benjaminite Presence in Chronicles? Benjamin in the Genealogies The prominent position of 1 Chronicles 8 in the genealogical construction of the first nine chapters has been emphasized by more than one scholar. Some commentators show that these chapters comprise seven genealogical units. 13 The first (1:1–54) and the last (9:2–34) correspond, indicating as an outer ring the peoples of the world and the inhabitants of Persian-period Jerusalem. A narrower ring correlates Judah (2:3–4:23) and Benjamin (8:1–40), who receive 10.  Archaeologists are not all in agreement on how the evidence should be interpreted and how the population of Jerusalem should be calculated. See the discussion between Lipschits and Finkelstein in this regard: Lipschits, “Persian Period Finds” and I.  Finkelstein, “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder.” The controversy between them centers on the methodological problem of how the absence of evidence should be interpreted. However, both are in agreement that Jerusalem was a small settlement during the Persian era, although Lipschits’s estimates of the population are higher than Finkelstein’s. 11.  Ibid., 179–80. 12. See L. L. Grabbe and G. N. Knoppers, “Introduction,” in Exile and Restoration Revisited: Essays on the Babylonian and Persian Periods in Memory of Peter R. Ackroyd (ed. G. N. Knoppers and L. L. Grabbe, with D. N. Fulton; LSTS 73; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009) 20: “The question of Jerusalem as a cult and political centre arises, because Mizpah had become the capital of the province through much of the Neo-Babylonian period. Some argue that Mizpah continued to serve as the political centre of Judah until the mid-fifth century (the arrival of Nehemiah).” 13.  See, for example, G. N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9 and 1 Chronicles 10–29 (AB 12–12A; New York: Doubleday, 2003) 260–65. J. T. Sparks, however, identifies 12 units (The Chronicler’s Genealogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9 [Academia Biblica 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008] 29–32).

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much of the genealogical attention. Another circle parallels the Transjordanian tribes (4:24–5:26) and the northern tribes (7:1–40), thus acknowledging the inclusion of these regions in the definition of “all Israel.” The central nexus of this structure would then be the genealogies of the tribe of Levi (6:1–81), emphasizing the special position of the Levites in the Chronicler’s view. In this ring structure, Judah and Benjamin are put on a par with each other. Gary Knoppers remarks: “In an era in which kinship relations and the question of ancestry were of great consequence for determining status and self-identity, the prominence of Benjamin is striking.” 14 Not only is the prominent position of the Benjamin genealogy in the overall construction significant but also the fact that this genealogy is unparalleled in the rest of the Hebrew Bible (although a part is repeated in 1 Chronicles 9). It is clear that the Chronicler’s genealogical introduction is intended to claim equal status between Judah and Benjamin.

Distribution of Key Terms In order to gain an impression of where and how the Chronicler refers to Benjamin, the reader should consider the tables at the end of this essay. The explicit references to the key terms “Benjamin”/“Benjaminite,” “Saul” (as a prominent member of the Benjamin tribe), “Mizpah,” “Gibeon,” “Bethel,” and “Gibeah” (as the major Benjaminite towns) have been traced in the main parts of Chronicles (excluding the genealogical introduction in chaps. 1–9). Some observations should be made from the data before we proceed with our discussion. (1) It is remarkable that an overwhelming number of occurrences of Benjaminite terminology in Chronicles belong to the writer’s Sondergut. (2) The term Benjamin appears in all parts of Chronicles—that is, in the histories of David and Solomon (1 Chronicles 10–29 and 2 Chronicles 1–9, respectively), as well as in the history of Judah’s kings (2 Chronicles 10–36). (3) It is particularly interesting that the term Benjamin appears almost exclusively (with the exception of 5 occurrences in Rehoboam’s narrative) in the narratives about the kings who were evaluated positively by the Chronicler (namely, David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, Hezekiah, and Josiah). (4) The term Benjamin occurs 10 times in the expression “Judah and Benjamin” in the contexts of the narratives about Rehoboam (2 Chr 11:1, 3, 12, and 23), Asa (2 Chr 15:2, 8, and 9), Amaziah (2 Chr 25:5), Hezekiah (2 Chr 31:1), and Josiah (2 Chr 34:9). 15 14.  G. N. Knoppers, “Israel’s First King and ‘the Kingdom of Yhwh in the Hands of the Sons of David’: The Place of the Saulide Monarchy in the Chronicler’s Historiography,” in Saul in Story and Tradition (ed. C. S. Ehrlich and M. C. White; FAT 47; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 207. 15.  The expression occurs only 5 times outside Chronicles: once in Kings (1 Kgs 12:23, which forms the Vorlage for 2 Chr 11:3), 3 times in Ezra (1:5, 4:1, 10:9), and once in Nehemiah (12:34). It is thus an expression that mainly occurs in postexilic Persian-period literature.

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In 7 of these cases, the expression is introduced by ‫‘ כל‬all’. (5) All references to Saul appear either in the death notice of Saul (1 Chronicles 10) or in connection with David’s reign. Saul is never mentioned in 2 Chronicles—that is, in the narratives about Solomon or the Judahite kings. (6) The death notice of Saul has been taken from the Vorlage in 1 Sam 31:1–13 (with minor changes). The one significant addition, however, is the theological evaluation of Saul in vv. 13–14. (7) Mizpah occurs only once in Chronicles—namely, in a statement that claims that Asa built Geba and Mizpah (2 Chr 16:6). This statement was taken from the Vorlage in 1 Kgs 15:22. (8) Gibeon is mentioned exclusively in connection with David’s history, but the occurrences in 2 Chronicles 1 also link Solomon to the sanctuary in this city (although this is an altered version of the Vorlage in 1 Kings 3). 16 Gibeon does not appear elsewhere in Chronicles. (9) Bethel occurs only once, in the account of Jeroboam’s battle against Abijah (2 Chr 13:19). This account indicates that Abijah took Bethel from Jeroboam. A major part of this account belongs to the Chronicler’s Sondergut—thus also the mention of Bethel. (10) Gibeah is mentioned once in Chronicles, again in the Jeroboam narrative in 2 Chr 13:2. This verse, however, is not the Chronicler’s own addition; it is, rather, a compendium of information that appears in 1 Kgs 15:2, 6, and 7. The Chronicler added to these verses the point that Jeroboam’s mother was the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. 1 Kgs 15:2, however, states, “His mother’s name was Maacah daughter of Abishalom” (nrsv).

Omissions from the Vorlage What the writer omitted from the Vorlage in regard to Benjaminite terminology may also be significant. 17 “Benjamin” occurs in 22 verses in the Deuteronomistic History. Of these, only 3 have been used by the Chronicler. Significant omissions are the anti-Benjaminite episode described in Judges 19–21, as well as almost the entire Saul history narrated in 1 and 2  Samuel. A significant omission from the land-distribution narratives in Joshua and Judges is Judg 1:21, which mentions the following: “But the Benjaminites did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived in Jerusalem among the Benjaminites to this day” (nrsv). 18 16.  For a recent study on Gibeon, see J. Day, “Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Old Testament,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and W. B. Aucker; VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 113–37. 17. I am aware of the danger of “overinterpreting” these omissions, since they might be the result of another Vorlage than the Masoretic tradition preserved for us. Particularly, the Samuel books should be treated with care in this regard. However, to get an impression of the different narrative lines followed by the Deuteronomist and Chronicler, respectively, this sort of synoptic comparison remains a helpful tool. 18.  The omission of “Benjamin” in Chronicles is not necessarily deliberate but may merely be the product of the Chronicler’s larger strategy of selecting and omitting texts from his Vorlage.

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Of all the numerous direct references to Saul in the Deuteronomistic History (particularly in 1 and 2 Samuel, where Saul’s rise and fall are described and where David’s rise to power is described within the context of Saul’s downfall), only 2 were used by the Chronicler (namely, 2 Sam 5:2 and 6:16). Saul’s history was therefore almost entirely wiped out by the Chronicler. Of the 11 verses in the Deuteronomistic History where “Mizpah” is mentioned, only 1 was taken over by the Chronicler: namely, 1 Kgs 15:22, where it is indicated that “Geba of Benjamin” and “Mizpah” were built by Asa. One significant omission in terms of “Mizpah” is 2 Kgs 25:23, which reads as follows: “Now when all the captains of the forces and their men heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah as governor, they came with their men to Gedaliah at Mizpah, namely, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah son of the Maacathite” (nrsv). The appointment of the governor Gedaliah by the king of Babylon and the fact that this governor had his seat in Mizpah were omitted by the Chronicler. Eight of the 10 verses of the Deuteronomistic History in which Gibeon is mentioned were not used in the Chronicler’s version. Significantly, the Chronicler used in 2 Chronicles 1 the report in 1 Kings 3 about Solomon’s sacrificing at the “principal high place” (1 Kgs 3:4, nrsv). The situation with reference to Bethel and Gibeah is also interesting. Of the 39 appearances of Bethel in the Deuteronomistic History, none was repeated by the Chronicler. Additionally, the 29 occurrences of Gibeah in the Deuteronomistic History (all in Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel) were left out by the Chronicler. Next, I investigate the Benjaminite presence in 1 Chronicles 21, the narrative about David’s census, before I synthesize the findings of this study.

1 Chronicles 21 A synoptic comparison of this chapter with the Deuteronomistic version in 2 Samuel 24 produces interesting data. 19 It shows that the parallel section in the Deuteronomistic History, 2 Sam 24:1–25, was intensively reworked. Not much of the Vorlage remained unchanged in the Chronicler’s version. 20 The most prominent differences are indicated below. 21 19.  Apart from the various commentaries, also see P. Evans, “Divine Intermediaries in 1 Chronicles 21: An Overlooked Aspect of the Chronicler’s Theology,” Bib 85 (2004) 545–58. 20.  Klein indicates that in 29 cases the differences could be attributed to the fact that “he seems to depend on a text of Samuel other than MT.” See R. W. Klein, 1 Chronicles (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006) 429. 21.  Other issues that are enthusiastically debated in commentaries and journals are, for example, the facts that the Chronicler introduces “Satan” as the instigator of the cen-

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(1) The Chronicler omitted vv. 5–8a from 2 Samuel 24, a section indicating the route that Joab and the military leaders took when they conducted the census. They first crossed the Jordan into the Transjordanian area and, from there, proceeded in a counterclockwise route, returning to Jerusalem after they had finished. The Chronicler abbreviates this description in 1  Chr 21:4 by stating, “He went around in all Israel and returned to Jerusalem.” 2 Samuel indicates how long the census took, information that is also omitted in Chronicles. Ralph Klein is of the opinion that “[t]he Chronicler may have considered these details irrelevant, and/or he may not have understood all of the geographic data in the itinerary.” 22 However, one should not overlook the fact that the whole area described in 2 Samuel 24 is indicated by the Chronicler to be ‫כל־ישֹראל‬ ‘all Israel’. This term that appears so frequently in the Chronicler’s Sondergut is a prominent reflection of the self-definition that the Chronicler wanted to attribute to the community that returned to Yehud after the exile. The use of this term should therefore not be seen merely as an abbreviation of the Deuteronomistic version but as having significance in itself within the broader scope of Chronicles. Although the detailed itinerary is omitted by the Chronicler, 1 Chr 21:2 still indicates that the census was taken from the south (Beer-sheba) to the north (Dan). Interestingly enough, the direction is here changed from 2 Samuel 24 (where v. 2 has “from Dan to Beer-sheba”). (2) In 1  Chr 21:6–7, we find the much-discussed addition that indicates that “he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, because the word of the king was abhorrent to Joab. This thing was evil in the eyes of Elohim; therefore, he struck Israel.” Many commentators explain the omission of Levi by referring to the priestly regulation in Num 1:47–49 (and Num 2:33), which indicates that the Levites were not to be counted together with the other Israelites. 23 With reference to the omission of Benjamin, commentators diverge in their opinions. 24 Japhet tries to find a common denominator for the omission of both Levi and Benjamin. She states: sus (instead of Yhwh), the role of divine intermediaries, and the differences in numbers. My discussion makes no attempt to be exhaustive. I focus instead on the geographical/ local indications of the ways that Benjamin and Jebus/Jerusalem feature here. 22.  Klein, 1 Chronicles, 421. 23. E.g., Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10–29, 753; Klein, 1 Chronicles, 421; S. L. Mc­ Kenzie, 1–2  Chronicles (AOTC; Nashville: Abingdon, 2004) 172–73; P. B. Dirksen, 1 Chronicles (HCOT; Leuven: Peeters, 2005) 258. 24.  Knoppers states: “Benjamin may have been omitted because the holy site of Jerusalem was considered to lie within its borders” (1 Chronicles 10–29, 753). Klein disagrees with this view, however: “An earlier suggestion that the Chronicler attributed Jerusalem to the tribal territory of Benjamin is unlikely despite such passages as Josh 18:28 and Judg 1:21, since the temple site had not yet been sanctified by the sacrifices of David. . . . It is more likely that it was because the tabernacle was located at Gibeon (1 Chr 16:39; 2 Chr 1:3; cf. 5:5 and Josh 18:25) in Benjaminite territory that

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Louis Jonker The common denominator of these two tribes is their connection with Jerusalem: Jerusalem is included in the territory of Benjamin according to certain geographical concepts (e.g. Josh. 18.28; also Deut. 33.12), while the tribe of Levi is linked to the cultic activity in the Temple. The exemption of Jerusalem from the horrors of the plague is explained in II Sam. 24 by a change in God’s will. . . . In Chronicles, this explanation is prepared for and given substance in our verse, which theologically speaking is the sequel of v. 3. Benjamin and Levi were in fact free from guilt. The ‘guilt upon Israel’ caused by the census justified God’s punishment but also warranted the exclusion of Jerusalem. 25

I will come back to Japhet’s view below and will evaluate this text against the background of late Persian Yehud. (3) Another addition in 1 Chronicles 21–22 is 21:27–30 and 22:1. The main point of contention here is whether the whole section should be seen as an addition by the Chronicler or whether part of it should be attributed to later interpolators. Japhet provided a lengthy discussion in her commentary on this section. 26 According to her, “There is no doubt that vv.  28–30 constitute a self-contained passage which can be interpreted in one of two ways: as a parenthetical element in the Chronistic composition itself . . . or as a later interpolation.” 27 She sees 1 Chr 22:1 as the narrative sequel to 1 Chr 21:26–27 and therefore treats 21:28–30 as a separate unit. She does not make a final judgment between the two possibilities, however. 28 Both Dirksen and Klein, although in different ways and with different motivations, opt for the probability that the Chronicler had Joab exclude this tribe from the census” (1 Chronicles, 422). Tuell is of the following opinion: “The reasons for excluding Benjamin are more complex. . . . Benjamin plays a special role in the Chronicler’s History. . . . In the genealogies, three separate lists are devoted to Benjamin; only Judah and Levi are treated in greater detail. Further, throughout the History, ‘Judah and Benjamin’ is the Chronicler’s designation for faithful Israel” (S. S. Tuell, First and Second Chronicles [IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 2001] 85).These views will be revisited below in my discussion of the fact that it was instead the late Persian reality that determined this insertion into the text. 25. S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles (OTL; London: SCM, 1993) 378. 26.  See ibid., 387–90. 27.  Ibid., 388–89. 28.  Japhet keeps both options open by stating: It would seem . . . that the difficulty in ascribing vv. 28–30 to the Chronicler does not stem from matters of language, style, literary structure, subject matter or theological views. From all these aspects the passage can be regarded as a parenthetic statement which tries to account for a difficult theological problem evoked in the story. The difficulty lies in the most fundamental approach to the determination of the Temple site: should it be viewed, in the spirit of the narrative context, as a divine choice and act of grace, or should it be regarded, as in the parenthetic passage, as a concession to human limitation and weakness? The question is, rather, can these two concepts coexist in one author, or should we attribute the deviant one to a later redactor, who based his interpolation on the general standpoint of the Chronicler himself? (ibid., 389–90)

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these verses are part of the Chronicler’s addition. 29 Knoppers comes to another conclusion when he states that vv. 28–30 should be attributed to a later scribe, who wanted to explain why David did not offer sacrifices in Gibeon, where the tabernacle altar was. 30 However, all these commentators are in agreement that 1 Chr 22:1 belongs to the Chronicler’s own material. Knoppers even sees this verse—where the divine appearance on the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite, is related to the site of the future temple—as a turning point in the Chronicler’s construction. After this, the Chronicler’s David narrative concentrates on the preparation for temple building and the appointment of a national administration to assist David’s chosen successor, Solomon. Knoppers therefore asserts that: “In this respect, the Chronicler’s story of the census functions as a bridge between two highly important periods in David’s career: the campaigns 29.  Dirksen treats vv. 26–28 and 22:1 as a unit. With reference to vv. 29–30, he concludes: It is an apologetic remark which does not form part of the story’s development and interrupts the connection between v. 28 and 22:1. This raises the question whether these verses are a later insertion. . . . Though it cannot be ruled out that a later reviser here continues the Chronicler’s fiction that the tabernacle was in Gibeon, it is more natural to assume that the Chronicler himself ensured the consistency of his story. We can also consider that in v. 16 the Chronicler introduces the sword of the angel where 2 Sam. 24 does not; a possible explanation is that this leads up to vv. 29ff. Finally, the language agrees with that of the Chronicler. (Dirksen, 1 Chronicles, 263)

In the light of his own discussion on the 4QSama version of v. 16 (Dirksen, 1 Chronicles, 260), Dirksen’s argument cannot be accepted on this point. However, his other arguments at least keep the possibility open that vv. 29–30 could have been part of the Chronicler’s Sondergut. Klein “interpret(s) v. 28 as a protasis followed by the apodosis in 22:1. Verses 29–30 are a parenthesis” (1 Chronicles, 429). He sees in 21:28–22:1 a deliberate attempt by the Chronicler to invoke the memory of earlier divine interventions: “[T]he Chronicler has made allusions to a number of storied characters and events in Israelite history—Abraham, Jacob, Balaam, Joshua, and Gideon—in drafting this account” (ibid.) However, Klein also sees in the continuation of the temple-building narrative in 2 Chronicles 3 an allusion back to this section in 1 Chronicles 21: “When the Chronicler begins his account of the actual building of the temple, he alludes to God’s appearance to David at the threshing floor of Ornan, as well as to the name Moriah, which linked this site back to Abraham (2 Chr 3:1, without parallel in 1 Kings)” (ibid.). 30.  Knoppers regards 21:28–30 as a later addition. He argues that these verses are actually an inverted quotation of vv. 26–27. He further states: Many scholars have acknowledged that this material is parenthetical within this chapter. . . . But the material is more than parenthetical; its content conflicts with the force of earlier verses. . . . The author of vv.  28–30 draws on material in vv.  26–27 and 2 Chr 1:3–6 to excuse David’s offering sacrifice away from the Tabernacle altar. But David is explicitly commanded to do so (1 Chr 21:18). Not the Chronicler, but a later scribe is bothered by the story’s evidence for divinely approved worship away from the Gibeon altar. (1 Chronicles 10–29, 760)

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against Israel’s neighbors (18:1–20:8) and the preparations for the transition to the reign of his successor and the construction of a temple (22:1–29:30).” 31 Moreover, with the emphasis on the divine response to David’s sacrifice on the mentioned site, the Chronicler had another long-range objective. I agree with Knoppers, who indicates that the impressive divine reaction to David’s offering was preparing the way for the tabernacle to be brought to Jerusalem from Gibeon to be united with the Ark of the Covenant, a move that was necessary given the Chronicler’s ideology of one national cult that adhered to both the Priestly and the Deuteronomic traditions. 32 Let me now relate the Chronicler’s Sondergut in 1 Chr 21:6–7 to that in 21:27–30 and 22:1. If Knoppers is correct that the census narrative in the Chronicler’s construction forms the transition between the era of David’s campaigns and the era of temple building and worship in Jerusalem, it is clear that the Chronicler wanted to give a Benjaminite flavor to this transition. Japhet’s explanation for the addition in v.  6, where Levi and Benjamin are excluded from the census, seems acceptable. As indicated above, she proposes that the common denominator between Levi and Benjamin was that both were closely related to Jerusalem. That the Chronicler did not want to implicate Jerusalem in the census narrative seems logical if the outcome of this episode, according to the Chronicler’s construction, is taken into account. The Benjaminite link is further evoked with the explicit mention of Gibeon in v. 29. It seems that Benjamin and Jerusalem are brought into an interesting interplay by means of the Chronicler’s mention of the selection of the Jebusite’s threshing floor as temple site.

Synthesis: A Reflection of Late Persian Identity Negotiation in Yehud? We have seen in our investigation above as well as in our study on the Saul narrative (1 Chronicles 10) 33 that the matter is not as simple as identifying a pro- or anti-Benjaminite tendency in Chronicles. We find different, even contrasting portrayals of Benjamin. The two extremes in the book are probably, on the one hand, the positive portrayal of the tribe of Benjamin in the genealogies (where they feature on a par with Judah), and on the other hand, the negative assessment of the first king of the United Monarchy, King Saul, who was a 31.  Ibid. 32.  Ibid., 761. Japhet also sees 22:1 as a climax: “This is the climax and, according to the Chronistic context, the dénouement of the story: God has chosen the threshing floor as ‘the holy place’. . . . The house is God’s, the altar is for the people” (I and II Chronicles, 390). 33. See my “Revisiting the Saul Narrative in Chronicles: Interacting with the Persian Imperial Context?” (OTE 23 [2010] 283–305), in which I discuss the different attempts to reconcile the contrasting portrayals in the genealogies and the Saul narrative, as well as the synthesis that Knoppers offered.

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Benjaminite. The Sondergut passage in 1 Chr 10:13–14 even states that Yahweh himself killed Saul and gave the kingship to David. 34 Between these extremes, we find many ambiguous references to a Benjaminite presence in Chronicles. We should, however, take note that this presence is a significantly different presence from the one reflected in the Deuteronomistic History. Although there are numerous occurrences of this presence in Chronicles, the great majority of these occurrences are part of the Chronicler’s Sondergut. The majority of references to Benjamin or related terminology occurring in the Deuteronomistic Vorlage were not used in the Chronicler’s work. Benjamin is very much present in Chronicles but on the Chronicler’s own terms! Benjamin is used by the Chronicler wherever it serves his own purposes well but is abused where it threatens his own coherent construction. In this respect, 1 Chronicles 21 is pivotal in my argument. In the Chronicler’s modification of this narrative, he apparently tried to advance three purposes. First, he modified the story to become a ‫‘ כל־ישֹראל‬all-Israel’ narrative by replacing the itinerary of the census with the indication of how many people constituted all Israel. In this way, he tied the census to the genealogical construction in 1 Chronicles 1–9, which is clearly a perspective from the context of the Persian period. The Persian period definition of ‫ כל־ישֹראל‬thus involved the time of David’s kingship, even though it was by using a negative episode. Second, the Chronicler’s exclusion of Levi and Benjamin from the census served the purpose of protecting Jerusalem from any implication in this negative incident. Since Jerusalem is the common denominator between the tribes of Levi and Benjamin—the first being related cultically to Jerusalem and the latter related geographically—one may assume that this exclusion was the Chronicler’s way of keeping Jerusalem on the moral high ground. In this strategy, Benjamin is thus closely related to Jerusalem. Third, and closely related to the second point, the Chronicler wanted to claim a special position for Jerusalem in contrast to the Benjaminite sphere of influence. By adding some spectacular details to the theophany on the Jebusite’s threshing floor, the Chronicler claims that this is the right place for bringing sacrifices to God, 35 in contrast to Gibeon, where the tabernacle was 34.  This is in line with the very negative portrayal of Benjamin in Judges 19–21, a section that is entirely ignored by the Chronicler. 35.  Kalimi rightly indicates that it is a tendency in Chronicles to depict Jerusalem “as an absolutely theocratic city, ‘the city of God/the Lord’ in the full sense of the word, more so than in any other biblical work” (I. Kalimi, “Jerusalem—The Divine City: The Representation of Jerusalem in Chronicles Compared with Earlier and Later Jewish Compositions,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein [ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003] 189–205 [at p. 191]). Lux refers to the ancient Near Eastern sanctuary-building ideology according to which continuity of the temple site with earlier theophanies was always emphasized: “Immer wieder werden die Auffindung des Tempelortes und der Beginn der Tempelbaumassnahmen mit Traugesichten oder

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being kept at this stage. By claiming that this exact site is the place where the sanctuary should be built, the Chronicler establishes neutral terrain for the temple site. 36 In fact, in another piece of Sondergut (1 Chr 11:6), the Chronicler claims that it was the same Joab (who decided not to count Levi and Benjamin) who was the one conquering the Jebusite city for David. 37 The importation of the Jebusite into the census narrative came from the Vorlage. However, it was then manipulated by the Chronicler to act in the service of the Jerusalemite claim to the sanctuary in opposition to the Benjaminite centers’ claims. Jebus now became the Chronicler’s trump card to play in any Benjaminite claim to authority. My argument is thus that the Benjaminite appearances in 1 Chronicles 21 do not function homogeneously. Sometimes Benjamin is used in the service of a Jerusalemite claim, while in other instances it is used in contrast to Jerusalem. Why is this? We may find some clues in the prehistory of Benjamin. 38 The unique identity of Benjamin as both Judahite and Israelite and as a buffer zone speziellen Offenbarungen . . . sowie rituellen Vollzügen . . . in Zusammenhang gebracht” (ET: Time and again, the identification of the temple site and the beginning of the temple-building exercise are related to visions or special revelations, or even ritual procedures) (R. Lux, “Der Zweite Tempel von Jerusalem: Ein persisches oder prophetisches Projekt?” in Prophetie und Zweiter Tempel [ed. R. Lux; FAT 65; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009] 122–43 [at p. 132]). It is understandable that the Jerusalemite community in the restoration period would want to claim the continuity of the Second Temple with the Solomonic temple. See also H. G. M. Williamson, “The Temple in the Books of Chronicles,” in Studies in Persian Period History and Historiography (ed. H. G. M. Williamson; FAT 38; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 150–61. 36.  Kalimi rightly refers to Josh 15:8 and 18:16 to indicate that there was a tradition that did not consider Jerusalem to be part of either Judah or Benjamin. “It remained a foreign city between the borders of these tribes, as is evident also from the story about the concubine at Gibeah (Judg. xix 10–12). Here Jerusalem clearly was regarded as ‘the city of foreigners, who do not belong to the people of Israel’ (verse 12)” (I. Kalimi, “The Capture of Jerusalem in the Chronistic History,” VT 52 [2002] 66–79 [at p. 67]). 37. See Kalimi’s thorough discussion of 1  Chr 11:6 (in ibid.). He comes to the conclusion that “[a]ll in all, it seems that the historical credibility of the story concerning the capture of Jerusalem in 1 Chr. Xi 6 is very weak” (p. 78). He therefore also interprets this reference as an attempt of the Chronicler to highlight Jerusalem’s significance: “The significance of Jerusalem in the Chronistic history is revealed above all by the description of the city’s conquest, the immediate and first royal action of David, even prior to the celebration of his own coronation. The capture is presented as the most remarkable and meaningful national goal in which all the Israelites participated and to which they contributed willingly, as a result of deep conviction” (pp. 78–79). 38.  As indicated, there are divergent views on the prehistory of Benjamin. For example, Knauf, Davies, and Naʾaman all come to different conclusions (see E. A. Knauf, “Bethel: The Israelite Impact on Judean Langauge and Literature,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period [ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006] 291–349; Davies, “The Trouble with Benjamin”; Naʾaman, “Saul,

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between Judah and Samaria provided a key for the Chronicler to use in defining ‫‘ כל־ישֹראל‬all Israel’. It is clear that in Chronicles—although the history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is almost totally ignored by the Chronicler—the North is not excluded from ‫כל־ישֹראל‬. Already the genealogical construction of 1 Chronicles 1–9 confirmed this. The term ‫ כל־ישֹראל‬is full of ambiguity: it claims inclusion for the Northern tribes without conceding that these tribes had any political or cultic claim to make. The means by which this ambiguity is expressed is Benjamin. It is therefore not surprising to find that “all Judah and Benjamin” becomes some sort of a synonym for ‫ כל־ישֹראל‬in Chronicles. Some scholars claim that the prevalence of the expression “all Judah and Benjamin” in Persian-period literature indicates that the tension between Judah and Benjamin had been resolved by then. However, I am not convinced that the Chronicler’s use of the phrase is merely a reflection that “all is well between Judah and Benjamin.” The fact that there is a strong tendency in Chronicles to use this phrase in the contexts of the stories of good kings instead shows its tendentious character in defining ‫כל־ישֹראל‬. The use of this phrase both differentiates and associates Judah and Benjamin. The ambiguities in the Chronicler’s presentation of Benjamin should be related to the process of self-definition as ‫כל־ישֹראל‬. Solomon is allowed by the Chronicler to bring sacrifices to the Benjaminite sanctuary of Gibeon. Jeroboam is indicated by the Chronicler to have had a Benjaminite mother. And many of the other good kings are shown to have had the support of Judah and Benjamin. However, these instances do not cancel the strong Judahite claims to political authority (by means of the contrast between Saul and David) and cultic superiority (by means of the census narrative and the Jebusite threshing-floor episode). The continuity and discontinuity between Judah and Benjamin were used by the Chronicler for his own purposes in the late Persian period. Social-identity theory teaches us that identity negotiation always takes place on different levels, in continuity and discontinuity with other social groups. Furthermore, the identity negotiation of one group in relation to other social groups may take place without excluding the possibility of categorization within the group. The Benjaminite presence in Chronicles (and in 1 Chronicles 21 in particular) constitutes an example of intra-group categorization. The Chronicler, a staunch supporter of the Davidic House and the cultic center in Jerusalem, was confronted with the fact that the surrounding Benjaminites had, in the more administratively relaxed Achaemenid dispensation, an opportunity to resuscitate their claim to being the central political and cultic influence. The Chronicler was also confronted with the fact that the Judahite center of Part 1”; idem, “Saul, Part 2”; idem, “The Israelite-Judahite Struggle”). However, all these studies confirm that Benjamin occupied an in-between position vis-à-vis Judah and Israel.

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political and cultic influence was situated near Benjaminite territory (and could even have been claimed by the Benjaminites). The Persian imperial ideology of the time would have made the Chronicler well aware of the fact that the Persian kings wanted order and peace in their subjugated provinces. 39 There was therefore no desire on the Chronicler’s part to estrange the Benjaminites. They were still a prominent, even a founding part of the “all-Israel” concept that the Chronicler was trying to foster in this literature. When trying to establish itself from a provincial point of view within the Empire, one group simply could not afford to emphasize the differences from the in-group too much. Intra-group identity negotiation took place but not at the expense of the concomitant processes of inter-group identity negotiation with the imperial masters. 39.  See again my “Revisiting the Saul Narrative,” where I have explained how the Persian royal ideology forms the international backdrop to the local identity-negotiation processes in Yehud. See also idem, “The Cushites in the Chronicler’s Version of Asa’s Reign: A Secondary Audience in Chronicles?” OTE 19 (2006) 863–81; idem, “Solomon in an International Arena.”

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Of Jebus, Jerusalem, and Benjamin

Appendix Table 1.  “Benjamin”/“Benjaminite” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

Sondergut?

1 Chr 11:31

Ithai son of Ribai of Gibeah of the Benjaminites.

A list of David’s warriors

No 2 Sam 23:29

1 Chr 12:2

They were archers, and could shoot arrows and sling stones with either the right hand or the left; they were Benjaminites, Saul’s kindred.

Benjaminite Yes warriors supporting David to become king

1 Chr 12:17[16] Some Benjaminites and Judahites came to the stronghold to David.

Yes

1 Chr 12:30[29] Of the Benjaminites, the kindred of Saul, three thousand, of whom the majority had continued to keep their allegiance to the house of Saul.

Yes

1 Chr 21:6

But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king’s command was abhorrent to Joab.

David’s census

Yes

1 Chr 27:12

Ninth, for the ninth month, was Abiezer of Anathoth, a Benjaminite.

David’s military divisions

Yes

1 Chr 27:21

(F)or Benjamin, Jaasiel son of Abner.

Leaders of the tribes during David’s reign

Yes

2 Chr 11:1

When Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled one hundred eighty thousand chosen troops of the house of Judah and Benjamin to fight against Israel, to restore the kingdom to Rehoboam.

Rehoboam’s troops to fight against Israel

No 1 Kgs 12:21

2 Chr 11:3

Say to King Rehoboam of Judah, son of Solomon, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, . . . .

2 Chr 11:10

Zorah, Aijalon, and Hebron, fortified cities that are in Judah and in Benjamin.

2 Chr 11:12

He also put large shields and spears in all the cities, and made them very strong. So he held Judah and Benjamin.

2 Chr 11:23

He dealt wisely, and distributed some of his sons through all the districts of Judah and Benjamin, in all the fortified cities; he gave them abundant provisions, and found many wives for them.

No 1 Kgs 12:23 Rehoboam’s fortified cities

Yes Yes

Rehoboam’s appointments in the districts

Yes

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Table 1.  “Benjamin”/“Benjaminite” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

Sondergut?

2 Chr 14:7[8]

Asa had an army of three hundred thousand Asa’s warriors from Judah, armed with large shields and spears, and two hundred eighty thousand troops from Benjamin who carried shields and drew bows; all these were mighty warriors.

Yes

2 Chr 15:2

He went out to meet Asa and said to him, The prophet “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: Azariah speaks The Lord is with you, while you are with him. to Asa If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you.”

Yes

2 Chr 15:8

When Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns that he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim. He repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the Lord.

Yes

2 Chr 15:9

He gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing as aliens with them, for great numbers had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him.

2 Chr 17:17

Of Benjamin: Eliada, a mighty warrior, with two hundred thousand armed with bow and shield. . . .

Jehoshaphat’s commanders

Yes

2 Chr 25:5

Amaziah assembled the people of Judah, and set them by ancestral houses under commanders of the thousands and of the hundreds for all Judah and Benjamin. He mustered those twenty years old and upward, and found that they were three hundred thousand picked troops fit for war, able to handle spear and shield.

Amaziah’s warriors

Yes

2 Chr 31:1

Now when all this was finished, all Israel who Hezekiah’s were present went out to the cities of Judah reform and broke down the pillars, hewed down the sacred poles, and pulled down the high places and the altars throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all.

Yes

Asa’s reform

Yes

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Table 1.  “Benjamin”/“Benjaminite” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Description of Context

Translation

Sondergut?

2 Chr 34:9

They came to the high priest Hilkiah and delivered the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the Levites, the keepers of the threshold, had collected from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all the remnant of Israel and from all Judah and Benjamin and from the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Josiah’s reform

Yes

2 Chr 34:32

Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin pledge themselves to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem acted according to the covenant of God, the God of their ancestors.

The covenant renewed under Josiah’s leadership

Yes

Table 2.  “Saul” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

1 Chr 10:2

The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; Saul’s death and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchishua, sons of Saul.

1 Chr 10:3

The battle pressed hard on Saul; and the archers found him, and he was wounded by the archers.

1 Chr 10:4

Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and make sport of me.” But his armorbearer was unwilling, for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.

1 Chr 10:5

When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died.

1 Chr 10:6

Thus Saul died; he and his three sons and all his house died together.

1 Chr 10:7

When all the men of Israel who were in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their towns and fled; and the Philistines came and occupied them.

Sondergut? No 1 Sam 31:1–13

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Table 2.  “Saul” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

Sondergut?

1 Chr 10:8

The next day when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.

1 Chr 10:11

But when all Jabesh-gilead heard everything that the Philistines had done to Saul,

1 Chr 10:12

all the valiant warriors got up and took away the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh. Then they buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

1 Chr 10:13

So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was Theological unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not evaluation of keep the command of the Lord; moreover, Saul he had consulted a medium, seeking guidance.

Yes

1 Chr 11:2

“For some time now, even while Saul was king, it was you [David] who commanded the army of Israel. The Lord your God said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over my people Israel.”

David becomes king (reference to the past of Saul’s reign)

No 2 Sam 5:2

1 Chr 12:1

The following are those who came to David at Ziklag, while he could not move about freely because of Saul son of Kish; they were among the mighty warriors who helped him in war.

Benjaminite Yes warriors supporting David to become king

1 Chr 12:2

They were archers, and could shoot arrows and sling stones with either the right hand or the left; they were Benjaminites, Saul’s kindred.

Yes

1 Chr 12:20[19]

Some of the Manassites deserted to David when he came with the Philistines for the battle against Saul. (Yet he did not help them, for the rulers of the Philistines took counsel and sent him away, saying, “He will desert to his master Saul at the cost of our heads.”)

Yes

1 Chr 12:24[23]

These are the numbers of the divisions of the armed troops who came to David in Hebron to turn the kingdom of Saul over to him, according to the word of the Lord.

Yes

101

Of Jebus, Jerusalem, and Benjamin

Table 2.  “Saul” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Description of Context

Translation

Sondergut?

1 Chr 12:30[29]

Of the Benjaminites, the kindred of Saul, three thousand, of whom the majority had continued to keep their allegiance to the house of Saul.

Yes

1 Chr 13:3

“Then let us [David and the people] bring again the ark of our God to us; for we did not turn to it in the days of Saul.”

David let the ark return from Kiriath-jearim (reference to the past)

1 Chr 15:29

As the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing; and she despised him in her heart.

David let the ark No return to the city 2 Sam 6:16 of David (Saul’s daughter)

1 Chr 26:28

Also all that Samuel the seer, and Saul son of Kish, and Abner son of Ner, and Joab son of Zeruiah had dedicated— all dedicated gifts were in the care of Shelomoth and his brothers.

Dedicated gifts given to the House of the Lord during David’s reign

Yes

Yes

Table 3.  “Mizpah” in Chronicles Reference 2 Chr 16:6

nrsv

Description of Context

Translation

Then King Asa brought all Judah, and they carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber, with which Baasha had been building, and with them he built up Geba and Mizpah.

Asa’s building projects

Sondergut? No 1 Kgs 15:22

Table 4.  “Gibeon” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

Sondergut?

1 Chr 14:16

David did as God had commanded him, and they struck down the Philistine army from Gibeon to Gezer.

David’s fight against the Philistines

No 2 Sam 5:25 (Geba > Gibeon)

1 Chr 16:39

And he left the priest Zadok and his kindred the priests before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place that was at Gibeon

David’s placement of Zadokite priesthood in Gibeon

Yes

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Table 4.  “Gibeon” in Chronicles Reference

nrsv

Translation

Sondergut?

Description of Context

1 Chr 21:29

For the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time in the high place at Gibeon.

The tabernacle in Gibeon during David’s reign

Yes

2 Chr 1:3

Then Solomon, and the whole assembly with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon; for God’s tent of meeting, which Moses the servant of the Lord had made in the wilderness, was there.

Solomon worships at Gibeon, because the tabernacle was there

No Altered from 1 Kgs 3:4

2 Chr 1:13

So Solomon came from the high place at Gibeon, from the tent of meeting, to Jerusalem. And he reigned over Israel.

Table 5.  “Bethel” in Chronicles Reference 2 Chr 13:9

nrsv

Translation

Description of Context

Abijah pursued Jeroboam, and took cities Jeroboam’s from him: Bethel with its villages and battle against Jeshanah with its villages and Ephron Abijah with its villages.

Sondergut? Yes

Table 6.  “Gibeah” in Chronicles Reference 2 Chr 13:2

nrsv

Translation

He [Abijah] reigned for three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Micaiah daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. Now there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

Description of Context Jeroboam’s battle against Abijah

Sondergut? No 1 Kgs 15:2, 6, 7

Historia or Exegesis? Assessing the Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib Narrative Paul S. Evans McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University

Introduction The story of the invasion of Sennacherib in the book of Chronicles provides an interesting case study for examining aspects of the Chronicler’s method. 1 As is well known, the majority of scholars have concluded that the main source for the Chronicler’s work was the Deuteronomistic History (primarily Samuel–Kings). 2 Similarly, when the Chronicler diverged from his Vorlage, 1. By Chronicler, I mean the author(s) of the book of Chronicles. 2.  Of course, Auld and Ho argue for a common source behind both Chronicles and the Deuteronomistic History rather than a theory of dependence of the former on the latter. See A. G. Auld, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994); idem, “What Was the Main Source of the Books of Chronicles?” in The Chronicler as Author (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 91–135. Also C. Y. S. Ho, “Conjectures and Refutations: Is 1 Samuel XXXI 1–13 Really the Source of 1 Chronicles X 1–12?” VT 45 (1995) 82–106. As with most scholars, I have not found their arguments convincing because the supposed “shared text” (book of the Two Houses) is far too much like Samuel–Kings to be worth serious consideration. The Chronicler clearly shows knowledge of material (and assumes this knowledge of his audience) from Samuel that does not easily fit into the shared source that Auld asserts was a history of Judah. See S. L. McKenzie, “The Chronicler as Redactor,” in ibid., 70–90. More recently, R. Person has argued that the Chronicler’s history and “Deuteronomic” history were actually more or less contemporary, competing histories (R. F. Person, The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World [SBLAIL 6; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010]; idem, The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature [Studies in Biblical Literature 2; ed. D. T. Olson; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002]). Person argues for a Persian-period dating for the Deuteronomistic History on text-critical grounds. He highlights LXX texts in the Deuteronomistic History that appear to reflect a Hebrew Vorlage earlier than the MT. Person therefore posits Deuteronomistic redaction at a stage later than these LXX-Vorlagen, concluding that the Deuteronomists worked in the postexilic period

103

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Paul S. Evans

these deviations are often understood as being the result of the Chronicler’s intentional editorial activity and directly related to his ideology. 3 However, at other times the changes are thought to be due to the Chronicler’s reliance on unknown sources that are no longer extant. In the Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative (2 Chronicles 32), both explanations have been suggested to account for the divergences from his Vorlage. In some details of the narrative (for example, Hezekiah’s war preparations), the Chronicler may have relied on an unknown source(s); in other areas (for example, Sennacherib’s failure to take Judah’s fortified cities), the Chronicler simply changed the facts to fit his ideological purposes. A closer look at two proposals for explaining the Chronicler’s method in 2 Chronicles 32 is necessary at this point. In attempting to describe the Chronicler’s method in this chapter, Childs and Williamson suggested the term midrash as the most appropriate descriptor. 4 One of the main features of midrash that both scholars detect in the (as late as the mid-fifth century b.c.e). Person suggests that the Chronicler employed a pre-Deuteronomic text as his source and that the Ezra-Nehemiah-Chronicles school eventually replaced the Deuteronomic school. However, his textual-critical arguments are unconvincing. First, the examples he uses are some of the most debated text-critical problems in the Deuteronomistic History (Josh 20:1–7; 1 Samuel 17; 1 Kgs 12:24), and his conclusion that LXX Kings always predates the MT version is overreached, because many examples where the latter predates the former can easily be found. Furthermore, his dating of Deuteronomistic History additions to the early Persian period does not really explain why the LXX translates the pre-Deuteronomic text, unless the work of the Deuteronomists goes far later than he allows (because he does not argue for an early date for the LXX). As Van Seters has commented: “If it is correct that the Deuteronomistic redaction of Samuel and Kings is later than the writing of Chronicles, as apparently confirmed by such text-criticism, then Person’s view that the EzraNehemiahChronicles school replaced the Deuteronomic school is completely contradicted” (“Review of The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature,” JAOS 123 [2003] 388–89, esp. p. 389). Person’s work has not gained the assent of many so far, and I do not find his thesis to be sustained by his arguments. 3.  Of course, this is not always the case, because there is much evidence that the differences between the MT of the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronicler’s actual Vorlage explain many of the divergences. See W. Lemke, “The Synoptic Problem in the Chronicler’s History,” HTR 58 (1965) 349–63. This is especially evident regarding the text of Samuel. See E. C. Ulrich, The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus (HSM 19; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978); S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985); P. E. Dion, “The Angel with the Drawn Sword ([1] Chr 21,16): An Exercise in Restoring the Balance of Text Criticism and Attention to Context,” ZAW 97 (1985) 114–17. 4.  B. S. Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis (SBT 2/3; London: SCM, 1967) 107; H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 379. In the past Wellhausen has used the term to describe the Chronicler’s work in a pejorative sense (Prolegomena to the History of Israel [Atlanta: Scholars Press,

Assessing the Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib Narrative

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Table 1.  The Chronicler’s Source-Critical Awareness 2 Kgs 18:17–19:9a, 36–37 (Account B1)

2 Kgs 19:9b–35 (Account B2)

2 Chronicles 32

Isaiah prays (2 Kgs 19:4)

Hezekiah prays (2 Kgs 19:15–19)

Both Isaiah and Hezekiah pray (2 Chr 32:20)

“Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand . . . ?” (2 Kgs 18:35)

“Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed . . . ?” (2 Kgs 19:12)

“Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of other lands?” (2 Chr 32:13)

The Rabshakeh delivers a message in person (2 Kgs 18:19–37)

Letter threats are sent (2 Kgs 19:14)

Speeches are delivered (2 Chr 32:10–15) and letters are sent (2 Chr 32:17)

Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative is the “serious wrestling with the problems arising from [the Chronicler’s Vorlage] itself.” 5 What is interesting about these scholars’ observations is their view that 2 Kings 18–19 presented tremendous problems of interpretation due to its being comprised of contradictory parallel accounts. As Williamson writes, “It needs to be remembered that the Chronicler, together with many modern scholars, took the two accounts in 2 Kgs 18:17–19:9a, 36–37 and in 2 Kgs 19:9b–35 to be parallel and that he summarized them into one.” 6 In other words, the Chronicler also held to the source-critical delineations that have come to be known as the Stade-Childs hypothesis. 7 The proof for the Chronicler’s anticipation of the Stade-Childs hypothesis is offered by Childs. 8 His argument is displayed most simply in table 1. However, I find this evidence unconvincing. Each of these examples can be more easily explained by understanding the Chronicler to be summarizing the Deuteronomist’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative as a whole rather than 1994] 227). Similarly, Kittel, Die Bücher der Chronik, übersetzt und erklärt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902) ix; Welch, The Work of the Chronicler, Its Purpose and Its Date (Schweich Lectures 1938; London: Oxford University Press, 1939) 54. 5.  Childs, Assyrian Crisis, 107; Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 379. 6. Ibid. 7.  That is, the source-critical delineations that divide 2 Kgs 18:13–19:37 into three discrete, parallel sources and have been labeled: Account A (2 Kgs 18:13–16); Account B1 (2 Kgs 18:17–19:9a, 36–37); and Account B2 (2 Kgs 19:9b–35). See Stade, “Miscellen: Anmerkungen zu 2 Kö. 15–21,” ZAW 6 (1886) 156–89; Childs, Assyrian Crisis. 8.  Ibid., 108.

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attempting to harmonize what he viewed as contradictory, parallel sources. 9 For example, it is not evident that the Chronicler viewed these accounts as a doublet simply because he presents both Hezekiah and Isaiah as praying. I favor the simpler explanation that the Chronicler’s source referred to both men praying, and therefore the Chronicler simply summarized by referring to both instances. 10 It is more likely that he viewed 2 Kings 18–19 as one continuous account wherein initially Isaiah prayed, and then subsequently Hezekiah prayed. Needless to say, the difficulties that modern scholars have found in 2 Kings 18–19 were not the same difficulties that the Chronicler discerned in the text. So the label midrash, as suggesting that its starting point for interpretation was these perceived difficulties in the text, appears to be an inadequate (and anachronistic) term to describe the Chronicler’s work. Japhet characterizes 2 Chronicles 32 as “adaptive” in character and a “comprehensive epitomization” of 2 Kings 18–20. 11 However, she views Hezekiah’s address to the people (2 Chr 32:7–8), his preparations for the war, and the listing of his political and economic accomplishments as not based on 2 Kings 18–20. In her view, Hezekiah’s speech is a free composition that was not influenced by any particular source, while his war preparation and economic achievements were based on an “additional independent source.” 12 Although I am in basic agreement with Japhet’s position regarding the “epitomization” aspect of the Chronicler’s work in this instance, I suggest in this essay that more of the divergent material in 2 Chronicles 32 can be attributed to his reliance on and critical interaction with his sources than she has allowed. Furthermore, I maintain that in 2 Chronicles 32 the Chronicler did not intend to contradict or correct his sources through these divergences. In fact, each of the distinctive features of the Chronicler’s narrative appears to be founded on his interpretation of the sources he employed (this realization somewhat mitigates the necessity of positing extrabiblical sources on which the Chronicler relied). Furthermore, while agreeing with Williamson and Childs in seeing the Chronicler’s work as a critical engagement with his source text, I argue that his basic approach to his sources in 2  Chronicles 32 was not midrashic but historiographical in nature. However, his historiographic impulse cannot be separated from the theological and exegetical aspects of his method. 9.  For a detailed discussion about the Stade-Childs hypothesis and its many weaknesses, see my Invasion of Sennacherib in the Book of Kings: A Source-Critical and Rhetorical Study of 2 Kings 18–19 (VTSup 125; Leiden: Brill, 2009). 10. As Japhet has observed, “The general tendency of the Chronicler is to abbreviate” (I and II Chronicles [OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993] 976). 11.  Ibid., 976–77. 12.  Ibid., 976–78.

Assessing the Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib Narrative

107

The Chronicler’s Hezekiah-Sennacherib Narrative The divergences of 2  Chronicles 32 from 2  Kings 18–19 are readily apparent: (1)  Hezekiah does not rebel against Assyria (contra 2  Kgs 18:7–8), (2)  Hezekiah does not pay tribute to Sennacherib (contra 2  Kgs 18:14–16), (3) Sennacherib does not conquer Judah’s fortified cities (contra 2 Kgs 18:13), (4) Hezekiah fortifies Jerusalem (not mentioned in 2 Kings), (5) Hezekiah addresses the people (the address is not recorded in 2  Kings), (6)  Tirhakah of Cush is absent from the narrative (contra 2 Kgs 19:9), (7) Jerusalem is not besieged by the Assyrian army because the Assyrian forces do not even approach the city of David (contra 2 Kgs 18:17). In order to assess what changes the Chronicler makes to his Vorlage, we must first determine with which source(s) the Chronicler was working. While there is little dispute about whether Samuel–Kings was the Chronicler’s main source for his work, the Chronicler’s own source citation in this instance is intriguing. In 2 Chr 32:32, the Chronicler refers to his source as “the vision (‎‫ )חזון‬of Isaiah son of Amoz,” which is the title of the canonical book of Isaiah because its editorial incipit reads, “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz” (‎‫חזון‬ ‫יׁשעיהו בן־אמוץ‬, Isa 1:1). Since editorial superscriptions of this sort are late accompaniments to prophetic books, if not the last additions, the Chronicler’s awareness of this title suggests his knowledge of the book in its edited form. 13 This reference is compelling because Isaiah 36–37 contains virtually identical narratives to those in 2 Kings 18–19. It appears that the Chronicler was aware of a relationship between the two books because he locates the “vision of Isaiah” within “The Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.” 14 What is most interesting for the purposes of this paper is that Isaiah 36–37 also omits both Hezekiah’s rebellion against Assyria and his payment of tribute to Sennacherib. If we assume that either the Chronicler used the Isaian narratives instead of the Deuteronomistic History in this instance or that he was at least influenced by the Isaian Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative, then his omission of these 13. W. Johnstone actually argues that Chronicles presupposes not only the Deuteronomic History but the account in Isaiah as well (1 and 2 Chronicles [2 vols.; JSOTSup 253–54; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997] 2:180). Williamson also mentions in passing the possibility that the Chronicler was influenced by the book of Isaiah (1 and 2 Chronicles, 348). Interestingly, in 2 Chr 26:22 the Chronicler also refers to Isaiah as being the author of King Uzziah’s history. The connection between Isaiah and Uzziah is doubtless due to the book of Isaiah, which presents Isaiah as ministering during Uzziah’s reign (Isa 1:1). 14. W. Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period (JSOTSup 197; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) 216.

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parts of the narrative are explained. 15 This leaves only five other items from our list of the Chronicler’s divergences from 2 Kings 18–19 to examine.

Sennacherib’s Incomplete Conquest of the Fortified Cities At the beginning of this narrative (2 Chr 32:1), the Assyrian invasion is in its infancy. Sennacherib invades and lays siege to the fortified cities. Sennacherib’s thoughts are then described for us by the narrator, that he aspired ‘to conquer (‎‫ )בקע‬them’ for himself. 16 At first glance, this is in direct contrast to 2 Kgs 18:13/Isa 36:1, which state that Sennacherib not only ‘came against’ (‎‫ה על‬ ‎ ‫)על‬ the fortified cities but he ‘captured (‎‫ )ויתפׂשם‬them’. However, it is interesting that the Chronicler uses a different verb from his Vorlage here. Rather than denying that he ‘captured’ (‎‫ )תפׂש‬the cities, the Chronicler simply does not narrate Sennacherib’s ‘conquering’ (‫ )בקע‬of them. 17 The failure of Sennacherib to “conquer” the cities may have been suggested by the note in 2 Kgs 19:8 that Sennacherib left one fortified city (Lachish) and went to fight against another (Libnah). Why would Sennacherib need to fight against Libnah (2 Kgs 19:8) if all the fortified cities had truly been conquered at this point (2 Kgs 18:13)? The Chronicler probably distinguished between an initial ‘seizing’ (‫ )תפׂש‬of cities and a final ‘conquering’ (‫ )בקע‬of them. Though they were temporarily “seized,” the note about the Assyrians’ movement from Lachish to Libnah suggested that these cities continued to resist and were not fully conquered. The Chronicler may have seen another indication that all the fortified cities were not conquered in 2 Kgs 19:8, where the Rabshakeh returns to Lachish to find Sennacherib but is surprised that the Assyrian king ‘has left Lachish’ (‎‫ )נסע מלכיׁש‬for Libnah (2 Kgs 19:8). In a military situation, the verb ‫ע‬ ‎ ‫ נס‬can indicate a withdrawal from hostilities. For example, 2 Kgs 3:27, when the 15.  Japhet suggests that the Chronicler was influenced by Isaiah in regard to his omission of Hezekiah’s rebellion and his tribute paid to Sennacherib (I and II Chronicles, 977). The supposition that the Chronicler was influenced by Isaiah may also be seen in the note that, due to Hezekiah’s pride, “wrath” fell upon Judah and Jerusalem (2  Chr 32:25), though it did not come in Hezekiah’s days (2  Chr 32:26). The Deuteronomistic History blames the exile on the sins of Manasseh, while in Isaiah, the last chapters before the exilic section (chaps. 40–55; so-called Deutero-Isaiah) present Hezekiah’s failings and the prediction of exile. Thus, it appears that the Chronicler picked up on the arrangement of these Hezekiah narratives and their role in the structure of the book of Isaiah to explain the exile by presenting Hezekiah as instrumental in the falling of “wrath” on Judah as stated in 2 Chr 32:25–26. 16.  The verb used here is ‫בקע‬, which means ‘to split/rip open’ in many instances (e.g., Exod 14:16, Hos 13:8) but in military contexts refers to ‘breaking through’ enemy lines (2 Sam 23:16, 2 Kgs 3:26, 1 Chr 11:18) and, especially, breaking through city walls (2 Kgs 25:4; Jer 39:2, 52:7; Ezek 26:10). In Ezek 30:16; Isa 7:6; 2 Chr 21:17, and 32:1, the word seems to refer simply to conquering a city. 17.  The word ‫ תפׂש‬is employed 65 times in the OT/HB. Most commonly, it refers to the seizing of individuals (42 times), but it is used 9 times for the seizure of cities.

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battle against Moab is abandoned, says they ‘withdrew’ (‎‫ ;)ויסעו מעליו‬18 and at the end of the Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative itself, after the angelic attack, Sennacherib ‘withdraws’ (‎‫)ויסע‬. 19 Thus, the note that Sennacherib “withdrew” from Lachish suggested to the Chronicler that he actually could not conquer the city. 20 Rather than attempting to contradict his source, the Chronicler was interpreting the source and making historical judgments. In fact, if we did not have access to Assyrian annals, a drawing from Lachish, and archaeological excavations that evince a destruction of the city during Sennacherib’s invasion, we modern scholars might interpret the note in 2 Kgs 19:8 regarding Sennacherib’s ‫ נסע‬from Lachish in the same way. 21

Hezekiah Fortifies Jerusalem In response to hearing of Sennacherib’s intended invasion, Hezekiah in 2 Chr 32:3 sets out to reroute the water supply to prevent an invading Assyrian army from having access to water (2 Chr 32:4) and to fortify Jerusalem’s defenses by repairing breaches in the wall, constructing a second wall, and strengthening the Millo (2 Chr 32:5). 1.  Fortifying Jerusalem’s Defenses.  The Chronicler’s presentation of Hezekiah’s other efforts at strengthening Jerusalem’s fortifications do not find a parallel in 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37. However, the details of these additional fortifications have some interesting parallels with Isa 22:8b–11. A brief look at this passage is necessary here. On that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, and you saw that there were many breaches in the city of David, and you collected the waters of the lower pool. You counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the 18.  Note the use of ‫ מן‬in this instance as well as in 2 Kgs 18:13. Similarly, in Num 20:22 after Edom comes out with a military force (Num 20:20), Israel ‘sets out from Kadesh’ (‎‫) ויסעו מקדׁש‬. 19.  In non-military contexts, the verb similarly means ‘to move on’ from one place to another (e.g., Gen 37:17). It is most commonly used in this sense. 20. Contra Childs, who asserts that the Chronicler assumes “that Lachish had fallen” (Assyrian Crisis, 108). 21.  Writing before the discovery of the Assyrian annals, Simon Patrick questioned “whether this Destruction was made in the Army that besieged Libnah” (A Commentary upon the Historical Books of the Old Testament [2 vols.; 6th ed.; London: Millar, 1765] 509). Even with the light from the Assyrian annals, some have viewed the move away from Lachish in this way. For example, A. Edersheim suggested that Sennacherib’s move from Lachish “indicates a further retreat of Sennacherib and his army” (Bible History [7 vols.; Boston: Bradley 1887] 7:139–40). Honor entertained the possibility that the destruction of Sennacherib’s army might have taken place at Lachish. See L. L. Honor, Sennacherib’s Invasion of Palestine: A Critical Source Study (COHP 12; New York: Columbia University Press, 1926) 58. Thus, in this perspective, the fortified cities were not completely conquered.

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houses to fortify the wall. You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him who planned it long ago.

Both Isaiah 22 and 2 Chronicles 32 refer to the construction of the water conduit, repairing the breaches in the wall, and a second wall. The last item is especially interesting because 2 Chr 32:5 and Isa 22:11 are the only passages in the Hebrew Bible to mention a second wall in Jerusalem. As noted above, it appears that the Chronicler had access to the book of Isaiah, already in its edited form. This makes the mention of the second wall another provocative connection between Chronicles and Isaiah and may suggest that the Chronicler employed Isaiah 22 in presenting Hezekiah’s fortification efforts. Gary Knoppers has noted the possibility that the Chronicler drew on Isaiah 22 at this point but rejected it for two reasons. 22 First, Isaiah 22 does not attribute the construction of the wall explicitly to Hezekiah. Second, the details of Isaiah 22 differ from the Chronicler’s presentation. 23 For instance, Isaiah 22 only mentions the repair of the original wall and the building of a water basin between the inner and outer walls, while the Chronicler adds that Hezekiah built towers on the original wall and actually constructed the second wall. However, I do not find these objections compelling. First, regarding the lack of explicit identification of Hezekiah in Isaiah 22, since the Chronicler’s Vorlage clearly stated in 2 Kgs 20:20 that Hezekiah constructed the water conduit, the reference in Isaiah 22 to the construction of the conduit would doubtless have implied Hezekiah’s involvement to the Chronicler. What probably also contributed to a perceived connection between Isaiah 22 and Hezekiah was the focus on Shebna and Eliakim in Isa 22:15–25 and their association with Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37. In fact, these two officials are only mentioned in these texts, which probably strengthened the perceived connection of Isaiah 22 to the Hezekiah story for the Chronicler. 24 Second, regarding the differences in details, if the Chronicler connected Isaiah 22 with the work of Hezekiah (as proposed above), the mention of a second wall in Isaiah 22 could have suggested to him that Hezekiah also built the second wall. In fact, Isa 22:10–11 says he broke down houses to fortify the wall, then says he made a reservoir between the ‘two walls’ (‎‫)החמתים‬. It is 22. G. Knoppers, “History and Historiography: The Royal Reforms,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 198 n. 61. 23.  Williamson also notes the similarities between Isaiah 22 and 2 Chronicles 32 but does not view the Chronicler as having used the former due to “several quite striking differences between” the two passages (1 and 2 Chronicles, 380). However, he does not elaborate on the “striking differences” to which he refers. 24.  For a hypothetical reconstruction of the relationship between Isaiah 22 and the Hezekiah-Sennacherib narrative, see my Invasion of Sennacherib, 72–73.

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possible that the Chronicler understood the use of houses to “fortify” the wall as creating a second wall and placing the reservoir between it and the first wall. The reservoir could be part of the strengthening of the fortifications because it would have served as “extra protection,” as Japhet suggests. 25 Alternatively, the fact that this second wall is not mentioned elsewhere in his sources but only in connection with the construction of the conduit could have suggested to the Chronicler Hezekiah’s role in constructing the second wall. 26 The reference to towers’ being built could have been the Chronicler’s elaboration on how Hezekiah fortified the wall, since a wall is strengthened by the addition of watchtowers (cf. Isa 2:15). Similarly, the reference to Hezekiah’s “strengthening the Millo” in 2 Chr 32:5 was probably the Chronicler’s elaboration on Hezekiah’s wall-fortification process. 27 Elsewhere, the building of the Millo is often connected with the fortification of the wall (1 Kgs 9:15, 11:27; 1 Chr 11:8). In fact, 1 Kgs 11:27 connects the building of the Millo with filling in the breaches of the city wall. 2.  The Waterworks Construction.  Hezekiah’s efforts to reroute Jerusalem’s water supply in preparation for an Assyrian attack does not find a parallel in his Vorlage. However, at the end of the Hezekiah narratives in 2 Kgs 20:20, reference is made to Hezekiah’s construction project involving the water supply. Therefore, it seems likely that here the Chronicler was again attempting to reconstruct on the basis of his Vorlage. However, 2 Kgs 20:20 does not connect this construction to preparations for an Assyrian invasion as does the Chronicler’s account. Historically speaking, there is reason to conclude that the entire water project could not be a response to the Assyrian invasion in 701 b.c.e. 28 A project of this size (especially if the construction of the Siloam Tunnel is in view) would have taken a considerable amount of time and could hardly have been done so quickly after Sennacherib had already attacked the fortified cities (which is how it is presented in 2 Chronicles 32). Therefore, we must inquire why the Chronicler saw a connection between the waterworks project 25.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 983. 26.  For archaeological identification of the second wall, see Avigad, “Excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City Jerusalem 1969/1970, Preliminary Report II,” IEJ 20 (1970) 129–34. Avigad dates this wall to the late eighth century b.c.e. See also idem, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983) 45–60. 27. Similarly, Japhet views the Chronicler’s reference to the strengthening of the Millo as conforming to Isa 22:9 and the reference to repairing the breaches in the walls (I and II Chronicles, 983). 28. As Dalley notes, the construction of the Siloam Tunnel “cannot have been connected with the impending assault by Assyria because it would have taken too long to make, and because it did not make a substantial difference to the end-point of the water’s flow—in other words, it would not deprive an Assyrian army of water” (“Recent Evidence from Assyrian Sources for Judaean History from Uzziah to Manasseh,” JSOT 28 [2004] 397–98).

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and Sennacherib’s invasion if the Chronicler’s sources did not make this connection. Once again, the influence of the book of Isaiah on this narrative may be detected, because Isa 22:11 references the construction of waterworks in connection to fortification preparations. 29 Thus, the Chronicler was following the lead of his sources when he presented Hezekiah’s efforts to reroute Jerusalem’s water supply as being done in preparation for an Assyrian invasion. 30 However, one detail concerning the waterworks project could not have been derived from either 2 Kings 20 or Isaiah 22. While 2 Kgs 20:20 only notes that Hezekiah brought water into the city (with no reference to the western sector), 2 Chr 32:30 claims that he brought the Gihon waters “down to the west of the city of David.” Interestingly, archaeological excavations show that this was indeed the case. 31 However, how did the Chronicler know about the function of the water system that Hezekiah constructed? Two possibilities exist. First, he may have had a nonbiblical source (written or oral) on which he relied. Second, since the Chronicler was probably a Jerusalemite, he could have had firsthand access to the conduit to see its functioning; thus, no other source need be posited. Nevertheless, his attributing the water system to Hezekiah may be due solely to his reliance on 2 Kgs 20:20. 32 An interesting aspect of the Chronicler’s reliance on Isaiah 22 is his silence regarding the critique that permeates that chapter and views those preparations 29.  Kalimi asserts that the Chronicler relied on 2 Kgs 20:20 and Isa 22:8–11 for his presentation of Hezekiah’s preparations for war, though he does not elaborate on any specifics or on how exactly his sources informed his work in this regard (The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005] 388). 30.  Interestingly, when the Chronicler describes the waterworks construction, he has the people justify it by saying “Why should the Assyrian kings come and find water in abundance” (2 Chr 32:4). If this project was begun only after Sennacherib’s invasion had begun, it is curious that they should speak of Assyrian ‘kings’ (‫ )מלכי‬rather than the singular “king” (Sennacherib). Perhaps this shows the Chronicler’s awareness that the preparations for an Assyrian assault began well before Sennacherib’s invasion and that the impetus for such extensive fortifications was Hezekiah’s plan to rebel against Assyria. 31.  R. G. North, “Does Archaeology Prove Chronicles Sources?” in A Light Unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers (eds. H. H. Bream, R. D. Heim, and C. A. Moore; GTS 4; Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974) 375–79. 32.  Though most scholars attribute the construction of the Siloam Tunnel to Hezekiah, there have been some who think Manasseh was responsible. As Dalley has argued, a project of this size would have taken a considerable amount of time (“Recent Evidence,” 397–98). If the Siloam tunnel was truly connected with the “siege” of 701, surely the Kings account would have made this connection, since the narrative there is so lengthy. Dalley has suggested that the Siloam tunnel was a project to bring water into the royal garden which was an imitation of the hanging gardens of the Assyrian monarch, noting parallels between the inscription in the tunnel and various Assyrian inscriptions.

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for war as symptomatic of unbelief. If this critique is leveled at Hezekiah, it appears to contradict the presentation of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18–19. This may account for the omission of the details of Hezekiah’s war preparations in the book of Kings, because the Deuteronomist sought to present Hezekiah as a model of faith. However, the Chronicler both includes Hezekiah’s extensive preparations for war and also presents him as a model of trust. The Chronicler’s inclusion of both Hezekiah’s faithfulness as described in 2 Kings 18–19 and the extensive war preparations referred to in Isaiah 22 suggests that he was attempting to harmonize his sources. However, the omission of the critique cannot be overlooked and would not fit into the category of harmonization. It is possible that the Chronicler understood the critique found in Isaiah 22 as being directed at the people rather than the king. In fact, Isa 22:8–11 consistently addresses a plural audience and refers to the actions of a group, rather than an individual. 33 The king is not clearly implied, nor is an individual singled out in these verses. In Isa 22:15–25, Shebna is singled out for criticism and Eliakim praised, but the king is not referred to in any instance. In fact, in Isa 22:18, Shebna is castigated as “a disgrace to his master’s house,” which implies that the master is not under judgment here. Since Shebna served during Hezekiah’s reign, “master” probably refers to Hezekiah in this instance. At least, this is how the Chronicler may have interpreted this chapter. If this was the interpretive stance of the Chronicler in this instance, his presentation of Hezekiah is explained. First, Hezekiah makes extensive preparations for war, as noted in Isaiah 22. Second, Hezekiah acts as a model of trust in Yahweh, as emphasized in 2 Kings 18–19. 34 To emphasize Hezekiah’s faith, the Chronicler presents Hezekiah as encouraging the people not to trust in these extensive preparations for war (“the arm of flesh”) but instead to trust in Yahweh alone. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him, for there is a greater power with us than with him. With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles. (2 Chr 32:7–8)

Thus, the Chronicler concludes that, although Hezekiah did all he could to prepare for an Assyrian invasion, his heart fully trusted in Yahweh rather than in his fortification of Jerusalem. 33. J. Blenkinsopp argues that the use of the plural here refers to “Hezekiah and his people” (Isaiah 1–39 [AB 19; New York: Doubleday, 2000] 333). 34.  P. S. Evans, “Sennacherib’s 701 Invasion into Judah: What Saith the Scriptures?” in The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies (ed. P. G. Kirkpatrick and T. Goltz; LHBOTS [JSOTSup] 489; London: T. & T. Clark, 2008) 57–77.

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Hezekiah’s Address to the People Hezekiah’s attempt to hearten (‎‫ )וידבר על־לבבם‬his people by an encouraging speech (2 Chr 32:7–8) is another of the Chronicler’s apparent divergences from his sources. As Japhet has pointed out, the speech of Hezekiah “can easily be recognized as the Chronicler’s work.” 35 It conforms to the Chronicler’s practice of adding addresses to the people, including the people’s response. The language is particularly Chronistic, and the theological comments in 2 Chr 32:25–26 are most obviously the Chronicler’s. 36 However, what commentators have failed to note is the signal in the Chronicler’s Vorlage that Hezekiah had indeed spoken to the people. 2 Kgs 18:36 notes that “the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, ‘Do not answer him’” (my italics). This verse clearly indicates that Hezekiah had addressed the people. Of course, the content of the inserted speech was created by the Chronicler, but his method here may have been similar to that of Thucydides, who endeavored to “make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.” 37 At this point, we must keep in mind that what the Chronicler thought was the type of speech demanded by the occasion was deeply influenced by his own ideology and view of Hezekiah. Nevertheless, his inserted speech at this point is in line with a historiographical goal, not a purely fictive goal. Furthermore, his source tells of the king’s commanding the people to be silent. Their obedience to this command may have indicated to the Chronicler that Hezekiah encouraged them enough that they boldly stood their ground and did not reply to the Assyrian messengers. Thus, his speech to them must have been a persuasive, heartening speech, similar to the one that the Chronicler composed for Hezekiah. The Absence of Tirhakah The Chronicler’s omission of the advance of Tirhakah is first of all due to the abbreviated nature of his account of the Assyrian invasion. 38 Tirhakah is only mentioned in one verse, and his role in the historical event is unclear. 39 While 35.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 977. 36.  Japhet notes phrases such as “be strong and of good courage” and “do not be afraid or dismayed,” and so on, as recurrent phrases in Chronicles (ibid). 37.  Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, book 1, chap.  1 (trans. R.  Crawley; provided by The Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu// Thucydides/pelopwar.html [accessed 21 June 2011] n. p. 38.  In this sort of narrative, it is common for minor characters to be omitted. See H. J. Tertel, Text and Transmission: An Empirical Model for the Literary Development of Old Testament Narratives (BZAW 221; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994) 156–71. 39.  Some have argued that, although he was not king until 689, Tirhakah could have been involved in a battle with Sennacherib and Egypt at Eltekeh as a prince. E.g., K. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 b.c.) (2nd ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986) 385; C. van Leeuwen, “Sanchérib devant Jérusalem,” in

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the role of the Cushites in the historical events surrounding the Assyrian invasion of 701 b.c.e. has been debated, some have recently suggested that they actually played a quite pivotal role. 40 However, if the Chronicler’s only source for Sennacherib’s invasion was 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37, this role would not have been self-evident. In fact, Tirhakah is only mentioned in the ‘report’ or ‘rumor’ (‎‫ )ׁשמועה‬that Sennacherib hears in 2 Kgs 19:9, which appears to be part of the divine plot against him. This rumor partially fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy of 2 Kgs 19:7, which predicted that Sennacherib would “hear a rumor/report and return to his land.” Thus, the presence of Tirhakah is not even evidentially true but may be understood to have been just a “rumor.” 41 Given the compendious nature of his account, there is no reason for the Chronicler to mention the “rumor,” especially when it does not appear to be the cause of the Assyrian retreat.

The Lack of a “Siege” of Jerusalem Whether or not the Chronicler refers to a siege in 2 Chronicles 32 has been the subject of some debate, the center of which surrounds the phrase ‫ם‬ ‎ ‫מצור בירוׁשל‬ in 2 Chr 32:10. The word ‫ מצור‬can mean either ‘siege’ or ‘fortress’, depending on the context. Thus, two translations are possible: ‘the siege of Jerusalem’ or ‘the fortress of Jerusalem’. Note the two translation possibilities of 2 Chr 32:10 in the context of Sennacherib’s question: ‎‫כה אמר סנחריב מלך אׁשור על־מה אתם בטחים‬ Thus says Sennacherib, King of Assyria, “On what are you trusting, . . . ‎‫ויׁשבים במצור בירוׁשלם׃‬ 1.  . . . that [you are] undergoing the siege of Jerusalem?” 2.  . . . that [you are] remaining in the fortress of Jerusalem?” Kaf–He: 1940–1965—Jubilee Volume, Published on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Dutch O.T. Society (OtSt 14; Leiden: Brill, 1965) 260. Others have found the mention of Tirhakah to suggest a second campaign by Sennacherib. E.g., W. H. Shea, “Jerusalem under Siege: Did Sennacherib Attack Twice?” BAR 25 (1999) 36–44, 64. Others find the mention of Tirhakah to be pure anachronism and doubt his presence in the Levant at that time: A. van der Kooij, “Das assyrische Heer vor den Mauern Jerusalems im Jahr 701 v. Chr,” ZDPV 102 (1986) 114. 40.  E.g., D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) 353; L. L. Grabbe, “Of Mice and Dead Men: Herodotus 2.141 and Sennacherib’s Campaign in 701 bce,” in ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 119–40; E. A. Knauf, “Sennacherib at the Berezina,” in ibid.,141–49; Evans, Invasion of Sennacherib. 41.  This is exactly how some scholars have understood the reference: e.g., H. Ewald, The History of Israel (London: Longmans, Green, 1878) 183; and Stade, “Miscellen.” As van der Kooij writes, “The text of 19:7, 9a does not imply (at least not necessarily so) that Tirhaka [sic] actually did advance to wage war at this time. On the contrary, it is simply a rumour” (“Das assyrische Heer,” 114).

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The most frequent meaning of ‫ מצור‬is ‘siege’. However, the context appears to argue against this translation since, in the Chronicler’s account, the Assyrian army does not approach Jerusalem but instead remains with (‫ )עמו‬Sennacherib, who is besieging Lachish (2 Chr 32:9). Sennacherib only sends ‘his servants’ (‫ )עבדיו‬to Jerusalem (2 Chr 32:9), not his army. In view of this narrative context, some have argued for the latter translation above. 42 However, the lexical evidence appears to weigh in favor of translating ‫מצור‬ as ‘siege’. Outside this reference, every instance in the HB/OT in which ‫מצור‬ is used with the preposition ‫ב‬, it clearly refers to a siege. 43 In fact, the combination of the verb ‎‫ יׁשב‬with ‫ מצור‬is only found here and in Jer 10:17 and seems to be a technical phrase for undergoing siege. Furthermore, Jerusalem is never referred to as ‫ מצור‬anywhere else, making the ‘fortress’ option unlikely. 44 Even though this is the case, it is still not clear that the Chronicler is actually suggesting that Jerusalem was besieged, because the narrative context clearly contradicts this statement. 45 Japhet has sensed this tension and argues that the reason for the tension is the Chronicler’s literary method. She writes, “While carefully reworking the story in contents and phrasing, the Chronicler still insists on producing an adaptation of an existing text and not a new composition; the price to be paid is the unavoidable tension between old and new.” 46 That is to say, the Chronicler was constrained to be faithful to his source text, so he had to refer to the siege of Jerusalem (which Japhet says is the “central point to the whole event” in his Vorlage), even though his reworked account does not have a siege of Jerusalem take place. 47 However, this explanation seems quite unlikely. First, the Chronicler was not unusually constrained by his sources. Often he clearly contradicts the presentation of historical events in his Vorlage. For instance, in 2 Chronicles 28 Ahaz’s appeal to the Assyrian king for aid against Aram and Israel results in military oppression by Assyria (2 Chr 28:20) rather than Assyrian assistance against his foes, as in his Vorlage (2 Kgs 16:9). Second, the “siege of Jerusa42.  Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 383; J. M. Myers, II Chronicles (AB 13; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965). 43.  Deut 20:19; 28:53, 55, 57; 2 Kgs 24:10, 25:2; Jer 10:17, 19:9, 52:5; Ezek 4:3; Zech 12:2. 44.  Selman argues against translating ‘fortress’ or ‘stronghold’, since ‫“ מצור‬is never applied to Jerusalem in this way” (2 Chronicles [TOTC 11; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008] 532 n. 118). 45.  Though some have taken this statement to indicate a siege. E.g., E. Ben Zvi, “Malleability and Its Limits: Sennacherib’s Campaign against Judah as a Case-Study,” in ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 86; Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History, 387–89; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 987. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid.

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lem” does not appear to be the central point of 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37. Though I have dealt with this issue at length elsewhere, 48 I find it necessary to take another brief look at whether the Chronicler’s Vorlage refers to a “siege” of Jerusalem. Various terms are used to describe situations of siege in Biblical Hebrew. The word ‫ מצור‬is most commonly used to denote a siege. 49 Additionally, the verb ‫‘ צור‬to besiege’ is frequently employed in such contexts. 50 The verb ‫חנה‬ ‘to encamp’ and the noun ‫ מחנה‬in conjunction with ‫ על‬are also commonly used in this regard. 51 The noun ‫‘ דיק‬siege towers’ and ‫‘ סללה‬siege mounds’ or ‘ramps’ are often employed in siege contexts. 52 Given the many terms available, it is significant that none of these terms is found in 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37 except in Isaiah’s denial that a siege will occur. 53 If 2 Kings 18–19/ Isaiah 36–37 was indicating a situation of siege, some siege language would surely have been used. 48.  Evans, Invasion of Sennacherib, 161–62. 49. E.g., ‫ בוא מצור‬refers to being besieged (cf. Deut 20:19; 2 Kgs 24:10, 25:2; Jer 52:5); ‫ ישב במצור‬is to undergo a siege (Jer 10:17; 2 Chr 32:10); ‫ מצור על‬denotes building siegeworks against a city (Deut 20:20; Ezek 4:2; ‫ שים מצור על‬indicates setting a siege against a city (Mic 4:14); ‫ היה במצור‬indicates being under siege (Ezek 4:3; Zech 12:2). See “‫מצור‬,” HALOT 2:623. Nah 3:14 refers to ‫ מי מצור‬the ‘waters of siege’. Closely related is the noun ‫‘ מצורה‬siegework’ (cf. Isa 29:3). 50.  E.g., Deut 20:12, 19; 28:52; 1 Sam 11:1, 20:15, 23:8; 1 Kgs 8:37, 16:15; 2 Kgs 6:24, 16:5, 17:5, 18:9; Isa 1:8, 21:2, 29:3; Jer 39:1; 1 Chr 20:1; 2 Chr 6:28; Dan 1:1. The verb ‫ צוק‬is used similarly, though less frequently and does not appear to be a technical term for siege, but simply means to ‘harass’ or ‘press hard’ (cf. Jer 19:9). The verb ‫ סמך‬is used in Ezek 24:2 in this sense, but the word basically denotes ‘to befall’. See “‫סמך‬,” HALOT 2:759. ‫ לחם‬is often used in the context of such pericopes, but clearly does not mean ‘siege’ but ‘to do battle’ etc. (as 2 Kgs 16:5 makes clear). 51. For ‫חנה‬, see Josh 10:34, 21; Judg 6:4, 20:19; 1 Sam 11:1; 2 Sam 12:28; 2 Kgs 25:1; Isa 29:3; Jer 50:29, 52:4; Ps 27:3. For ‫מחנה‬, see Ezek 4:2, Ps 27:3. 52. For ‫דיק‬, see 2 Kgs 25:1; Jer 52:4; Ezek 4:2, 17:17, 21:27, 26:8; 2 Chr 32:10. This word is often paired with ‫בנה‬. For ‫סללה‬, see 2 Sam 20:15; Jer 6:6, 32:24, 33:4; Ezek 4:2, 17:17, 21:27, 26:8. The hapax legomenon ‫ בחון‬is also used to refer to ‘siege towers’ in Isa 23:13. Also, in Qoh 9:13, ‫ מצודים‬refers to ‘siegeworks’ or ‘towers’. Isa 29:3 has ‫ מצב‬for ‘tower’. Ezekiel alone uses the term ‫‘ כרים‬battering rams’ (Ezek 4:2, 21:27). 53.  Which mentions ‫‘ סללה‬siege mounds’. Cf. 2 Kgs 19:32. When the Assyrian emissaries come to Jerusalem, it is only said that they ‫‘ עלה‬went up’, they ‫‘( בוא‬entered’ or ‘came’), and they ‫‘ עמד‬stood’. The word ‫‘ עלה‬to go up’ is sometimes used in military situations, in combination with other more explicit battle verbs (e.g., ‫מלחמה‬, Isa 7:1; ‫צור‬, Isa 21:2). Or when ‫ עלה‬is in combination with ‫( על‬e.g., 1 Kgs 20:22, 2 Kgs 18:13), it can mean ‘to fight against’; however, see Gen 38:12, where the same combination is not in a military situation. Of course, in the Hiphil form, this same combination refers to the offering of burnt offerings (e.g., Lev 2:12, 1 Kgs 18:29, 2 Kgs 16:12). But on its own, it never indicates such a military threat. Cf. my Invasion of Sennacherib, 161–62.

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However, 2 Kings 18/Isaiah 36 does have a military force approaching Jerusalem. In 2 Kgs 18:17, a ‘heavy force’ (‫ )חיל כבד‬is said to accompany the Assyrian emissaries to Jerusalem. However, if the Chronicler understood this ‫ חיל כבד‬to be a military contingent accompanying the emissaries, sufficient to protect the emissaries but too small to be a real threat to the city itself (as it appears to be elsewhere, 2 Kgs 6:19–20), 54 when the emissaries left Jerusalem in 2 Kgs 19:9, the Chronicler may have understood the military contingent to have accompanied them at this point as well. In fact, some scholars have also understood the accompanying ‫ חיל כבד‬to have left Jerusalem with the Rabshakeh, rather than besieging Jerusalem. 55 If this was the Chronicler’s understanding of his Vorlage, then it would also explain why the Assyrian army did not encroach on Jerusalem in his narrative but remained at Lachish with Sennacherib. Regardless of whether modern historical reconstructions conclude that a significant military force did blockade Jerusalem or not (or whether the Assyrian annals suggest this), for our purposes here, it is significant that the narrative in 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37 does not clearly present a siege of Jerusalem. 56 If we assume that the Chronicler’s only source for his account of Sennacherib’s invasion was 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37, then it is understandable that he did not narrate a siege of Jerusalem himself. 57 It is only if one assumes that 54.  The phrase ‘heavy force’ (‫ )חיל כבד‬is used in 2 Kings 6 to refer to a military force that is led into the city of Samaria by Elisha (2 Kgs 6:19–20). This military contingent (‫ )חיל כבד‬appears small enough to enter the city and, once there, be destroyed easily by the inhabitants, for once the king of Samaria sees this ‫ חיל כבד‬inside the city, Israel’s king asks, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” (2 Kgs 6:21). Therefore, it appears from the context in 2 Kings 6 that ‫ חיל כבד‬is used to denote a small military force appropriate for attacking a small city in order to capture an individual but inappropriate for the task of defeating a larger city such as Samaria—despite the fact that the group successfully entered through the city walls. 55.  In his examination of the second Assyrian threat enumerated in 2 Kings 19, Honor assumes that the military contingent has left with the Assyrian ambassadors. Regarding the military contingent itself, Honor notes that some scholars “do not believe that these verses refer to the blockade mentioned in the Assyrian Annals” and that they interpret the ‫“ חיל כבד‬as referring to a military escort rather than to a large army” (Sennacherib’s Invasion of Palestine, 74 n. 40). 56.  It is important to read the text on its own terms. The text may be historically inaccurate, but we should allow it to be so, rather than making it conform to what we understand (through other evidences) to have happened. 57.  If a siege of Jerusalem really did take place in 701, it is at least a possibility that the Chronicler knew of it by oral transmission. However, most historians now hold that in fact a siege of Jerusalem did not take place, that the Assyrian annals do not refer to a siege, and that there is no archaeological evidence for a 701 siege of Jerusalem. See Knauf, “Sennacherib at the Berezina,” 145–46; W. R. Gallagher, Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: New Studies (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 18; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 133; W. Mayer and J. Assante, “Sennacherib’s Campaign

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the Chronicler had knowledge of the Assyrian annals or understood 2 Kings 18–19 in the same way as modern commentators who allow the Assyrian annals to provide the interpretive category for understanding 2  Kings 18–19/ Isaiah 36–37 that we would conclude that the Chronicler was consciously contradicting his sources and attempting to reinvent the historical event according to his ideology. This still leaves unanswered the question of how to account for the phrase “siege of Jerusalem” in 2 Chr 32:10. Isaac Kalimi has suggested that, despite the fact that there was no actual Assyrian siege of Jerusalem historically, the Chronicler presented Jerusalem under siege in 2 Chronicles 32 “for the purpose of glorifying the great miracle that the righteous Hezekiah experienced. That is, Jerusalem, its king, and its people were saved despite the Assyrian siege to which they were subjected.” 58 However, Kalimi’s conclusion here ignores the literary context of this reference to a Jerusalem siege. First, it is must be noted that the narrator does not refer to the siege but only the Assyrian emissary. Second, the narrator appears to deride the Assyrian messengers by noting that they were sent to Jerusalem to force surrender by merely “crying aloud” (2  Chr 32:18)—an obviously foolish stratagem. Finally, since the Assyrian messenger’s reference to a siege of Jerusalem directly contradicts the facts as narrated (no army is said to encroach upon Jerusalem), the statements of the Assyrian emissary are clearly unreliable. 59 The Chronicler does not present an actual siege of Jerusalem but only Assyrian boasts and threats. However, even in the Chronicler’s choice to have the Assyrian messenger refer to a siege of Jerusalem in 2 Chr 32:10, he was probably following the lead of his Vorlage. In 2 Kgs 18:27, the Rabshakeh speaks to those who were sitting on the wall and hearing his speech to Hezekiah’s emissaries and predicts that they are going “to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine.” While this threat is clearly a reference to the results of siege warfare, in the context of 2 Kings 19/Isaiah 37 it appears to be a threat of future conditions should a siege occur. 60 However, in keeping with this empty threat, the Chronicler has of 701 bce: The Assyrian View,” in ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. L. L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; ESHM 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 179–81. 58.  Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History, 388. Kalimi interprets the Assyrian annals as “propaganda” and concludes that there really was no siege of Jerusalem (p. 389). 59.  This narrative is a reliable third-person account in which the narrator can be trusted absolutely (R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative [London: Allen & Unwin, 1981] 116). Therefore, when a character’s speech contradicts the narrator’s reliable statements, the character’s speech must be judged untrue (see Y. Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001] 93–96). 60.  For more on this, see my Invasion of Sennacherib, 157.

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the emissaries talk as if the siege of Jerusalem was presently underway, which heightens the negative characterization of the Assyrian messengers.

Conclusion In this paper, I suggest that most of the divergences of 2 Chronicles 32 from 2 Kings 18–19/Isaiah 36–37 are due to the critical interpretation of the Chronicler’s sources rather than an imaginative attempt to correct his source or ignore history for exegetical or theological ends. His interpretation of these sources need not be viewed as midrashic or purely exegetical in nature but can be understood as the work of an ancient “historian.” This is not to conclude that the Chronicler’s interaction with and interpretation of these sources was purely historiographical in nature. It is highly unlikely that exegetical and theological interests can be separated from historiographical interests in this ancient writer. 61 The Chronicler’s work employed exegesis for historiographical and theological ends. 62 Separating these proposals for explaining the Chronicler’s purpose as mutually exclusive is reductionistic and does not do justice to the multifaceted work of the Chronicler. 63 61. As McKenzie points out, in ancient historiography, a distinction between history and theology did not exist (S. L. McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles [Nashville: Abingdon, 2004] 34). 62.  For examples of studies that emphasize one of these aspects (exegesis, history, or theology) of the Chronicler’s method, see T. Willi, Die Chronik als Auslegung: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Gestaltung der historischen Überlieferung Israels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); I. Kalimi, “Was the Chronicler a Historian?” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. Mc­Kenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); K. G. Hoglund, “The Chronicler as Historian: A Comparativist Perspective,” in ibid., 19–29. P. R. Ackroyd, The Chronicler in His Age (JSOTSup 101; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); Coggins, The First and Second Books of the Chronicles (CBC 13–14; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 3–5; Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 9–10, 23. 63.  As with many of the essays in this volume, this paper was originally presented in the Ancient Historiography Seminar at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, and I am grateful for the feedback given by the seminar participants. In particular, I would like to thank G. N. Knoppers (Penn State) for his written comments on that early draft of this paper.

Reading Chronicles and Reshaping the Memory of Manasseh Ehud Ben Zvi University of Alberta

1. Introduction Manasseh was certainly a memorable king of Judah for those who had read and reread the books of Kings and Chronicles. Both books draw much attention to him, but there can be no doubt that the figure of Manasseh as portrayed in Chronicles was significantly different from the king evoked by the book of Kings (see 2 Kgs 21:1–20; 23:12, 26; 24:3) and reflected in Jer 15:14 as well. 1 Reading Chronicles affected the way in which literati in the 1.  On the contrasting portrayals, see, for instance, P. Abadie, “From the Impious Manasseh (2 Kings 21) to the Convert Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33),” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein (ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 89–104. For a detailed and helpful contrastive analysis of the two texts, see K. A. D. Smelik, “The Portrayal of King Manasseh,” in Converting the Past: Studies in Ancient Israelite and Moabite Historiography (ed. K. A. D. Smelik; OtSt 28; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 129–89. For a study that explains the difference between Kings’ and Chronicles’ portrayals of Manasseh in terms of cultural wars that were waged at the time of the exilic edition of Kings but that were all but won by the time of Chronicles, see B. Halpern, “Why Manasseh Is Blamed for the Babylonian Exile: The Evolution of a Biblical Tradition,” VT 48 (1998) 473–514. Cf. Hermann-Josef Stipp, “Remembering Josiah’s Reforms in Kings,” in Remembering (and Forgetting) in Early Second Temple Judah (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin; FAT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). The tension between the two different portrayals of Manasseh construed by these texts continued to impact the construction of the memory of Manasseh centuries after these texts were composed and first read. See, for instance, “Said R. Yohanan, ‘Both authorities [who dispute the fate of Manasseh] interpret the same verse of Scripture, as it is said, “And I will cause to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah” (Jer. 15:4). . . . “One authority takes the view that it is ‘on account of Manasseh,’ who repented, while they did not repent.” . . . “The other authority takes the view [103A] that it is ‘because of Manasseh,’ who did not repent”’” (b. Sanh. 102b–103a; J. Neusner’s translation). Two important essays that emerged after this essay was written should be mentioned here as well: (1) Gary Knoppers, “Saint or Sinner? Manasseh in Chronicles,” in

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late Persian (or early Hellenistic) period remembered Manasseh. Reading Chronicles and (mentally) visiting and (imaginatively) experiencing, as it were, the Manassic period that it evoked, balanced the social memory of the period that these literati (and those whose views were strongly influenced by them) would have had, if they had read and known only about the books of Kings and Jeremiah. Although Manasseh was portrayed first in Chronicles in a way roughly similar to the portrayal in Kings (see 2 Chr 33:1–10), 2 the book asked its readers to imagine and remember, time and again, that Manasseh repented and carried out a “godly” cultic reform (2 Chr 33:11–17). Moreover, Chronicles reminded the readers that Manasseh’s prayer was worth remembering for generations and, since the book does not provide the text of the prayer, it opened the prayer’s contents to the imagination of the readers. 3 Rewriting Biblical History: Essays on Chronicles and Ben Sira in Honor of Pancratius C. Beentjes (ed. J. Corley and H. van Grol; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011) 211–29. Knoppers addresses matters from a different, though complementary perspective from my perspective here. (2) L. Jonker, “Manasseh in Paradise, or Not? The Influence of Persian Palace Garden Imagery in LXX 2 Chronicles 33:20,” to appear in Thinking of Water (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin, forthcoming) draws particular attention to the burial notices in MT 2 Chr 33:20 and in LXX 2 Chr 33:20 (compare and contrast with MT and LXX 2 Kgs 21:18) and suggests that these notes may have been part of a process of “upgrading” the figure of Manasseh. 2.  Note, for instance, that 2 Chr 33:5 refers to “sons,” plural, whereas 2 Kgs 21:6 (MT, but not LXXB and LXXL) has “son,” singular; and that it carries a slightly longer list of misdeeds although, significantly, like 2 Kgs 21:6 it does not fully or explicitly reproduce the entire list from Deut 18:10–11. Note also the removal of the explicit reference to the rejected prophets in 2 Chr 33:10, so as to make Manasseh reject Yhwh directly (see 2 Chr 33:10 and cf. 2 Kgs 21:10). In general, despite the fact that Manasseh is construed in extremely negative terms in 2 Kgs 21:1–10, the changes in 2 Chr 33:1– 10 seem further to enhance the negative portrayal of the king. One may note also that 2 Chr 33:7 replaces the explicit reference to the Asherah in 2 Kgs 21:7 with a reference to the ‫( סמל‬and cf. Deut 4:16; Ezek 8:3, 5). This change requires separate study. There are also minor additional changes; for example, compare 2 Chr 33:4 (‫ּו ָבנָה‬ ‫ֶה־ּׁש ִמי ְלעֹולָם‬ ְ ‫ִהי‬ ְ ‫ירּוׁשל ִַם י‬ ָ ‫ֲׁשר ָאמַר יהוה ִּב‬ ֶ ‫ְּבחֹות ְּבבֵית יהוה א‬ ְ ‫)מז‬ ִ with 2 Kgs 21:4 (‫ְּבחֹת‬ ְ ‫ּו ָבנָה ִמז‬ ‫ֶת־ׁש ִמי‬ ְ ‫ָׂשים א‬ ִ ‫ירּוׁשל ִַם א‬ ָ ‫ֲׁשר ָאמַר יהוה ִּב‬ ֶ ‫)ּבבֵית יהוה א‬. ְ On the “reprobate” section of the account of Manasseh in Chronicles, see W. Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, vol. 2: 2 Chronicles 10–36: Guilt and Atonement (JSOTSup 254; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 222–26. 3.  Not surprisingly, texts that purported to be the prayer of Manasseh eventually emerged, as clearly evidenced by 4Q381, frg. 33, 8–11. Compare and contrast the position advanced in W. M. Schniedewind, “The Source Citations of Manasseh: King Manasseh in History and Homily,” VT 41 (1991) 450–61. For the (most likely) later (and “canonical” in some groups) “Prayer of Manasseh,” see J. H. Charlesworth, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 2:625–38. On these and related matters, see F. Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities (BZAW 338; Berlin: de

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This essay is not about the historical King Manasseh who lived in the 7th century b.c.e. 4 or about potential sources other than Kings that might or might not have been available to the flesh-and-blood author/s of Chronicles. 5 It is about the Manasseh evoked by Chronicles and the ways this character influenced the construction of the community’s narrative about what “their” late monarchic past was and what they learned from it. It is about why the memory of Manasseh as evoked by Chronicles was shaped as it was.

2.  The Usual Approach and Its Limitations The usual approach to addressing these questions has been to focus on the historical (flesh-and-blood) author/s of Chronicles that we, as contemporary historians of ancient Israel or as historical-critical commentators of Chronicles, construct. 6 Once attention is turned to this author, on the surface, a response to the questions set at the conclusion of the previous section seems easy and quite straightforward: the portrayal of Manasseh’s repentance and transformation from villain to reformist hero was simply the author’s response to the tension that emerged from the length of the reign of Manasseh—55 years, the longest Gruyter, 2004) 130–33 and bibliography cited there. For a recent study of the “Prayer of Manasseh” and its background, see J. Davila, “Is the Prayer of Manasseh a Jewish Work?” in Heavenly Tablets: Interpretation, Identity and Tradition in Ancient Judaism (ed. L. R. LiDonnici and A. Lieber; JSJSup 119; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 75–85. 4.  See, among others, I. Finkelstein, “The Archaeology of the Days of Manasseh,” in Scriptures and Other Artifacts: Essays on Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King (ed. M. D. Coogan et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 169–87; Y. Thareani-Sussely, “The Archaeology of the Days of Manasseh Reconsidered in the Light of Evidence from the Beersheba Valley,” PEQ 139 (2007) 69–77; A. Faust, “Settlement and Demography in Seventh Century Judah and the Extent and Intensity of Sennacherib’s Campaign,” PEQ 140 (2008) 168–94; contrast with O. Lipschits, O. Sergi, and I. Koch, “Judahite Stamped and Incised Jar Handles: A Tool for Studying the History of Late Monarchic Judah,“ TA 38 (2011) 5–41. See also my “Prelude to a Reconstruction of the Historical Manassic Judah,” BN 81 (1996) 31–44; E. A. Knauf, “The Glorious Days of Manasseh,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings (ed. L. L. Grabbe; LHBOTS 393; London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 164–88; F. Stavrakopoulou, “The Blackballing of Manasseh,” in ibid., 248–63; and idem, King Manasseh. Compare and contrast B. Kelly, “Manasseh in the Books of Kings and Chronicles (2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chron 33:1–20),” in Windows into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and the Crisis of “Biblical Israel” (ed. V. Philips Long, D. W. Baker, and G. J. Wenham; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) 131–46 and bibliography cited there. 5.  Among those proposing the existence of sources other than Kings behind the Chronicles’ account of Manasseh, see, for instance, Schniedewind, “Source Citations”; S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 1009. 6.  This author was responsible for Chronicles but not for Ezra–Nehemiah or any section in that book. Given the distribution of social roles according to gender in Yehud, this author was most likely male and thus will be referred to as male in this essay.

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reign in Judahite history, even longer than the reigns of David and Solomon— as stated in Kings and his characterization as extremely impious. Since length of days was considered a blessing within the social mindscape of the community (and as expressed in numerous texts in the discourse of the community; e.g., Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16, 6:2; Ps 91:14–16; Prov 3:1–2, 10:2, 12:28; cf. 2 Kgs 20:1–7; 2 Chr 24:15) and was construed as a blessing by the author, he felt it was necessary to resolve the inconsistency between Manasseh’s long reign and life and the principles governing a divine economy of divine rewards and punishment; thus, he reshaped the portrayal of Manasseh. 7 But matters are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be. The observations mentioned above indeed shed light on some aspects of the emergence and role of the Manasseh of Chronicles in late Persian Yehud but obscure or oversimplify other aspects. To begin with, the generative tension between the 55 years’ regnal period and the overwhelming impiety did not necessitate the construction of a narrative about a pious Manasseh and most certainly not the particular narrative advanced in Chronicles. To be sure, a simple observation of literary and ideological tendencies (and constraints) at work in Chronicles shows that: (1) Chronicles could not have construed the span of Manasseh’s reign any differently from the span stated in the (MT) book of Kings; 8 (2) Manasseh’s piety was implicitly presented as consistent with his lengthy life; and (3) Chronicles shaped other regnal accounts around a narrative plot in which the reign of the king was divided between a period of piety and divine rewards and another of impiety and punishment (see the accounts of Asa, Joash, Amaziah, and Uzziah). But questions emerge. Despite the fact that, on the whole, Chronicles valued length of life as a blessing, 9 the very same Chronicles assigns to its most sinful king a life of about 36 years (see 2 Chr 28:1), not much shorter than the life of one of its most pious kings, Josiah, to whom it assigns about 39 years (2  Chr 34:1). Moreover, if one were to claim that there is a difference in that Josiah enjoyed 7.  This has been the most common approach since, at least, J. Wellhausen. See his Prolegomena to the History of Israel (trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies; Edinburgh: Black, 1885; orig. German pub., 1878) 206–7. See S. L. McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles (AOTC; Nashville: Abingdon, 2004) 353–54. 8. See my History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (London: Equinox, 2006) 78–99 (esp pp. 82–83). This chapter was first published as “Shifting the Gaze: Historiographic Constraints in Chronicles and Their Implications,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. M. Patrick Graham and J. Andrew Dearman; JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 2001) 38–60. 9.  Note that the great hero Jehoiadah the priest, to some extent as kingly a figure as a priest can ever be, lives 130 years, longer even than Moses; see 2 Chr 24:15. The portrayal of Jehoiadah in Chronicles requires a separate study that cannot be carried out here.

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many more regnal years than Ahaz, one still must keep in mind that Abijah, a most pious king in Chronicles, reigned only 3 years (2 Chr 13:2), far less than Ahaz’s 16 years (2 Chr 28:1). In fact, Chronicles had no problems with construing a world in which sinners may, at times, outlive the pious (see 2  Chr 24:20–22); and even more importantly, it asks its readers to imagine a world in which the worst sinner (Ahaz) is not necessarily punished with premature death. The fact that he remains alive when sinners around him die because of their sins (see 2  Chr 28:5–7) makes the point emphatically. These are not minor issues or accidental examples bearing little meaning. They are integral to shaping and communicating that, while longevity and long regnal periods are a blessing, not all pious were blessed this way, and conversely, not all sinners had to die (prematurely). The latter considerations reflect an important aspect of the ideological approach in Chronicles: a world in which sinners must be punished with (premature) death is a world that allows no room for repentance. However, repentance plays a central role in the ideological discourse of postmonarchic Israel (for obvious reasons) and in Chronicles. Ahaz is thus portrayed as being surrounded by examples of divine justice and consistently rejecting the lesson. His lack of repentance strengthens the negative characterization of the personage, which in turn, is a necessary feature for the shaping and communicating of an extreme example of the potential availability of repentance. Manasseh, who is portrayed as the worst king in Kings, could have been construed in Chronicles as consistently doing wrong, never repenting for 55 years, and thus “besting” (as it were) Ahaz. Chronicles could have but, significantly, did not construct him that way. Another consideration is that, although the division of a regnal period into two diametrically different eras is a common ideological and narrative-structuring device in Chronicles, the sequence is always a “good period” followed by a “bad period” (see the accounts of Asa, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, and to some extent Josiah). The account of Manasseh is a glaring, unique exception. 10 10.  On the surface, one might be tempted to consider the account of Rehoboam as another example, particularly given the report of his ascension to the throne. But that section of the account of Rehoboam is about the secession of the North and is substantially different from the accounts of the kings of Judah in the post-Davidic/Solomonic period. For my work on the secession of the North in Chronicles, see my History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 117–43; first published as “The Secession of the Northern Kingdom in Chronicles: Accepted ‘Facts’ and New Meanings,” in The Chronicler as a Theologian, 61–88. On the account of Rehoboam in Chronicles, see G. N. Knoppers, “Rehoboam in Chronicles,” JBL 109 (1990) 423–40. Of course, many scholars have noticed the contrast between the trajectories in the accounts of Asa, Joash, Amaziah, and Uzziah, as well as in Manasseh. For instance, P. Abadie maintains that the difference “gives the narrative of Manasseh a particular tonality” (Abadie “From the Impious Manasseh,” 95). See also Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 1001.

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However, the strong preference for the good-turns-bad plot over its counterpart (i.e., bad-turns-good) is not random. It reflects a central ideological viewpoint and, one may say, a particular social mindscape. I discussed this issue at some length elsewhere, 11 but for the present purposes, it suffices to note that Chronicles could have construed a good period in which Manasseh followed the counsel of his father Hezekiah’s advisors and then a bad period in which he rejected them (see Chronicles’ account of Joash). Moreover, had Chronicles shaped its account of Manasseh’s reign in such a way, not only would it have “explained” his lengthy reign, by assigning many of its years to the good period, but it also would have created a Manasseh whose image would have been much more easy to reconcile with that advanced in Kings than the image Chronicles actually developed. Given that the readership of Chronicles was well aware of Kings, social memory would have tended to prefer an image of Manasseh that could more easily been reconciled with the image in Kings than an image that can hardly be reconciled. But Chronicles did not follow this path; instead, it created an exceptional sequence that as such cannot but draw attention to itself, to the figure of Manasseh as evoked by Chronicles, and to the messages that this figure/site of memory communicated to the remembering community. A third consideration: it is easy to recognize that the Manasseh of Chronicles is the paradigmatic Judahite king who repents and that he prefigures Israel, considering that he is exiled to Babylon because of his sins and returns to Judah. 12 But one may wonder, why Manasseh? Why does Chronicles join Manasseh to David in such a way that the two become the two paragons of repentance? 13 To be sure, the communicative point may be that they represent two extremes of kingly behavior, the best and worst king—that is, a kind of polar construction. As one would anticipate, the most ideal human king is imagined as a great “repentant” as well. 14 But, probably more important from a communicative and ideological perspective is the image of the most sinful 11. E. Ben Zvi, “A House of Treasures: The Account of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25: Observations and Implications,” SJOT 22 (2008) 63–85, esp. pp. 69–75. 12.  On discussions of Manasseh as a “type” or prefiguration of Israel in Chronicles, see, among many others, R. Mosis, Untersuchungen zur Theologie des chronistischen Geschichtswerkes (Freiburger theologische Studien 92; Freiburg: Herder, 1973) 192– 94; Schniedewind, “Source Citations,” 451–55; H. G. M. Williamson, 1–2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 389–90; S. J. De Vries, 1 and 2 Chronicles (FOTL 11; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989) 399–400; Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh, 55–56; Abadie, “From the Impious Manasseh”; etc. 13.  On David, see G. N. Knoppers, “Images of David in Early Judaism: David as Repentant Sinner in Chronicles,” Bib 76 (1995) 449–70. For a different position, see J. W. Wright, “The Innocence of David in I Chronicles 21,” JSOT 60 (1993) 87–105. 14.  Assuming, of course, that all humans, even highly lionized individuals such as David, will occasionally fail and sin. This position is attested in and communicated by

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king as repentant, for it carries more persuasive appeal as a site of memory encouraging repentance within the community and as a potential site with which Israel can identify. 15 This said, Ahaz, not Manasseh, is the worst king in Chronicles. If the point is (1) that the worst Davidic king is comparable with Israel and (2) to convey a sense that both can repent (and that monarchic Israel did not, and thus it fell), then, again, why not use Ahaz, the most sinful king in Chronicles, for that purpose?  16 Moreover, given that the Ahaz evoked by Kings and particularly Isaiah is not such a bad king, it would have been “easier” to construe him as repenting and withstanding the enemies who were attacking him and Jerusalem than to “clean up” Manasseh. 17 Just to be clear, the point of these observations is not to advance or reject any hypothesis regarding causality as it applies to the actual author of Chronicles (remember David) and is common in the entire discourse of Yehudite Israel, which construed even Moses as occasionally sinning (see also 1 Kgs 8:46; Qoh 7:20). 15.  Although at some level, Israel was identified with David, the “Israelites” probably did not imagine themselves as pious as Chronicles’ David but also not as sinful as the Manasseh of memory and, if he could have repented, then so could they. See the text from b. Sanh. 102b–103a cited in n. 1. 16.  On the surface, one may claim that Ahaz ended up being the worst king only by default, because Chronicles made Manasseh repent. Even if this were the case, the message would have remained, but this is very unlikely to have beem the case. The main argument against such a position is that Ahaz’s image was very actively shaped as that of the worst king in Chronicles (compare with his image in Kings and see, for instance, 2 Chr 28:24; note the action of closing the temple that is attributed to him in Chronicles; even the Manasseh of Kings was not imagined as planning or carrying out such an extreme deed). Moreover, the maximization of the negative characterization of Ahaz in Chronicles goes together with the lionization of Hezekiah, which is certainly not an accidental result of the “cleansing” of Manasseh but a very important point in Chronicles. It is not by accident that the most important contrastive pair of kings (the worst and the best) in Chronicles is Ahaz and Hezekiah, whereas in Kings, it is Manasseh and Josiah. This has much to do with the general mnemonic and ideological differences between Chronicles and Kings (see below). Finally, one might also add that Chronicles could have used an available common narrative pattern meant both to portray and to remember within a community a particular king in a saliently negative way and still allow for his repentance at a late stage (see, for instance, Naram Sin’s legend; Daniel 4 [esp. v. 34]; and 2 Macc 9:12, 17). There was no need to lionize Manasseh or characterize Ahaz extremely just to construe the former as repentant. The story, however, had to portray Manasseh and Ahaz in the way it actually did if Chronicles were to evoke certain important mnemonic narratives about the past (see below). There were no accidents here, nor did the community construe the implied author of Chronicles as communicating any accidents. 17.  To be sure, there is the issue of the deportation to Babylon, but if this is, as most likely, a story contrived to make a particular point, it could have been used for other kings as well.

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Chronicles. The discussion above is not meant to propose or reject any particular answer to the question why the actual author of Chronicles wrote the account of Manasseh the way he did instead of some other potential way that would have been as consistent or more consistent with the general message and historiographical tendencies of Chronicles. Instead, the point of the present discussion is that the shape and contents of the report about King Manasseh in Chronicles do not represent a necessary, inevitable outcome. The actual author had a significant amount of freedom to reshape the narrative from Kings in different ways. Although we may explain the “final outcome,” we certainly could not have predicted it. In other words, the best we can do is to develop good descriptive, post-event explanations rather than pre-event, causality-centered frameworks. 18 18.  The preceding discussion has focused on historiographical/ideological tendencies and constraints that characterize Chronicles. It must be admitted, however, that on the surface another type of consideration must be addressed: one might claim that the simplest position is that the author of Chronicles portrayed Manasseh the way he did, simply because such was the historical Manasseh. But first, the resulting reconstruction of the historical Manasseh is highly problematic (see references in n. 4). Second, even if for the sake of the argument one were to accept the idea that some aspects of the portrayal of Manasseh in Chronicles reflected the circumstances of the historical Manassic period, accepting this approach requires us to ignore the complex processes involved in history writing in general and the very evidence of Chronicles itself about the way in which it dealt with its sources. Moreover, ancient (as well as contemporary writers, one may argue) history writers, including the author of Chronicles, do not include stories in their historiographical narratives simply because they (believe that they) happened. They recount or fail to recount matters, and they shape their accounts the way they do for a large variety of historiographical reasons. Close to the case at hand—can we imagine that the author of Chronicles failed to include a single reference to Josiah’s building activities just because he believed that Josiah did not build anything in his 31-year reign? Or that Asa and Jehoshaphat, both of them, did and did not remove the bamot? Or that Asa indeed had two different mothers? Or that this author included prophetic speeches such as Abijah’s because they simply happened? Or that this author shaped an image of Elijah in the particular way that he did in Chronicles (which stands in sharp contrast to Kings) just because Elijah was actually like that? (For a discussion of these and related matters, see my History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 44–77). Likewise, claims that Chronicles described Manasseh the way it did because this was the description of Manasseh that existed in the author’s sources not only face what we know all too well about the way Chronicles dealt with its sources but also simply shift the question to another “author” rather than “answering” the claim. Finally, as I show in §3, the very focus on the historical author and on matters of direct correspondence between the narrative reported in Chronicles and contemporary potential narratives about the history of the Manassic period is not the most helpful way to approach the question of how a late-Persian-period community construed memories of Manasseh by reading Chronicles. This is the reason that this essay does not focus on the historical Manasseh but on the remembered Manasseh, and even more narrowly,

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(Of course, these observations apply to authors of historiographical works other than Chronicles as well. See the book of Kings, for example; the book itself presents multiple approaches balancing each other and thus allowing multiple potential stories to be consistent with the book. At best, we would be able to “explain” how any text that the author/s eventually actually wrote/ composed fit other aspects of the book rather than addressing the question of why he/they decided to write this but not any other potential texts.) Moreover, the issue is not only that entering into the mind of the long-dead author to discern predictive, deterministic causality (as implied in some of the usual historical explanations about the construction of the figure of Manasseh in Chronicles) is in itself an impossible task but also—and far more important, even if this task were possible—that it would not shed much light on the memories evoked by the book. It is the implied author as construed by the intended readership of the book, not the flesh-and-blood, “actual” author that has an impact on the construction of social memories shaped by reading texts, for it is with this author that the readership communicates. It is to this implied and socially construed author that they listen and whose characters they bring into existence through imagination and memory. 19 As we turn to this implied author, an indirect but clear offshoot of the preceding discussion and its examples is that the literati reading and rereading the book in late-Persian Yehud had no substantive reason to imagine the author of the book—the voice talking to them, as it were—as constrained either to invent or to report the story of Manasseh’s exile to Babylon and his repentance, so as to make sense of his long life. In fact, had their “historian” (i.e., their implied author of Chronicles) been construed in such a manner, he would not have been on the remembered Manasseh evoked by reading Chronicles within a late-Persian/early-Hellenistic, Jerusalem-centered community—that is, in late Yehud. For general surveys or discussions on the historicity of the account of Manasseh in Chronicles, see, in addition to the works mentioned in n. 4, from different perspectives and among many other scholars: R. H. Lowery, The Reforming Kings: Cults and Society in First Temple Judah (JSOTSup 120; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 185–89; M. A. Sweeney, “King Manasseh of Judah and the Problem of Theodicy in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings (ed. L. L. Grabbe; LHBOTS 393; London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 264–78 (esp. pp. 268–72). Concerning the putative building activities of Manasseh, see also P. Welten, Geschichte und Geschichtsdarstellung in den Chronikbüchern (WMANT 42; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973) esp. pp. 31–34, 72–78. 19.  It should be stressed that ancient readerships did not read texts that they considered authoritative (or as carrying reliable, godly knowledge about Yhwh and Israel) against the grain. In other words, readers of authoritative books imagined themselves as following the communicative wishes of the authors as they thought them to be. See Y. Amit, “‘The Glory of Israel Does Not Deceive or Change His Mind’: On the Reliability of Narrator and Speakers in Biblical Narrative,” Proof 12 (1992) 201–12.

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too credible in the community, and the book attributed to him would have been unlikely to survive. The implied author/historian was not imagined as forced to tell anything; rather, he simply narrated what is worth remembering of the things that “happened.” Concerning these matters, the intended (re)readership of Chronicles construed itself in ways similar to those of their implied author. The intended readership was not required to imagine that Manasseh had to repent to avoid premature death, even if their mindscape would have been dominated only by the ideology and narratives of Chronicles. Taking into account that they were also influenced by the book of Kings, which was part of their repertoire of authoritative books as well, and which actually evoked a memory of Manasseh as evil and long-lived, the case is even more evident. 20 In other words, the literati who read and reread Chronicles were to evoke and remember Manasseh the way in which he is construed in Chronicles, because a Manasseh of this sort was worth remembering. But why did it make sense to remember this Manasseh, alongside the other Manasseh—the Manasseh in Kings and Jeremiah—in this community?

3.  The Memorable Manasseh Evoked by the Target Readership of Chronicles Before addressing this question, I must stress that, from the perspective of the reading community, the implied author wanted them to imagine and remember well the Manasseh of Chronicles. Time and again and in multiple ways, the text draws particular attention to Manasseh. The target readership is repeatedly reminded that their Manasseh is an exceptional character, to whom they should pay much attention. In other words, theirs is a very memorable Manasseh. At first glance, one might be tempted to dismiss some of the salient and unique ways that Manasseh is evoked as simple accidents, but the cumulative weight of all these observations is undeniable. Moreover, each of them in its own way serves to portray or draw attention to some significant aspect of the memory of Manasseh evoked by Chronicles. The exceptional, bad-turns-good plot that shapes the account of Manasseh has been mentioned above. Whereas most kings either remain as bad as they are or turn from good to bad due to hubris or other reasons, the exceptional nature of the shift toward good in Manasseh makes him a salient exemplar for repentance. Moreover, the fact that he is described as a terrible sinner before 20.  Note again that the link between length of days and proper behaviour on earth is not an invention of Chronicles, but a basic feature of an existing social mindscape that came to be explicitly expressed in texts that predated Chronicles and remained within the authoritative repertoire of the community. See, for instance, Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16, 33; 17:20; 22:7; 25:16 and cf. Prov 10:2; 11:4.

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his repentance communicates the message that Yhwh does not necessarily “execute” those worthy of being executed and that even some of the worst sinners may repent and their repentance be accepted by Yhwh. I will return to these points, but at this stage it is important to note the presence of many other markers of uniqueness and salience in Chronicles’ Manasseh. 2 Chr 33:10 reads ‫ַּׁשה ְואֶל־עַּמֹו‬ ֶ ‫ֶל־מנ‬ ְ ‫ ַויְדַ ּבֵר יהוה א‬. Given that the syntax here is very common and so are the key words, it is particularly worth noting that the exact phrase X-‫ ַויְדַ ּבֵר יהוה אֶל‬is rare in the HB used with any “X” other than Moses. 21 Moreover, in most of the exceptions, the slot of X is assigned to someone directly associated with Moses. 22 The other two exceptions are (1) in 1 Chr 21:9, where X is Gad, David’s seer but, interestingly, not David himself; and (2) in 2 Chr 33:10. Furthermore, the occurrence in 1 Chr 21:9 is in the context of the story about David’s census, the plague, David’s repentance, and the place of the temple. At the very least, therefore, the use of this precise phrase in 2 Chr 33:10 prepares the reader for the fact that the next account will narrate “something of importance.”  23 The readers of Chronicles were also asked to remember a past in which various kings received Godly advice through a special prophet or two at particular (potential) turning points. Chronicles evokes an image of a Manassic period in which multiple prophets continuously advised him (see the reference to ‫ִׂש ָראֵל‬ ְ ‫ הַחֹזִים ה ְַמדַ ְּבִרים ֵאלָיו ְּבׁשֵם יהוה אֱלֹהֵי י‬in 2 Chr 33:18). Moreover, Chronicles informs its readers that the words of these prophets were worthy of being recorded for posterity and referred to (see ‘Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, . . . and the words of the seers who spoke to him . . . these are in the Annals of the Kings of Israel’, ‫ֶתר ִּד ְברֵי‬ ֶ ‫ ְוי‬. . . ‫ִׂש ָראֵל‬ ְ ‫ַל־ּד ְברֵי מ ְַלכֵי י‬ ִ ‫ִהּנָם ע‬ ‫ ְו ִד ְברֵי הַחֹזִים‬. . . ‫ַּׁשה‬ ֶ ‫[ ְמנ‬2 Chr 33:18]). The contrast with the absolute absence of Manassic-period prophets in the worlds construed by the collection of prophetic books and the Deuteronomistic Historical Collection, with which the readership of Chronicles was acquainted as well, only emphasizes and draws attention to references about these prophets in Chronicles and about Manasseh himself. Personages from the past are most often remembered as characters within particularly memorable plots and in relation to other figures populating the memory-scape of the community. 24 The Manasseh whose image was evoked by reading Chronicles was constructed parallel with and in contrast to a 21.  With “X” being Moses, it is very common in the Pentateuch. 22.  See Aaron in Lev 10:8; Num 18:8 (and Moses and Aaron in Lev 13:1; 15:1; Num 16:20; 19:1) and Joshua in Josh 20:1, within a text where Joshua clearly stands in continuation with Moses. 23.  Moreover, the text here may have hinted at a potential connection to David, the other main exemplar of repentance. 24.  This is so because social memory tends to be organized in terms of narratives.

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combination of images evoked about two kings of the late period—namely, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. Like the first king, Manasseh is taken captive to Babylon (compare the precise language in 2 Chr 33:11b with that of 2 Chr 36:6, which stresses the point and weaves a network of meanings for the intended readers of the book), but in contrast to Zedekiah, he humbled himself (compare 2 Chr 33:12b with 2 Chr 36:12b). Significantly, the general tendency was to construe major characters as encompassing, in a contrasting or noncontrasting way, several minor characters rather than vice versa. Manasseh is presented through these allusions to kings such as Jehoiakim and Zedekiah as a major character, more memorable and more important than either one of the latter. Note also that, whereas Yhwh is portrayed as sending messengers calling for repentance during Zedekiah’s reign (2 Chr 36:15), Yhwh addresses Manasseh (and his people) “himself” and calls them to repent (2 Chr 33:10). This matter is not trivial or just a product of random chance and is consistent with the (contrastive) minor differences in the language of 2 Chr 33:12b and 2 Chr 36:12b and the other “peculiarities” of Manasseh’s account in Chronicles. Even as the memory of Jehoiakim and (especially) Zedekiah is strongly connected to the catastrophe of 586 b.c.e. in Chronicles (in contrast to Kings, where Manasseh’s memory is connected as much or even more), it is Manasseh and his repentance that consume more textual space and mind-share in Chron­ icles. 25 The target readership is asked to remember that Manasseh’s prayer was worthy of being recorded in both the chronicles of the kings of Israel and the prophetic records (2 Chr 33:18, 19). 26 I will return to the issue of Manasseh’s prayer and repentance, but at this point it is worth stressing that his is the only prayer, and the only text for that matter, that was putatively composed by a post-David/Solomon king of Judah and that was meant to be recorded for posterity. Also in this regard, the Manasseh evoked by Chronicles is exceptional and uniquely draws attention to himself. 27 25.  This is consistent with the tendency in Chronicles to balance the overwhelming centrality of exile and the catastrophe in other works in the repertoire of the community. I have discussed this matter elsewhere: see my “Toward a Sense of Balance: Remembering the Catastrophe of Monarchic Judah / (Ideological) Israel and Exile through Reading Chronicles in Late Yehud,” in this volume. I discussed the importance of the concept of social mind-share for studies of social memory in ancient Israel in my “Remembering the Prophets through the Reading and Rereading of a Collection of Written Prophetic Books in Yehud: Methodological Considerations and Explorations,” in Remembering (and Forgetting) in Early Second Temple Judah (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin; FAT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). 26.  This understanding of the text holds true regardless of the precise reading one adopts concerning ‫ ִּד ְברֵ י חֹוזָי‬in 2 Chr 33:19; on this matter, see Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 1012. 27.  Manasseh’s repentance and prayer were considered memorable and continued to affect and influence Jewish and Christian readers from early periods to recent times.

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Of course, given the basic facts about the past agreed upon in the community and the large mind-share of the figure of Josiah (as construed in Kings), Manasseh could not have been remembered as the last reformer king, but only as another reforming king. However, the Manasseh of Chronicles was to be remembered as the last Judahite building king in a book in which building activities was considered important and very much worth remembering. 28 In a manner reminiscent of the actions of his father, he built the walls of the city and strengthened the fortified cities (compare 2 Chr 33:14 with 32:5 and 32:1), yet clearly the actions of Manasseh are portrayed as being carried out in a period of peace and blessing and as a mark of blessing, rather than being hasty actions meant to stop an invading army by worldly means. There are additional textual markers that suggest that remembering the Ma­ nasseh of Chronicles involved evoking the memory of Hezekiah. For instance, the language ‫תֹודה‬ ָ ‫ָמים ְו‬ ִ ‫ׁשל‬ ְ ‫ִבחֵי‬ ְ ‫ ז‬in 2 Chr 33:16 is unique but reminiscent of the also-unique ‫ּומ ְתו ִַּדים‬ ִ ‫ָמים‬ ִ ‫ׁשל‬ ְ ‫ִבחֵי‬ ְ ‫ ְמז ְַּב ִחים ז‬in 2 Chr 30:22. Conceptually, the A few examples from different times suffice. As I mentioned in n.  2, texts in Qumran purported to contain the prayer of Manasseh. A Hebrew version of the traditional “Prayer of Manasseh” was found in the Cairo Geniza. Voices in Rabbinic Judaism that attributed the fall of Jerusalem to the fact that, even Manasseh could repent but Judah did not, were mentioned above. Jerome wrote: O happy penitence which has drawn down upon itself the eyes of God, and which has by confessing its error changed the sentence of God’s anger! The same conduct is in the Chronicles attributed to Manasseh, and in the book of the prophet Jonah to Nineveh, and in the gospel to the publican. . . . The first of these not only was allowed to obtain forgiveness but also recovered his kingdom, the second broke the force of God’s impending wrath. (Jerome, Epist. 77)

David, the Ninevites, Hezekiah, and Manasseh are considered the eminent exemplars of repentance in Apostolic Constitutions, II, section 3, §22. For much later times, see, for instance, the inclusion of Manasseh among six great kings of Judah in the statues at the royal chapel in El Escorial (the other kings are David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah; see J. C. Endres, “The Spiritual Vision of Chronicles: Wholehearted, Joy-Filled Worship of God,” CBQ 69 [2007] 1–21 [esp. pp. 6–12]). Turning to the twenty-first century: S. Tuell wrote, Manasseh serves as a compelling illustration of the extraordinary grace of God, offered freely to penitents whatever their offenses—and a firm rebuttal to those who would see a firm divide between ‘Old Testament’ law and ‘New Testament’ grace. In fact, the grace of God is the living heart of the whole Scripture. The forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ ministry . . . builds on the foundation laid in the Hebrew Bible . . . the life of Paul, persecutor of the church turned apostle, forms an intriguing parallel to the Chronicler’s life of Manasseh.” (S. S. Tuell, First and Second Chronicles [Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 2001] 233).

28.  In Chronicles, Manasseh, not Josiah is the last building king. I wrote elsewhere on building activities in Chronicles: History, Literature and Theology, 100–116; originally published as “The Chronicler as a Historian: Building Texts,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997) 132–49.

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sentence ‫ִׂש ָראֵל‬ ְ ‫יהּודה ַלעֲבֹוד אֶת־יהוה אֱלֹהֵי י‬ ָ ‫( וַּיֹאמֶר ִל‬2 Chr 33:16) may be seen as an expansion on 2 Chr 30:22 and similar texts. 29 In addition, the idiom, ‫ִׂש ָראֵל‬ ְ ‫( ַלעֲבֹוד אֶת־יהוה אֱלֹהֵי י‬2 Chr 33:16) links the figure of Manasseh to that of Josiah, the other great reforming king; and see ‫( ַלעֲבֹוד אֶת־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם‬2 Chr 34:33). 30 In addition, Manasseh was imagined in some ways as being similar to the reforming kings within the memory-scape of the community that preceded Hezekiah and Josiah (cf. 2 Chr 33:17 with 1 Kgs 22:44; 2 Kgs 12:4; 14:4; 15:4). The above considerations make the point that much attention was drawn in Chronicles to its Manasseh. But since he was made so memorable, the question is: why? What basic meanings and associations were embodied in the Manasseh of Chronicles as a site of memory for late-Persian/early-Hellenistic literati (the people who read and reread the book and for whom it was [directly] intended) that made him so central? The Manasseh of Chronicles was construed as partially embodying Israel. To be sure, he was a sinner who, for his sins, was removed to Babylon and then restored to Judah and Jerusalem, just as Israel was (as construed by the literati in Yehud). 31 Unlike postmonarchic Israel, however, he returned to Judah and Jerusalem to rule the land as well as to live in it (compare and contrast with 2  Chr 36:23). The story of Manasseh inspired not only repentance but also hope for a future. As the construed metaphor of Israel in the Persian period, Manasseh was not punished as harshly as he could have been. 32 Remembering Chronicles’ 29.  See also the opening language in 2 Chr 32:26 and 33:12. 30.  It is worth noting that the precise expression ‫ ַלעֲבֹוד אֶת־יְהוָה‬appears only in 2 Chr 33:16 and 34:33. 31.  An association between sinful Israel/Judah and sinful Manasseh is conveyed, indirectly, in Kings as well. See Smelik, “The Portrayal of King Manasseh,” 149–51. 32.  Japhet correctly notes that, “in view of the extraordinary and unprecedented transgressions, this arresting of Manasseh presents a relatively mild reaction of the Lord, disproportionate to the immensity of sin” (1 and 2 Chronicles, 1009). But the same can be said of Manasseh’s companions as paragons of repentance in Judah. David in the discourse of the literati was also influenced by Samuel, was construed as ‫בן מות‬, and was severely punished, but he was kept alive and eventually bore Solomon and engendered the temple. Postmonarchic Israel identified with both. Chronicles maintains the characterization of David as a paragon of repentance who existed within the discourse of the community, but it shifts the main event from the sin associated with Bathsheba and Uriah to the sin of the census: the story of Bathsheba is not mentioned in Chronicles and thus is indirectly considered not worthy of retelling and remembering. More importantly, the books tries to diminish the weight of the story within the mindshare of the community, while at the same time keeping David as a central site for repentance. Japhet concludes that Chronicles reports a relatively mild response of Yhwh, because it follows extrabiblical sources that report Manasseh’s removal to Babylon at the hands of the Assyrians.

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Manasseh was indirectly hammering the common but important point in the discourse of postmonarchic Israel that Yhwh had been just and merciful with Israel, even when Yhwh exiled it; after all, Yhwh allowed a remnant to survive, who in turn could be “restored.” Remembering Manasseh and seeing him as Israel was also remembering that the turning point that caused Manasseh’s/ Israel’s change of heart was divine punishment in the form of exile. Needless to say, this construction reflected, supported, and communicated the role given to the exile in the discourse of Persian Yehud and the idea that post-repentance Israel/Manasseh is post-Babylonian Israel. 33 Significantly, following his deliverance by Yhwh’s mighty hand, Manasseh as construed and evoked by reading Chronicles, acknowledges that Yhwh is God, just as Israel does following its deliverance from Egypt—even if the Sinai-nomad Israelites were not brought to Jerusalem. One may note even the use of the phrase ‫ ִּכי יהוה הּוא ָהאֱל ִֹהים‬in 2 Chr 33:13, taken word for word from Deut 4:35 and binding these two memories together. Thus, on some symbolic level, Manasseh is Israel and thus, when Yhwh talks to Manasseh, Yhwh is talking to Israel as well—a point implied in the logic of the text but also made explicit (2 Chr 33:10). Moreover, as Moses in Deuteronomy 4, Manasseh commands the people to serve Yhwh (2 Chr 33:16). To remember the Manasseh of Chronicles is to remember that he was an example of the repentant Israel of 2 Chr 7:14 and of Yhwh’s promise to forgive and heal. Significantly, some key wording and concepts in this text reverberate in 2 Chr 33:12–13. Notice the crucial role of Niphal verbal forms of ‫ כנע‬in both texts to communicate the turning point 34—the importance of prayer and of turning from (what are considered to be) wicked ways—which is detailed and exemplified in the case of Manasseh (2 Chr 33:15–16). Of course, the memory of Manasseh, like almost anything else in Chronicles, had to be set in proportion. Given his “history,” Manasseh at the very end could not be imagined as great as Hezekiah or as Josiah, even in Chronicles (compare 2  Chr 33:15–17 with 2  Chr 34:33; and above all the reports about the kings’ respective reforming activities and their level of success). 35 After all, Manasseh cannot overcome socially agreed-upon, core memories 33. See my “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts (ed. E. Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010) 155–68. 34.  See 2 Chr 12:22 (Rehoboam’s repentance that allowed for the continuation of the Kingdom of Judah and David) and 2 Chr 32:26 (Hezekiah’s repentance that postponed the fall of Monarchic Judah). 35.  The “problem” that Manasseh’s reform would not have left much for Josiah to purge/reform was not a problem for the target readership of Chronicles. Similar “logical” inconsistencies appear elsewhere in Chronicles (e.g., Asa’s reform) and, in any case, emerge out of modes of reading Chronicles other than those the intended readers were asked to follow as they read the book, or at least many sections of it. I have

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that exist in the community. 36 Moreover, not only his good deeds are worth remembering but also his evil ones (note the balance explicitly communicated in 2 Chr 33:19). But again, even this contrast makes the Manasseh of Chronicles a unique site of memory. Studies on social memory show that, the more a character comes to embody, integrate, and communicate multiple matters that were at the core or close to the core of the discourse of the community, the more memorable the character turns out to be; and vice versa, memorable characters serve as magnets for issues and images that are central to the community. Moreover, although each character is construed and remembered as unique and his/her singularity is necessary to be a memorable figure, able to communicate all the matters integrated in and evoked as sites of memory (e.g., ideas, images, conceptualizations, basic narratives), many of these matters cannot be unique to him/ her but must reflect the general mindscape of the period. Consequently, these memorable characters tend to be encoded elsewhere, in other sites of memory. In fact, had this not been the case, the character would not have been worthy of being remembered. 37 The Manasseh of Chronicles was a unique site of memory that embodied both grave sin and great repentance. Thus, he served not only as a site of memory, standing symbolically for Israel, but also as a site of memory for Yehudite Israel. From the latter’s perspective, Manasseh, to a large extent, encapsulated a central aspect of its main narrative about itself as reflected in the historical and prophetic books, and more importantly, for its present purposes. discussed these matters elsewhere; see my History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles, 44–77. 36.  It is particularly noteworthy that the motif of the people’s continuing to sacrifice and make offerings in the bāmôt that is so common in Kings appears only here in Chronicles, in a place that could not have had any direct parallel in Kings but had a rhetorical function quite similar to what is in Kings. In Chronicles, the note explicitly sets Manasseh’s reform in proportion, especially in terms of the reforms of his father, Hezekiah, and his most memorable successor, Josiah. 37.  I recently discussed these trends in relation to the figures of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea in the late-Persian/early-Hellenist period. See my chapters “The Memory of Abraham in Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Period Yehud” and “Exploring the Memory of Moses ‘the Prophet’ in Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Period Yehud/ Judah” and “Why Was Isaiah So Memorable in the Persian/Early Hellenistic Period? Some Observations,” in Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination (ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming). The chapter “The Memory of Abraham in Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Period Yehud” also appears in The Reception and Remembrance of Abraham (ed. P. Carstens and N. P. Lemche; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011). On Hosea, see my “Remembering Hosea: The Prophet Hosea as a Site of Memory in Persian Period Yehud” (paper presented at the International Meeting of the SBL, London, July 2011).

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To imagine the Manasseh of old was also to recall that both the good and bad deeds must be remembered by the community and that the good do not cancel the memory of the bad, even if explicitly imagined as “undoing” the bad. In this way, the Manasseh of Chronicles encapsulated again the general discourse of the period and the basic notions expressed in the authoritative repertoire of the community. Remembering Manasseh was not only a way to remember the place of Jerusalem in Israel, especially the fact that its temple and the return from the second exile were to Jerusalem, not to the land in general (see Isa 52:11–12; 2 Chr 36:23; and contrast these with the original return—that is, the exodus). But also, in his own way, Manasseh served as a site of memory, embodying and broadcasting a core aspect of the community’s ideology that was expressed elsewhere. To remember the Manasseh of Chronicles was, of course, to remember Yhwh and the deity’s interaction with Israel. Significantly, the Manasseh of Chronicles brings attention to Yhwh’s willingness to give enough time to Israel to repent but also calls attention to the fact that Israel should repent and acknowledge Yhwh. Considering that, for the most part, the narratives about deliverance from Egypt and Babylon do not emphasize Israel’s need for repentance prior to deliverance, and elsewhere Chronicles suggests that exile is by divine decision (temporally restricted and, in any case, of limited—though not inconsequential—significance), 38 remembering Manasseh serves to balance matters. This more balanced, multivocal approach to the issue is far more consistent with and representative of the larger spectrum of voices encoded in the prophetic corpus on this very matter. The preceding observations show that Manasseh was reshaped in Chronicles to reflect a set of positions expressed in the general authoritative repertoire of the community and reflective of its general social mindscape. Manasseh’s reshaping in Chronicles also played important roles in the reshaping of the structure of the remembered narrative about Israel’s late monarchic period. Kings encoded and communicated a narrative in which the two main characters were Hezekiah and Josiah, in that order. Each was preceded by a villain who served as the expected foil and, since Josiah was the most positive king in this plot, the one preceding him needed to be the most negative king. Thus the narrative in Kings was structured to a large extent around the pairs Ahaz-Hezekiah and Manasseh-Josiah. The heightened image of Josiah required and the lack of a slot for a “great villain” following him contributed much to the characterization of Manasseh as a king whose actions decided the fate of Judah—to the point that even Josiah’s deeds could not change it. 38.  On exile in Chronicles, see my “Toward a Sense of Balance: Remembering the Catastrophe of Monarchic Judah/(Ideological) Israel and Exile through Reading Chronicles in Late Yehud,” in the present volume.

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The narrative in Kings played an important role in the formation of memories about the period in the community, but Chronicles rebalanced this period in the social memory of the community by creating a different, and to a large extent, complementary main plot. Here the main hero was Hezekiah, and the main villain then had to be Ahaz. To characterize late Manasseh as Israel, not as villain but a hero, erases the possibility of strongly structuring the narrative around the pairs Ahaz-Hezekiah and Manasseh-Josiah. 39 To have Manasseh as a complex and, to a large extent, very positive figure is conducive to a reshaping of the narrative in order to have one heightened point: Hezekiah’s time (note the space allocated to his reign in Chronicles, which is much more than that allocated to any king since the foundational Davidic/Solomonic period). This narrative, in fact, is a case of resignifying another main narrative that existed in the discourse of the community—the one in which Hezekiah and the Assyrian crisis served as the prefiguration and counterpoint of the catastrophe of 586 b.c.e., which is reflected in, among others, the book of Isaiah and much of the prophetic literature. Chronicles resignifies the narrative so as to draw more attention to Hezekiah as a reformer and pious king rather than as the king who was delivered by Yhwh from the hands of the Assyrians. Although this is not the place to analyze the Hezekiah of Chronicles (and its aftermath in the quasi-messianic Hezekiah of Rabbinic Judaism), 40 it is worth stressing 39.  On the Hezekiah of Chronicles, see, for instance, M. A. Throntveit, “The Relationship of Hezekiah to David and Solomon in the Books of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph W. Klein (ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 105–21 (and previous literature cited there); L. Jonker, “The Chronicler’s Reinterpretation of Hezekiah’s Reformation Efforts,” in From Ebla to Stellenbosch (ed. I. Cornelius and L. C. Jonker; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008) 116–40; A. K. Warhurst, “The Chronicler’s Use of the Prophets,” in What Was Authoritative for Chronicles? (ed. E. Ben Zvi and D. V. Edelman; Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 2012) 165–82. I elaborated elsewhere on Josiah in Chronicles; see my “Observations on Josiah’s Account in Chronicles and Implications for Reconstructing the Worldview of the Chronicler,” in Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Naʾaman (ed. Y. Amit et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 89–106 and the references cited there. 40.  Compare with the (partial) “Hezekianic” characterization of Jesus in Matthew (see T. L. Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David [New York: Basic Books, 2005] 84). As for rabbinic sources, see b. Sanh. 94a, 98b, 99a; also M. Hadas-Lebel, “Hezekiah as King Messiah: Traces of an Early Jewish-Christian Polemic in the Tannaitic Tradition,” in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, vol.  1: Biblical, Rabbinical, and Medieval Studies (ed. J. Targarona Borrás and A. Sáenz-Badillos; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 275–81 and bibliography there. On the relationship between the accounts of Ahaz and Hezekiah in Chronicles and the lionization of the latter, see P. R. Ackroyd, “The Biblical Interpretation of the Reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah,” in In the Shelter of Elyon: Essays on Ancient Palestinian Life and Literature in Honor of G. W. Ahlström (ed. W. Boyd Barrick and J. R. Spencer; JSOTSup 31; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984) 247–59.

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that the reshaping of the memory of Manasseh in Chronicles is part of a larger project of replotting and restructuring the late monarchic past and constructing a particular memory of Hezekiah. This project aims at creating a memory landscape that is different from the one evoked by reading Kings or most of the prophetic books—which also construct a late monarchic past, but not Isaiah, which moves straight from Hezekiah (see Isaiah 39) to Cyrus and the return (Isaiah 40–55). 41 This project constructs a late monarchic past that rebalances and informs the other two, just as it is rebalanced and informed by them. The fact that, through this project, the main villain—who was at times construed and remembered as responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem 42—is now identified with Israel, is seen as quite a hero, becomes a shared embodiment of the extremely sinful and very pious; and a call to remember both turns out to be a cipher for a return to Jerusalem and the temple and is, above all, a cipher for (the potential of) repentance. This is clearly not to be underestimated. 43 Of course, through this very process, Manasseh becomes a paradigmatic case of a multivalent (and yet integrated and integrating) 44 site of memory within the social memory of an Israel who reads and rereads Kings, the prophetic literature, and Chronicles. In fact, one may say that Manasseh becomes a main site of memory embodying and communicating the potential multivalence of other sites of memory in the memory landscape of the community. 45 The presence of 41.  For a discussion of the ways that social memory structures plot and its significance, see my “Isaiah, a Memorable Prophet.” 42.  See the voice in Kings that comes to the forefront in 2 Kgs 23:26, 24:3; and see Jer 15:14. 43.  And certainly not explained away in terms of “necessities” that befell a relatively single-minded author, or a matter that is peripheral to “historical” issues, such as: “Did Manasseh rebel or think to rebel against Assyria or not?” “Was Manasseh taken to Babylon or not?” To be sure, these questions are important for historical reconstructions of the Manassic period, but for the reasons mentioned above, far less relevant to historical reconstructions of the world of thought and the social memory-scape of literati in late-Persian/early-Hellenistic Jerusalem and Yehud/Judah. The primary readership and historical community that imagined its past as it read Chronicles included the latter but not the former (i.e., the historical Manassic Judah). 44.  After all, all the mentioned attributes and associations were interwoven into one single character from the past. On this issue, see my “Exploring the Memory of Moses ‘The Prophet.’” 45.  The presence of such sites of memory contributes to and is consistent with a certain preference for “fuzziness” in the social mindscape of the community. A study of these matters, however, stands well beyond the scope of this essay. I briefly dealt with these issues in my essay “On Social Memory and Identity Formation in Late Persian Yehud: A Historian’s Viewpoint with a Focus on Prophetic Literature, Chronicles and the Dtr. Historical Collection,” in Texts, Contexts and Readings in Postexilic Literature: Explorations into Historiography and Identity Negotiation in Hebrew Bible and Related Texts (ed. L. Jonker; FAT 2/53. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 95–148; and in my “Exploring the Memory of Moses ‘The Prophet’.”

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multiple markers’ drawing the attention of the target readership of Chronicles to its Manasseh and making him such a memorable figure can be understood as a reflection of the centrality of the messages that are both embodied and communicated by this site of memory and the need to increase the relative weight or better social mind-share of this Manasseh vis-à-vis other Manassehs that existed in the memory-scape of the community. They both competed with and complemented the memory evoked by Chronicles (and vice versa). Needless to say, the more important the messages that Manasseh evoked, the greater would be the tendency in Chronicles to increase its mind-share within the community. The present discussion brings to the forefront the proof of this process. At the same time, the status of Chronicles—which presented itself as secondary to the books of the Deuteronomistic Historical Collection and was meant to complement and balance the memories that this collection (and the Primary History) evoked rather than erase them—set some limits on its capability to shape the comprehensive social memory of Manasseh. 46 46. See J. Van Seters, “Creative Imitation in the Hebrew Bible,” SR 29 (2000) 395–409; E. Ben Zvi, “One Size Does Not Fit All: Observations on the Different Ways That Chronicles Dealt with the Authoritative Literature of Its Time,” in What Was Authoritative for Chronicles? (ed. E.  Ben  Zvi and D.  V. Edelman; Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 2012) 13–36. The research leading to this essay and related works on social memory in ancient Israel has been supported by a grant of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The Cohesiveness of 2 Chronicles 33:1–36:23 as a Literary Unit Concluding the Book of Chronicles Shannon E. Baines McMaster Divinity College

Introduction Reading the book of Chronicles, as is the case in all biblical narratives, calls for a “dynamic reading” that will decide on the limits, extent, and demarcation of pericopae and smaller units of text.1 Therefore, it is natural that studies on Chronicles have presented various ways in which to understand the demarcation of units and that scholars have organized the reigns of Hezekiah to Zedekiah into various subsections. For example, in King and Cultus in Chronicles, Riley places the reign of Hezekiah within the larger context of the post-Solomonic era, the time period from Rehoboam to Josiah; McKenzie in The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History and Schweitzer in Reading Utopia in Chronicles place Hezekiah into a smaller subsection with Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah; and Williamson in Israel in the Books of Chronicles places Hezekiah with the remaining kings of Judah.2 Moreover, many scholars view the reigns of the last four kings in Judah’s history as a distinct unit in the book of Chronicles on the basis of one or more of the following factors: (1) the speed at which the kings ascend and descend the throne in Jerusalem in such a short period of time before the Babylonian Exile, (2) the brief descriptions of their reigns compared with previous narratives, (3) the lack of burial accounts for the kings, and (4) the control that foreign leaders exert over 1. Y. Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 16. 2. W. Riley, King and Cultus in Chronicles: Worship and the Reinterpretation of History (JSOTSup 160; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 97–140; S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 159–73; S. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (LHBOTS 442; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2007) 109–16; and H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 119–31.

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Judah’s political affairs, especially Neco, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus, who become God’s mediators, either speaking or acting on his behalf.3 These various ways of understanding the relationship between different literary units in Chronicles reflect each scholar’s perception of the literary structure of the book itself and of the reigns of the kings. Of course, the search for one “authentic” structure in a biblical narrative is somewhat misguided, because biblical writers clearly employed a wide variety of literary techniques in structuring their narratives.4 Since these literary techniques are embedded in the text and are quite flexible, many structures are potentially perceivable by the reader. As Bar-Efrat states, “The limits of the literary unit cannot be fixed a priori, but . . . they are dynamic and vary according to the kind of questions the literary critic desires to pose, provided of course that the delimiting of the unit has its justification in the text.”5 This statement provides a necessary caution against drawing hasty and unfounded conclusions regarding the perception of structures in a biblical narrative. However, conclusions regarding the existence of a literary unit have a stronger foundation when one observes multiple literary techniques that all appear to support the cohesiveness of the unit. This study suggests that 2 Chr 33:1–36:23, which comprises the accounts of Manasseh to Zedekiah (including the exile and edict of Cyrus), is an example of a situation in which multiple literary techniques are employed in order to demarcate a literary unit. I demonstrate how the Chronicler (hereafter, Chr)6 underscores this cohesive section through: (1) the establishment of Hezekiah’s reign as a climax in the book, creating a clear boundary for the beginning of the concluding unit; (2) the omission of the queen mothers’ names in every ascension formula following that of Hezekiah; (3) the repetition of the theme of exile within this literary unit; and (4) the clear use of an inclusio to comprise the themes of sin, judgment, and restoration at the beginning and end of this 3.  See scholars such as H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 412; S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 1061–62; Schweitzer, Reading Utopia, 117–18; J. G. McConville, I and II Chronicles (Daily Study Bible; Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press / Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) 266–68; and M. J. Boda, 1–2 Chronicles (CBC 5a; Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2010) 421–29. McKenzie attributes the distinctiveness of the accounts of the last four kings to a change in the Chronicler’s sources. The theory suggests that the Chronicler used the Deuteronomistic History as his main source to construct the accounts in his history up to and including the death of Josiah but, for the remainder of the history, he used other sources, not the Deuteronomistic History (The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 187). 4.  P. S. Evans, The Invasion of Sennacherib in the Book of Kings: A Source-Critical and Rhetorical Study of 2 Kings 18–19 (VTSup 125; Leiden: Brill, 2009) 87. 5. S. Bar-Efrat, “Some Observations on the Analysis of Structure in Biblical Narrative,” VT 30 (1980) 154–73. 6.  The term Chronicler is used throughout this study to refer to the person(s) who composed 1 and 2 Chronicles.

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concluding literary unit in Chronicles. While each of these literary features may not be conclusive on its own, when combined, the features provide strong evidence for the literary cohesiveness of 2 Chronicles 33–36 and suggest that these chapters are best understood and read as one literary unit that serves as the concluding chapter to the history of Judah’s kings. In addition to arguing for the existence of the unit, I also explore proposals for the purpose of this discrete literary unit in Chronicles and for the message aimed at its postexilic audience.7

The Climactic Reign of Hezekiah 2 Chronicles 29–32 serves as a climax to the story of the kings of Judah, in which Hezekiah stands out as the exemplary faithful and devoted leader—the third-greatest king in Judah’s history, after David and Solomon.8 In particular, 32:24–33—which contains Hezekiah’s restoration from illness; his wealth, riches, and building projects; the Chr’s favorable evaluation of his reign; and his burial account—plays a significant role in establishing the beginning boundary marker for the next literary unit, 2 Chronicles 33–36. The climactic nature of Hezekiah’s reign is clearly evident when this narrative is compared with the Chr’s account of Josiah. Although both of these kings were held in the highest regard by the Chr in the post-Solomonic era and Josiah was portrayed and judged overall as a good and faithful king, the Chr portrayed Josiah’s reign as second to the reign of Hezekiah, as the following analysis demonstrates.9

The Last Days of Hezekiah and Josiah The Chr assessed both Hezekiah and Josiah positively, as demonstrated by the phrase ‫‘( ויתר דברי יחזקיהו וחסדיו‬the remainder of the acts of Hezekiah and his acts of goodness’, 2 Chr 32:32) that appears at the conclusion of Hezekiah’s reign, and ‫‘( ויתר דברי יאשיהו וחסדיו‬the remainder of the acts of Josiah and his 7.  This essay focuses on the final form of the text and does not address issues such as the historical reliability of events or the various levels of redaction that may have transpired throughout the development of the book of Chronicles. 8.  S. L. McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles (AOTC; Nashville: Abingdon, 2004) 351. 9.  Many scholars have suggested that the Chr exalted Hezekiah above all other post-Solomonic Judahite kings, including Josiah. E.g., R. G. Coggins, The First and Second Books of the Chronicles (Cambridge Bible Commentary; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 291; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 936; G. N. Knoppers, “History and Historiography: The Royal Reforms,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 178–203, esp. p. 189; C. Mitchell; “The Ironic Death of Josiah in 2 Chronicles,” CBQ 68 (2006) 421–35, esp. p. 429; and Schweitzer, Reading Utopia, 111. In comparison, Josiah was portrayed as the ideal king in the book of Kings, second only to the reign of David (Coggins, Chronicles, 291).

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acts of goodness’, 2 Chr 35:26),10 which appears at the conclusion of Josiah’s reign. However, when the last days of Hezekiah and Josiah are compared, a different picture emerges. In 2 Chr 32:25–26, Hezekiah became proud and, as a result, an unknown calamity (God’s ‘wrath’ ‫ )קצף‬was either inflicted or about to be inflicted on Judah and Jerusalem. Once he repented before God, the threat was removed (or at least postponed).11 The remainder of the chapter (vv. 27–33) portrays Hezekiah and his life in a very positive light, recording his abundance of wealth and involvement in building projects. In comparison, 2 Chr 35:20–24 recounts the tragic ending of Josiah’s life, when he refused to listen to King Neco’s warning to stay out of his military affairs at Carchemish. Josiah disguised himself and entered into battle (v. 22), where he was shot by archers. Severely wounded, Josiah requested that his servants take him away (v. 23). His servants placed him in a chariot and brought him back to Jerusalem, where he subsequently died (v. 24). In 2 Chr 35:21, King Neco, through his messengers, responded to Josiah’s presence at Megiddo by warning him that he had divine approval for his mission and that Josiah was in fact opposing God himself (35:21). The narrator backs up Neco’s statements by noting that Josiah did not “listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God” (35:22). As Ben Zvi notes, the narrator “certifies the reliability of Neco’s words” and portrays him as someone who speaks the words of God and thus acts as a prophet, even though he is a non-Israelite.12 Neco is well aware that it is necessary to obey God’s words and communicates this explicitly to Josiah. Furthermore, Neco’s statement that “God is with me” (35:21) appears to be validated by the narrator’s claim that he spoke words “from the mouth of God” (i.e., “God is with Neco”).13 In sum, Josiah did not listen to the prophetic words from God spoken through the Egyptian king and was therefore portrayed by the Chr as disobedient at the 10.  My translation. Unless otherwise indicated, the nasb is used in this essay for Scripture citations. 11.  McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles, 350–51. Cf. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 994. 12. E. Ben Zvi, “When the Foreign Monarch Speaks,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 209–28, esp. p. 221. 13.  Ibid. As P. S. Evans notes, “God is ‘with’ him (2 Chr 35:21), as God was with David (1 Chr 11:9; 17:2), Solomon (1 Chr 22:15; 28:20; 2 Chr 1:1), Asa (2 Chr 15:2, 9), and Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:7)” (“The Function of the Chronicler’s Temple Despoliation Notices in Light of Imperial Realities in Yehud,” JBL 129 [2010] 31–47). Japhet understands Neco as referring to his (i.e., an Egyptian) god in his direct speech, interpreting “god who is with me” as literally an idol that was accompanying Neco on his campaign (I and II Chronicles, 1057). She acknowledges, however, that the narrator describes his words as coming from the mouth of the true God (“capital G”). Neco never refers to his god as “my god,” and the plain sense in light of the narrator’s remarks appear to equate this god with God.

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end of his life. 2 Chr 35:22 illustrates Josiah’s blatant disobedience, because he went out of his way, intent on engaging in battle, to disguise himself so that he would not be recognized. Unlike his predecessor Hezekiah, who repented and died peacefully, Josiah died a shameful death as the result of an injury incurred in a battle he should not have been involved in, thus marring his legacy.14

Similarities between the Deaths of Josiah and Ahab There are a few striking similarities between the Chr’s portrayal of the death of Ahab, king of Israel in 2 Chr 18:27–34, and the death of Josiah in 2 Chr 35:20–24. In both accounts, the king received prophetic warnings not to enter into battle (Ahab, through the prophet Micaiah in 18:16; and Josiah, through King Neco in 35:21). After hearing the prophecies, both kings did not heed the warnings but instead disguised themselves and entered into battle (18:29 and 35:22). In fact, the same verb (‫ )חפש‬is used in both instances (18:29 and 35:22) of the kings’ masquerade.15 Furthermore, after Ahab and Josiah entered battle, they were both wounded in the same way, by the arrow of an archer, and cried out for help in being taken away from the battlefield (18:33 and 35:23). Ahab instructed his chariot driver to “turn around and take me out of the fight, for I am wounded,” while Josiah’s response to his servants was similar: “Take me away, for I am badly wounded.” Once again, there is striking verbal correspondences between these two accounts because, in both instances, the same verb, ‫‘( חלה‬to be weak, sick’), is used.16 These striking similarities between the death accounts of Ahab and Josiah illustrate that the Chr intentionally associated Josiah with Ahab.17 In 2 Chron­ icles 18, the Chr clearly depicts Ahab negatively, as evidenced by: (1) his hatred toward the prophet Micaiah (18:7); (2) his response to Jehoshaphat after hearing the prophecy (18:17); (3) Micaiah’s words that God enticed Ahab into battle through the deceiving spirit of the prophets (vv. 19–21) and destined the king for destruction (v. 22); and (4) Ahab’s instructions to place Micaiah, the 14.  Mason suggests that Josiah’s disobedience may have been one of the reasons that he receives less attention than Hezekiah in Chronicles (R. Mason, Preaching the Tradition: Homily and Hermeneutics after the Exile [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990] 117). 15.  In both instances the verb is used in the first common singular hophal (‫)החליתי‬ which can be translated literally as ‘I am made sick,’ i.e., ‘wounded.’ The verb is used in the hithpael (‫ )התחַפש‬which translated literally means ‘to let oneself be searched for,’ i.e. ‘to disguise oneself.’ Cf. Mitchell, “The Ironic Death of Josiah,” 422. 16.  Ibid. The adverb ‫‘( מאד‬exceedingly’) is used in conjunction with the verb ‫חלה‬ in Josiah’s response but in Ahab’s response, only the verb is used. Since the accounts of both kings indicated that they were wounded to the extent that they died from their battle injuries, the presence of the additional qualifier ‫ מאד‬in Josiah’s account is interesting and may warrant further examination. 17.  Mitchell, “The Ironic Death of Josiah,” 434.

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prophet, in prison until he returns safely from the battle (v. 26). Thus, the Chr’s association of Josiah and Ahab through their similar death accounts clearly reflects negatively on Josiah and further supports the proposal that Hezekiah’s reign was climatic in Chronicles: the reign of Josiah is portrayed as secondary to the reign of Hezekiah.

The Burial Accounts of Hezekiah and Josiah When the burial accounts of Hezekiah and Josiah are compared, Josiah emerges once again as secondary to his predecessor. Hezekiah was the only king buried in the upper sections of the tombs, and the Chr specifically mentions that he slept with the sons of David (2 Chr 32:33), whereas Josiah’s burial account states that Josiah was buried in the tombs of his fathers (2  Chr 35:24). As McKenzie observes, Hezekiah is buried in the royal tombs with full honor from Judah and Jerusalem (v. 33). The ‘ascent’ on which he is buried, in addition to a topographic reference, may reflect one last attempt to distinguish this king, who must be considered in the Chronicler’s portrayal the third greatest king of Israel behind David and Solomon.18

The term ‫‘( מעלה‬ascent’) as used to refer to the burial place of kings only appears in Hezekiah’s account in the Old Testament19 and is likely an “expression of distinction,” as opposed to merely describing a physical location.20 Furthermore, Hezekiah is the only Judahite king about whom the text explicitly states that “all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem honored him at his death” (32:33, italics mine). In comparison, Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah (35:24, italics mine). In addition, Josiah’s burial account includes a lament that Jeremiah chanted for the fallen king; it was repeated throughout subsequent generations, became an ordinance in Israel, and was written in the Lamentations (v.  25).21 Jeremiah’s lament is not surprising, considering he held Josiah in high regard (cf. Jer 22:15–16). Josiah’s death may have been deeply discouraging for the people who were hoping for a politically independent Judah, and thus Jeremiah’s lament vividly reflects this sentiment.22 Therefore, the presence of the lament may not necessarily mean that Josiah’s burial account is superior to 18.  McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles, 351. 19. W. Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles (2 vols.; JSOTSup 254; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 2:221. 20.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 997. 21.  The Lamentations are often associated with the book of Lamentations but, since Josiah’s death is not mentioned in the book of Lamentations, the reference to the Lamentations may either be to a later addition or to another book that is no longer extant (Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 411). 22.  R. B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles (WBC 15; Waco, TX: Word, 1987).

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Hezekiah’s. The references to the “ascent” and the honor that was bestowed on Hezekiah appear to indicate that Hezekiah’s burial account was superior to that of Josiah, despite Jeremiah’s lament.

The Greater Narrative Space Given to Hezekiah The amount of narrative space that the Chr dedicates to recounting the various events in Hezekiah’s reign further underscores the great esteem in which the Chr viewed Hezekiah. In fact, Hezekiah’s account in Chronicles is the longest of any of the Judahite monarchs from the time of Rehoboam to Zedekiah.23 His reign begins in 2 Chr 29:1 and concludes in 2 Chr 32:33. The first three of these chapters narrate details of Hezekiah’s cultic reforms while the fourth chapter presents his political and military exploits. In comparison, the much briefer account of Josiah’s reign begins in 2 Chr 34:1 and ends in 2 Chr 35:27. As Amit has pointed out, in biblical narrative “the more important the subject matter, the longer its time of narration.”24 Therefore, the Chr’s lengthy Hezekiah narrative is another factor demonstrating the climatic nature of Hezekiah’s reign in closing a long chapter in Judah’s history, thus providing the beginning boundary marker for the next and final chapter to that history in 2 Chr 33:1–36:23.25 Hezekiah’s Success in Unifying the Nation The last piece of evidence presented here to illustrate that Hezekiah’s reign was climatic is an examination of Abijah’s and Hezekiah’s summons to reunify Israel and Judah in 2  Chr 13:4–12 and 30:1–9.26 Abijah’s speech addressed Jeroboam and the people in 2 Chr 13:4–12 and summoned the Northern Kingdom to return to God and reestablish a united kingdom.27 However, Jeroboam did not listen to Abijah’s invitation but, instead, engaged in battle with Judah 23.  Knoppers, “History and Historiography,” 189. 24.  Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives, 108. Bar-Efrat has also drawn attention to the extending of time as essential to discovering “the narrative’s focal points and the relative importance of its various subjects” (S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible [JSOTSup 70; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997] 151). 25. Furthermore, the Chr’s Hezekiah narrative includes three crucial speeches given by the king to: (1) the priests and Levites (2 Chr 29:5–11, 31), (2) the people of Judah and Israel (30:6–9), and (3) the people and combat commanders (32:7–8). In comparison, the Chr’s account of Josiah only included a brief speech to Hilkiah, Ahikam, Abdon, Shaphan, and Asaiah (34:21) and another one that was addressed to the Levites (35:3–6). For an analysis of the speeches in the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah, see Mason, Preaching the Tradition, 96, 118; and M. A. Throntveit, When Kings Speak: Royal Speech and Royal Prayer in Chronicles (SBLDS 93; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 19, 24–26, 39–42, 124. 26.  Cf. ibid., 36–42, 115–20. 27.  Ibid., 112. Cf. G. N. Knoppers, “‘Battling against Yahweh’: Israel’s War against Judah in 2 Chr 13:2–20,” RB 100 (1993) 511–32.

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and was defeated (vv. 13–20). This defeat represented God’s judgment on the North for its rebellion.28 In 2  Chr 30:1–9, Hezekiah summoned the Northern Kingdom to reunify with the South through the celebration of a joint Passover. The initial invitation was not well received in the North, but some people from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun came to Jerusalem for the celebration (v.  10). Furthermore, v. 18 states that many people from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun were also present at the Passover (even though they had not cleansed themselves), thus indicating that there was a level of success in reunifying both kingdoms. The Chr declared that, since the time of Solomon, such a celebration of the Passover had not occurred in Jerusalem (30:26). Hezekiah was the first person to be compared with Solomon after the time of Abijah, which serves as a testimony to the achievement of Hezekiah’s Passover.29 The success of Hezekiah’s reunification of the divided kingdom is in direct contrast to Abijah’s call for a reunification, which was rejected outright by the North.30 In the Chr’s presentation of the history of the divided kingdom, it was not until the reign of Hezekiah that some level of unity finally occurred.31 This is an important point and further demonstrates the significance of Hezekiah and the Chr’s portrayal of the king’s reign as climatic in the book of Chronicles.

The Omission of the Queen Mothers’ Names The Problem In 1 and 2 Kings, the queen mothers’ names are consistently present in the introductory formulas’ ascension accounts of the Judahite kings (except Jehoram and Ahaz) but absent in the accounts of the Israelite kings.32 In the Chr’s account of the Judahite kings, the ascension formulas follow the Kings accounts by including the mothers’ names, beginning with the reign of Rehoboam and concluding with Hezekiah, excluding Jehoram and Ahaz. However, after Hezekiah, the names are no longer mentioned in the ascension formulas for 28.  Ibid., 113. 29.  Ibid., 116. 30.  Ibid., 41. 31.  Of course, whether this pictures a truly “united kingdom” or not has been vigorously debated. Cf. G. N. Knoppers, “A Reunited Kingdom in Chronicles?” Proceedings, Eastern Great Lakes and Midwest Biblical Societies 9 (1989) 74–88; Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles, 97–131. 32.  Even though the queen mothers’ names are absent in the ascension formulas of the Judahite kings Jehoram and Ahaz in the Kings account, this issue will not be addressed here because the Chronicler subsequently followed his source and likewise omitted their names in his historical account. Boda suggests that, though the reason for the omission in 2 Kings is ambiguous, the Chr may have been emphasizing the connection of Jehoram and Ahaz with the northern kings (1–2 Chronicles, 376, 407).

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Manasseh through the last king, Zedekiah, even though they are present in these accounts in 2 Kings. There is no unanimity among scholars regarding the omission of the queen mothers’ names in these instances, with opinions ranging from uncertainty,33 to understanding the omissions as being part of the Chr’s intentional reshaping of his source material, to his relying on divergent source material from 2 Kings’ sources. McKay suggests that the omission in the ascension formulas of Manasseh and Amon was an attempt by the Chr to obscure the close connection between Judah and Arabia.34 Though there is no information available on Manasseh’s mother, Hephzibah, he speculates that Amon’s mother, Meshullemeth (Manasseh’s wife), was Arabian.35 In the history of Judah, there were close ties with Arabia but, by omitting the queen mothers’ names in the account of Manasseh and Amon, the Chr in effect obscured the foreignness that entered into the lineage of the Judahite heirs to the throne.36 McKay explains the omission of the other queen mothers’ names by suggesting that they were “omitted from the Chronicler’s history automatically, following the precedent set in modifying the introductions to the reigns of Manasseh, Amon and Josiah.”37 Williamson accepts McKay’s explanation for the omission of the mothers’ names for the reigns of Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah but does not address the subsequent omissions, in the reigns of Jehoahaz through to Zedekiah, in his commentary.38 Japhet, on the other hand, rejects this theory and instead suggests that the Chr adapted his source throughout this entire section, beginning with Manasseh, and omitted the names of the queen mothers consistently, without any regard for the mothers’ ethnic origins (or the faithful or unfaithful actions of the kings themselves).39 While she does not provide a rationale for the omissions in the 33.  Dillard suggests that, though the omission in Manasseh’s account may have been “in some way theologically motivated and may have set the precedent for the remaining accounts . . . ,” the author may have been “simply modifying his format for reasons no longer apparent to us” (2 Chronicles, 267). 34.  J. W. McKay, Religion in Judah under the Assyrians: 732–609 bc (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1973) 23. 35.  Ibid., 24. 36. As McKay writes, “The visit of a Sabaean queen to the Solomonic court and the discovery of a South Arabian trader’s seal at Bethel may place intercourse between pre-exilic Palestine and South Arabia above the level of mere speculation. It is also known that Sargon resettled Arabs in Samaria in 715 bc, and in an age of unrest amongst the Arabs of the empire it is possible that some Arabian states corresponded with Judah, just as Babylon had done in the reign of Hezekiah” (ibid., 23). 37.  Ibid., 94 n. 38. 38.  Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 390. 39.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 1004.

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accounts of Manasseh, Amon, or Josiah,40 Japhet suggests that the Chr omitted the queen mothers’ names for the reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin in order to obscure relationships between these family members.41 She suggests that the omission serves to conceal the fact that Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim were half brothers and also to obscure the “comparative element in the description of his sins [Jehoiakim’s]” in the Chr’s evaluation of his reign in 36:8.42 In effect, this strategy creates a separation between Jehoahaz, whose reign was not explicitly evaluated by the Chr, and the reign of Jehoiakim, who was judged as evil. However, the problem with Japhet’s rationale is that there is a clear relationship between the two half brothers, because they are both associated with Josiah: (1) 2 Chr 36:1 states that Jehoahaz was the son of Josiah, and (2) 2 Chr 36:4 states that “the king of Egypt made Eliakim his [Jehoahaz] brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim.” Based on these two passages, I do not see that the omission of the queen mothers’ names obscures this relationship: there is already an explicit connection of the two kings to the same father, Josiah.43 McKenzie deduces that, since the queen mothers’ names have been consistently provided in the ascension formulas of Rehoboam to Hezekiah, inclusively, the omission cannot be attributed to the Chr’s bias or to any corruption of the text but, instead, must be attributed to a change in the Chr’s source texts for the ascension formulas.44 As is well known, McKenzie suggested that the Chr relied on an early version of the Deuteronomistic History (Cross’s Josianic Dtr1, which ended with Josiah) and that the Chr’s narratives from Josiah onward relied on divergent source material rather than the book of Kings as we know it.45 However, McKenzie’s theory has been severely undermined and largely rejected by subsequent scholars.46

40.  Ibid., 1004, 1013, 1021, respectively. 41.  Ibid., 1065. 42. Ibid. 43.  Japhet further explains the omissions of the mothers’ names as serving to explain that, “rather than being listed as Jehoiachin’s uncle (II Kings 24:17), the full brother of Jehoahaz (cf. II Kings 23:31) and half-brother of Jehoiakim, Zedekiah is presented as Jehoiachin’s elder brother . . . and thus most probably the legitimate heir to his father’s throne” (ibid., 1068). 44.  McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History, 175. McKenzie bases his discussion on H. R. Macy’s unpublished dissertation The Sources of the Books of Chronicles: A Reassessment (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1975). 45.  Ibid., 159–73, 181–206. 46.  In particular, see the scathing reviews of his thesis by H. G. M. Williamson (“Review of S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History,” VT 37 [1987] 107–14) and M. A. Throntveit (“Review of The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History,” JBL 106 [1987] 319–20).

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Omission as a Literary Technique The cessation of the recording of the queen mothers’ names in the Chr’s ascension formulas for the kings following Hezekiah creates a sharp, distinct division between the end of Hezekiah’s reign and the beginning of Manasseh’s reign in Chronicles. I suggest that the omission of the queen mothers’ names is a literary device that accentuates Hezekiah’s reign, which serves as a climax to the post-Solomonic Judahite history.47 At the same time, the omission marks off the reigns of Manasseh to Zedekiah as a separate, concluding unit to the book of Chronicles, and thereby the unit is also set apart from Hezekiah and the previous kings’ reigns. The omission of the queen mothers’ names would certainly attract the reader/listener’s attention to the narratives that recount Judah’s demise from Manasseh to Zedekiah. If Japhet and McKenzie are correct in suggesting that 2 Chr 32:26 alludes to the fact that the Babylonian Exile has been postponed to a future time,48 after the reign of Hezekiah, then this verse may indicate that Judah’s fate has been sealed—the exile will occur at some definite point in time. The remaining chapters after Hezekiah’s reign (2 Chronicles 33–36) can be interpreted as the last pages of the downfall of Judah’s history. Once set in motion, Judah’s fate cannot be reversed, in spite of Josiah’s cultic reforms and faithfulness to God.49

Repetition of the Theme of Exile It is well known that repetition is used as a literary device in biblical narratives as a means to direct the reader’s attention to a particular point(s) that the author wants to emphasize.50 Many components of a narrative can be repeated, such as words, phrases, themes, people, and place-names. The theme of exile is repeated throughout 2 Chronicles 33–36, which suggests that the Chr used 47.  Boda suggests that the omission of the queen mothers’ names “may have been intended to accentuate Hezekiah’s reign as the zenith of the history of the divided kingdom,” though he does not elaborate on this statement (Boda, 1–2  Chronicles, 407). This seems to be more of an all-encompassing explanation for the reigns of Manasseh through Zedekiah. 48.  McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles, 351; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 994. 49.  Coggins suggests that the Chr’s brief treatment of the last four kings (compared with Kings) “appears as if he regards the punishment of exile as inevitable from this point on, and is anxious to reach it as soon as possible” (Chronicles, 304). The inevitability of exile suggested here goes against many scholars’ understanding (e.g., S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009] 129) of the book of Chronicles, whereby each generation had a new chance to decide its fate. In contrast, it is understood that, in the book of Kings, the fate of the people had already been sealed in advance. 50.  Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 117.

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repetition as a device to attract his audience’s attention to this particular section of his work. As mentioned in the previous section, some scholars have observed that 2 Chr 32:26 may be interpreted as an allusion to the Babylonian Exile that is yet to come. This allusion points forward to 2 Chronicles 33–36, where the actualization of exile occurs. The theme of exile first appears in the Chr’s account of Manasseh within the proposed concluding section of his history. In 33:1–9, Manasseh’s ascension to the throne is recorded (v. 1) along with his various cultic-based acts of disobedience and the Chr’s negative portrayal of the king (vv. 2–9). Verse 10 indicates that God spoke to Manasseh and the people but to no avail. As a result, Manasseh was captured by Assyria’s army with hooks, bound in bronze chains, and exiled to Babylon (v. 11).51 The king experienced exile, the divine punishment for his wickedness, which also represented a foretaste (though to a lesser extent) of what Judah would soon experience. The impending demise of the Southern Kingdom and its diminishing power are accentuated in 2 Chronicles 36 by the control that foreign nations exhibit over the monarchy in Jerusalem.52 The king of Egypt removed Jehoahaz from the throne, imposed a fine on the land (v. 3), appointed Eliakim as king and changed his name to Jehoiakim, and exiled Jehoahaz to Egypt (v. 4). Jehoiakim subsequently experienced exile at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. Verse 6 records that he was bound in bronze chains and taken to Babylon, similar to the fate incurred by Manasseh. In the account of Manasseh’s exile, 33:11 states, ‫וילכדו את־מנשה בחחים‬ ‫‘( ויאסרהו בנחשתים ויוליכהו בבלה‬and they seized Manasseh with hooks and they bound him in bronze shackles and took him to Babylon’) and similarly, in Jehoiakim’s exile, 36:6 states, ‫עליו עלה נבוכדנאצר מלך בבל ויאסרהו בנחשתים‬ ‫‘( להליכו בבלה‬Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against him and he bound him in bronze shackles and took him to Babylon’).53 Manasseh and Jehoiakim were taken away to the same place, Babylon. Kelly suggests that the presence of Babylon is a literary device intended to foreshadow Judah’s own experience of exile in Babylon and then its restoration; more particularly it anticipates the experience of Jehoiakim in 2 Chron 36:6, who is himself bound in bronze shackles by Nebuchadnezzar with the purpose of taking him to Babylon. The fact that there is a close verbal parallel between 2 Chron 33:11 and 36:6 leads commentators to suspect that a literary motif rather than a historical interest is controlling the report here.54 51.  There is no parallel account in the book of Kings documenting Manasseh’s capture and exile. 52.  Boda, 1–2 Chronicles, 423. 53.  My translation. 54. B. Kelly, “Manasseh in the Books of Kings and Chronicles (2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chron 33:1–20),” in Windows into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument, and

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Since Assyria’s capital was Nineveh, it seems unlikely that Manasseh would be bound in shackles and exiled to Babylon, as the account suggests.55 However, regardless of the historical reliability of the event, there is an intertexual link between the two passages. Christopher Begg suggests that Manasseh’s exile foreshadows Jehoiakim’s, while Jehoiakim can be viewed as reliving his great-grandfather’s exile. The similarities between the two exiles may indicate that the Chr was suggesting or leaving open the possibility that repentance could lead to restoration for Jehoiakim or his descendants, because this happened with Manasseh.56 Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim’s successor, reigned in Jerusalem for three months before Nebuchadnezzar removed him from power, exiled him to Babylon, and replaced him with Zedekiah (36:9–10). Though Zedekiah reigned 11 years (v. 11) and was the last king of Judah, he disappears from the story after v. 13. The Chr does not document Zedekiah’s removal from the throne or tell whether he was exiled to Babylon or killed. Verses 17–19 provide an abbreviated account (compared with 2 Kings 24) of the attacks on Jerusalem—specifically, the attack on the people at the temple (v. 17), the looting of the temple (v. 18), the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem (v. 19), and the exile of the survivors to Babylon (v. 20). The foreshadowing of Judah’s downfall, beginning with Manasseh’s exile and on through Jehoiachin’s, has finally been fulfilled in these verses; God’s wrath has been poured out on his people for their persistently unfaithful behavior. The clear repetition of the theme of exile in the reigns of Manasseh, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah functions as a literary device employed by the Chr in chaps. 33–36 and further supports the proposal that these chapters are a distinct literary unit.

The Theme of Sin, Judgment, and Restoration as an Inclusio around 2 Chronicles 33–36 One of the most indisputable criteria for demarcating literary units is the inclusio.57 Kalimi defines an inclusio as a word, phrase or group of phrases that is used at the beginning of a literary unit of any scope and then is repeated at the end of it. The aim of this literary the Crisis of Biblical Israel (ed. V. P. Long, D. W. Baker, and G. J. Wenham; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) 131–46, esp. p. 137. Williamson also observes that “whatever is made of possible historical sources for the account of Manasseh’s captivity, the reference to Babylon in v. 11 . . . must have been consciously included as a pointer to the national exile later on” (1 and 2 Chronicles, 390). 55.  Kelly, “Manasseh,” 137. 56. C. Begg, “The Fate of Judah’s Four Last Kings in the Book of Chronicles,” OLP 18 (1987) 79–85, esp. p. 83. 57.  Amit also refers to this as a “principle of symmetry (or inclusio)” (Reading Biblical Narratives, 18, 21).

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technique may have been to define the limits of a literary unit, to tighten its various component parts into a single unit . . . and to give a unit the appearance of continuity and uniformity.58

An inclusio can also be indicated by repeated themes, motifs, subjects, or other material.59 The repetition of similar themes at the beginning and end of the proposed closing literary unit functioned as a framing device to delimit the unit’s boundary markers. The tripartite cycle of the themes of sin, judgment, and restoration is present in Manasseh’s reign and repeated in 36:11–23, which provides a brief account of Zedekiah’s reign, the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, and the edict of Cyrus. After the Chr provided the introductory ascension formula for Manasseh in 33:1, the theme of sin is immediately apparent in v. 2 and continues through to v. 10, where God speaks to the king and the people but is ignored. God inflicted judgment on Manasseh as a result of his sinfulness by sending him into exile to Babylon (v. 11). While in exile, he repented before God, who then responded 58. I. Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 295. 59.  For example, Perry and Sternberg take thematic aspects into account when attempting to delimit sections of the David narratives in Samuel (cf. M. Perry and M. Sternberg, “The King through Ironic Eyes: Biblical Narrative and the Literary Reading Process,” Poetics Today 7 [1986] 275–322). As Amit notes, an inclusio is not limited to words or phrases but also includes “thematic criterion” and “beginning and ending with a similar subject” (Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives, 18). Of course, as noted at the beginning of this essay, biblical writers employ a variety of literary techniques in their narratives, which allow for the perception of many different structures by readers. For instance, Kalimi identifies an inclusio within the Chr’s Josiah narrative in 2 Chr 34:3b and 5b (the repetition of a similar phrase pertaining to cleansing Judah and Jerusalem), which he believes functions to introduce Josiah’s cultic reforms ((The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History, 308). Though this inclusio exists in my proposed literary unit of 2 Chronicles 33–36 and may further accentuate features of Josiah’s reign, it does not help to explain the inclusio I have identified in 2 Chr 33:2–13 and 36:11–23. However, Kalimi also identifies 1 Chr 15:1–16:1 as an inclusio, which, though it is outside 2 Chr 33:1–36:23, provides support for my thematic-based proposal that 2 Chr 33:2–13 and 36:11–23 form an inclusio. 1 Chr 15:1–16:1 describes both the preparations that were being made in Jerusalem for the pending arrival of the ark of God and the events that occurred as the ark was being transported from Oded-Edom’s home to Jerusalem (p. 306). The introductory portion of the inclusio in 15:1–3 includes the setup of the tent, the instructions given that only the Levites were permitted to carry the ark, and that David and the people together would return the ark to Jerusalem. The concluding portion of the inclusio is 15:27–16:1 and, though it contains the same three elements as 15:1–3, Kalimi indicates that these elements are organized in the conclusion in “chiastic structure relative to the same parts in the introduction” (p. 307). Though the chiastic ordering is not applicable to the present discussion on 2 Chr 33:2–13 and 36:11–23, the above example illustrates that there is support for the existence of more than one element within an inclusio.

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by bringing him back to Jerusalem and restoring him to the Davidic throne (vv. 12–13). Verses 1–13 provide the beginning boundary marker for the inclusio, which consists of sin, judgment, and restoration. The concluding boundary marker for the inclusio appears in 36:11–23. After the Chr provided the introductory ascension formula for Zedekiah in 36:11, the theme of sin was introduced in the following verse, where the Chr stated, not only that the king “did evil in the sight of the Lord his God,” but that “he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet,” an additional qualifying phrase that was not included in the assessments of his immediate predecessors, Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin. Zedekiah, like his predecessor Manasseh, ignored the prophetic warnings that God had provided.60 Sin continues throughout the reign of Zedekiah as recorded in vv.  12–16 until judgment occurs in vv. 17–20, where the temple and Jerusalem are destroyed. Verse 21 states that these events occurred in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy. The edict pronounced by Cyrus in vv. 22–23, though not actualized by the end of Chronicles, provides hope that restoration will occur. Verse 22 indicates that Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding restoration was fulfilled in the edict of Cyrus, which stated that the people could return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (v. 23). Thus, the themes of sin, judgment, and restoration in 36:11–22 mark the end of the inclusio that concludes the literary unit of 2 Chronicles 33–36.

A Few Differences within the Inclusio There are a few differences between the introductory and concluding segments of the inclusio in 2 Chronicles 33–36 that need to be examined briefly. First of all, the restoration of Manasseh to the Davidic throne was a direct result of his repentance while in exile in Babylon. On the other hand, there is no indication in chap. 36 that the people repented in exile, thus leading to restoration. 2 Chr 36:21 seems to suggest that God’s judgment had run its full course for 70 years, according to Jeremiah’s prophecy. Second, there are differences between Manasseh’s exile and the exile of the general populace recorded in 36:20. Manasseh’s exile was shorter than the Babylonian exile, which lasted for 70 years. Although 33:11–13 does not indicate how long Manasseh was in Babylon, he reigned for 55 years (v. 1), and it was sometime during this period that he experienced exile not only for his disobedience but also the people’s. Verse 10 indicates that neither party listened 60.  Though the failure to heed God’s prophetic warnings is present in the accounts of Manasseh and Zedekiah, this fact does not mean that 33:10 is the boundary marker for the introductory portion of the inclusio, because the theme of sin is presented earlier in the account, in 33:2. In contrast, the statement that Zedekiah did not repent (‘humble himself’, ‫ )לא נכנע‬before God provides a strong antithetical allusion to 33:12, which indicated that Manasseh repented a great deal (‫)ויכנע מאד‬.

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Table 1.  Overview of the 2 Chronicles 33–36 Literary Unit Themes Reign Manasseh

Scripture References

Judgment Sin (Exile)

33:1–13 (inclusio)

×

33:14–20 (remainder      of account)

×

Amon

33:21–25

×

Josiah

34:1–35:27

×

Jehoahaz

36:1–3

Jehoiakim

36:4–8

×

×

Jehoiachin

36:9–10

×

×

×

×

Zedekiah to Cyrus 36:11–23 (inclusio)

×

Restoration ×

×

×

to God, but only Manasseh was punished and taken away by the Babylonians. This may have served as a warning or a foreshadowing to the people that they might suffer the same fate for their disobedience. Finally, Manasseh’s repentance in exile and his subsequent restoration to the throne in Jerusalem led to positive cultic reforms, which the Chr recorded in 33:15–16. However, at the conclusion of the book, Cyrus’s edict in 36:22– 23 provides only the hope of restoration, since the people have not returned to Israel yet. Unlike Manasseh, who was restored to the throne, the people can return to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem according to Cyrus’s announcement. There is no mention of the restoration of the Davidic throne. The end of the book may posit a question to the audience: will the Israelites follow the faithful example of Manasseh when they return from exile?

The Purpose of the Inclusio The themes of sin and judgment that compose part of the inclusio are repeated in the accounts of Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin. The accounts of these kings are sandwiched between the inclusio of sin, judgment, and restoration (see table 1 for a visual overview of the entire literary unit). The inclusio provides a good summary of Judah’s history and the overall context in which the Chr wanted his audience to understand its history. The presence of sin and exile in the accounts within the inclusio present a rather dark and bleak past, but this is only part of the whole picture, which is then completed with restoration. This history, in a sense, has served to shape the identity of God’s people: people who have been disobedient to God and, as a result, have suffered God’s judgment. However, due to God’s love for the people and his

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covenant faithfulness, he has not abandoned them forever, as demonstrated by their restoration. The people of God have been redeemed from exile and are now living once again in the Promised Land. The postexilic generation is living proof of God’s redemption. The inclusio can also serve as a reminder to the postexilic audience of its past so as not to repeat the same mistakes in the present. Disobedience to God in the form of idolatry and a general disregard for his commandments, neglect of the temple, and the refusal to heed God’s warnings spoken through his prophets were all contributing factors to the Babylonian Exile. The themes of sin, judgment, and restoration that frame the concluding chapter of Judah’s history may suggest that, if previous disobedient acts are repeated by the postexilic community, the cycle will start all over again.

The Purpose of the Concluding Section in the Chronicler’s History There are three interconnected messages to the postexilic community that emerge from this concluding literary and thematic unit in the Chronicler’s History (2 Chr 33:1–36:23). First, the concluding section serves to promote and justify the Chr’s perspective that Hezekiah was the model king in the post-Solomonic era, not Josiah, who held this position in the book of Kings. The Chr achieves his goal by not only casting Josiah in a negative light but, on a larger scale, combining the accounts of 2 Chr 33:1–36:23 into one unit. On one hand, the portrayal of Hezekiah’s reign as climactic is a literary device used to establish the beginning boundary marker for the concluding unit, but on the other hand, the unit itself is in contrast to Hezekiah’s reign. Since the literary unit comprises actual experiences of exile, beginning with Manasseh and further accentuated with the last four kings of Judah, it represents the final downfall and demise of the kingdom. This unit stands in stark contrast to the significant reign of Hezekiah and, in effect, draws the audience’s attention back to his time in power. Second, chaps. 33–36, which repeatedly recount the actualization of exile, may motivate the postexilic audience either to return to God, if they have strayed away through disobedience, or to remain faithful, seeking God and obeying his commandments. The repetition of the theme of exile invokes exhortations to heed the warnings God speaks to the current generation as a reminder not to duplicate the actions of its predecessors that led to the exile. Last, the final phase of Judah’s history recorded in chaps. 33–36 is a low point because the kingdom ceases to exist. However, Cyrus’s edict presents an opportunity for the people to commence a new phase in their history by uniting around a common purpose of worshiping God through rebuilding the temple and establishing its centrality in the community. Japhet describes the book of Chronicles as “from beginning to ‘beginning’”: it begins with the origins of

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humanity with Adam in 1 Chr 1:1 and concludes with Cyrus’s edict in 2 Chr 36:22–23, which presents hope for a new beginning in history.61 Thus, the book concludes with the vision of a new beginning and extends an invitation to the audience to embrace and participate in this phase of Israel’s history: “Whoever there is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up!” (2 Chr 36:23). 61.  Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 8. Japhet also notes that the Chronicler’s History “constitutes a comprehensive parallel to the earlier . . . ‘Deuteronomistic history’— with its conclusion pointing toward a new era.”

“To Him You Must Listen”: The Prophetic Legislation in Deuteronomy and the Reformation of Classical Tradition in Chronicles Gary N. Knoppers The Pennsylvania State University

Introduction The book of Exodus presents a remarkable story about Israel’s encounter with the divine during a thunderous, smoky, and lightning-filled scene at Mt. Sinai. Following the Israelites’ hearing the Ten Commandments directly from on high, the people tremble, stand from afar, and implore Moses, “You speak to us . . . and we shall obey, but let not God speak to us lest we die” (Exod 20:19). Fearing the dangerous consequences of a continuing divine encounter, even at the auditory level, the people ask that Moses hear God’s words privately and convey these words to them afterward. In the context of the Sinaitic pericope, the episode ratifies Moses’ role as a mediator between the people and the divine (Exod 20:18–21). The people’s fears are allayed, and Moses’ unique office is secured. One of the two Deuteronomic retellings of this episode develops the ramifications of the divine assent to Israel’s request in new directions (Deut 18:16–18; cf. 5:22–31). In the section of the book devoted to authorizing and defining several different public offices (Deut 16:18–18:22), the story becomes an explicit etiology of the institution of prophecy. Responding to the people’s request that the deity no longer reveal himself directly to them at Mt. Horeb (Deut 18:16–17), Yhwh deems the keen popular concern about the effects of an unmediated divine encounter to have merit: “they have done well (‫)היטיבו‬ by what they have spoken” (Deut 18:17). Given that the divine affirmation does not appear in Exodus, the divine response in Deuteronomy generates an even stronger commendation of Moses’ mediatory function than is found in the earlier work. Author’s note:  A somewhat different version of this essay was presented at the 2010 annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in Montréal. I am grateful to all those who commented on the earlier draft.

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In Deuteronomy, the episode also occasions the creation of a continuing prophetic office. Fulfilling his intermediary role, Moses declares on behalf of Yhwh: “A prophet from your midst (‫)נביא מקרבך‬, from your kin (‫)מאחיך‬, like me (‫ )כמני‬. . . Yhwh your God will establish for you. To him you must listen” (‫ ;אליו תשמעון‬Deut 18:15). 1 The words of Moses provide comfort to subsequent generations, because they assure continuity in the process of divine communication. Moses prophesies a prophetic future. 2 The establishment of prophecy as an enduring institution may be considered to be an act of divine grace to the Israelite people. 3 The presentation of Israelite prophecy in Chronicles comports in some important ways with the older picture presented in Deuteronomy. Yhwh never speaks directly to the people but instead uses intermediaries to accomplish this task. 4 I have argued elsewhere that the Chronistic work significantly re1.  Along with most interpreters, I am construing the force of Deut 18:15 as distributive (involving a succession of prophets), even though the the text speaks of a single prophet. “The promised prophet is to meet a continuous and permanent need of the people,” S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy ( 3rd ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1951) 228–29. Many, but not all, of the early interpreters interpreted Deut 18:15 as pertaining to a distant time and as applying to a single individual (e.g., John 1:21, 45; 6:14; 7:40; Acts 3:22–24; 7:37). See C. Nihan, ‘“Un prophète comme Moïse’ (Deutéronome 18,15): Genèse et relectures d’une construction deutéronomiste,” in La construction de la figure Moïse (ed. T. Römer; Supplément 13 à Transeuphratène; Paris: Gabalda, 2007) 43–76. This is also true of Samaritan tradition: F. Dexinger, “Eschatology,” in The Samaritans (ed. A. D. Crown; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989) 266–92; idem, “Taheb,” in A Companion to Samaritan Studies (ed. A. D. Crown, R. Pummer, and A. Tal; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993) 224–26. 2. J. Barton discusses at some length the basic understanding of prophecy as foretelling, not forthtelling in Second-Temple prophecy: Oracles of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). It is interesting that Deuteronomy itself repeatedly assumes the same basic definition (13:2–6, 18:9–22). See further §II below. 3.  So the MT and SP (lectio brevior). The affirmation is even more unequivocal in the longer reading of a few witnesses to the LXX, Tg., Syr., and Vg., “They have done well [‫ ]היטיבו‬by all [‫ ]כל‬that they have spoken” (Deut 18:17). 4.  The prophetic phenomenon in the Chronicler’s work has been the subject of much diligent and careful study. See, e.g., G. von Rad, Das Geschichtsbild des chronistischen Werkes (BWANT 4/3; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930); idem, “The Levitical Sermon in I and II Chronicles,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) 267–80; T. Willi, Die Chronik als Auslegung: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Gestaltung der historischen Überlieferung Israels (FRLANT 106; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972) 216–44; D. L. Petersen, Late Israelite Prophecy: Studies in Deutero-Prophetic Literature and in Chronicles (SBLMS 23; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977); I. L. Seeligmann, “Die Auffassung von der Prophetie in der deuteronomistischen und chronistischen Geschichtsschreibung,” in Congress Volume, Göttingen 1977 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 29; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 254–84; J. P. Weinberg, “Die ‘ausserkanonischen Prophezeiungen’ in der Chronikbüchern,” Acta Antiqua 26 (1978) 387–404; R. Micheel, Die Seher- und

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vises and expands the presentation of prophecy in Samuel–Kings both in substance and in style. 5 Even though the Chronicler reuses parts of the earlier work and borrows many of its prophets, his casting of the prophetic legacy differs markedly from that of his principal source. 6 One of the major influences in the Chron­istic rewriting of earlier prophetic history in the Deuteronomistic work is, ironically, the legislation promulgated in Deuteronomy. In this essay, I explore further the structure of the prophetic institution in Deuteronomy and the way it relates to other offices legislated in the so-called constitution of office-holders (Deut 16:18–18:22). Particular features of the Deuteronomic prophetic office may be fruitfully compared with those exhibited by the Chronistic prophets and the types of messages that they convey. In proposing this thesis, I shall note briefly a somewhat different point of view. Some have contended that Chronicles reacts against the prophetic personae found in Deuteronomy by recourse to the testimony of the classical prophets. 7 The prophetic presentation in the Chronicler’s work is certainly Pro­phetenüberlieferungen in der Chronik (BBET 18; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983); C. T. Begg, “The Classical Prophets in the Chronistic History,” BZ 32 (1988) 100–107; H. V. Van Rooy, “Prophet and Society in the Persian Period according to Chronicles,” in Second Temple Studies, 2: Temple and Community in the Persian Period (ed. T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards; JSOTSup 175; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) 163–79; W. M. Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period (JSOTSup 197; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995); idem, “Prophets and Prophecy in the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997) 204–24; R. W. Klein, “Prophets and Prophecy in the Books of Chronicles,” TBT 36 (1998) 227–32; P. Beentjes, “Prophets in the Book of Chronicles,” in The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist (ed. J. C. de Moor; OtSt 45; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 45–53; Y. Amit, “The Role of Prophecy and Prophets in the Chronicler’s World,” in Prophets, Prophecy and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (ed. M. H. Floyd and R. L. Haak; LHBOTS 427; London: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 80–101. 5.  G. N. Knoppers, “Democratizing Revelation? Prophets, Seers, and Visionaries in Chronicles,” in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; LHBOTS [JSOTSup] 531; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 391–409. The present analysis may be considered a companion piece to this earlier and more general treatment. 6.  Whether one can even speak of a single perspective on prophecy in the Deuteronomistic work (or even within Samuel–Kings) is questionable. Prophecy in this corpus is complex and takes a variety of forms. See W. Dietrich, “Prophetie im deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk,” in The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (ed. T. Römer; BETL 147; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 47–65 (and the references listed there). 7.  See, for instance, the substantial treatments of S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (BEATAJ 9; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989) 85–198, 416–28; eadem, I and II Chronicles (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 14–23.

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indebted to the legacy of the classical prophets, yet the evidence is complex. Chronicles cites major prophetic writings, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. 8 Allusions to other prophets and prophetic concepts may be found in Chronicles as well. 9 Certain prophetic emphases, such as the call to repentance are integrated into the work and figure prominently in the narration of particular reigns. Hence, it is clear that Chronicles moves beyond Deuteronomy in some respects. 10 However, I also maintain that the depiction of prophecy in Chronicles reacts against certain important features exhibited by the Major Prophets and represents a partial but substantive return to the more limited, less dramatic, and carefully-defined Deuteronomic model. The Chronistic account of the monarchy incorporates several key aspects of the Deuteronomic definition and structuring of prophecy. It may be argued, in fact, that the book of Chronicles reforms images of the classical prophets found in the prophetic books in accordance with its reformation of the Deuteronomic prophetic schema. My study begins with an analysis of the contextualization of the prophetic office within the constitutional theocracy envisioned by the writers of Deuteronomy. Attention will then turn to the Deuteronomic understanding of what genuine Israelite prophecy is (and is not). Because there has been some debate about who is and who is not a prophet in Chronicles, I will need to examine the diversity of prophetic titles in this work as a prelude to discussing how Chronistic prophecy relates to major institutions and how the kinds of prophecy depicted in Chronicles compare with the characterization of prophecy in Deuteronomy. Examination of some of the ways Chronicles innovates 8.  Japhet, Ideology, 176–91. 9.  On the many different sorts of literary allusion and and types of literary dependence, see recently J. M. Leonard, “Identifying Biblical Allusions: Psalm 78 as a Test Case,” JBL 127 (2008) 241–65. 10.  To complicate matters, there is literary evidence that substantial portions of Jeremiah, in particular, but also some parts of Ezekiel were influenced by Deuteronomy, if not also by Deuteronomistic editing. This important topic lies beyond the scope of my essay. Discussions and references may be found in L. S. Schearing and S. L. Mc­ Kenzie, eds., Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); R. Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century b.c.e. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003) 271–345; R. Achenbach, “Die Tora und die Propheten im 5. und 4. Jh. v.Chr.,ˮ in Tora in der Hebräischen Bibel: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte und synchronen Logik diachroner Transformationen (ed. R. Achenbach, M. Arneth, and E. Otto; Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 7; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007) 26–71; T. C. Römer and K. Schmid, eds., Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque, de l’Hexateuque et de l’Ennéateuque (BETL 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2007); T. C. Römer, “The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah as a Supplement to the So-Called Deuteronomistic History,” in The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2009) 168–83.

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beyond Deuteronomy will be the subject of the last section of this study. The essay will conclude by exploring the social and religious functions of the substantial Chronistic refashioning of the prophetic legacy in the late-Persian/ early-Hellenistic era.

I.  Judges, Priests, Prophets, and Possibly Kings The Deuteronomic laws affecting prophecy constitute but one part of a larger program for distributing powers among a variety of institutions—local courts (Deut 16:18; 17:2–7), a central court (17:8–13), a king (17:14–20), a Levitical priesthood (18:1–8), and prophets (18:9–22). 11 Within this system of shared governance, no one office or group holds absolute sway. Each of the office-holders may be assigned specific duties, rights, and functions, but each is subordinated to the principle of law. The system of national polity involves shared leadership and a division of powers. It will be useful to examine how 11. On the structure, composition, and dating of this section of Deuteronomy, see the proposals of N. Lohfink, “Die Sicherung der Wirksamkeit des Gotteswortes durch das Prinzip der Schriftlichkeit der Tora und durch das Prinzip der Gewaltenteilung nach den Ämtergesetzen des Buches Deuteronomium (Dt 16,18–18,22),” in Testimonium Veritati: Festschrift Wilhelm Kempf (ed. H. Wolter; FTS 7; Frankfurt: Knecht, 1971) 143–55 (repr. in and cited from his Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischer Literatur, vol. 1 [Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände: Altes Testament 8; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990] 305–23); U. Rüterswörden, Von der politischen Gemeinschaft zur Gemeinde: Studien zu Dt 16,18–18,22 (BBB 65; Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1987); S. D. McBride, “Polity of the Covenant People,” Int 41 (1987) 229–44; J. C. Gertz, Die Gerichtsorganisation Israels im deuteronomischen Gesetz (FRLANT 165; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994) 28–97; R. Albertz, A History of Religion in the Old Testament Period (2 vols.; OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 1:195–226; E. Otto, “Von der Gerichtsordnung zum Verfassungsentwurf: Deuteronomische Gestaltung und deuteronomistische Interpretation im ‘Ämtergesetz’ Dtn 16,18–18,22,” in “Wer is wie du, HERR, unter den Göttern?” Studien zur Theologie und Religionsgeschichte für Otto Kaiser zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. I. Kottsieper et al.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995) 142–55; idem, “Von der Programmschrift einer Rechtsreform zum Verfassungsentwurf des Neuen Israel: Die Stellung des Deuteronomiums in der Rechtsgeschichte Israels,” in Bundesdokument und Gesetz: Studien zum Deuteronomium (ed. G. Braulik; Herders biblische Studien 4; Freiburg: Herder, 1995) 92–104; W. S. Morrow, Scribing the Center: Organization and Redaction in Deuteronomy 14:1–17:13 (SBLMS 49; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996) 159–78; B. M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 98–143. While it may be evident that this section of Deuteronomy was not authored at one time, the redaction history of this material lies beyond the scope of the present study. In any event, it is an open question whether the Chronicler and other earlier interpreters were aware of the compositional history of the version of Deuteronomy (or proto-Deuteronomy) available to them. See further §IV below.

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prophecy fits into this larger constitutional theocracy before examining the nature of the prophetic office itself. Because early interpreters, such as the Chronicler, probably read Deuteronomy (or proto-Deuteronomy) as a literary work and did not fixate simply on small subsections within that corpus, my analysis extends to other relevant portions of Deuteronomy as well. One of the unusual features of the separation of powers in Deuteronomy (16:18–18:22) that affected various offices and office-holders was the attempt to regulate Israelite prophecy and to dissociate this phenomenon from all sorts of prophetic activities attributed to the autochthonous nations. Other legal texts proscribe certain forms of prophetic activity and necromancy (e.g., Exod 22:17; Lev 19:31; 20:1–6, 27), but the authors of these texts do not devote the concerted attention to defining, administering, and containing the prophetic phenomenon that the writers of Deuteronomy do. The prophet is neither above the law nor outside it, because the very definition of what constitutes Israelite prophecy and what constitutes the proper prophetic role in society is determined by Deuteronomic legislation. Within the larger system of shared governance, the prophetic office constitutes a requisite component of Israel’s national constitution. The position is not configured as a human choice—one for either Moses or the people to make. The text repeatedly declares that the prophet(s) to succeed Moses will be directly ‘appointed’ (Hiphil of ‫ )קום‬by Yhwh (18:15, 18). The stress on divine selection may be compared with the direct divine ‘election’ (‫ )בחר‬of the tribe of Levi (Deut 18:1–8). Levi and his descendants served in perpetuity in Yhwh’s name, receiving a clear mandate to accept various offerings from the people (Deut 18:5). Although their functions and responsibilities differ, both the Levitical priests and the prophets have a clear connection to the divine realm and a permanent place within the division of powers advocated by the writers of Deuteronomy. The enduring mandates awarded to the institutions of prophecy and priesthood may be compared with the conditional and highly restricted allowance awarded to the monarchy (Deut 17:14–20). In contrast to the legal justification for and the divine affirmation of the prophetic and priestly offices, the kingly office is not divinely mandated but is only conceded to because of popular desire when Israel finds itself in the land (Deut 17:14). The authors link the possible introduction of a royal dynastic form of government, not with divine instruction or with corporate piety, but with competitive emulation, a desire among the people to set “a king over us like all the nations surrounding us” (Deut 17:14). Indeed, within the power structure of corporate governance envisioned by the authors, the monarchy is the only social institution the existence of which is deemed to be optional. In contrast to the divine affirmation of the popular request for a human intermediary in the process of divine revelation

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(Deut 18:18), no such divine affirmation appears in response to the (anticipated) popular wish for a king (Deut 17:14). Within the division of powers envisioned by the authors of Deuteronomy, the monarchy is not a necessary feature of national life. If an institution of this sort is to be introduced at some point, its powers are to be severely curtailed and its king subordinated to the rule of “this Torah” (Deut 17:19)—that is, to Deuteronomy. 12 As with other positions in the laws regulating public officials, the position of prophet is not attainable by all and carries certain conditions. Like Levitical priests and kings, prophets are to be native Israelites—“from your midst, from your kin” (Deut 18:15). However, in a number of respects, prophets (Deut 18:15–22) differ from other officials within the theocracy (Deut 16:18–18:22). The prophetic office differs from the priesthood, because the priesthood entails membership in a certain tribe (Deut 18:1–8). To be sure, a prophet theoretically could stem from the tribe of Levi, because the Levites are, of course, Israelites. Similarly, the legislation does not preclude the possibility that a high official, for example a king, could be prophetically endowed. But the point is that the prophet need not stem from any one particular Israelite sodality. The institution of prophecy differs from the monarchy, because the monarchy normally involves dynastic succession within a single bloodline (Deut 17:20). The legislation governing prophecy makes no mention of a dynastic succession. It does not speak of a son or daughter of Moses taking his place after he dies. Of course, the laws dealing with prophecy do not foreclose the prospect of a series of prophets stemming from one particular family. Yet, if this were to happen, each would need to be appointed individually by the deity. 13 In the polity outlined in Deuteronomy, prophecy enjoys a certain independence from other offices. Prophecy is not an institution that is to be subordinated to or controlled by the monarchy and the priesthood. Quite the contrary, prophecy represents an institution that is set apart from other social institutions, such as the tribal leadership, central judiciary, local elders, monarchy, and priesthood. The writers mandate the creation of a system of local courts and a central court (Deut 17:2–7, 8–13), but these courts lack any formal connection to the institution of prophecy. Moses’ announcement that the prophet who is 12.  G. N. Knoppers, “The Deuteronomist and the Deuteronomic Law of the King: A Reexamination of a Relationship,” ZAW 108 (1996) 329–46; idem, “Rethinking the Relationship between Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History: The Case of Kings,” CBQ 63 (2001) 393–415; B. M. Levinson, “The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History’s Transformation of Torah,” VT 51 (2001) 511–34; idem, “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation (FAT 54; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 68–79. 13.  As is the case, apparently, in the successive reigns of Asa and Jehoshaphat, in which a father (Hanani; 2  Chr 16:7–10) and his son (Jehu; 2  Chr 19:1–3; 20:34) prophesy.

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to succeed him will be “like me” (Deut 18:15) intimates a connection between prophecy and law. 14 This connection is, of course, most prominent in the public career of Moses. 15 But the prophetic legislation accords to the prophet no formal connection to the courts that are to interpret and apply this law. If Moses is a proto-prophet (or the prophet par excellence), he does not accord to his successors the same prerogatives and authority that he himself possesses. Within the larger legislative schema, some of Israel’s institutions clearly depend upon each other. For instance, the dictates governing the constitution of a central court presume the existence of magistrates and “Levitical priests” (‫ )הכהנים הלוים‬to staff such a tribunal (Deut 17:9). But the legislation affecting courts, the military, and the Levitical priests does not mention any role for prophets. The prophet who is to succeed Moses is neither mentioned nor alluded to in any of the discussions pertaining to centralization (Deut 12:1–31), the support of the Levites (14:27–29), the seventh-year remission of debts (15:1–18), or the three major feasts—the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths (16:1–17). Because the prophet is not mentioned in conjunction with cultic centralization, the prophet need not be bound up with the central sanctuary. To be sure, there is nothing to prevent the prophet from having an association with or a presence at the central sanctuary. However, the legislation does not deem this sort of association necessary for the prophet to be a genuine and fully authorized mouthpiece of God. Similarly, because the prophet is not associated with the process of centralizing power, the prophet need not serve at or be responsible to the royal palace. Again, there is nothing in the legislation forbidding such an association, if a given prophet wishes to begin a courtly residence, but the prophet is under no obligation to do so. Interestingly, the work does not elsewhere accord the prophet any major responsibility. The writers do not integrate prophecy, formally at least, into any of the other power structures of corporate governance. For example, the prophet is given no positive mandate to instruct the populace in the content of the scroll of the Torah. Near the close of his life, Moses hands the Torah scroll to the elders and the priests and informs the latter that they are to recite “this Torah in the presence of all Israel” every seven years (Deut 31:9–13). The possession and safekeeping of the Torah are the responsibilities of the 14. J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Ancient Israel (rev. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 162. 15.  One may discern an interesting contrast with the presentation of Moses in the Former Prophets. There, Moses himself is not mentioned often with the exception of the book of Joshua. When Moses is mentioned, it is often in connection with Torah and not with prophecy: D. L. Petersen, “The Ambiguous Role of Moses as Prophet,” in Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes (ed. B. E. Kelle and M. B. Moore; LHBOTS 446; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 311–24.

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priesthood (Deut 17:18). The scroll of the Torah hardly forbids the prophet from learning what the scroll prescribes and proscribes, especially as these stipulations pertain to his own duties. The prophet is not barred from teaching his fellow Israelites. After all, Moses, the one whom the prophets succeed, is repeatedly told to “teach” (Piel of ‫ )למד‬the commandments to Israel (Deut 4:5, 5:31; cf. 6:1). Nevertheless, the basic understanding of prophecy as the “voice of Yhwh” creates a different focus for the prophetic profession. It falls to Levi to teach Yhwh’s Torah to Israel (Deut 33:10). Similarly, the organization of the military (20:1–9) makes no mention of the prophetic office. In this case, the laws of warfare do mention a number of other officials: ‘the priest’ (‫)הכהן‬, ‘the officers’ (‫)השטרים‬, and ‘the army commanders’ (‫)שרי צבאות‬. It is the responsibility of ‘the priest’ (‫ )הכהן‬and ‘the officers’ (‫ )השטרים‬to address the troops and it is, not surprisingly, the responsibility of ‘the army commanders’ (‫)שרי צבאות‬ to lead the troops. Yet, this martial legislation accords no function—whether consultative, intercessory, or ceremonial—to a prophet. It is not entirely clear what one should make of the lack of prophetic integration within the constitutional theocracy. Does the careful dispersal of authority effectively marginalize prophecy, relegating it to an outsider status? Do the containment and regulation of prophecy occur because prophecy as the living voice of God represents a potential threat to the prophetic authority of Deuteronomy itself? 16 Or does the distribution of powers effectively protect the integrity of the prophetic office, ensuring that the prophet’s authority is not compromised by priest, judge, or king? The prophetic office is, after all, the only public office the character of which Moses compares with his own (Deut 18:15). In any case, it seems that the clear authorization of prophecy—or to be more precise, the clear authorization of a certain kind of prophecy—coupled with prophecy’s not being dependent on another office or institution accords to prophecy a certain degree of latitude to function by itself. In comparison with the range of responsibilities accorded to the Levitical priests, the responsibilities of the prophets are quite defined and circumscribed. The prophet has an important but carefully limited responsibility to play in Israel’s national constitution. Directly dependent on Yhwh and constrained by the laws governing the office, the prophet is nevertheless largely independent of other societal institutions and obligations.

II.  Heeding “the Voice of Yhwh”: The Legislation Governing Prophecy Having outlined some main features of Deuteronomic prophecy and its structural relationships (or lack thereof) to other societal institutions, I now turn to analyzing how the authors define genuine prophecy and what 16.  Blenkinsopp, History, 162–63; Levinson, Deuteronomy, 145.

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constraints they place on the holders (and would-be holders) of this particular office. Both the prohibitions and the affirmations are important to understanding how the authors define the prophetic vocation. One may begin by pointing out that Deuteronomy gives about as much legislative space to specifying what prophecy should not be (Deut 18:9–14) as to specifying what prophecy is (18:15–22). The work associates illicit prophecy with various kinds of deductive divination involving the use of sorcery, charms, necromancy, and augury. Techniques of this sort are associated with “the abominations (‫ )תועבת‬of these [indigenous] nations” (18:9). The intense concern with deductive divination is, in itself, quite revealing, because the legislation does not engage broader social issues or economic justice. The issue is how one accesses information from the divine world. Certain kinds of attempts to procure hidden knowledge from the supernatural realm through illicit means are strictly prohibited (Deut 18:9, 12, 13). The authors do not deny the possibility that these methods might actually work or that legitimate Yahwistic prophets might exhibit mantic behaviors or employ omens, signs, and the like, but they do not mention these mantic behaviors, signs, and omens in connection with the proper function of the prophetic office (18:15– 22). 17 Indeed, in another context, the writers of Deuteronomy readily concede that a ‘sign or wonder’ (‫ )אות או מופת‬performed by ‘a prophet or a dreamer of dreams’ (‫ )נביא או חלם חלום‬might actually work, but if this prophet were to advocate worshiping and serving other gods, the people are not to heed his words. Instead, this “prophet or dreamer of dreams must die” (13:2–3, 6). Thus, the legislation clearly circumscribes the phenomenon of prophecy, even miraculous prophecy, by recourse to law (13:5). 18 The text does not speak of signs and wonders wrought by the prophet whom Yhwh is to raise up after Moses. Instead, the prophet becomes the ‘voice of Yhwh’ (‫ ;קול ליהוה‬Deut 18:16). The stress falls on the verbal component of prophecy, rather than on the personal qualities, pedigree, or appearance of the prophet himself. To the appointed prophet, Israel “must listen” (18:15). As defined by the writers of Deuteronomy, the prophetic office is fundamentally charismatic, rather than dynastic, in nature. Moses speaks of a prophet ‘like me’ (‫—)כמני‬that is, one who is appointed by God to speak God’s word to the 17.  Although the authors of Deuteronomy’s epilogue maintain that one of the distinguishing marks of Moses’ unparalleled prophetic career was the performance of signs (‫ )אתות‬and wonders (‫ )מופתים‬in Egypt (Deut 34:11). 18.  On this remarkable passage (Deut 13:2–6), see the incisive discussion of Levinson, Deuteronomy, 102–35. A helpful overview of recent discussions of Deuteronomy 13 may be found in U. Rüterswörden, “Dtn 13 in der neueren Deuteronomiumforschung,” in Congress Volume, Basel 2001 (ed. A. Lemaire; VTSup 92; Leiden, Brill, 2002) 185–203.

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people (Deut 18:15–20). 19 Prophecy does not originate either from the fact that some people possess a natural ability to access the preternatural realm or from the fact that some individuals have acquired specialized skills that enable them to decode and interpret puzzling signals inherent within the world of nature. Rather, Yhwh bequeaths prophets to preserve and enhance his relationship with his people. Moses becomes the first in a line of message-bearers who serve as human conduits of divine communication to Israel. If the prophet does Yhwh’s bidding and fulfills his proper role, Yhwh will hold the people responsible for how they treat his spokesperson (Deut 18:19). As someone set in office directly by the deity, the “voice of Yhwh” carries authority and deserves respect from the other members of Israel’s body politic. The institution of prophecy in Deuteronomy does not preclude the possibility of Israelites’ making direct requests for information or action from the deity. The text does not proscribe prayer. By the same token, the legislation does not establish a mechanism whereby Israelites might approach prophets to intervene on their behalf with the deity. Authentic prophecy is inherently verbal and unidirectional in nature. Yhwh’s declaration that “I shall set my words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him” (Deut 18:18) creates a channel for mediated messages from the divine realm to the human realm, but the converse does not hold. It does not create a warrant, explicitly at least, for Israelites to employ a channel of this sort to petition the divine realm. The legislation in Deuteronomy acknowledges that not all those who claim to speak on Yhwh’s behalf have been authorized by Yhwh to do so. If a prophet speaks in God’s name but has not actually been told by God to do so, or speaks in the name of other gods, “that prophet will die” (Deut 18:20). 20 The framers explicitly recognize another problem with the attempt to regulate an inherently charismatic phenomenon: how does one know whether an oracle spoken in Yhwh’s name is in fact given by Yhwh to the would-be spokesperson (18:21)? The determining factor is fulfillment or nonfulfillment. If a prophet speaks in the name of Yhwh, and his words are not fulfilled, his oracle did not stem from Yhwh, and the prophet who spoke it may be deemed to have behaved insolently (Deut 18:22). 21 The very criterion of authenticity proposed 19.  On this prophetic role in comparative context, see R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 89–134; T. W. Overholt, Channels of Prophecy: The Social Dynamics of Prophetic Activity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989). 20.  The exact means or judicial apparatus by which the individual would be held accountable for such a capital offense are not spelled out. By comparison, in the appendix to the legislation of Leviticus 20, an Israelite who is determined to have a ‘ghost’ (‫)אוב‬ or ‘divining spirit’ (‫ )ידעני‬is to be executed through stoning (Lev 20:27). 21.  The community should therefore “have no fear of him” or ‘of it’ (‫ ;ממנו‬Deut 18:22).

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in Deuteronomy presupposes a basic understanding of prophecy as foretelling. 22 The legislation does not state that prognostication is the only type of utterance that may emanate from the mouthpiece of Yhwh, but it is the type specifically addressed in the text. If a prophet’s prediction does not come true, he is not a prophet. Thus defined, the prophetic office becomes one of the standard institutions in Israelite polity. 23

III.  Who Is a Prophet? Who Is Not a Prophet? Before analyzing how the activities of various prophets who appear in Israelite and Judahite history relate to the dictates of Deuteronomic law, one should clarify what prophets are (and are not). The issue, here, is not that Chronicles presents a variety of hitherto unknown pro tem prophetic figures as populating monarchic history. 24 These sorts of characters are not professional prophets and receive no prophetic label but appear on the scene to prophesy on given occasions for the benefit of the larger body politic. 25 Distinguishing between professional and nonprofessional (or temporary) prophets does not settle the question of what constitutes a prophet. The legislation in Deuteronomy simply speaks of the ‫‘ נביא‬prophet’ whom Yhwh will appoint to replace Moses, but Chronicles employs a number of terms to refer to prophecy. In Chronicles, a range of different prophetic figures speak explicitly on behalf of the deity, including the ‫‘ נביא‬prophet’, the ‫‘ ראה‬seer’, the ‫‘ חזה‬visionary’, and the ‫‘ איׁש האלהים‬man of God’. 26 Given the usage of various terms, should any of these figures be excluded from the prophetic rubric? It is interesting that, in the reign of an individual monarch, the monarch may be faced with more than one type of prophet or prophetic figure. Indeed, the kings who 22.  On these issues, especially as they relate to the discussions about true and false prophecy in Jeremiah, see C. J. Sharp, Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah (OTS; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003). 23.  To be sure, the authors of the final verses of Deuteronomy aver that “there never did rise again in Israel a prophet like Moses (‫)כמשה‬, whom Yhwh knew face to face” (Deut 34:10). In this way, the incomparability of the Mosaic prophetic persona is defined and preserved for posterity. Nevertheless, the writers do not deny that there were such prophets after Moses. The use of the incomparability formula assumes, in fact, that there were prophets: see my “‘There Was None like Him’: Incomparability in the Books of Kings,” CBQ 54 (1992) 411–31. 24.  Schniedewind, Word of God, 31–162; idem, “Prophets and Prophecy,” 204–24. 25.  The appearance of temporary prophets reinforces the message that prophetic figures are essentially conduits of messages sent from on high. The fact that most of these individuals are neither people of great importance nor figures who have received special training in the prophetic arts demonstrates that prophecy is intimately tied to the phenomenon of divine revelation (Knoppers, “Democratizing Revelation,” 397–98). 26. J. Kegler, “Prophetengestalten im deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk und in den Chronikbüchern: Ein Beitrag zur Kompositions- und Redaktionsgeschichte der Chronikbücher,” ZAW 105 (1993) 484–97.

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encounter a ‘prophet’ (‫ )נביא‬usually, but not always, encounter no more than one prophet (defined as a ‫)נביא‬. 27 If a monarch encounters more than one prophetic figure, the other prophetic figure will most likely be a ‘seer’ (‫)ראה‬, a ‘visionary’ (‫)חזה‬, or a ‘man of God’ (‫)איׁש האלהים‬. 28 The ‘visionary’ (‫)חזה‬ tends to be associated with the royal court. 29 Thus we read about the ‘visionary of the king’ (‫ ;חזה המלך‬1 Chr 25:5; 2 Chr 29:25; 35:15) and of the ‘visionary of David’ (‫ ;חזה דויד‬1 Chr 21:9). Some have seen in this distribution of prophetic figures an implicit hierarchy in which the ‫‘ נביא‬prophet’ is the highest-order prophetic figure. 30 The deliberate use of varied terminology is certainly fascinating, but it should be remembered that varied usage is already found in some of the Chronicler’s sources. 31 Of the titles discussed, “prophet(s)” is by far the most commonly employed. 32 But if the terms ‫נביא‬, ‫ראה‬, and ‫ חזה‬referred to distinctly prophetic 27.  Micheel, Prophetenüberlieferungen, 19, 68–69. The pattern is not followed, however, in all instances. In the reign of David, both Samuel and Nathan are referred to as prophets (1 Chr 11:3; 17:1–15), while both Gad and Heman are referred to as visionaries (1 Chr 21:9–13, 18–19; 25:5). One could conceivably argue that there are so many prophetic figures appearing in David’s reign that the author ran out of prophetic labels, but no ‘man of God’ (‫ )איׁש האלהים‬appears during David’s tenure. 28.  King Zakkur of Hamath and Luʾath recounts how Baal-shamayn answered his plaintive plea “through seers” (ḥzyn) and “through messengers” (ʾddn; KAI 202.11–12). The extrabiblical inscriptions from Deir ʿAllā refer to Balaam as ‘a seer of the gods’ (ḥzh ʾlhn), who saw a ‘vision’ (mḥzh), because the gods came to him (I 1; J. Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ʿAllā [HSM 31; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984] 26–27). In biblical sources, Balaam is not given a prophetic title (Num 22:5–24:25; 31:8, 16; Deut 23:5–6; Josh 24:9–10; Mic 6:5; Neh 13:2), although he is once referred to as ‘the augur’ (‫ ;הקוסם‬Josh 13:22). In the New Testament, he is once called a ‘prophet’ (προφήτης; 2 Pet 2:15–16) but is otherwise untitled (Jude 11; Rev 2:14), There may be a reference to a ‘vision’ (ḥzn) in one of the Lachish letters (21.B.4), but the context is quite fragmentary. Renz prefers to read yzn (HAE 1:437). An unnamed ‘prophet’ (hnbʾ) is mentioned in one of the Lachish letters (3 rev. 4). Either this prophet or another with a Yahwistic name ([y]hw hnbʾ) appears in another Lachish letter (16.A.5). 29. Z. Zevit, “A Misunderstanding at Bethel: Amos VII 12–17,” VT 25 (1975) 783–90. 30. Thus Micheel, Prophetenüberlieferungen, 71–82. Others have thought of a basic taxonomy in which temporary prophets are understood to be akin to (postmonarchic) inspired interpreters. See, for instance, Schniedewind, Word of God, 31–162. The evidence is, however, complex. See my review in JJS 49 (1998) 133–35. 31. Recently, M. J. de Jong, Isaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets (VTSup 117; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 318–44. 32.  For ‘prophet’ (‫)נביא‬, see 1 Chr 17:1; 29:29; 2 Chr 9:29; 12:5, 15; 13:22; 15:8; 18:6; 21:12; 25:15, 16; 26:22; 28:9; 29:25; 32:20, 32; 34:22 (prophetess); 35:18; 36:12. For “prophets,” see 1 Chr 25:1 (Kethiv); 2 Chr 18:5, 11, 12, 19, 21; 20:20; 24:19; 29:25; 36:16. On the particular usage in 1 Chr 16:22, see my I Chronicles 10–29 (AB 12A; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 647.

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and nonprophetic figures at one time in Israel’s past, those distinctions seem to have largely disappeared by the time of the Chronicler’s writing. That this is so can be seen by the use of different terminology to refer to the same prophetic figure. Thus, Samuel is called both a seer (‫ ;ראה‬1 Chr 9:22, 26:28, 29:29) and a prophet (‫ ;נביא‬2 Chr 35:18). Heman appears as one prophesying (Qere 1 Chr 25:1; Kethiv ‘prophet’, ‫)נביא‬, a ‘visionary’ (‫ ;חזה‬1 Chr 25:5), and a ‘seer’ (‫;ראה‬ 1 Chr 9:22, 26:28, 29:29). 33 The work brands Shemaiah a ‘man of God’ in one context (‫ ;איש־האלהים‬2 Chr 11:2) and a ‘prophet’ in another (‫ ;נביא‬2 Chr 12:5–8). That the first reference (‫ ;איש־האלהים‬2 Chr 11:2) is derived from the Chronicler’s biblical source (1 Kgs 12:22) while the second is the Chronicler’s own suggests that the author construed Shemaiah the man of God as a prophet (2 Chr 12:5). Another example of varied terminology involves Iddo in the early Judahite monarchy. The writing describes him as a ‘visionary’ (‫ ;חזה‬2 Chr 12:15) in the reign of Rehoboam and as a ‘prophet’ (‫ ;נביא‬2 Chr 13:22) in the reign of Abijah. In Chronicles, then, the title ‫ נביא‬is the most common, but the titles ‘prophet’ (‫)נביא‬, ‘seer’ (‫)ראה‬, ‘visionary’( ‫)חזה‬, and ‘man of God’ (‫איׁש‬ ‫ )האלהים‬are functionally interchangeable. 34 The one possible exception to this pattern is the usage of ‫איׁש האלהים‬, since this phrase can designate a prophetic figure but need not necessarily do so. 35 The use of ‫איׁש האלהים‬, for instance, as a title for Moses does not entail that the writers employing the terminology thought of Moses as a prophet. 36

IV.  Back to the Classics: Deuteronomic-Style Prophets in the Monarchy It is well known that the Chronicler had a high esteem for a number of earlier writings in Israelite tradition. Living in a world that valued antiquity, early interpreters considered the writings of the Pentateuch a prestigious, classical literature to be reapplied in their own postclassical age. 37 To be sure, these 33. The others depicted as prophesying (so Qere 1 Chr 25:1) or as ‘prophets’ (Kethiv; ‫ ;נביאים‬1 Chr 25:1) are Asaph, elsewhere termed a ‘visionary’ (‫ ;חזה‬2 Chr 33:18, 35:15), and Jeduthun, elsewhere termed a ‘visionary’ (‫ ;חזה‬2 Chr 35:15). See further pp. 188–191 below. 34.  That this is so may also be indicated by the translations found in the LXX. The title ‫ חזה‬is sometimes rendered προφητής (2 Chr 19:2, 29:25, 33:18, 35:15) as is the title ‫( ראה‬1 Chr 26:28; 2 Chr 16:7, 10). 35.  Schniedewind, Word of God, 49–51. 36. See Schniedewind (ibid., 196), although it is possible that the appositive ‫איׁש‬ ‫ האלהים‬designates Moses as a prophetic lawgiver (1 Chr 23:14, 2 Chr 30:16, Ezra 3:2). See the comments of E. M. Dörrfuss, Mose in den Chronikbüchern (BZAW 219; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994) 165–67, 234–35. The title ‫ איׁש האלהים‬is also applied to David in Chronicles (2 Chr 8:14) and in Nehemiah (12:24, 36; ibid., 193–96). 37.  There is also some evidence that the Pentateuch (or proto-Pentateuch) was understood by the author, as it was by a number of other early interpreters, to be basically

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older works presented significant problems for interpretation, especially because they dated to different times, stemmed from a variety of distinct authors, and spoke with many different voices. Such complications notwithstanding, the Chronicler’s fundamental respect for and orientation toward the past are critical considerations for understanding his literary craft. The legislation in Deuteronomy affecting prophecy is a case in point. The impact of this material on the presentation in Chronicles is, I argue, quite significant. 38 Although Chronicles innovates beyond Deuteronomy, as we shall see, in many important respects Chronicles is more indebted to this earlier work than is generally recognized. I begin this section with some observations on the way that prophecy as an institution relates structurally to other institutions in society. The discussion then proceeds to a brief summary of the way the kinds of prophecy depicted within the work bear affinities with the basic pattern outlined in Deuteronomy. In conformity with the divinely instituted provisions announced by Moses in Deuteronomy, prophecy represents a divinely authorized institution in Israelite polity. Appearing in every era and sub-era of the monarchy, prophecy permeates the history of the united and divided kingdoms. The work does not posit any competitions or training sessions for the prophetic vocation. 39 Rather, the fact that a succession of prophets appear throughout the monarchy results from repeated divine interventions in the life of Israel. Yhwh periodically endows the body politic with individuals who deliver his word, whether in oral or in written form. 40 Divine election is evidently the critical factor in establishing a single work: I. L. Seeligmann, “The Beginnings of Midrash in the Book of Chronicles,” Tarbiz 49 (1980) 14–32 [Hebrew] (repr. and trans. as “Anfänge der Midraschexegese in der Chronik,” in his Gesammelte Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel (FAT 41; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 31–54); M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). See also my “Parallel Torahs and Inner-Scriptural Interpretation: The Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs in Historical Perspective,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (ed. T. Dozeman, K. Schmid, and B. Schwartz; forthcoming). In the view of J. R. Shaver, the Torah scroll of the Chronicler (understood to be the author of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah) was greater than the canonical Pentateuch: Torah and the Chronicler’s History Work (BJS 196; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). This is a point to be debated in another setting. 38.  The focus here is on the links with Deuteronomy. For an overview of Chronistic prophecy in general, see my “Democratizing Revelation,” 391–405. 39.  Although, the presence of such guilds and prophetic families may have been overemphasized in the recent history of interpreting Kings: D. T. Lamb, “‘A Prophet Instead of You’ (1 Kings 19.16): Elijah, Elisha and Prophetic Succession,” in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; LHBOTS [JSOTSup] 531; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 172–87. 40.  References to specific prophetic writings are usually found within concluding regnal formulas. These citations are not incidental notices but form part of a larger effort on the part of the author to underscore the gravity of particular reigns: D. Glatt-Gilad, “Regnal Formulae as a Historiographic Device in the Book of Chronicles,” RB 108

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who becomes a prophet. In one setting, the work explicitly commends the intimate linkage between prophecy and the divine. During an international crisis, King Jehoshaphat declares to the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem: “Trust (‫ )האמינו‬in Yhwh your God and you will be entrusted (‫ ;)ותאמנו‬trust (‫)האמינו‬ in his prophets (‫ )בנביאיו‬and you will succeed” (‫ ;והצליחו‬2 Chr 20:20). 41 When the people trust Yhwh’s prophets, they trust Yhwh himself. 42 Prophets may serve (or not) in the royal court, but they generally do not do the king’s bidding. 43 Kings and queens do not summon prophets; rather, prophets (in the Chronistic Sondergut) appear on the scene unsolicited. 44 Prophecy represents a vital pillar of the larger Israelite polity, providing an independent check on the activities of king and people alike (e.g., 2 Chr 12:1–5). Ignoring a prophetic message is never a good idea (e.g., 2 Chr 33:10–11, 18). Blaming the messenger for the message is even worse (e.g., 2 Chr 16:10–12, 24:20–25, 25:16). In keeping with the fact that the stipulations of Deuteronomy are directed toward Israel as a whole, the Chronistic seers often speak to both king and people. 45 However, prophets do not find themselves encumbered or compromised by their relationships with laypeople. There are no instances in the work in which prophets are fed or sustained by ordinary people (cf. 2 Kgs 4:8–44). Prophets are national leaders in the sense that they represent Yhwh to the people and their leaders, but as spokespersons of the deity they do not normally function as royal consultants. Most prophetic messages are unsolicited. Seers, visionaries, and men of God exhibit a certain distance from royalty, community (2001) 184–209. See also Kegler, “Prophetengestalten,” 487; Amit, “Role of Prophecy,” 80–101. 41. The source text in Isaiah (7:9) puts things negatively, “If you do not trust (‫)תאמינו‬, indeed you will not be entrusted (‫)תאמנו‬,” but the basic message remains the same. The citation of Isaiah (late-eighth century) by Jehoshaphat in the mid-ninth century is, of course, anachronistic, but it underscores the influence of written texts on the Chronistic perspective toward prophecy (Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 796–97; H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles [NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982] 33, 299). 42.  The point of this text is not simply the affirmation of prophecy in general but, rather, the affirmation of the prophets sent by Yhwh (“his prophets”). There does not seem to be a conflict, therefore, with the stance on prophecy found in Deuteronomy. For a different view, see Japhet, Ideology, 181–83. 43.  The one clear counterexample to this pattern is the institution of musical prophecy associated with the Jerusalem temple (see §V below). 44.  On the importance of paying special attention to the Chronistic Sondergut, see L. C. Jonker, “Who Constitutes Society? Yehud’s Self-Understanding in the Late Persian Era as reflected in the Books of Chronicles,” JBL 127 (2008) 706–7; as well as Jonker’s essay in this volume. One also must do justice, of course, to the writer’s careful recontextualization and reshaping of older material found in his Vorlage, but the new material added in Chronicles may provide particular insight into motifs that the writer wished to stress. 45.  Japhet, Ideology, 417–28.

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leadership, and the populace at large. Prophets typically arrive on the scene, deliver their messages, and leave. As spokespersons on behalf of the divine realm, the prophets have a mediating status that is unidirectional. 46 In some of the classical prophetic writings (e.g., Jeremiah), the mediatory function of the prophet is bidirectional. 47 The spokesperson for the God of Israel laments his condition and that of the people (Jer 11:18–23, 12:1–6, 15:10–21, 17:14–18, 18:18–23, 20:7–13, 20:14–18). His petitions hold both his persecutors and the deity to account (e.g., Jer 11:20, 12:1–6, 14:13–22). Indeed, the intercessory role of the so-called “mourning prophet” constitutes one of the sub-themes in the development of Jeremiah’s ministry. When Yhwh instructs Jeremiah to cease interceding on behalf of the people, this is a significant event with dire implications for the future of the Judahite Kingdom (Jer 11:14–17). Yhwh even announces to Jeremiah that, were Moses and Samuel to stand before him, he still would not show his favor “to this people” (Jer 15:1). The divine pronouncement assumes a long history of prophetic intercession before the time of Jeremiah, but this sort of intercessory role for prophets largely does not exist in Chronicles. The work features a number of critical instances in which kings appeal to Yhwh on behalf of the body politic (e.g., 1  Chr 21:17, 29:10–19; 2 Chr 14:10, 20:5–12). But the same does not hold for prophets. In line with the basic picture presented in Deuteronomy, prophets do not normally intercede on behalf of royalty, priests, Levites, and the people. 48 We have seen that Deuteronomy polemicizes against certain kinds of deductive divination, labeling these prophetic activities as reflective of the abominable practices of the aboriginal nations. The writers of Deuteronomy offer instead the model of a prophet as the mouthpiece of God, who transmits messages relayed to him from on high. The typology of prophecy found in Deuteronomy influences the Chronistic presentation of prophecy remarkably. As in Deuteronomy, Yhwh forbids necromancy, augury, sorcery, and a range of mantic behaviors. 49 Even signs, portents, strange clothing, frenzied behavior, 46.  Monarchs are not subordinated to prophets in Chronicles the way they appear to be in Samuel–Kings (Amit, “Role of Prophecy,” 94, 99). 47.  Admittedly, the issue of the rise of prophetic books, as opposed to the inscripturation of individual accounts of prophetic utterances, is a topic by itself (M. Nissinen, “How Prophecy Became Literature,” SJOT 19 [2005] 153–72; E. Ben Zvi, “The Concept of Prophetic Books and Its Historical Setting,” in The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud [ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2009] 73–95). 48.  There is one exception in which Isaiah and Hezekiah together petition the deity “and cry out to the heavens” in response to the crisis precipitated by Sennacherib’s shocking invasion of Judah (2 Chr 32:20). Yet, on this issue, see Amit, “Role of Prophecy,” 91–92. 49.  This is a very important consideration, but it lies beyond the scope of this essay. In any case, forms of illicit prophetic behavior such as these do not loom large in the

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and dramatic actions are rare. 50 Thus, for example, the Isaianic sign given to Hezekiah in Kings (2 Kgs 20:1–11) becomes a divinely given sign to Hezekiah in Chronicles (2 Chr 32:24). Symbolic actions feature prominently in a variety of prophetic narratives. 51 These dramatic performances constitute more than good public theater. They are critical to understanding the accompanying prophecies themselves. 52 There is an example of a symbolic action in one of the passages borrowed from Kings (1 Kgs 22:1–38//2 Chr 18:1–34), but it relates to the behavior of false prophets. Symbolic actions are conspicuously absent from the narratives about seers, men of God, prophets, and visionaries in the Chronistic Sondergut. Prophets in Chronicles do not perform miracles. 53 Some of the monarchic prophets (e.g., Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah) are well known for their passionate denunciations of economic exploitation and social injustice, but the prophetic materials in Chronicles, like those in Deuteronomy, are not occupied with concerns of this sort. Not a few prophetic texts depict the prophets as particularly endowed by the deity to see things (visions, new realities) that ordinary people are incapable of seeing. 54 The work contains many ‘seers’ (‫ ;ראים‬1 Chr 9:22, 26:28, 29:29; 2 Chr 16:7, 10; 29:8; 30:7) and ‘visionaries’ (‫;חזים‬1 Chr 21:9, 25:5, 29:29; 2 Chr 9:29; 12:15; 19:2; 29:25, 30; 33:18; 35:15), but there are no cases in the Chronistic Sondergut in which seers dream dreams and visionaries see visions. There are many instances in ancient Near Eastern literature in which prophets distinguish themselves by a special proficiency in oneiromancy, astronomy, augury, or extispicy. 55 The Chronistic prophets exhibit no such technical skills of deductive science. There are many instances in the ancient Greek world in Chronistic depiction of the monarchy. The focus is on the positive. See my overview, “Democratizing Revelation,” 394–95. 50.  If they appear, they are almost always appear in material drawn from the author’s Vorlage (J. Kegler, “Prophetengestalten,” 485–97). On prophetic behaviors of this sort in other literary and cultural contexts, see B. Becking, “The Prophets as Persons,” in Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices: Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Personalities (ed. G. Glas et al.; Dordrecht: Springer, 2007) 53–63. 51.  E.g., 1 Kgs 11:29–39; 2 Kgs 13:14–19; Isa 7:1–17, 20:1–6; Jer 16:1–17:7, 27:1– 28:17, 35:1–19, 43:8–13; Ezek 4:1–9, 12:1–7, 21:23–37, 24:15–27, 37:15–28. 52. J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1962) 165–73. 53.  But one should not think simply of a straight historical trajectory through the centuries in which the miraculous becomes increasingly downplayed. On the contrary, prophetically induced miracles and the prophetic access to the preternatural are celebrated in Ben Sira’s ancestral hall of fame (46:4–5, 17–18, 20; 48:2–10, 12–15, 21, 23, 25). 54.  So, e.g., 2 Kgs 8:13; Jer 24:1–10, 38:20–23; Ezek 11:25, 40:1–4; Amos 7:1, 4, 7; 8:1; Hab 1:3; Zech 2:3, 3:1. 55. M. Nissinen, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources (SAA 7; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998); idem, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (SBLWAW12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).

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which prophetic figures exhibit proficiency in intuitive divination, defined as a special ability to perceive more acutely or deeply than others do. Such an unusual capacity has sometimes been referred to as a sixth sense or a second sight. 56 But the ‘seers’ (‫ )ראים‬and ‘visionaries’ (‫ )חזים‬of Chronicles, in spite of their names, do not overtly display these special talents. The remarkable consistency within the Chronistic presentation of prophecy hardly seems accidental. It reveals a concerted attempt to reshape the prophetic image according to a certain set of preconceived norms. The highly stylized nature of the narratives and speeches suggests that the writer wished to recast the prophetic legacy within the history of the Judahite Kingdom in a most fundamental way. Particularly striking is the absence of normal prophetic behaviors attested in the classical prophetic writings and in the Deuteronomistic version of Samuel–Kings from the writer’s own work. 57 In his peculiar re-formation of the monarchic era, the Chronicler redefines prophetic orthopraxis and heteropraxis. Deuteronomy is clearly not the only influence in this reworking of the past, but it seems to have had a formative impact on the author’s point of view. The influence from Deuteronomy also may be seen in a positive way. Chronicles construes Yahwistic prophecy as inherently a verbal phenomenon that is directed toward all Israelites, no matter their rank, lineage, or position. 58 In Chronicles, as in Deuteronomy, prophets function as the mouthpieces of God. The stress falls entirely on the communications of the seers and not on their idiosyncratic experiences, social pedigrees, technical skills, or private lives. 59 Rather than rely on mystical experiences, fantastic dreams, or extraordinary talent, seers rely on the deity to speak to them. Not a few poems in the prophetic writings are lengthy, dense, and highly allusive. Similarly, messages from on high in ancient Neo-Assyrian and Greek contexts may be mysterious and difficult to interpret. 60 In contrast, the messages delivered in Chronicles are clear, direct, and unambiguous. In some prophetic writings, such as Jeremiah, the battle between true and false prophecy features as a major theme. 61 The tension between the two is also evident in one of the passages that Chronicles borrows from Kings (2 Chr 18:1–34 || 1 Kgs 22:1–38), but it is not otherwise a significant motif in the work. Many prophets, seers, and visionaries are attested in Chronicles who do not appear in Samuel–Kings. Because prophetic appearances punctuate the history of 56. A. Lange, “Greek Seers and Israelite-Jewish Prophets,” VT 57 (2007) 461–82. 57.  Willi, Chronik als Auslegung, 216–44; Begg, “Classical Prophets,” 100–101. 58.  On the emphasis on popular (in addition to royal) culpability, see the important treatment of Japhet, Ideology, 85–198; idem, I and II Chronicles, 14–23. 59. Idem, Ideology, 176–91. 60. H. Huffmon, “The Oracular Process: Delphi and the Near East,” VT 57 (2007) 457. 61.  C. J. Sharp, Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah (OTS; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003).

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the monarchy, many kings experience some sort of prophetic engagement. This is especially true of good kings, such as David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, and Hezekiah, but it is also sometimes true of errant monarchs. However, none of these new figures advocates worshiping and serving other gods (cf. Deut 13:2–3, 6). There are no false prophets in the Chronistic Sondergut. That the new (or reconfigured) seers, visionaries, and men of God appearing in the work are all authentic prophetic figures accentuates the positive, effectively creating a different prophetic legacy from the legacy known in Samuel–Kings. In conformity with the criterion of authenticity advanced in Deuteronomy, the predictions made by Chronistic visionaries always come true. 62 The messages conveyed by the prophets, whether professional or temporary, display much consistency, in spite of the many changes that occur in the evolution of Israel. The themes promoted largely comport with and exemplify Chronistic theology. 63 In times of tumultuous change or regression, seers uphold the traditional standards of the community (as defined within the writing itself). In Deuteronomy, the divine promise to provide successors to Moses is not delivered to one particular tribe only but to the people a whole (Deut 18:15, 18). Prophecy is the patrimony of the entire nation. As such, the divine pledge could be fulfilled in any part of Israel. Given the Chronicler’s pan-Israelite emphasis, it comes as no surprise that the work features a number of northern prophets (e.g., 2 Chr 16:7–9, 19:2–3, 20:34), whose messages can take oral or written form (2 Chr 21:12–15). 64 Some of these prophets are paralleled in Kings, but others are not. That Chronicles adds northern prophetic figures to prophets attested in Kings is significant, suggesting that the political divide that developed between northern and southern realms could be ignored if the 62. I. Kalimi, Zur Geschichtsschreibung des Chronisten (BZAW 226; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995) 143–48; Z. Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London: Continuum, 2001) 504–6. On the same motif at work in the Deuteronomistic work, see G. von Rad, “The Deuteronomic Theology of History in I and II Kings,” in his Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) 205–21; H. Weippert, “Geschichten und Geschichte: Verheissung und Erfüllung im deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk,” in Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991) 116–31 [ET: “‘Histories’ and ‘History’: Promise and Fulfillment in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: The Deuteronomistic History in Recent Thought (ed. G. N. Knoppers and J. G. McConville; SBTS 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000) 47–61]. On the possible complications to the outworking of the prophecy-fulfillment schema, see further below, pp. 182–183. 63.  A. C. Welch, The Work of the Chronicler (The Schweich Lectures 1938; London: Oxford University Press, 1939) 42–54; Micheel, Prophetenüberlieferungen, 75– 82; M. A. Throntveit, When Kings Speak: Royal Speech and Royal Prayer in Chronicles (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 127–29; Kegler, “Prophetengestalten,” 492–95. 64. Elijah sends his oracle south via letter (B. J. Diebner, “Überlegungen zum ‘Brief des Elia’ [2 Chr 21,12–15],” Henoch 9 [1987] 199–227).

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need arose to proclaim a divinely authorized prophetic message to a specific situation (e.g., 2 Chr 28:9–11). 65 Indeed, the Chronistic insistence that seers, visionaries, and men of God populated the entire monarchy effectively transforms the Deuteronomistic version of history into a version of the past that exhibits much closer conformity with the prophetic succession model advanced in Deuteronomy. In analyzing the prophetic office in the constitutional theocracy of Deuteronomy, we saw that the authors employ the criteria of fulfillment and non­ fulfillment as a test of true prophecy. But prophecy-fulfillment is hardly the only model of prophetic communication in Chronicles. Because the prophetic task is to inform, encourage, warn, and rebuke, the range of prophetic responsibilities extends beyond simple prognostication. Words of admonition, encouragement, and advice are also instances of divine communication given through the prophetic medium. In this respect, arguments for the dependence of Chronicles on the prophetic books (e.g., Jer 7:1–34, 25:4–5, 26:1–6; Ezek 33:1–6) have much merit. Indeed, prophecies appearing in the Chronistic Sondergut are often punctuated with learned expositions or quotations of earlier biblical texts. The prophetic responsibility to warn of the negative consequences of following a certain course of action is particularly prominent. 66 The call to repentance is part of the prophet’s responsibility to the body politic. 67 In examining the adjustments made in the light of major prophetic traditions, such as those of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, one may discern a potential problem with the prophecy-fulfillment typology itself. Presumably, the point of rendering a negative prediction (whether privately or publicly) is to inform the prophet’s audience of the negative consequences of their actions. In this respect, the prophecy is also ipso facto a warning. If the target audience responds positively to the prophet’s verdict by repenting and changing course, they may thereby avoid the punishment decreed by the deity. In this case, the prophet 65.  Japhet, Ideology, 267–325; H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 87–118; R. Braun, “A Reconsideration of the Chronicler’s Attitude toward the North,” JBL 96 (1977) 59–62. 66.  See 2 Chr 11:2–4; 24:19; 25:9, 15; 28:9–11; 33:10, 18; 36:15; and the larger discussion of Japhet, Ideology, 184–90. This function of prophecy is also evident in one of the latest layers of Kings (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:13–14, 22–23). See P. A. Viviano, “2 Kings 17: A Rhetorical and Form-Critical Analysis,” CBQ 49 (1987) 548–59; M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (New York: Routledge, 1995); E. Ben Zvi, “‘The Prophets’: Generic Prophets and Their Role in the Construction of the Image of the ‘Prophets of Old’ within the Postmonarchic Readership of the Book of Kings,” ZAW 16 (2004) 555–67; idem, “Are There Any Bridges Out There? How Wide Was the Conceptual Gap between the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 59–86. 67.  Willi, Chronik als Auslegung, 217–23.

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may be judged to have performed his task admirably. Yet by succeeding, the prophet also fails. Having tendered a prophecy, the prophet may be deemed suspect, because his prophecy has failed to come true. By the criterion of historical falsification stipulated in Deuteronomy—namely, fulfillment—his prophecy “was not spoken by Yhwh,” and he has delivered his message ‘insolently’ (‫ ;בזדון‬Deut 18:22). As a result, Israelites “should have no fear of him.” 68 The construction of a prophet who forewarns and calls both king and people to repent is, however, not ultimately at odds with the prophetic paradigm of Deuteronomy—at least, as that paradigm has been developed and modified in Chronicles. To begin with, public warnings, reprimands, and the like are also instances of verbal messages sent from the divine realm. Predictions do not enjoy a monopoly on divine speech. Inasmuch as Moses’ speeches contain occasional calls to repentance (e.g., Deut 4:29–31, 30:1–10), it is not inconsistent for the speeches of Moses’ successors to follow course. 69 Second, the prophetic verdicts, injunctions, and warnings appearing in Chronicles have been carefully constructed to avoid the kind of conflict between prophecy and fulfillment outlined above. Each kind of oracle has its own function to play within its literary context. The call to repentance, the public reprimand, the stern warning, the summons to action, and the forecasts of weal and woe have all been carefully integrated into a larger repertoire of internally consistent prophetic behaviors. To take one example, the nonsynoptic speech of the northern prophet Oded to his victorious Israelite forces upon their arrival in Samaria with some 200,000 of their southern kin in tow poignantly addresses the future, but it does not constitute an apodictic prediction (2 Chr 28:8–11). Oded’s parenesis on northern (mis)conduct reinterprets the Israelite triumph as stemming from Judahite regression, rather than from Israelite superiority. Accordingly, the prophet instructs his northern audience to “return the prisoners which you captured from your kin, because the fierce wrath of Yhwh is upon you” (2 Chr 28:11). The threat from the good Samarian to his Israelite counterparts is explicitly conditional. The point of the confrontation is to counsel the army against incurring further divine wrath. That the northerners respond positively and compassionately to the prophetic reprimand averts a probable disaster (2 Chr 28:12–15). To take a second example, the unparalleled letter of Elijah to the southern monarch Jehoram indicts him for various infractions and announces that Yhwh is about to inflict Jehoram and his people, in general, with significant punishment and Jehoram, in particular, with a severe bowel disorder that will 68.  Or ‘of it’ (‫ ;ממנו‬Deut 18:22). 69.  The latter passage is alluded to and recast in Hezekiah’s Passover invitation (2 Chr 30:6–9) sent out to both southern and northern Israel (G. N. Knoppers, “What Has Mt. Zion to Do with Mt. Gerizim? A Study in the Early Relations between the Jews and the Samaritans in the Persian Period,” SR 34 [2005] 307–36).

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lead to his death (2  Chr 21:12–15). In this case, there is a specific prediction of calamities with no conditions attached. The text does not mention any response by the king—merely notices that the prophecies of doom were fulfilled (2 Chr 21:16–19). The Chronicler has greatly expanded and carefully refashioned his source text from 2 Kgs 8:20–22 according to a strict prophecy-fulfillment typology. To take a final and more complex example, the reworking of Shishaq’s invasion of Judah (1 Kgs 14:25–28) includes a nonsynoptic oracle sent through Shemaiah announcing to Rehoboam and the officers of Judah: “As for you, you have abandoned me (‫)אתם עזבתם אתי‬, and so, as for me, I have abandoned you (‫ )ואף־אני עזבתי אתכם‬to Shishaq” (2 Chr 12:5). 70 In response to this general announcement of divine punishment, Rehoboam and the officers of Israel ‘humble themselves’ (‫ )ויכנעו‬and declare Yhwh to be ‘righteous’ (‫ ;צדיק‬2 Chr 12:6). The result is a divinely decreed amelioration of the punishment set for Judah, but not its elimination. In other words, the basic prophecy-fulfillment typology holds, but the effects of the disaster decreed for Judah are adjusted in accordance with the people’s repentance. The tempering or postponement of divine judgment in response to repentance or good deeds complicates but does not abrogate the outworking of a negative prophecy. The Judahites still come to know the difference between servitude to Yhwh and servitude to “the kingdoms of the lands” (2 Chr 12:12). To sum up, Chronicles integrates a variety of prophetic rhetorical forms known from earlier writings into his account of monarchic history: the prognostication, the call to repentance, the solemn warning, the oracle of deliverance, and so forth. 71 In this respect and others, he moves beyond the patterns set by his major source (Samuel–Kings). The messages communicated by prophetic figures are, therefore, much more diverse than the prophecy-fulfillment rubric allows. Nevertheless, the work embraces the basic typology found in Deuteronomy of the prophet serving as the mouthpiece of the deity. In other words, the indebtedness of Chronicles to additional works, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, may be affirmed without negating the foundational dependence on Deuteronomy (at least, with respect to the issue discussed here). When the prophet does Yhwh’s bidding and fulfills his proper role, Yhwh holds Israelites responsible for how they treat his spokesperson (2 Chr 16:7–12, 18:16–34, 25:15–24, 36:15; cf. Deut 18:19). In the Chronicler’s heavily stylized portrait of the past, the prophets are not the primary focus of the story, but they make history and are a pivotal component of corporate life. 70. W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher (HAT 21; Tübingen: Mohr, 1955) 233–35; Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 673–81. 71.  S. J. De Vries provides comprehensive lists and definitions (1 and 2 Chronicles [FOTL; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989] 426–37).

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V.  “The Words of Necho from the Mouth of God”: Complications and Exceptions to the Deuteronomic Model We have been examining the way prophecy’s relations to other societal institutions in Chronicles are reminiscent of the larger pattern established in the Deuteronomic constitution of office-holders. We have also seen that the Chronistic understanding of the prophet as the spokesperson for the divine realm embodies many features of the Deuteronomic image of the prophet as the “voice of Yhwh.” In what follows, it will be useful to discuss briefly some significant complications and exceptions to this hypothesis. I shall begin by examining a couple of instances of divinely-authored messages sent through non-Israelite intermediaries that do not carry a prophetic label. At the outset, it is quite important to recognize that prophets are not the only figures, who speak on behalf of the divine realm in Chronicles. What all falls and does not fall under the categories of prophecy and pro tem prophecy is a difficult issue to resolve. If prophecy has to be marked by a full-time or principal vocation, the use of a formal title, such as a ‘prophet’ (‫)נביא‬, ‘seer’ (‫)ראה‬, a ‘visionary’ (‫)חזה‬, or a ‘man of God’ (‫ )איׁש האלהים‬would seem to be necessary. If temporary prophecy has to be marked by spirit possession or by the use of a specific verb, such as ‘to prophesy’ (‫ נבא‬in the Niphal or Hithpael), then certain communications cannot be labeled in any sense as prophetic. If one understands a prophetic figure as someone who speaks on behalf of the divine realm or who exhibits the gift of teaching and communicating the will of God in a given setting to a specific audience, then a number of additional speakers, including some native kings, may be labeled as temporary prophets. Indeed, there are a number of royal orations that fall within this pro tem prophetic category. 72 The existence of such speeches does not nullify the Deuteronomic criterion of prophecy, both because these kings are native Israelites and because these figures are presented as pro tem prophets, not professional. Nevertheless, they point to a more active, central, powerful, and divinely blessed royal regime than is advocated in Deuteronomy. 73 72.  J. D. Newsome, “Toward an Understanding of the Chronicler and His Purposes,” JBL 94 (1975) 203–4; M. A. Throntveit, When Kings Speak: Royal Speech and Royal Prayer in Chronicles (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 11–50; Begg, “Classical Prophets,” 102–3; Schniedewind, Word of God, 189–208; Amit, “Role of Prophets,” 86–91, 95–96. The function of certain royal speeches in Chronicles as a kind of prophecy is, however, a rather large topic and is too complex to address adequately in this context. 73.  G. N. Knoppers, “David’s Relation to Moses: The Context, Content, and Conditions of the Davidic Promises,” in King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East: Papers from the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; JSOTSup 270; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 91–118; idem, I Chronicles 1–9 (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 80–87.

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There are, however, two cases clustered near the end of the Judahite monarchy that, while lacking certain formal markers, present divine communications through irregular means. In these instances, non-Judahite monarchs claim to express the will of the deity to the Judahite king or people. 74 The question is: does the category of temporary prophecy embrace even foreign kings? 75 The Egyptian ruler Necho fulfills this sort of intermediary role during the latter reign of Josiah. The story of Josiah’s confrontation with Necho is, as a number of commentators have pointed out, quite different from the enigmatic and laconic version found in Kings. 76 Sending messengers to dissuade Josiah, Necho admonishes the Judahite monarch to cease and desist, declaring: “Hold yourself back (‫ )חדל־לך‬from God (‫)מאלהים‬, who is with me so that he might not annihilate you” (‫ ;אל־ישחיטך‬2 Chr 35:21). The pharaoh does not label himself a prophet, a seer, or a man of God, but his brief communication fits well with the contours of Yahwistic prophecy outlined in Deuteronomy and reworked in Chronicles. In Deuteronomy (18:20–22), the criterion for determining true prophecy, as opposed to false prophecy, is fulfillment or nonfulfillment. So also here, Necho’s warning to Josiah is predicated on a fulfillment/nonfulfillment basis. If Necho is correct that God is with him, and should Josiah ignore his message, Josiah will be killed (2 Chr 35:21). If Josiah manages, however, to disregard the communication without experiencing any harm to his person, he will invalidate Necho’s unambiguous claim to be on God’s side in this confrontation. In such a scenario, Josiah and the rest of the people would not need to have any fear of him (Deut 18:22). That Necho’s message is, however, regarded as a divine revelation is evident in the narrator’s comment that “he [Josiah] did not heed the words of Necho from the mouth of God” (‫;מפי אלהים‬ 74.  The focus, in this context, is on Yhwh’s employing non-native monarchs to communicate his messages to the Judahite people or their king. There are many other interesting instances of Yhwh’s employing non-native monarchs to implement his will against his own people or king (e.g., 2 Chr 12:2–8) that lie beyond the concerns of this essay. 75. E. Ben Zvi, “When the Foreign Monarch Speaks,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 209–28. 76. There are related textual issues in determining the nature and extent of the Chronicler’s Vorlage (cf. 1 Esd 1:23–31). See S. L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 184–85, 188; H. G. M. Williamson, “The Death of Josiah and the Continuing Development of the Deuteronomic History,” VT 32 (1982) 242–47; idem, “Reliving the Death of Josiah: A Reply to C. T. Begg,” VT 37 (1987) 9–15; C. T. Begg, “The Death of Josiah in Chronicles: Another View,” VT 37 (1987) 1–8; Z. Talshir, “The Three Deaths of Josiah and the Strata of Biblical Historiography (2 Kings xxiii 29–30; 2 Chronicles xxxv 20–25; 1 Esdras i 23–31),” VT 46 (1996) 213–36; A. van der Kooij, “The Death of Josiah according to 1 Esdras,” Text 19 (1998) 97–109.

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2 Chr 35:22). The speech of King Necho must be added, therefore, to the list of authentic communications from on high. There is one other prominent case in which a foreign monarch casts himself as the chosen instrument to deliver a message from the divine realm. 77 Having announced that the land enjoyed its Sabbaths during the Babylonian deportation, the book ends with an auspicious announcement of the Persian emperor Cyrus, which invites the Judahite people to return to the land and rebuild the Jerusalem temple (2 Chr 36:22–23). Again, the foreign potentate communicates forthrightly, lucidly, and concisely. As is the case with Necho’s message, the verbal announcement lacks any connection with sorcery, charms, necromancy, or augury. In Chronicles, as in Ezra (1:1–3), the royal decree is divinely authorized: “Yhwh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus (‫)העיר יהוה את־רוח כורׁש‬, king of Persia, so that he sent out a proclamation by word of mouth and in writing throughout his kingdom” (2 Chr 36:22). The notice about divine inspiration strikingly resembles other cases of spirit possession resulting in acts of temporary prophecy (e.g., 1 Chr 12:19, 28:12; 2 Chr 15:1, 24:20, 20:14). 78 Moreover, the new initiative fulfills an earlier prophecy, namely, “to complete the word of Yhwh (sent) through the mouth of Jeremiah” (2 Chr 36:22). In this way, a message from a foreign king is presented as divinely sanctioned, if not engineered. Unlike Necho, Cyrus freely employs the personal name of Israel’s God in his public communication: “Whoever among you from all of his people—may Yhwh his God be with him (‫ )מי־בכם מכל־עמו יהוה אלהיו עמו‬and let him go up” (‫ ;ויעל‬2 Chr 36:23//Ezra 1:2–3a). 79 Not only is Yhwh equated with the God of the heavens, but this God of the heavens publicly conveys his personal message to his people dispersed throughout the Persian realm by employing the voice of the highest political authority in that realm. 80 77.  I am including a discussion of this passage, because it falls within the book of Chronicles. The text is generally considered to have been borrowed from the beginning of Ezra (1:1–3), although there is disgreement about whether the passage was borrowed by the Chronicler or by a later editor. For the former option, see S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 1074–77. For the latter option, see H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 7–10; idem, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 5–15, 419; De Vries, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 11–12. 78.  For this and other reasons, Ben Zvi can speak of Chronicles as “Israelitizing” these foreign figures (“Bridges,” 78–79). 79.  The fact that the summons and encouragement in Chronicles, unlike in Ezra and in 1 Esdras, ends midsentence, “let him go up,” is no accident, because it confirms the centrality of Jerusalem in the development of international Judaism (G. N. Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9, 135–37; see also Kalimi, An Ancient Israelite Historian, 151–53). 80.  The epithet “God of heaven” is applied to Yhwh in a variety of Persian-period texts. The title appears in the decree of Cyrus (Ezra 1:2), the Aramaic correspondence (Ezra 5:11, 12; 6:9, 10), the rescript of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:21, 23), other late biblical texts (Ps 136:26; Jonah 1:9; Neh 1:4–5; 2:4, 20; Dan 2:18–19, 37, 44), the Apocrypha or Deutero-Canon (Jdt 5:8; 6:19), and the Judean documents from Elephantine (e.g.,

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In literary context, the oracles by foreigners play a strategic role in the narration of the last decades of the Judahite monarchy and the Babylonian Exile. The divinely authorized communications prepare the people (and readers) for a period in which Judean life will be dominated by foreign kings. 81 That the messages delivered by Necho and Cyrus prove to be efficacious provides one more important indication that the God of Israel could work, on occasion, for the good of his people through alien leaders. 82 Admittedly, such usage contrasts with the picture in Deuteronomy. There, the writers cast prophecy as fundamentally a native institution. Moses prophesies: “A prophet like me from your midst (‫)מקרבך‬, from your kin (‫)מאחיך‬, Yhwh your God will establish for you” (Deut 18:15). The authors brook no exceptions for outsiders. Necho and Cyrus appear, however, as temporary mouthpieces of God, rather than as regular prophets. Hence, it is possible that the writer may have seen no direct conflict. However, if this is so, one must expand the range of temporary prophets to include the occasional outsider. 83 There is one other notable exception to the pattern outlined in Deuteronomy, involving the phenomenon of cultic prophecy. In the last part of his reign, an aging David establishes a national administration to assist his son and divinely chosen successor in governing Israel and building the long-awaited central sanctuary in Jerusalem (1 Chr 22:2–29:25). 84 One of David’s preparations for constructing the temple involves the Levites Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, who serve as musicians under his rule. 85 Along with the officers of the army, AP 30.2, 27–28; 31.2; 32.3–4; 38.3, 5; 40.1). Within Chronicles, the sobriquet occurs only here. 81.  I speak of a (limited) period, because it does not seem to me that the Chronicler’s narration of his people’s past presents this sort of divinely authorized foreign rule as God’s permanent will for his people. He is careful in what he affirms and what he does not affirm. He does not speak, for example, of the kingdom of Yhwh in the hands of either Necho or Cyrus (cf. 2 Chr 13:4–7). See also M. J. Boda, “Identity and Empire, Reality and Hope in the Chronicler’s Perspective,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 249–72. 82. C. Karrer discusses this motif at some length with reference to the narration of Ezra–Nehemiah (Ringen um die Verfassung Judas: Eine Studie zu den theologisch-politischen Vorstellungen im Esra-Nehemia-Buch [BZAW 308; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001]). 83.  Or one must invent an additional category of divine revelation to account for genuine prophecies sent through non-natives. Yet, it is unclear what this would achieve. 84.  Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 843–60. 85.  As part of a major administrative reorganization and expansion in preparation for Solomon’s tenure (see J. W. Wright, “The Legacy of David in Chronicles: The Narrative Function of 1 Chronicles 23–27,” JBL 110 [1991] 229–42; idem, “The Founding Father: The Structure of the Chronicler’s David Narrative,” JBL 117 [1998] 45–59; Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 788–98).

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the founding father “set apart (‫ )בדל‬the sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun for service (‫)לעבדה‬, those prophesying (‫ )הנביאים‬to the accompaniment of lyres, harps, and cymbals” (1 Chr 25:1). 86 Because the text proceeds to refer to the “sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun” and not simply to the individuals themselves, it is evident that a regular office is being instituted. 87 In the short Levitical census that accompanies the royal appointments, we read of a chain of command involving the sons of Asaph under the direction of Asaph, who, in turn, “prophesied (‫ )הנבא‬under the direction of the king” (1 Chr 25:2). 88 Similarly, the sons of Jeduthun “were under the direction of Jeduthun, who prophesied (‫ )הנבא‬in thanksgiving and praise to Yhwh to the accompaniment of the lyre” (1 Chr 25:3). One of David’s legacies in the final stage of his reign is thus to create a regular rotation of cultic seers at the sanctuary that his divinely chosen son is commissioned to build. 89 The issue is not the fact that some Levites are in the business of prophesying. Given that Moses openly declares: “A prophet like me from your midst (‫)מקרבך‬, from your kin (‫)מאחיך‬, Yhwh your God will establish for you” (Deut 18:15), it is clear that a Levite could qualify for such an office. The Levites are, after all, “kin” to other Israelites. Nor is the issue an association with the central sanctuary. There is nothing in the laws governing prophecy prohibiting such a cultic connection. The issue is, instead, that the text in question speaks of familial succession as operative in the transmission of these prophetic offices. Unfortunately, the text does not spell out in what way the Levitical singing was a kind of prophecy. It is not clear whether: (a) temple music was the essential trigger for the origination of new prophecies (cf. 2 Kgs 3:10–19); (b) accompanied choral song resembled accompanied prophetic song (cf. 1 Sam 10:5–6); (c) accompanied choral song, as practiced by the Levitical musicians, was construed as a divine revelation to Israelites about how Yhwh 86.  In 1 Chr 25:1, I am reading with the Qere (Niphal plural participle). The Kethiv (‫ )הנביאים‬has the nominal plural form (‘the prophets’). In either case, the sons of Heman, Jeduthun, and Asaph are presented as being in the business of prophesying (Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 844). 87.  For further (somewhat variant) discussions and references, see von Rad, Ge­ schichtsbild, 98–115; idem, “Levitical Sermon,” 267–80; Petersen, Late Israelite Prophecy, 55–87; Van Rooy, “Prophet and Society,” 176–79; Schniedewind, Word of God, 163–88. 88.  On the text-critical issues in 1 Chr 25:2, see my I Chronicles 10–29, 844. 89.  J. W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Significance of Choral Music in Chronicles (JSOTSup 156; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); Van Rooy, “Prophet and Society,” 175–79; J. W. Hilber, Cultic Prophecy in the Psalms (BZAW 352; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005); D. V. Edelman, “From Prophets to Prophetic Books: The Fixing of the Divine Word,” in The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2009) 29–54.

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should be praised; or (d) choral song centered at the temple was understood to be an appropriate conduit for divine revelation. 90 The work simply does not explain the matter. 91 The case of the Levitical singers is basically the only context in which Chronicles alludes to a type of prophecy involving membership in a certain Israelite tribe or tribal phratry. As such, it could be easily dismissed as an addition to the text or as part of a light redaction by a later Chronistic editor. Nevertheless, this type of prophecy is not entirely unique to David’s reign. In the reign of the reformer Jehoshaphat, a Levite from the “sons of Asaph” named Jahaziel appears during an international crisis, the ‘spirit of Yhwh’ (‫)רוח יהוה‬ upon him, to deliver a public prophecy in the midst of a national assembly at the Jerusalem temple (2 Chr 20:14). 92 Drawing on select older war narratives (Exod 14:13–14, 1 Sam 17:47), the Asaphite counsels complete confidence in Yhwh (2 Chr 20:14–17). That Jahaziel’s declamation is commonly interpreted as an example of temporary prophecy is certainly understandable, because Jahaziel is not labeled overtly as a prophet, and his spirit possession appears to be ad hoc. But the case may be more complex. Does the spirit of Yhwh lead this Asaphite Levite to become a pro tem prophet, proclaiming an oracle during a particular situation, or does the spirit of Yhwh provide the appropriate words to an official who is already regarded as a quasi-prophetic figure? Given the context in Jerusalem and the reference to Jahaziel as belonging to the “sons of Asaph,” one cannot rule out the latter interpretation. Indeed, the unequivocal affirmation from Jahaziel is not opposed to the life of the cult but is clearly linked to the temple. 93 To this consideration may be added another. The Chronistic work occasionally contains criticism of priests and Levites (e.g., 2 Chr 36:14), but the criticism always stems from the narrator. Prophets never attack 90.  The issue also affects how early and modern interpreters have read Psalms. See L. C. Jonker, “Revisiting Psalm Headings: Second Temple Levitical Propaganda?” in Psalms and Liturgy (ed. D. J. Human and C. J. A. Vos; JSOTSup 410; London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 102–22; and S. Gillingham, “New Wine and Old Wineskins: Three Approaches to Prophecy and Psalmody,” in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; LHBOTS 531; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 370–90 (and the additional references listed in these studies). 91.  Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 856–60. 92.  Liturgically, Jahaziel’s role may be compared with that of the designate priest in war preparations who assures the people of victory (Deut 20:2–4); see my “Reform and Regression: The Chronicler’s Treatment of Jehoshaphat,” Bib 72 (1991) 500–524; idem, “Jerusalem at War in Chronicles,” in Zion, City of Our God (ed. R. S. Hess and G. J. Wenham; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999) 57–76. 93. A point stressed by D. L. Petersen, Late Israelite Prophecy: Studies in Deutero-Prophetic Literature and in Chronicles (SBLMS 23; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977) 68–77; and Huffmon, “Oracular Process,” 449–60.

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priests in Chronicles, whereas this is sometimes the case in the Prophets. The complete lack of prophetic criticism of the sacerdocy in Chronicles suggests that the great social divide commonly posited between prophets and priests (especially in the postmonarchic age) is overblown. The two may be more closely linked, in fact, than is often supposed. The Chronistic attribution of prophecy to the Levitical singers in David’s reign reappears in two other contexts with the prophetic associations of Asaph. During the cultic reforms implemented by King Hezekiah, Asaph is referred to as ‘the visionary’ (‫ ;החזה‬2 Chr 29:30). Similarly, in the context of Josiah’s cultic reforms, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun are referred to as “visionaries of the king” (2 Chr 35:15). 94 Given that these two monarchs—Hezekiah and Josiah—are presented as the two greatest reformers in the Judahite monarchy, the author is intimating that their policies recalled the classical arrangements made under David. The passages in Chronicles referring to Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun as prophetic figures bear witness to the different nuances that prophecy can take in monarchic and postmonarchic times. It seems apparent that the work recognizes some diversity in the prophetic phenomenon within ancient Israel and Judah. To be sure, the references to cultic prophecy are a subtheme and not a major theme in the book. Far and away, most of the references in the work are to free-lance prophets. But the references to multi-generation families of cultic prophets are, by no means, unique to Chronicles. Cultic prophecy is a phenomenon attested elsewhere both in biblical and in nonbiblical writings. 95 In Neo-Assyrian sources, for instance, the temple precincts were considered to be a natural milieu in which prophetic figures practiced their craft. Given this larger regional context, it might be unusual if Judah did not contain such a social and religious phenomenon. 96 Various writings might seek to imprint their 94. Reading ‫( חֹוז ֵי‬see the LXX, οἱ προφῆται, and the other Versions). Compare the MT, ‫ ;חֹוז ֵה‬1 Esd 1:15, οἱ θυρωροὶ. 95. S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (SAA 9; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1995); B. Pongratz-Leisten, Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Formen der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und Konig in 2. und 1. Jahrtausend v.  Chr. (SAA 10; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1999); Nissinen, Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources; idem, Prophets and Prophecy; idem, “Comparing Prophetic Sources: Principles and a Test Case,” in Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. J. Day; LHBOTS [JSOTSup] 531; London: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 25–46. 96.  To take one example, the Rassam Cylinder, dating to approximately 700 b.c.e., lists among the booty taken by Sennacherib of Assyria from Hezekiah of Jerusalem, “his [Hezekiah’s] male and female singers” (M. Cogan, “Sennacherib’s Siege of Jerusalem [2.119b],” in The Context of Scripture, vol. 2: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World [ed. W. W. Hallo, and K. L. Younger; Leiden: Brill, 2000] 303b). The fact that Sennacherib mentions royal singers is telling, because no such references to royal singers appears in Samuel–Kings. To be sure, the Assyrian monarch does not label

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own stamp on this institution, but the institution may have been regarded as long-standing by the time the Chronicler composed his work. In the Chronistic writing, the references to Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun justify a long-standing tradition of cultic prophecy by associating the appointment of these critical figures with the formative arrangements of the united monarchy. The fact that the founding father confirms these appointments validates the existence and professional standing of these particular figures in the course of later centuries. In this respect, freelance prophets do not enjoy a monopoly on the divine word. Yahwistic prophecy in Chronicles is a rich and diverse phenomenon.

Conclusions We have seen that the presentation of prophecy in the united and Judahite monarchies is greatly indebted to the formative influence of Deuteronomy. The influence can be traced not only in the image of what constitutes an authentic prophet and what constitutes abhorrent prophetic practices but also in how prophecy as a social institution relates to other societal institutions. The work depicts a wide variety of prophets, prophetesses, seers, men of God, and visionaries at work in Israelite history. Many are prophets by vocation, but others are pro tem prophets who speak briefly on behalf of God to address a need on a certain occasion. These include priests, Levites, laypersons, and even foreign monarchs. It seems that professional prophets do not enjoy a monopoly on divine revelation. God uses a range of mouthpieces to communicate his will to the people and ensure that the people do not lack access to the “voice of Yhwh.” 97 Stressing Yhwh’s intervention in Israelite and Judahite life by, among other things, the communication of his messages directly to the people through word of prophetic mouth, the Chronistic work takes issue with a prominent tendency in some other biblical writings—namely, the effort to distance the deity from firsthand, direct involvement in Israelite affairs. Over the course of the centuries, Yhwh gradually becomes more hidden. 98 But in the Chronistic presentation, the history of Judah is not so different from the formative era of national beginnings. In both cases, the word of Yhwh is made readily available to the people. Allowing for the fact that Chronicles innovates in some important respects beyond the pattern outlined in the constitutional theocracy of Deuteronomy, how does one account for the fact that the work departs so pervasively from singers of this sort as prophetic figures, but his inscription bears witness to the royal institution of male and female singers in preexilic times. 97.  Almost all of these figures function in the narrative portions of the work. Apart from the possible exception of Moses, none appears as a prophet in the genealogical prologue (1 Chronicles 1–9). 98.  R. E. Friedman, The Hidden Face of God (San Francisco: Harper, 1997).

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the record of the Deuteronomistic treatment of the Judahite monarchy? Why does the writer massively reconfigure the history of prophecy and populate the history of ancient Judah with so many prophetic figures who conform in many, albeit not all, respects to the legislation found in Deuteronomy? Links with the Major Prophets are also clearly attested, as we have seen, but the impact of Deuteronomy is pervasive. The many linkages with Deuteronomy draw the history of the monarchy into closer conformity with the formative arrangements made for prophecy during Israel’s sojourn on the Steppes of Moab, a critical time of national (re)formation in the ancient past. By constructing a history in which a variety of prophetic figures frequent the entire Judahite monarchy, the Chronicler creates an alternative to the pattern of mostly prophet-less Judahite history found in his major narrative source (Samuel–Kings). Rewriting and greatly expanding prophecy in monarchic history, Chronicles effectively classicizes the prophetic legacy in Judah. Recourse to the standards (re)confirmed on the Steppes of Moab draws the foundational epoch of divine revelation and the monarchic era closer together. The Chronistic work presupposes a historical and social context in which at least some in the Judean community still held prophecy—or at least prophecy in certain forms—in high regard. It should be recalled that the work never attacks the prophets. 99 Other leadership figures such as kings, priests, and Levites all come under criticism at one point or another, but prophets never do. Moreover, all of the many prophetic figures added to the history of Judah are authentic. 100 Given the paucity of so-called false prophets present in the work (all used from the writer’s Vorlage), the great imbalance between true and false prophets generates a rather skewed picture of prophecy during the monarchy. Indeed, the writer can conclude his evaluation of national regression at the end of the Judahite Kingdom by declaring that, although Yhwh sent his messengers to stir the people and ‘priestly leaders’ (‫ )שרי הכהנים‬to reform, because he felt compassion for them and for ‘his dwelling-place’ (‫)מעונו‬, they were despising his words and kept mocking his prophets (‫ ;מתעתעים בנבאים‬2 Chr 99.  This includes references to the prophetic writings. Such works, whether attested or non-attested, never come under criticism. On the importance of inscribing prophecy, see recently Nissinen, “How Prophecy became Literature,” 153–72; J. Schaper, “The Death of the Prophet: The Transition from the Spoken to the Written Word of God in the Book of Ezekiel,” in Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (ed. M. H. Floyd and R. D. Haak; LHBOTS 427; London: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 63–79; N. Wyatt, “Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone: El’s Oracle to King Keret (Kirta), and the Problem of the Mechanics of Its Utterance,” VT 57 (2007) 507; E. Ben Zvi, “Towards an Integrative Study of the Production of Authoritative Books in Ancient Israel,” in The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2009) 1–28. 100.  Knoppers, “Democratizing Revelation,” 399–404.

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36:14–16). There is no question of a persistent problem with false prophets or fundamental disagreements among prophets themselves. Rather, the fundamental problem is a widespread and long-standing disregard for Yhwh’s duly designated spokespersons. In this summation of Judahite decline, the writer clearly intimates that things could have been different. Inhabitation of the land came to an ignominious end, not because of the prophets, but in spite of them. The heavily stylized and carefully typed portrait of prophecy may yield an idealized version of prophecy’s contributions to Israel’s past, but the portrait does not sanitize monarchic history itself. The narration admits to many failings, shortcomings, and disappointments in the course of Judahite history. Nevertheless, the major reworking of the prophetic legacy with a view to Deuteronomy creates a more noble history of Judah in monarchic times. Despite its failures, Davidic rule enjoyed many lines of continuity with Israel’s ancient past. In an age in which more than one community claimed crucial links both with the ancestors and with Sinaitic Israel, the Chronistic writing draws many links including free-lance prophets, cultic prophets, and prophetic writings between the Jerusalem establishment and the social institutions created during the times of national origins. 101 These claims to historical, social, and cultic continuity with ancient Israel were important to framing, defining, and consolidating corporate selfunderstanding. 102 One of these institutional constants was prophecy. In the course of history, the presence of prophetic writings and a continuous line of prophecy became distinguishing marks of the early Judean community in relation to its Samarian counterpart to the north. 103 Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine precisely when this process of differentiation begins. The Chronistic insistence that the “voice of Yhwh,” whether in oral or in written form, was never far from the people may reflect a self-conscious attempt to employ the prophetic legacy to (re)define Israelite identity itself. If so, the people’s 101.  G. N. Knoppers, “Revisiting the Samarian Question in the Persian Period,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. M. Oeming and O. Lipschits; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 265–89; idem, “Nehemiah and Sanballat: The Enemy Without or Within?” in Judah and the Judaeans in the Fourth Century (ed. O.  Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 305–31; idem, “Parallel Torahs and Inner-Scriptural Interpretation: The Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs in Historical Perspective,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (ed. T. Dozeman, K. Schmid, and B. Schwartz; forthcoming). 102. J. Tiňo, King and Temple in Chronicles: A Contextual Approach to Their Relations (FRLANT 234; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). 103.  Clearly, there were many northern Israelite prophets, some of whom appear in Chronicles. The issue is, rather, the concerted effort in the late-Persian or earlyHellenistic period to incorporate and reshape the prophetic tradition into a foundational understanding of what constitutes Israelite identity. Do the times of Israel’s formative development include the era of kings and prophets or not?

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identity in the postmonarchic period becomes inextricably tied not only to the time of Israel’s origins but also to the time of the monarchy. Given this scenario, it may be no accident that in later tradition the Samaritans view themselves as ‘protectors’ (‫ )שמרים‬of the Torah as opposed to the beliefs found in the (Judean) prophetic writings. 104 In spite of its variegated history, the monarchy thus takes on a classical cast. 105 This is especially true of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, which constitutes an unprecedented era of national consolidation, peace, and prosperity, but it is also true to a lesser degree of the Judahite monarchy. To be sure, none of the monarchic prophets, visionaries, seers, and men of God see Yhwh face to face, as Moses did (Deut 34:10–12). But, by the same token, the united and Judahite monarchies were blessed with many authentic prophetic figures. In this respect, Chronicles is as much a work of theodicy and identity formation as it is a work of history. Granted Deuteronomy’s profound ambivalence about the institution of kingship, it is certainly ironic that Deuteronomy’s highly defined notions of what constituted prophecy (and what did not constitute prophecy) enjoyed such a great impact on the development of a theological history that was itself focused on the contributions of the Jerusalemite monarchy to securing Israel’s national legacy. 104. A. Mikolášek, “The Samaritans: Guardians of the Law against the Prophets,” in Essays in Honour of G. D. Sexdenier: New Samaritan Studies of the Société d’études samaritaines, III and IV (ed. A. D. Crown and L. Davey; Sydney: Mandelbaum, The University of Sydney, 1995) 85–94; J. Zsengellér, “Canon and the Samaritans,” in Canonization and Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), Held at Leiden, 9–10 January 1997 (ed. A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn; SHR 82; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 166–67; M. Kartveit, “The Martyrdom of Isaiah and the Background of the Formation of the Samaritan Group,” in Samaritan Researches, vol. 5 (ed. V. Morabito, A. D. Crown, and L. Davey; Studies in Judaica 10; Sydney: Mandelbaum, 2000) 15–28. 105.  Indeed, it may be recalled that the stories about Israel’s exodus, wilderness wanderings, and Sinaitic revelations are themselves punctuated by many community disagreements and rebellions. This period (or sequence of periods) is important not because it was marked by corporate solidarity, longstanding peace, and communal blessing but because of the foundational events that are associated with this time.

Divine Retribution in Herodotus and the Book of Chronicles John W. Wright Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego Given the chronological proximity of the composition of the book of Chronicles with The Histories of Herodotus, perhaps it is surprising that few scholars have sought to engage the two works in conversation. Thanks largely to the groundbreaking work of Canadian biblical scholar John Van Seters, 1 recent decades have seen scholars engage Herodotus with the “Primary Historian,” that is, the Deuteronomistic Historian and the Pentateuch. 2 Initial probes into the relationship between Chronicles and Herodotus did not, however, lead directly Author’s note:  A version of this essay was given at the Ancient Historiography Seminar at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in May 2010. I am thankful for the invitation to participate in the seminar and for the excellent suggestions that I received at the meeting. In particular, Gary Knoppers provided written comments that I was able to incorporate into the final draft. Of course, all limitations of the paper are fully mine. 1.  The first order of business will be to review the current discussion about early

Greek historiography from the fragments of the earliest prose works down to Herodotus. In doing so it will become apparent that many opinions about Greek historiography, often repeated in Old Testament studies, are quite out-of-date. Very important, in my view, are the current studies on Greek historical prose, which I believe will be useful for Old Testament narrative studies. Furthermore, classical scholars are becoming increasingly aware that ancient Greece belonged to the eastern Mediterranean world including the Near East, and that literary forms, styles, and interests were therefore not so distinct between the two regions. (J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983] 6)

2. See, for instance, R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), esp. pp. 225–30; D. N. Freedman and S. Mandell, The Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); A. J. F. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 251; Copenhagen International Seminar 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); and J. W. Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’ Histories as Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002).

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to any research programs between the two works. 3 The “Hellenization” of Judah remains a topic of debate for scholars of the post-Alexandrian conquest of Judaism and is the outcome of a “clash of civilizations” in which the specter of Hegel continues to gaze over scholarly work. 4 In the words of Erich Gruen:   The culture of the Hellenes traversed the Mediterranean in the last three centuries before the Common Era. In the lands of the Near East it encountered, among a motley array of nations and societies, the tenacious “people of the Book.” The Jews clung fast to practices and sacred scriptures not readily assimilable to the experience of the Greeks. Both civilizations laid claim to great antiquity, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. And both carried rich traditions, with a noble heritage that gave special character to their peoples. The encounter inevitably grips the imagination. 3.  The study of the relationship between Chronicles and The Histories has largely focused on the motif of the “wise counselor” (see, for instance, K. G. Hoglund, “The Chronicler as Historian: A Comparativist Perspective,” in The Chronicler as Historian [ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997] 18–29; T. Langille, “Divine Providence and Retribution in Ancient Historiography: A Comparative Analysis of the Book of Chronicles and Herodotus,” Axis Mundi [2004–5], http//:www.arts.ualberta.ca/axismundi/2004/Wise_ Advisor.pdf [cited 5 July 2011]) and more generally, the genealogical structures of early Hellenistic historiography and Chronicles (see G. N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History: A Reexamination,” JBL 122 [2003] 627–50). 4.  In the early essay, “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” Hegel wrote, In the Greek republics the source of these laws lay in the fact that, owing to the inequality which would otherwise have arisen, the freedom of the impoverished might have been jeopardized and they might have fallen into political annihilation; among the Jews, in the fact that they had no freedom and no rights, since they held their possessions only on loan and not as property, since as citizens they were all nothing. The Greeks were to be equal because all were free, self-subsistent; the Jews equal because all were incapable of self-subsistence. (G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings [trans. T. M. Knox; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971] 198–99)

As described by Yirmiyahu Yovel, for the young Hegel, “Judaism also lacked the element of beauty, the essence of Greek religion which Christians learned to absorb but Jews rejected fanatically. Opposing the unity and harmony of the Hellenic spirit, Judaism is severance, the fissure between man and everything else, including himself” (Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews [Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998] 33–34). The late Hegel developed a more positive view of the Jews in relationship to the Greeks. In his 1827 lectures, according to Yovel, “Judaism is now higher than Greek religion” (Yovel, Dark Riddle, 83), the “elevation of the religion of beauty [Greek religion] into the religion of sublimity [Judaism]” (G.  W.  F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol.  2: Determinate Religion [ed. Peter C.  Hodgson; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987] 669). Nonetheless, for our purposes, Hegel’s position remains the same. Greek and Jew represent a dialectical opposition, each distinct, defined against each other.

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  Far-reaching consequences followed from that convergence. But the effects were disproportionate and imbalanced. In the wake of Alexander the Great’s triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Jews endured a subordinate status politically and militarily, a minor nation amidst the powers of the Hellenistic world. 5

If one understands the “encounter of the Greeks and the Jews” as the encounter between distinct cultures that occurred only after Alexander, little reason has existed to sustain academic energies in researching the relationship between a “Judean” text such as Chronicles and a “Greek” text such as The Histories. Recent scholars have called into question these underlying presuppositions at various levels. First, at an imperial level, Alexander seems to have adopted Achaemenid imperial practices in the establishment of his Empire. 6 It is possible to see so-called Hellenization as the continuation and even intensification of “Persia-fication.” Second, at the level of cultural interaction, research by Walter Burkert and others has shown that the ancient Near East deeply affected Greek culture at two prominent points in history: in the late eighth century, and following the Achaemenid conquests beginning with the end of the sixth century. 7 Cultural interaction flowed both ways within concrete networks as various Greek groups and eastern Asian populations met and interacted. What has come to be called “Hellenization” is in some ways indistinguishable from 5.  E. S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998) xiii. 6.  The short period initiated by the arrival of the Macedonian was the prolongation of the longue durée, from the geopolitical point of view. . . . The Macedonian in fact took over, for his own benefit, the principles and organization of an empire whose structures were totally alien to the Balkan world. . . . Philip II had already borrowed from the Achaemenid world, but in his time, these were nothing more than scattered borrowings that were not reintegrated into an overall dynamic. This dynamic was forced upon them by the conquest of the Achaemenid territory and the destruction-absorption of the imperial organization of the Great Kings. Whatever may have been the intentions of the King of Macedon when he launched the initial offensive against the royal territories in 337–336, his son pursued to completion a goal of unprecedented breadth that was based on the complete usurpation of the territorial and ideological forms of organization of Darius III’s Empire, as well as the cooperation of the former ruling class. (P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire [trans. P. T. Daniels; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002] 875)

7.  See A. Fantalkin, “Identity in the Making: Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age,” in Naukratis—Greek Diversity in Egypt: Studies on East Greek Pottery and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean (ed. A. Villing and U. Schlotz­ hauer; The British Museum Research Publication 162; London: The British Museum, 2006) 199–235.

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its more ancient roots in the cultures and accomplishments of the Egyptians, Neo-Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, and the Persians. As Burkert has argued: The “miracle of Greece” is not merely the result of a unique talent. It also owes its existence to the simple phenomenon that the Greeks are the most easterly of the Westerners. Under the special circumstances of the eighth century, they could participate in every development at the time without falling victim to the concomitant military devastations, as did their neighbors in Syria and southern Anatolia. The miracle did repeat itself once again, when the Persian Empire reached but finally spared the Greeks. 8

Greek and ancient Near Eastern cultures were not hermetically sealed entities. Evidence from the first millennium shows a cultural interaction between the Near East and Greece that began with the Neo-Assyrians, then reengaged and intensified from the sixth century onward. Third, at the level of material culture, the transition between the so-called Persian and Hellenistic ages witnessed cultural continuity in Judah and southern Palestine, even with Alexander’s conquest. 9 Any breaks in the material culture came earlier, at the turn of the fifth century. 10 Perhaps within the Persian period we find the most dramatic evidence of the Greek cultural artifacts in the seals found at Wadi Daliyeh. 11 However, the data go far beyond Wadi Daliyeh. According to Hanan Eshel, Greek inhabitants’ presence in the Land of Israel in the Persian period is first documented in a Phoenician inscription found in 1994 during the excavation of a Persian-period cemetery in Jaffa. . . . The owner of that juglet, who may have 8. W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (trans. M. E. Pinder and W. Burkert; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) 129. See also M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). 9.  “The province of Judah, based on our understanding of the archaeological data, retained traditional cultural patterns during the transition between the Persian and Hellenistic periods” (O. Lipschits and O. Tal, “The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah: A Case Study,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b .c.e. [ed. O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007] 33–52). 10.  The material shift from the fifth to the fourth century seems related to the Persian response to Egypt’s rebellion as it affected southern Palestine. See A.  Lemaire, “New Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea and their Historical Interpretation,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 413–56. For evidence of shifts in the administrative structure of Yehud itself, see O. Lipschits and D. Vanderhooft, “Yehud Stamp Impressions in the Fourth Century b.c.e.: A Time of Administrative Consolidation?” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e., 75–94. 11.  See M. J. W. Leith, Wadi Daliyeh: The Wadi Daliyeh Seal Impressions (DJD 24; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997).

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been cremated and buried in that juglet, bore the Greek name ‘Hermes’. Thus we may assume that already in the fifth century bce there were some Greek inhabitants in Jaffa. 12

In the same volume, Ambar-Armon and Kloner show that the intensity of the ties between the Levant and the Greek world varied from region to region. An examination of the finds suggests that these ties were strongest along the coast. . . . The many and diverse finds there attest to the strength of those initial influences. A similar process took place in the Shephelah, though to some extent also at Tel Halif in the southern upper Shephelah. In Samaria, unlike the coastal plain, there is no evidence of influence other than economic throughout the first half of the Persian period. The picture starts to become more complex towards the end of the period. . . . Material finds from Judah also indicate economic penetration. . . . Ceramics and coins penetrated Yehud and Samaria, but not figurines. 13

Seen in this perspective, Morton Smith’s historical analysis of Nehemiah as a “Hellenistic tyrant” who served as a Persian underling makes sense. 14 Finally, at the textual level of Chronicles itself, Gary Knoppers has shown persuasively that “the Chronicler’s work does manifest some signs of contact (direct or indirect) with historiographic traditions attested in the ancient Aegean world.” 15 He specifically shows that the genealogies of Chronicles share a common underlying cultural interest with the work of the Hellenistic genealogists. 16 To extend Knoppers’ argument—perhaps it is not inaccurate to call the book of Chronicles the first exemplar of Hellenistic Jewish historiography and thus the Chronicler as the first author within the tradition of Hellenistic Judaism. 17 Together this recent scholarship calls for a research program to read the Book of Chronicles in conversation with The Histories of Herodotus for the 12. H. Eshel, “Hellenism in the Land of Israel from the Fifth to the Second Centuries bce in Light of Semitic Epigraphy,” in A Time of Change: Judah and Its Neighbors in the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods (ed. Y. Levin; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2007) 106–7. 13. E. Ambar-Armon and A. Kloner, “Archaeological Evidence of Links between the Aegean World and the Land of Israel in the Persian Period,” in ibid., 20–21. 14.  See M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) 125–47. 15. G. N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chroniclers History: A Reexamination,” JBL 122 (2003) 647. 16.  See ibid., 627–50; see also G. N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 253–59. 17. We should remember that Eupolemus drew from Chronicles, not Samuel– Kings, to write his Jewish historiography in the second century b.c.e. See B. Z. Wacholder, Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1975).

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mutual illumination that each might provide for the other. 18 No evidence exists that either author knew of the work of the other; Herodotus does not even mention the Jews, despite his familiarity with the coastal regions of Palestine and his interest in the traditions and practices of small, out-of-the-way ethnoi. Both, however, shared a cultural horizon at the material intersection of the Greek and Persian worlds within the broader eastern Mediterranean environment of the fifth and fourth centuries. Perhaps one vein into this conversation is to examine a common motif that has drawn analysis from scholarship of both texts: the motif of divine retribution. Classics scholarship has interpreted Herodotus’s invocation of divine retribution in a variety of ways; since the work of Julius Wellhausen, 19 scholars have interpreted divine retribution as a particular thematic key to the work of the Chronicler. 20 The two works mutually enlighten a shared cultural orb of assumed practices and interpretations, even as they reveal different characteristics of the God/gods and subsequent ontologies.

Divine Retribution in Herodotus’s Histories Recent years have seen a reinvigoration of interest in the work of Herodotus. His Histories, once disdained for its more discursive style in an age of positivistic historiography, has now become an important archive precisely because 18.  For a similar research program in relationship to other Second Temple Judean texts, see A. C. Hagedorn, “Looking at Foreigners in Biblical and Greek Prophecy,” VT 57 (2007) 432–48; idem, “Of Foxes and Vineyards: Greek Perspectives on the Song of Songs,” VT 53 (2003) 337–52; and idem, Between Moses and Plato: Individual and Society in Deuteronomy and Ancient Greece (FRLANT 204; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). 19.  The history of Judah in the Book of Chronicles has yet another instructive purpose. In the kingdom of Judah it is not a natural and human, but a divine pragmatism that is operative. To give expression to this is what the prophets exist for in unbroken succession side by side with high priests and kings; they connect the deeds of men with the events of the course of the world, and utilize the sacred history as a theme for their preaching, as a collection of examples illustrative of the promptest operation of the righteousness of Jehovah. In doing so they do not preach what is new or free, but have at their command, like Jehovah Himself, only the Law of Moses, setting before their hearers prosperity and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern, just as the law if faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune occurs is guilt wanting. (J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel [Edinburgh: Black, 1885] 203)

20.  The literature on the issue is extensive. For a relatively recent review of the issue, see B. E. Kelly, “‘Retribution’ Revisited: Covenant, Grace, and Restoration,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph Klein (ed. M. P. Graham; S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 206–27.

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of its ethnographic interest in a multicultural world. The work is complex and intriguing. Mikalson correctly states: Herodotus as an author is difficult to categorize. He writes an epic narrative or war, but is not a Homer. He uses some techniques and concepts of tragedy, but he is not an Aeschylus or Sophocles. Cicero terms him the “father of history,” but he is no Thucydides. He is not simply a geographer, ethnographer, or historian, but he exhibits characteristics and methodologies of each. He is, essentially, a category unto himself, or, put another way, he cannot be categorized. 21

Perhaps the uniqueness of Herodotus becomes most evident in his treatment of the divine. In particular, divine retribution becomes an important trope that he employs throughout his historical narrative. Thomas Harrison has recently attempted “to expose Herodotus’ religious beliefs in all their complexity.” 22 Harrison claims that “the moral of divine retribution is indeed a moral of the Histories as a whole.” 23 According to Harrison, Herodotus presupposes that retribution from the gods is a given for certain human actions: moral actions or amoral actions in relationship to omens or in the case of capricious divinities. Harrison states that “certainly, a majority of such actions are what we might describe as specifically ‘religious’ crimes. . . . These unequivocally ‘religious’ crimes, however, form only the majority of the actions that attract divine retribution. . . . The category of actions likely to receive retribution is broader (potentially, at least) than just the narrow class of acts of sacrilege.” 24 “Herodotus’ belief in divine retribution appears then to constitute a complete moral system: unjust actions meet without fail with a just, proportional response.” 25 Scott Scullion, however, finds Harrison’s interpretation insufficiently nuanced. He argues that Herodotus operated on two basic models concerning divine retribution: “On the one hand sacrilegious behavior inevitably punished by the relevant god, on the other superiority exposed to the caprice of chance and the counteraction of an abstract divinity. It is the latter model, better suited to uncertainty and complexity, that is relevant to the general significance of the Persian Wars.” 26 21. J. D. Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003) 6–7. 22. T.  Harrison, Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000) 15; see also idem, “Herodotus and the Certainty of Divine Retribution,” in What Is a God? Studies in the Nature of Greek Divinity (ed. A. B. Lloyd; London: Duckworth in conjunction with the Classical Press of Wales, 1997) 101–22. 23. Ibid., 121. 24.  Ibid., 108–9. 25.  Ibid., 110. 26. S. Scullion, “Herodotus and Greek Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (ed. C. Dewald and J. Marincola; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 195. Mikalson joins with Scullion in this criticism of Harrison:

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According to Scullion, except from specific acts of sacrilege, Herodotus speaks of “‘the divine’ or ‘the god(s)’ (or the validity of oracles) rather than .  .  . named Greek divinities.” 27 He summarizes that “Herodotus’ divinity is real and active but remote, intelligible primarily as a set of principles governing the universe.” 28 Herodotus incorporates the particular divinities that retaliate for specific acts of sacrilege: “The divinity ‘behind’ the gods can operate ‘through’ conventionally sacral media.” 29 Scullion’s analysis provides a helpful backdrop to The Histories. We may refine the notion of divine retribution, however, in terms of both the nature of “sacrilege” and its deeper relationship to the ontological order that Scullion suggests operates behind the gods. We may distinguish what Scullion calls “sacrilege” in two related categories: (1)  the disdain for/destruction of temples; and (2)  disobedience to the words of the prophets. For Herodotus, however, obedience to the prophetic oracles is not necessarily simple. It requires first the ability to penetrate an or­acle’s ambiguity in order to interpret it correctly. The fact that prophecy is often, though not always linked to particular temples—the realm of the gods— shows how deeply these two categories relate. Justice demands that humanity respect the divine realm. Human disdain for the gods, intentional or unintentional, elicits divine retribution. Consistently throughout the The Histories, Herodotus links divine retribution to the abuse of temple properties—and even temple personnel. When a fire set by an invading force inadvertently burned down the Temple of Athena at Assesus, the ruler of the invasion, Alyattes, on returning home, “fell ill. For a considerable time he got no better; so either on somebody’s advice, or because he thought it the sensible thing to do, he sent to Delphi to inquire of the god about his health. When the messengers arrived, the Priestess of Apollo refused to give an answer until the Lydians had rebuilt Athene’s temple, which they had burnt down at Assesus” (1.19). 30 Similarly, “The Scythians who robbed Harrison asserts, but does not prove (esp.  108–109) that “the category of actions likely to receive [divine] retribution is broader (potentially at least) than just the narrow class of acts of sacrilege.” The distinction is important, because Harrison would have Herodotus’ gods concerned with justice in general and beyond matters of impiety, whereas in fact all examples of divine intervention to punish individuals in the Histories can be seen to arise from impieties. Herodotus’ gods are concerned with actions that affect them and their property and specific human institutions under their protection. They do not, in broader terms, attend to all matters of justice among human beings. (Herodotus and Religion, 143)

27.  Scullion, “Herodotus and Greek Religion,” 202. Scullion references 1.210.1, 4.205, 6.27. 6.98.1, 8.77, 8.96.2, 9.100.2 (also see ibid., 207 n. 37). 28.  Ibid., 203. 29. Ibid. 30. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from Herodotus, The Histories (trans. A. De Sélincourt: revised with introduction and notes by J. Marincola; London: Penguin, 2003).

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the temple at Ascalon were punished by the goddess with the infliction of what is called the ‘female disease’, and their descendants still suffer from it” (1.105). The elite from Aegina inadvertently violated the realm of a god in a temple by cutting off the hands of a rebel who had sought sanctuary in its midst: “Before they could regain the favour of the outraged goddess, they were driven from their island” (6.91). Herodotus himself attributes the death of sailors to their previous desecration of the shrine of Poseidon (8.129). Humans have no right to infringe upon the properties and personnel of the gods. In Apollonia, the attempt to punish a shepherd for the loss of sheep without consulting the god brings retribution: Immediately afterwards the sacred ewes had no more lambs, and the land ceased to produce the normal harvests. The oracles both at Dodona and Delphi were consulted for the reason for this calamity. The answer in each case was that it was the fact that Euenius, the guardian of the sacred sheep, had been unjustly deprived of his sight: it was the gods themselves who had set the wolves on the sheep, and they would continue to punish the people of Apollonia for the wrong they had done Euenius. (9.93)

For Herodotus, the gods and goddesses can take care of their own: It is a wonder to me how it should have happened that, though the battle was fought close to the holy precinct of Demeter, not a single Persian soldier was found dead upon the sacred soil, or ever appears to have set foot upon it, while round the temple, on unconsecrated ground, the greatest number were killed. My own view is—if one may have views at all about divine matters—that the Goddess herself would not let them in, because they had burnt her sanctuary at Eleusis. (9.65) 31

Temple property and personnel belong to the divine; to disrespect the divine through disregard, intentional or unintentional, invokes divine retribution, usually but not necessarily immediately, in order to restore justice, the right order, between the divine and human. Similarly, and even more prominently in Herodotus is the danger of disregarding the prophetic word of oracles, usually given in temples or in sacrifices. Whether the disobedience is intentional or unintentional makes no difference. To disobey prophecy brings divine retribution; to try to avoid prophecy is vain. Perhaps one of the more illuminating incidents in Herodotus appears in 9.36– 41. The Greeks and the Persians face off for battle across from each other; each consults the divine through a pre-battle sacrifice. They each receive a similar divine communication: both will win the battle if it is fought defensively, but lose it if they attack. A divinely ordered stalemate follows until the Persian, Mardonius, loses patience: “In his view, the right policy, as the Persian army 31.  Herodotus explicitly quotes Apollo at Delphi: “The god replied that they were not to be disturbed, for he was well able to guard his own” (8.26).

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was far stronger than the Greek, was to force an engagement at once, and not allow the enemy forces to increase any further; as for Hegesistratus and his sacrifices, it would be best to ignore them—certainly not to try to force their meaning—and to engage in battle in the good old Persian way” (9.41). Disaster for the Persians immediately ensues. The battle and their quest for conquering Greece fail. Mardonius himself dies as a response to a divine oracle unintentionally invoked by Xerxes (see 8.114). As a human, one does not place one’s judgment over the will of the divine. The case of the Euboians serves paradigmatically: “This warning they ignored; and the result was great suffering, both then and later, in the troubles which were daily expected” (8.20). However, the prophetic word is not always easy to obey. As Herodotus states, “I cannot deny that there is truth in prophecies, and I have no wish to discredit them when they are expressed in unambiguous language” (8.77). The ambiguity of prophetic word can place even the well meaning in danger—or lure humans into an attempt to shift the oracle to their favor. Thus, when the Persians sack Athens, they find a remnant holed up in the Temple of Athena Polias. The survivors had misinterpreted an oracle that applied to a naval battle and thought that the goddess would save them if they hid behind wood planks in the temple (8.50). Cyrene leaders disobey a Delphic oracle to start a colony in Libya: “During the seven years that followed not a drop of rain fell in Thera, and every tree on the island, except one, withered and died” (4.151). Battus’s founding of a colony on an island just off the coast of Africa, however, does not change the situation: They went to the oracle, and declared that, in spite of the fact that they were living in Libya, they were no better off than before. To this the Priestess replied: “If you know sheep-breeding Libya better than I do, not having been there—I have—I marvel much at your cunning!” On this, Battus and his men sailed away once more for Platea, for it was plain that Apollo would not let them off until they established a settlement actually on the Libyan mainland. (4.157)

In Herodotus, humans may easily misinterpret prophetic oracles, bringing divine retribution upon themselves, often so that they unwittingly fulfill the prophetic words. 32 The intelligence of the divine always exceeds the wiles and thoughts of humans. Humans must bear the results of their violation of the divine order, whether the violation was willful or not. 32.  Most famous, of course, is the Delphi oracle to Croesus in Book 1 that, “if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire, and they advised him to find out which of the Greek states was the most powerful, and to come to an understanding with it” (1.53). Croesus, thinking that the gods have given the Persians into his hand, misinterprets the oracle and suffers defeat and subordination to the Persians: “In this way Sardis was captured by the Persians and Croesus taken prisoner, after a reign of fourteen years and a siege of fourteen days. The oracle was fulfilled; Croesus had destroyed a mighty empire—his own” (1.86).

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Instances involving temples, temple personnel, and prophetic oracles, what Scullion calls “sacrilege,” constitute the vast majority of the instances of divine retribution in Herodotus. Retribution comes fiercely, tragically, and often, but not necessarily, immediately. Divine retribution continues until either the prophetic word is seen to its end or humans make appropriate recompense in their suffering or through their propitiation so that divine justice is restored. The divine is greater than the human. Humans must always remember their rightful place and not violate this order in deed or thought. At this point, we may see the underlying unity between the level of sacrilege and the second level that Scullion mentions: human “superiority exposed to the caprice of chance and the counteraction of an abstract divinity.” 33 Perhaps we may again refine Scullion’s fundamental insight. Divine retribution in Herodotus functions within an ontology that is ultimately determined by an underlying Necessity that seeks to keep the cosmic order intact. Goddesses, gods, and heroes—and humans—all function within a common ontological order united by and subject to this Necessity, the ultimate “divine” or “God.” The story of Croesus in Book 1 provides a crux to the interpretation of the relationship of divine retribution to the divine, rather than individual goddesses or gods. As discussed by David Asheri, “The first book of the Histories foreshadows the entire work and, in a sense, constitutes its quintessence.” 34 Croesus engages in philosophical conversations throughout the first logos (1.6–94). In a crucial passage, Solon declares: “I know God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; and you question me about the lot [tuche] of man. . . . Look to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him” (1.32). The crucial term here is tuche. Mikalson notes: It is simply “what will happen” and “what does in fact happen.” . . . In virtually all cases “what has to happen,” whether predicted by an oracle or not, is bad for the individual or state concerned. Herodotus uses this concept almost exclusively to “explain” evils, in much the way that other, especially later Greek authors use “fortune” (tuche), which also, etymologically, is simply “what happens.” 35

Unlike particular deities, the Divine does not provide retribution in response to any particular offense. The Divine upholds the cosmic order, the superiority of the gods and the Divine over the human within the overall Necessity of this order. In his flourishing and might, Croesus, like Xerxes later on, threatens to move into a realm reserved for the Divine: “God was angry with him [Croesus] for supposing himself the happiest of men” (1.34). Thus, “the gods” enslave 33.  Scullion, “Herodotus and Greek Religion,” 195. 34. D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, and A. Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV (ed. O. Murray and A. Moreno; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 59. 35.  Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion, 150.

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Croesus to Cyrus and thus re-place him in the necessary order of all that is (1.89). To Croesus’ objection to his treatment by Apollo, the priestess replies for the god, “The fated destiny (τὴν πεπρωμένην μοῖραν) it is impossible even for a god to escape . . . it was not possible for him to draw the Destinies aside from their course (οὐκ οἷόν τε ἐγίνετο παραγαγεῖν μοίρας); but so much as these granted he brought to pass, and gave it as a gift to Croesus” (1.91). 36 The key term is μοῖρα, which “is not a person, not a god or a power, but a fact: the word means portion, and proclaims that the world is apportioned, that boundaries are drawn in space and time.” 37 Particular deities, as humans, exist within a limited space within a larger cosmic order, an order that they simultaneously constitute. Divine (θεῖον) retribution at this level seeks to sustain justice, the right order in which all beings, divine or human, find a place within their limited space for movement in light of possible violations. Herodotus’s “determinism” or “pessimism” is nothing but the realization of the limitation of movements of various “natures” up or down the apportionments—or, as Amasis states, “how impossible it is for one man to save another from his destiny” (3.43). It is unimaginable for Herodotus that a being would seek to lower itself below the status of its “apportionment” in order to sustain “Necessity.” Beings that seek to exceed their appropriate place become the concern for the “Divine,” the guarantor of the order of the “Apportionment.” Therefore, Herodotus can openly state, “I do not hesitate to declare that the refusal of the Greeks to believe it came of divine volition in order that their utter destruction might plainly prove to mankind that great offences meet with great punishments at the hands of God. This, then, is my own interpretation” (2.120); or Artabanos states, “For God tolerates pride in none but Himself” (οὐ γὰρ ἐᾷ φρονέειν μέγα ὁ θεὸς ἄλλον ἢ ἑωυτόν; 7.10). The difference between the cases of divine retribution by particular gods and by “the Divine” becomes intelligible when we grasp the relationship between the deities who share a place in the order as part of “the Divine.” Mikalson quotes the earlier work of Ivan Linforth to describe this underlying relationship: The impression which one receives from his manner of expression is that he recognized the existence of numerous gods who may act as individuals on particular occasions, or who may be thought of as something like a unified group with a racial solidarity contrasting them with the race of men. This divine race, godkind, set over against mankind, is very real, and . . . one can detect its influence in the world with more or less certainty, and one can form opinions concerning its general character; but little can be known about it from within. Men have discerned 36.  The translation here is taken from G. C. Macaulay, from the parallel English/ Greek texts, at http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh1090.htm. 37. W.  Burket, Greek Religion (trans. J.  Raffan; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) 129.

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certain individual members of the race and know them by name. These individuals are believed to be active in certain more or less well defined phenomena, and in particular places where cults have been established for their worship. But of their relations among themselves we can know nothing, and in the extremely complicated and diversified phenomena of human history and experience it is seldom possible to see the hand of a particular known god. 38

Particular deities interact with humans in a different way and for different reasons than “God.” In a sense, then, Harrison is correct: for Herodotus, “Unjust actions meet without fail with a just, proportional response.” Yet divine retribution encompasses justice only to protect the “portion” of the Divine within “the Necessity”; even atrocities such as feeding unaware fathers the meat of their murdered sons receives no divine retribution. Justice within the human sphere depends on human retribution, not Divine. The Divine only seeks to keep the order intact when humans disrupt it, such as acts against the properties, personnel, or the will of deities as expressed in prophetic oracles; or humans achieving a power and might that threatens to rise above the apportionment of the human, into the divine. With Herodotus’s notion of divine retribution, we enter the underlying ontology of Herodotus’s world. Particular deities protect their properties and status against human infringement; “God” protects “that which is” from human attempts to raise themselves beyond the human realm into the divine. Divine retribution occurs to protect the “justice” or “order” of this ontological system against human transgression into the divine order, as deities and as the Divine. Within the strictly human orb, human retribution must protect the order from injustice or displacement from within the human. In most cases, divine retribution occurs at the level of particular deities whose common properties and prophecies are vulnerable to human transgression. For the very few humans who rise to such an exalted status to receive more honor than the Divine, “the Divine” works within the deeper necessity of apportioned lots to prevent the disruption of the order. The deities and the human form together a continuum of Being, a continuity that permits the possibility for humans to transgress the cosmic order (nomos). Such a situation requires surveillance on the part of the gods to keep humans in their appropriate place.

Divine Retribution in the Book of Chronicles The “assured results of critical scholarship” in the twentieth century has led scholars to accept divine retribution, particularly the doctrine of immediate retribution, as a central, defining characteristic of Chronicles. Baldly stated, however, it is now apparent that this language lacks the necessary nuance to describe the workings of the narrative of Chronicles. As Kenneth Ristau has 38. I. Linforth, quoted in Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion, 131–32.

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stated, “The theme of immediate reward and punishment (or ‘immediate retribution’) is an undeniable component of the Chronicler’s narrative. . . . The theme, however, is generally overstressed by its proponents. The Chronicler also advances the idea of transgenerational sin and even inexplicable events.” 39 With the readings of Herodotus in mind, I wish to provide additional nuance to understandings of this sort. Sara Japhet considered the doctrine of retribution to be central to her reading of Chronicles. She writes, It is true that the Chronistic elements we have discussed focus on what exists in the present or, more accurately, on what exists now and for all time—elements such as complete trust in God and His power, sovereignty, and justice, the absolute constancy of divine retribution, the eternal bond between Yhwh and the people, the glorified portrayal of the Davidic-Solomonic period, the perpetual longing for the people to be whole, with all its tribes occupying the entire land. Yet, despite their focus on the here and now, all these features are directed towards the future. Through them, the writer expresses his hopes for the future and confidence that his hopes will be fulfilled. . . . They are concrete hopes that the land will be redeemed and Israel’s greatness and glory will be restored. 40

Divine retribution is a prominent strand in a wider historiographical web that encompasses the major, enduring intent of its writer. For Japhet, the Chronicler presents divine retribution as a universal principle: “Chronicles does not allow for the theoretical possibility that a man may sin and neither he nor his son will be punished: every sin must be punished.” 41 Thus, “It is the sinner who is punished and the righteous man who is rewarded, and the deeds of one generation are not visited on the next.” 42 Counter to Japhet’s reading of Chronicles as constituting an absolute principle of divine retribution, Ehud Ben Zvi maintains: Rather than presenting to the audience a world governed by God according to a set of independent principles, whose relative importance may be abstracted from the number of reported attestations, Chronicles suggested to its historical audience a world in which God’s principles are deeply interrelated and qualify each other, and therefore, a world in which God’s rules cause a variety of possible effects, including those which are inconsistent with some of the divine principles themselves, had they been separate and universally valid. This multiplicity of 39. K. A. Ristau, “Reading and Rereading Josiah: The Chronicler’s Representative of Josiah for the Postexilic Community,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 228–29 n. 25. 40. S.  Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (trans. A. Barber; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 392. 41.  Ibid., 127. 42.  Ibid., 129.

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possible results allowed relatively flexible explanations of events in Israel’s construction of the past, and in the lives of the audience as well. 43

The Chronicler communicates the possibility of divine retribution on the individual level. It is not, however, a fixed principle imposed on history but a possible tool to use if the age warrants it: “Past (and by implication, also present) events and circumstances are not necessarily coherent with such a principle of correspondence; in fact, many times the reported past openly contradicts this principle, which may suggest that the present as experienced by individual members of the audience may also contradict such a principle.” 44 It is important to see how Japhet and Ben Zvi agree despite their differences. They agree that Chronicles recounts history with instances of divine retribution; they disagree whether this constitutes an abstract, universal principle for the Chronicler, or it is one way among others of interpreting history in order to inform the audience’s contemporary moral decisions. Perhaps a brief review of the data in light of Herodotus may allow us to build on their agreement and nuance their disagreement. Divine retribution in Chronicles, as for Herodotus, occurs largely in terms of two related spheres: dishonor of God through transgressing divine properties and disobeying the divine word—that is, prophetic oracles. Divine retribution does not occur for Judean maltreatment of humans; it occurs only for improper responses to divine authority. The mandated sole devotion to the one God, Yhwh, the God of Israel widens the possibility of disrespect for divine properties beyond the boundaries found in Herodotus. Kings and others may now disrespect Yahwistic properties and prophets by attending to what belongs to other divinities. The line between devotion, properties, and prophecy becomes blurred, presupposed in the text but held together by a demand that Judah and all Israel devote themselves exclusively to Yhwh through Yhwh’s Temple and Temple personnel and listen to Yhwh’s prophets, Judean or otherwise, who speak in Jerusalem in Yhwh’s name. First Chronicles demands that Israel submit solely to Yhwh via the God of Israel’s properties, personnel, and prophetic word. The Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh “transgressed (‫ )‏מעל‬against the God of their ancestors, and prostituted themselves (‫ )‏זנה‬to the gods of the land . . . so the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of King Pul of Assryria, the spirit of King Tilgath-pilneser of Assyria, and he carried them away” (1 Chr 5:25–26). The terms ‫‏מעל‬and ‫‏זנה‬do not represent inward, abstract attitudes but concrete attendance at the temples of deities other than the God of Israel and behavioral submission to them. The contrast is to their earlier, opposite behavior, “when 43. E. Ben Zvi, “A Sense of Proportion: An Aspect of the Theology of the Chronicler,” in History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (London: Equinox, 2006) 160. 44.  Ibid., 161.

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they received help . . . for they cried out (‫ )‏זעק‬to God in the battle” (1 Chr 5:20)—the vocalization of honor to God as a war cry in the middle of battle. Similarly, “Saul died for his unfaithfulness (‫ )‏מעל‬. . . in that he did not keep the command of the Lord; moreover, he had consulted a medium, seeking guidance, and did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death” (1 Chr 10:13–14). As Klein argues, although “not keeping the word of Yhwh” is used by Deuteronomy and Psam 119, “this hardly justifies interpreting v. 13 abstractly, without any reference to the Saul traditions in 1 Samuel.” 45 Saul both disobeys the prophetic words of Samuel and seeks an oracle from a medium. Here, we see that ‘to seek or inquire’ (‫ )‏דרׁש‬finds its background, similar to its use in Herodotus, as pursuing a prophetic oracle from some divine source. Saul receives divine retribution because of his refusal to honor the cultic properties and prophetic word of Yhwh, the God of Israel. It should not surprise us, then, that Uzzah’s unintentional transgression of the Ark, Yhwh’s property (1 Chr 13:9–10), results in his immediate death. The issue is not Uzzah’s intent; it is the divine ownership of Yhwh’s properties. Similarly, Joab brings judgment upon Jerusalem because of his disobedience to David; 46 David’s word is the word of the Lord. Joab places his judgment above the judgment of David, who speaks for Yhwh, particularly to establish the location for Yhwh’s Temple in Jerusalem. David’s final words to “all Israel” (1 Chr 28:1) call them to care for the temple through seeking prophetic oracles there: “If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you forever. Take heed now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house as the sanctuary; be strong and act” (1 Chr 28:9–10). Divine retribution occurs when Judeans disdain the God of Israel through attention to other gods’ properties and/or prophets and through disobedience to Yhwh’s words through the prophets. The God of Israel shows concern about Israel’s sole devotion to God’s own properties, personnel, and prophetic word. The same pattern continues in 2  Chronicles. Solomon emphasizes that prayers from within Yhwh’s Temple properties are efficacious; to “humble themselves, seek my face, pray, and turn from their wicked ways” is to pray “in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (2  Chr 8:14–16). Rehoboam brings divine retribution upon himself through 45. R. Klein, 1 Chronicles: A Commentary (ed. T. Krüger; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 290. 46. See my article “The Innocence of David in 1 Chronicles 21,” JSOT 60 (1993) 87–105. I am well aware that my interpretation that the divine plague in 1 Chronicles 21 is caused by Joab, not David has not persuaded many scholars of Chronicles in subsequent scholarship. Perhaps it is merely my hubris that continues to hold that this reading best accounts for the text; however, I have yet to find another reading that accounts for the “because of this” in v. 7a, the inclusion of the sons of Levis in a census (1 Chr 23:3), and the intertextual reference to Joab in 1 Chr 27:24.

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his refusal to honor Yhwh in the temple properties. Rehoboam, however, like Croesus, receives moderated divine retribution because of his devotion to the prophetic word (2 Chr 12:5–8). “Jeroboam and all Israel” receive full divine retribution (2 Chr 13:15–18), in contrast to Abijah and the Judeans, who faithfully cared for the divine properties and the divinely appointed personnel; this is what it means to proclaim that “the Lord is our God, and we have not abandoned him” (2 Chr 13:10; see vv. 10–12). Asa obeys the prophetic word and honors Yhwh’s property: “The heart of Asa was true all his days; He brought into the house of God the votive gifts of his father and his own votive gifts—silver, gold, and utensils” (2 Chr 15:18– 20). Divine reward and retribution follow a consistent pattern: it is within the particular, concrete location of proper royal obeisance, solely within Yhwh’s properties, with care taken for Yhwh’s personnel and obedience to Yhwh’s prophetic oracles. Thus, Asa’s later removal of Yhwh’s wealth from the temple (“Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king’s house and sent them to King Ben-Hadad of Aram,” 2 Chr 16:2) invokes divine punishment; one does not steal from God without repercussions. When he imprisons the prophet for speaking Yhwh’s word to explain his poor fortunes, his judgment is sealed: “Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe” (v.  12a). Rather than inquiring for a prophetic oracle from Yhwh, Asa sought help instead from physicians (v. 12b), “Then Asa slept with his ancestors” (v. 13). Asa’s turn from flourishing to dying accompanies his progressive abandonment of Yhwh’s Temple and the prophetic words. The pattern continues throughout the end of 2  Chronicles. For instance, Joash, like Asa, cared for the God of Israel’s properties and flourished (2 Chr 24:2–16); however, when Judah and Jerusalem “abandoned” the properties and “served the sacred poles and the idols,” “wrath came upon [them] for this guilt of theirs” (2 Chr 24:18). Joash compounded his woes through his murder of the prophet (v. 22), and “the Lord delivered into [a few Arameans’] hand a very great army, because [the Judeans] had abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors. Thus they executed judgment on Joash” (2  Chr 24:24). Amaziah combines neglect of the divine properties with disdain for the Lord’s prophets: “It was God’s doing, in order to hand them over, because they had sought the gods of Edom” (2 Chr 25:20). Uzziah’s dishonoring of the divine properties and usurping the role of the divine personnel leads to his leprosy (2 Chr 26:16– 20). His leprosy justly excluded him from the temple that he had dishonored (v. 21). Ahaz’s abuse of the divine prophetic oracle and divine property leads to disaster, personal and national (2 Chr 28:1–27). Even Josiah, in disdaining the divine oracle through Neco (2 Chr 35:22b), brings on himself divine retribution and loss of life. This continuous disdain for the divine properties and the prophetic word ultimately leads to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple itself.

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This brief survey in categories established by Herodotus reveals that both Japhet and Ben Zvi are correct—divine retribution both is and is not an “abstract, universal principle” of divine justice. Divine retribution is a “universal principle”: as with the particular deities in Herodotus, divine retribution in Chronicles arises as the God of Israel watches over this God’s specific and sole property in Jerusalem and communicates through prophetic words. However, divine retribution is also not a universal principle. Divine retribution is not dispensed for all of the affairs of Israel but only in the particular realm of honoring Yhwh’s Temple, personnel, and prophetic world. Chronicles, however, lacks the second level of “divine retribution” that we have found in Herodotus. No retribution falls on Israel, Judah, or any characters as a result of human “superiority exposed to the caprice of chance and the counteraction of an abstract divinity.” 47 No layer of divinity or being lies behind the God of Israel, uniting this God with humans within a continuum of being. For the Chronicler, no human may ascend to a divine level; the God of Israel is ontologically distinct. In Kierkegaardian language, there is an “infinitely qualitative difference” between Yhwh and humans in Chronicles. Necessity is found in the particularity of the God of Israel, not within a certain “portion” of a scale of “Necessity.” Even as the Chronicler shares the same cultural horizon as Herodotus in his historiographical interpretation of history as the working out of divine retribution, the presupposed, underlying ontology is nevertheless radically different because of the Chronicler’s insistence on Israel’s sole devotion to the God of Israel—whose presence is found in absence, and whose absence is manifested in presence. 48

Conclusion Of course, notions of divine retribution began neither with Herodotus nor with the book of Chronicles. Morton Smith in his classic article “The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East” noted that the notion of divine retribution was part of a deep cultural heritage throughout the ancient Near East: Now—since the gods were like men—it was expected everywhere that a god would punish men who offended him and would reward those who did what he wanted; this, moreover, was what he was for. And since he was everywhere thought to want sacrifices, it was also by sacrifices that men sought to placate him when they thought they had offended him or to secure his good will when they wanted special favors. . . . most people were probably content to believe 47.  Scullion, “Herodotus and Greek Religion,” 195. 48. See my article “Beyond Immanence and Transcendence: The Characterization of the Presence and Activity of God in the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph Klein (ed. M. P. Graham; S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers; JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 240–67.

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that rewards and punishments were given, whether to individuals or to the whole people, according as men obeyed or disobeyed the usual social and religious codes of the society. The relation between people and god was therefore always essentially a contractual one. 49

Because of their contractual relationship with the gods, people gave attention to the prophets, who everywhere claimed to know by revelation the country’s state of obedience or disobedience and the rewards or punishments to be allotted. The same two realms that we see in Herodotus and Chronicles, temples (divine properties for sacrifices) and prophets, were concerned with divine retribution, positive and negative, throughout the ancient Near East. Both The Histories and Chronicles participate in this broader tradition. But they participate in it by means of the particularity of their own indigenous heritage. Chronicles itself stands in a particular Judean repetition of this tradition, with predecessors in the Torah, Samuel–Kings, and prophetic scrolls, such as the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 50 In all these Judean texts, divine retribution works itself out in relationship to temple and prophets in their own particular language. Both The Histories and Chronicles exist in a complex web of traditions on divine retribution that they received and to which they then contributed. Nonetheless, the analysis of divine retribution in Herodotus’s Histories and the book of Chronicles supports Knoppers’s thesis that “the Chronicler’s work does manifest some signs of contact (direct or indirect) with historiographic traditions attested in the ancient Aegean world.” 51 Of course, the Chronicler inherited from within Yehud an indigenous understanding of divine retribution that contributed to his own historiographic ends. Participating in his own Judean tradition about divine retribution through works such as the Torah, Samuel–Kings and Ezekiel, the Chronicler shapes his own indigenous tradition while simultaneously partaking in the same eastern Mediterranean culture as Herodotus with its particular constellation of gods, temples, and prophetic oracles. Reading Chronicles and Herodotus together merits much more scholarly energy, both from the side of classics scholarship that ignores Jewish literature because of its Hebrew and Aramaic language, and from Second Temple Jewish scholarship, which sees the issues of “Hellenization” as arising only in the time of Alexander. 52 49.  Morton M. Smith, “The Common Theology of the Ancient Near East,” JBL 71 (1952) 144–45. 50. See Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, 117–55. 51.  Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chroniclers History,” 647. 52.  See, for instance, the role of the ‘seer’ (roʾeh) in Chronicles compared with the mantis in the Greek world. See the recent work of M. A. Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). A promising area of research is also the Greek practice of gathering prophetic oracles into extended

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Even as Chronicles shares a common cultural orb with Herodotus, Chronicles distinctly and profoundly differs from its Herodotan predecessor—and not only in its lack of ethnographic breadth or more-simple genre. In accordance with the Chronicler’s own Judean inheritance, Chronicles is profoundly, ontologically different from Herodotus in a way that marks it as particularly Jewish. The God of Chronicles radically differs from the deities and the divine of Herodotus. Even as they share a notion of divine retribution at one level, the difference between the ontologies, the relationship between God/the gods and humans goes “all the way down,” so to speak. We may see the “Jewish difference” of the book of Chronicles as already prefiguring the controversies and battles within Judaism in the coming centuries as the Jews interacted with the culturally imperial Ptolemaics, Seleucids, and Romans who colonized Judah and its diaspora colonies. As Chronicles shows, the issue was not so much “Hellenization,” for all the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian world became “Hellenized.” The issue was how the God of Israel related to the gods and divinity of the Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman worlds—whether, as Benjamin Sommer describes it, the God of Israel would be absorbed with a concept of “fluidity” into the wider world, as Herodotus was. 53 Within such a fluid notion of the divine, the God of Israel becomes a particular embodiment of a god within a continuum of being that allows a “relationship” of this deity to the world as a mediated manifestation of a deeper “divinity” that has other (equally, or perhaps, more-apt) embodiments. The Chronicler resists this assimilative, mediated notion of God. For Chronicles, the universality of the God of Israel is found precisely in this God’s particularity. The God of the Chronicler fits into no mediated category of the divine or being. It is this difference—the difference between the “Greek” and “Jewish, Christian, and Muslim” notions of God, an ontological difference that underlies Chronicles and Herodotus—that still stands at the basis of assimilative or nonassimilated patterns of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic histories today. 54 collections as compared with the gathering of the prophetic scrolls during the Persian and early-Hellenistic periods. See A. Lange, “Oracle Collection and Canon: A Comparison between Judah and Greece in Persian Times,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon (ed. C. A. Evans and H. D. Zacharias; Library of Second Temple Studies 70; T. & T. Clark, 2009) 9–47. See also the promising scholarship of Hagedorn (see n. 18 above). 53.  See B. D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 54. See D.  B. Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); and especially, R. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995) 12–30.

Gazing through the Cloud of Incense: Davidic Dynasty and Temple Community in the Chronicler’s Perspective Mark J. Boda McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University

Introduction Unquestionably the fragment from Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena most frequently cited by researchers on Chronicles is the following: See what Chronicles has made out of David! The founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and the public worship, the king and hero at the head of his companions in arms has become the singer and master of ceremonies at the head of a swarm of priests and Levites; his clear cut figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of incense. 1

“See what Chronicles has made out of David!” In classic Wellhausen style with its final exclamation mark, it is a fitting summary of his distaste for the Chronicler. But, since Wellhausen, what have we made out of David? The presentation of David and his dynasty in Chronicles has been the focus of much attention since these words were penned. In particular, since the Second World War we have seen worthy proponents of opposing interpretations on this issue: 1950s: Gerhard von Rad versus Wilhelm Rudolph 1960s: Robert G. North/William F. Stinespring/Frank Michaeli versus Otto Plöger/André Caquot/Odil Hannes Steck/Peter R. Ackroyd 1970s: H. G. M. Williamson versus Frank Moore Cross/James D. Newsome/ David Noel Freedman versus Roddy L. Braun/Richard J. Coggins 1980s: Raymond B. Dillard/Magne Sæbo versus Rex A. Mason/Simon J. De Vries/Joachim Becker/Sara Japhet 1990s: Brian E. Kelly/Antti Laato /William Horbury versus Donald F. Murray/ William M. Schniedewind/William Riley/Kenneth E. Pomykala 1. J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (trans. J. S. Black and A. Menzies; Edinburgh: Black, 1885) 182.

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And this discussion has not fallen by the wayside in the past decade, with fresh work on this issue flooding the market: 2000s: Gary N. Knoppers/John Jarick versus Pancratius C. Beentjes/Peter  B. Dirksen/Ernst M. Dörrfuss versus Murray/Steven James Schweitzer

The purpose of this paper is to describe the multidimensional nature of the debate over David and his dynasty in Chronicles and then to propose a “bothand” rather than an “either-or” solution. The goal is not to convert various proposals to their lowest common denominator or to create a dialectal synthesis or to create hermeneutical skepticism and discourage any resolution. Rather, it is to argue that the various viewpoints noted throughout the recent history of interpreting Chronicles are valid and have revealed important aspects of the Chronicler’s intention that can be integrated into the world view of the interpretive community represented by the books of Chronicles. My point of departure will be Williamson’s 1977 work on the eschatology of Chronicles. 2 In this piece, he distinguishes himself from four proposals represented by several groups of scholars: the realized eschatology view of Rudolph, Plöger, and Paul D. Hanson in which the dynastic promise has been fulfilled in the restoration temple community, the Zerubbabel proposal of Freedman/Cross/Newsome in which the dynastic promise is fulfilled in Zerubbabel’s rebuilding of the Second Temple, the messianism of von Rad and others in which the dynastic promise remains unfulfilled as the Chronicler awaits a future eschatological figure, and the eschatological community of Rudolf Mosis in which the dynastic promise will be fulfilled in the ideal temple community. Williamson rejects all of these views and takes his position securely between Freedman/Cross/Newsome and von Rad, as he argues for a royalist though not messianic hope in the Davidic line. This array of positions reveals the multidimensional nature of the issue at hand. On the one hand, Freedman/Cross/Newsome, Williamson, and von Rad agree that the dynastic promise was or will be literally fulfilled in a Davidic figure, while Rudolph, Plöger, Hanson, and Mosis transfer the dynastic promise to the community as a whole. On the other hand, Rudolph, Plöger, Hanson and Freedman, Cross, Newsome share in common the view of the fulfillment of this promise in the present circumstances, while Williamson, von Rad, and Mosis push this sort of fulfillment into the future. This review reveals two distinct issues that affect one’s interpretation of the Chronicler’s view of the future of the Davidic Dynasty. First (and often the focus in past reviews of this debate) is the issue of the shape of the fulfillment of the Davidic dynastic promise: Is the promise fulfilled through the restoration of a literal Davidide to the throne or through a restoration of the core values of the Davidic line as presented by the Chronicler in the temple community? 2.  H. G. M. Williamson, “Eschatology in Chronicles,” TynBul 28 (1977) 115–54.

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Table 1.  Views on Davidic Dynastic Fulfillment in Chroniclesa Shape of the Fulfillment

Execution of the Fulfillment Timing

Effect

Eschatological Monarchy

Davidide

Future

Cataclysmic

Future Monarchy

Davidide

Future

Continuity

Inaugurated Monarchy

Davidide

Present

Continuity

Realized Hierocracy

Community

Present

Continuity

Future Hierocracy

Community

Future

Continuity

Eschatological Hierocracy

Community

Future

Cataclysmic

  a.  See outline on p. 219 and the bibliography at the end of this volume.

Second is the issue of the execution of the dynastic promise: Is the promise fulfilled in the immediate present or in the distant future and, furthermore, will its fulfillment bring cataclysmic changes to the order of the world or stress continuity with the present circumstances of the community? On an abstract level, the answers to these questions produce six basic views (see tables 1–2). 3 My presentation so far has revealed two related but distinct issues that underlie the discussion of the future of the dynastic promise in the book of Chronicles. I will look first at the shape of the fulfillment of the Davidic dynastic promise (king or community) and then turn to the timing of this fulfillment (present or future). I will not deal with the issue of the effect of the fulfillment (continuity or cataclysmic) since I have treated this issue elsewhere and find little justification for speaking of the eschatological (in its strict definition) in most of the Old Testament including Chronicles. 4 3.  For lists and reviews of bibliography see I. Kalimi, The Books of Chronicles: A Classified Bibliography (Jerusalem: Simor, 1990) 104–5; B. E. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology in Chronicles (JSOTSup 211; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 135–55; P. B. Dirksen, “The Future in the Book of Chronicles,” in New Heaven and New Earth—Prophecy and the Millennium: Essays in Honour of Anthony Gelston (ed. P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward; VTSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 37–51; R. K. Duke, “Recent Research in Chronicles,” CBR 8 (2009) 10–50. 4. See my “Figuring the Future: The Prophets and the Messiah,” in The Messiah in the Old and New Testaments (ed. S. E. Porter; MNTS; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 35–74 (esp. 39–43). Those who define eschatology in ahistorical, cosmic, cataclysmic, final ways, restrict “eschatology” to late apocalyptic writings in the Hebrew Bible, and even then, as Gerhard von Rad has noted, “not with absolute precision”; Old Testament Theology (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962) 2:114. However, when eschatology is understood as a future hope that envisions the breaking in of a new era, some have been more open to this phenomenon in Chronicles and have thus employed the term. Additionally, those who link eschatology to the radical fringe, have a priori excluded eschatology from Chronicles because it speaks so vigorously of “official” personnel (priest, king) and structures (city, temple). Because of this confusion, the

218 Eschatological Monarchy Rothstein (1902) Rothstein and Hänel (1927) von Rad (1930, 1962) Noordtzij (1937, 1940) Brunet (1953, 1954, 1959) Botterweck (1956) Kaufmann (1961) Stinespring (1961) North (1963) Poulssen (1967) Willi (1972) Dillard (1987) Townsend (1987) Gabriel (1990) Jones (1993) Selman (1994) Horbury (1998) Future Monarchy Williamson (1977, 1982, 1983) Butler (1978) Sæbø (1980) Im (1985) Noth (1987) Wright (1989) Oeming (1990) Knoppers (1990) Strübind (1991) Raison (1992) Laato (1992, 1997) Shipp (1993) Thompson (1994) Kelly (1995, 1996) Knoppers (2001, 2004)

Mark J. Boda McKenzie (2004) Avioz (2004, 2005) Jarick (2007) Street (2009) Inaugurated Monarchy Freedman (1961) Cross (1975) Newsome (1975) Porter (1979) Throntveit (1987) Realized Hierocracy Wellhausen (1885) König (1925) Rudolph (1954, 1955) Baltzer (1961) Caquot (1966) Ackroyd (1967, 1977) Plöger (1968) Steck (1968) Kellermann (1971) Braun (1971, 1973, 1986) Coggins (1976) Petersen (1977) Mason (1990) Riley (1993) Murray (1993) Schniedewind (1994, 1999) Pomykala (1995) Beentjes (1998, 2008) Kalimi (2005) Sparks (2008) Future/Eschatological Hierocracy Schumacher (1957) Michaeli (1967) Coppens (1968)

Mosis (1973) Dumbrell (1984) Future Only Goldingay (1975) Utopian Murray (2000) Schweitzer (2007) Multiple Views Realized/Future Hierocracy Myers (1965, 1966, 1974) Japhet (1989, 1993) Dirksen (1999, 2005) Realized and Eschatological Hierocracy Becker (1980, 1986) Future Hierocracy/ Future Monarchy De Vries (1989) Realized Hierocracy/ Future Monarchy Hanson (1979) Dörrfuss (1994) Uncertainty/Ambiguous Tuell (2001) Klein (2006)

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Shape of the Fulfillment of the Davidic Dynastic Promise: King versus Community Researchers on the books of Chronicles are agreed on at least one issue: the Chronicler grants David and his Dynasty a privileged position in his presentation of the kingdoms. Nearly absent from his tradition is the figure of Saul, who is afforded only 1 Chronicles 10, the account of his death. So also, the tradition of the counterkingdom begun by Jeroboam in rebellion from the Davidic Dynasty is largely absent from the Chronicler’s account. The spotlight is fixed on David’s Dynasty and its kingdom. However, the question is whether this emphasis belies hope in the Chronicler for the reemergence of the dynasty or whether he is merely using the dynasty to introduce his real agenda: the legitimacy of the temple community. Several key pericopae in Chronicles have received close scrutiny by those on both sides of this issue and to these I now turn.

Genealogies (1 Chronicles 1–9) Davidide: Literal Fulfillment.  Those who argue for a literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise usually point to the fact that, among the tribes, Judah is not only placed first and given considerable space but has the distinction of being traced well into the Persian period through the line of David (1 Chr 3:17–24). 5 This focus on David sets the tone for the book as a whole and reveals the Chronicler’s keen interest in the literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise. That the Chronicler is accentuating the special place of the Davidic line within the tribe of Judah is evident in the rhetoric of 1 Chr 28:4, where he makes explicit what is implicit in the genealogy (see 1 Chr 5:2). Community: Communal Fulfillment.  For scholars who argue for a communal fulfillment of the dynastic promise, the genealogies provide significant evidence. First of all, the presence of the Davidic line is overwhelmed by the abundance of other names from the various non-Davidic clans and tribes study below will consider the “future” outlook of the Chronicler and review the various attempts that have been made to describe this view or lack of it. 5.  Cf. M. Oeming, Das Wahre Israel: Die ‘Genealogische Vorhalle’ 1 Chronik 1–9 (BWANT 128; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990) 209; A. Laato, Josiah and David Redivivus: The Historical Josiah and the Messianic Expectations of Exilic and Postexilic Times (ConBOT 33; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992) 327; A. Laato, A Star Is Rising: The Historical Development of the Old Testament Royal Ideology and the Rise of the Jewish Messianic Expectations (University of South Florida International Studies in Formative Christianity and Judaism 5; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 230–35; B. E. Kelly, “Messianic Elements in the Chronicler’s Work,” in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts (ed. P. E. Satterthwaite, R. S. Hess, and G. J. Wenham; Tyndale House Studies; Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster / Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995) 249–64; Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology, 164.

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presented in the nine chapters. Most scholars agree that one of the Chronicler’s main emphases is the unity of the tribes as “all Israel.” Second, the Davidic genealogy in chap. 3 displays diversity in its presentation. The first part lists the many children born to David (3:1–9) followed by a list of the royal line from Solomon to Zedekiah (3:10–16). Verse 17 provides a fuller listing of offspring, moving away from the more restricted style of the previous verses. This change after v. 17 reveals a transition from the “dynastic line” to “familial genealogy.” 6 Although it grants prominence to the Davidic families in the Chronicler’s period, it should not be taken as an expression of royal hopes. Third, the genealogical section ends in chap. 9 with two important lists. The final list, in 9:35–44, is the genealogy of Saul, the Benjaminite, the purpose of which is to transition the reader from the genealogical section to the main narrative. This shows us that the lists have served to trace implicitly the story from Adam to Saul, near the end of whose life the Chronicler will now begin the story of the kingdom. The penultimate list, in 9:1b–34, however, appears to have a different purpose. After signaling the end of the genealogical lists of the tribes of Israel in 9:1a (“So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and these are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel”), the Chronicler then continues the line into the early Persian period by including a list of the individuals who were first to return to the land after exile. This list comprises “Israelites, priests, Levites, temple servants” (9:2), and the Israelites were from the tribes of “Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh” (9:3). As the final list, in 9:35–44, is used to set up the story that will begin in chap. 10, the penultimate list is used to show the relevance of this story to the Persian-period community. What is fascinating is that the penultimate list makes no reference to Davidides 7 but appears to show the intersection of all the families of preexilic Israel in the restoration community gathered around Jerusalem and its temple.

Dialogue The communal approach to the genealogies has some merit. It places the Davidic line in the context of the nation as a whole and sets the tone for the stronger communal presentation of the dynasty in Chronicles. However, the fact remains that the Davidic line is singled out among the many families and given a place of prominence. Rather than extinguishing the hope of dynasty, the Chronicler reignites it through his arrangement of the genealogical list in chap. 3. The list begins with a large pool of children for the Davidic line out of which Solomon is chosen. After the long list of the dynastic line, there is a clear break at v. 17 focusing attention on the line of Jehoiachin in exile. After 6. See K. E. Pomykala, The Davidic Dynasty Tradition in Early Judaism: Its History and Significance for Messianism (SBLEJL 7; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) 104–7. 7.  Ibid., 107.

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this point, the fuller list shows the considerable familial resources of the Davidic line, matching the conditions during David’s inaugural period. Through this presentation of both the endurance and the abundance of the Davidic line, the Chronicler recreates the conditions of David’s reign and sets up expectation for another Solomon. This evidence, however, does not eliminate the strong communal tone of the genealogical section and especially the absence of Davidic emphasis in the list of chap.  9, but the Chronicler, living in the midst of a community gathered around the temple, consistently focuses on the role of the restoration community in introducing the conditions of a Davidic theocracy.

David’s Psalms (1 Chronicles 16:7–36) Davidide: Literal Fulfillment.  Several scholars have argued that the Chronicler is stressing literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise in his incorporation of Psalm 105 in 1 Chronicles 16. 8 The quotation of Psalm 105 ends at 1 Chr 16:22 (Ps 105:15) with the exhortation of God to foreign kings: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.” Although originally this referred to the patriarchs in foreign nations, according to these scholars it has been transformed by the Chronicler into a reference to the Davidic line, for the noun ‫‘‏מׁשיח‬messiah’ (‘anointed one’) or the verb ‫‘‏מׁשח‬anoint’ is used elsewhere in Chronicles almost exclusively in reference to kings (1 Chr 11:3, 14:8, 29:22; 2 Chr 22:7, 23:11). 9 Community: Communal Fulfillment.  This evidence, however, could be used in favor of those who see communal fulfillment of the dynastic promise. It is uncertain, first of all, why these exegetes see 1 Chr 16:22 as referring to a literal fulfillment of the royal house and yet do not see any significance in the second phrase concerning “prophets.” The plural form of ‘anointed ones’ (‫ׁשיחָי‬ ִ ‫)מ‬ ְ in 16:22 could be a reference to both king and priest, for the one exception to their rule regarding the root ‘anoint’ is 1 Chr 29:22, where both Solomon and Zadok are anointed as king and priest. Furthermore, the term ‘anointed ones’ is located in a section speaking of the community’s forebears, who were few in number, living among the nations, and looking to the fulfillment of the promise of land. The most natural application of this is a reference to another small community living among the nations that is longing to be restored to its 8.  Cf. T. Butler, “A Forgotten Passage from a Forgotten Era (I Chr. 16:8–36),” VT 28 (1978) 142–50; R. M. Shipp, “‘Remember His Covenant Forever’: A Study of the Chronicler’s Use of the Psalms,” ResQ 35 (1993) 29–39; Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology, 173. 9.  Note also the argument of Shipp (“Remember”) that references to the phrases “Give thanks to the Lord; his love endures forever” are references to God’s covenant love to David; for the use of Psalm 132 in 2 Chr 6:40–42, see further pp. 226–229 below.

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promised land. 10 This is bolstered by the incorporation of Ps 106:1, 47–48 into 1 Chr 16:35–36, which voices the cry of an exilic community to be released from bondage and returned to the land to give appropriate praise and thanks to God. The final words focus attention on “all the people.” Thus, although 1 Chronicles 16 focuses attention on David’s role as patron of temple worship, the psalm shows the importance of this temple expression for the restoration of the entire community from the nations. Dialogue.  It appears that the evidence above favors the communal view, although it has been noted that the connection between anointed one and prophecy is seen elsewhere in Chronicles in the claim that David was a recipient of divine revelation (1 Chr 28:19). It is also possible that the plural anointed ones may be a reference to the royal and priestly streams and even that the reference to prophets treats this group as a third entity. 11 The intertwining of the two streams (priestly, royal) is not odd in Chronicles and will be seen as key in Jehoiada’s rescue of the Davidic line later in Chronicles (see pp. 234–235 below).

God’s Promise to David (1 Chronicles 17) and David’s Speeches to Solomon (1 Chronicles 22, 28–29) Davidide: Literal Fulfillment.  1 Chronicles 17 has provided the opportunity for the hottest debate over the issue at hand. Those who argue for literal fulfillment see the mere presence of this section as ample evidence that the Chronicler saw a literal future for the Davidic line, especially with three references to the enduring character of the Davidic promise (‫ עולם‬in 17:12, 14, 27). 12 While some may see the Chronicler’s omission in 17:13 of 2 Sam 7:14b (“when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men,” nasb) as evidence of playing down the conditionality attached to the dynastic promise, a conclusion that would bolster the literal fulfillment view, 13 its exclusion is most likely due to the later presentation of Solomon as 10.  Kelly straddles both views at this point, arguing for the connection of this patriarchal section to the “postexilic community” but also to the “Davidic descendants” (Retribution and Eschatology, 173). 11.  Not unlike Zechariah 3–4; see my “Oil, Crowns and Thrones: Prophet, Priest and King in Zechariah 1:7–6:15,” in Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures (ed. E. Ben Zvi; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2006) 379–404. 12.  Kelly, “Messianic Elements,” 249–64; cf. J. D. Newsome, “Toward a New Understanding of the Chronicler and His Purposes,” JBL 94 (1975) 201–17; M. Sæbø, “Messianism in Chronicles: Some Remarks to the Old Testament Background of the New Testament Christology,” HBT 2 (1980) 85–109 (Sæbø notes that this is especially important since the Chronicler presented this in a time when eternal kingship no longer existed). 13.  Sæbø, ibid. (Sæbø writes: “God’s promise made unreservedly”).

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the perfect royal through whom the dynasty is established. 14 The emphasis in the Chronicler’s form of the dynastic promise is certainly on Solomon, whose rule, rather than David’s, God will establish in perpetuity (1 Chr 17:14; cf. 2 Sam 7:16). 1 Chronicles 22, 28, and 29 reinforce the same themes discerned in 1 Chronicles 17. Allusions to 1 Chronicles 17 are evident throughout, but the Chronicler now makes it clear that Solomon is the offspring to whom Nathan refers in 1 Chronicles 17. The Chronicler introduces the tone of conditionality into the dynastic promise, but rather than undermining the promise this secures it, for the Chronicler presents Solomon as fulfilling the conditions set forth here (1 Chr 28:7; 2 Chr 7:17–18). 15 Community: Communal Fulfillment.  These arguments for literal fulfillment have not gone unanswered by scholars who see a communal fulfillment. 16 First, changes in verbal forms between 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 17 reveal that the Chronicler is not arguing for a future dynasty but, rather, that God has already built a dynasty for David. Second, the term ‫ עולם‬does not carry the abstracted sense of eternality in the Hebrew Bible. It speaks of ‘remotest time’ and can be employed for a person’s lifetime, which appears to be the case in Chron­icles. 17 Third, the promise to David in 1 Chronicles 17 is limited to Solomon only, not to a dynasty. Fourth, where 2 Sam 7:16 refers to David’s House and kingdom, 1 Chr 17:14 changes this to God’s House and kingdom. The change of reference to dynasty (David’s House) and to temple (God’s House) subtly reinforces the Chronicler’s view that the dynasty’s purpose is for temple and not for itself. 18 The change from David’s kingdom to God’s kingdom is a regular feature of Chronicles (1 Chr 28:5; 29:23; 2 Chr 9:8; 13:5, 8), deemphasizing the Davidic Dynasty in favor of God’s rule. Fifth, the incorporation of David’s speech to the people after the charge to Solomon in 1 Chronicles 22, reveals the role of the Davidic king as God’s agent to grant rest to the people so they fulfill their vocation as theocratic community. 19 Thus 14. So Laato, David Redivivus, 324; Laato, Star, 230–35; Kelly, “Messianic Elements.” 15. See Williamson, “Eschatology in Chronicles.” 16. Especially R. Mosis, Untersuchungen zur Theologie des chronistischen Ge­ schichtswerkes (FThSt 92; Freiburg: Herder, 1973); J. Becker, Messianic Expectation in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980); A. Caquot, “Peut-on parler de messianisme dans l’oeuvre du Chroniste?” RTP 16 (1966) 110–20; R. A. Mason, Preaching the Tradition: Homily and Hermeneutics after the Exile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Pomykala, Davidic Dynasty; W. Riley, King and Cultus in Chronicles: Worship and the Reinterpretation of History (JSOTSup 160; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). 17.  See especially Mosis, Untersuchungen; Pomykala, Davidic Dynasty. 18.  Riley, King and Cultus, 70. 19. Cf. Mason, Preaching, 26–27.

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the goal of the dynasty is not military prestige but, rather, theocracy. Sixth, 1 Chr 28:20 says that God’s presence was linked to the Davidic Dynasty only for the duration of the temple building. 20 Finally, 1 Chronicles 29, addressing the entire assembly, highlights the inexperience of Solomon for the task of temple building and invites the entire community to participate in the project. 21 This is further evidence of a widening of the dynastic focus: “The Chronicler sees the whole people of the theocracy inheriting the responsibility for the temple, once entrusted to the Davidic dynasty . . . a kind of ‘democratisation’ of the Davidic role.” 22 Dialogue  Several of the communal arguments have been successfully re­ futed by those in the royalist camp. Laato has shown that the changes in verbal forms do not bear the weight of the argument. 23 Several scholars have argued that the promise to David was certainly focused on Solomon in Chronicles but that Solomon is viewed in Chronicles as the one whose obedience in temple building and Torah observance successfully secures the dynastic throne “for­ ever.” 24 Kelly has shown that the meaning of David’s promise of God’s presence to Solomon in 28:20 turns on the preposition ‫עד‬, which can just as easily be translated ‘throughout’ as ‘until’. 25 Communal arguments based on a more limited definition of the term ‫ עולם‬are also unconvincing. Although it is true that the word ‫ עולם‬does not carry the weight of our Western conception of eternity and that it can be used for more-limited periods of time such as the span of human life, it is best to follow James Barr and John R. Wilch, who argue that it contains the idea of perpetuity or permanence, or with Norman Henry Snaith: “It involves continuing, continuing, continuing.” 26 When it refers to a person’s 20.  Caquot, “Messianisme,” 118; Mason, Preaching, 32; Riley, King and Cultus, 75–76; R. L. Braun, 1 Chronicles (WBC 14; Waco, TX: Word, 1986) 273. 21.  Mason, Preaching, 34. 22. Ibid. 23. See Laato, David Redivivus. 24. R. L. Braun, “Solomon, the Chosen Temple Builder: The Significance of 1 Chronicles 22, 28, and 29 for the Theology of Chronicles,” JBL 95 (1976) 581–90; Williamson, “Eschatology in Chronicles”; H. G. M. Williamson, “The Dynastic Or­ acle in the Books of Chronicles,” in Essays on the Bible and Ancient World, vol. 3: Isaac Leo Seeligmann Volume (ed. A. Rofé and Y. Zakovitch; Jerusalem: Rubinstein, 1983); R. B. Dillard, “The Chronicler’s Solomon,” WTJ 43 (1981) 289–300; Laato, Star, 230–35. 25. Cf. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology, 144. 26.  N. H. Snaith, “Time in the Old Testament,” in Promise and Fulfillment: Essays Presented to Professor S. H. Hooke in Celebration of His Ninetieth Birthday (ed. F. F. Bruce; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1963) 180; J. Barr, Biblical Words for Time (rev. ed.; SBT 33; Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1969) 73 n. 1; J. R. Wilch, Time and Event: An Exegetical Use of ʾeth in the Old Testament in Comparison to Other Temporal Expressions

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life, it often refers to the span of his or her life, but when it is used of a nation or people or line of people, the time period cannot be delimited in this way. Anthony Tomasino expresses this well when he comments that promises for an office or dynasty “were made with no anticipated end point.” 27 In the case of Eli in 1 Sam 2:30, where we hear of an ‫ עולם‬covenant for an official line, God’s decision to bring an end to this line is clearly a shocking development (‘but now . . . far be it from me’, ‫י‬‎ ‫ חלילה ל‬. . . ‫ )ועתה‬and shows that promises of this sort are seen as enduring without perceivable end. God’s judgment is clearly announced against the continuance of this promise. Confirmation of this can be seen in Psalm 89, where the establishment of an ‫ עולם‬throne for David is equated with a line of seed from generation to generation (89:4–5[3–4e]) and linked with the endurance of the created order (89:30[29], 37–38[36–37]). That the Chronicler has in mind more than just the reigns of David and/or Solomon is clear from 1 Chr 28:8, where David uses ‫ עולם‬when speaking of Solomon’s bequeathing the kingdom to his descendants. Furthermore, as we will soon see, the allusion to this promise as ‫ עולם‬in 2 Chr 21:7, in reference to a much later generation confirms that the promise is perpetual. Three of the communal arguments are important observations and should not be ignored, even though none of them precludes a literal future for the dynasty. The change from David’s to God’s House and kingdom that finds echoes elsewhere in Chronicles is important evidence of the Chronicler’s definition of the role of the dynasty within the economy of the theocracy. The kingdom is clearly delineated as God’s kingdom, in which the king reigns as prince or vice regent. There is no room here for a dynasty’s ruling independently of Yahweh. 28 However, the Chronicler does not eliminate the dynastic aspect; he includes it five times later in David’s response (1 Chr 17:23–27). As a mediatorial figure, the king in his relationship to God and his kingdom is carefully delineated by the Chronicler as well as an emphasis on his relationship to the people. The people are closely associated with the king. David envisions the participation of the people in the priorities of the dynasty (1 Chronicles 29) but also the role that the dynasty will play in providing the kind of rest that makes the fulfillment of its theocratic vocation possible (1 Chronicles 22). in Clarification of the Concept of Time (Leiden: Brill, 1969) 17–19. Jenni and De Vries both speak of ‫ עולם‬as remotest time, either past or future. See E. Jenni, “‫עֹולָם‬,” TLOT 2:853; S. J. De Vries, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Time and History in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975). 27. A. Tomasino, “‫עֹולָם‬,” NIDOTTE 3:348–49. 28.  On this, see Laato, David Redivivus, 332; idem, Star, 230–35; J. A. Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles (NAC 9; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994) 36–37; Sæbø, “Messianism,” 101 (Sæbø notes: “In the end there is only one kingdom, that of Yahweh—and the Davidic king is its representative . . . it represents a significant shifting of the main points in direction of the theocratic”).

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Solomon’s Dedication of the Temple (2 Chronicles 6) and God’s Response (2 Chronicles 7) Davidide: Literal Fulfillment.  Once again, scholars who hold to a literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise find here strong support. 29 Both through Solomon’s speech to the assembly (2 Chr 6:10–11) and through his prayer to God (6:15), the Chronicler reveals fulfillment of the promises in 1 Chronicles 17 that Solomon will inherit the throne and build the temple. However, this does not exhaust the promise, because the following two verses in the prayer (6:16–17) constitute a request for fulfillment of the other promise in 1 Chronicles 17: that Davidic kings would sit on the throne eternally. Further proof of literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise is drawn from the end of the prayer in 2 Chr 6:40–42. Whereas the preceding evidence is found nearly word for word in the Chronicler’s Vorlage, vv. 40–42 represent a clear departure from this source. The final scenario in the prayer in 1 Kings 8 depicts a people in captivity who, because of their sin, penitently cry out to God for forgiveness and are granted compassion by their captors (1 Kgs 8:46–53). This section ends with two allusions to the exodus experience. The Chronicler uses the majority of this final scenario but cuts his account short of the release from captivity, leaving out the allusions to the exodus experience. In its place, the Chronicler has incorporated a piece that relies mostly on Ps 132:8–10 30 but also betrays the influence of Isa 55:3 in the phrase ‎‫חסדי דויד‬. 31 As a whole, Psalm 132 represents a cry for grace for the Davidic House, reminding God of the faithfulness of his servant David and of the dynastic promise of an eternal line. The incorporation of 132:8–10 here in the mouth of Solomon is crucial, for it represents an additional request to God after a series of scenarios that reached their climax in the exilic experience. The prayer calls for God to fill the temple with his presence (2 Chr 6:41a), clothe his priests with salvation, and cause his people to rejoice (6:41b). But in the final and climactic piece, Solomon cries out to God not to reject the request of his “anointed one,” by remembering his ‫ד‬ ‎ ‫( חסדי דוי‬6:42). For those who see a literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise, the “anointed one” here is a reference to the king. The phrase ‫ד‬ ‎ ‫ חסדי דוי‬is taken as an objective genitive and thus means God’s dynastic promise to David: Solomon is calling to God to fulfill his promise of dynasty. This view is based on two considerations: (1) this is the sense in Isa 29.  Laato, David Redivivus. 30.  So idem, “Psalm 132 and the Development of the Jerusalemite/Israelite Royal Ideology,” CBQ 54 (1992) 49–66; idem, “Psalm 132: A Case Study in Methodology,” CBQ 61 (1999) 24–34; C. L. Patton, “Psalm 132: A Methodological Inquiry,” CBQ 57 (1995) n. 17. 31.  So H. G. M. Williamson, “‘The Sure Mercies of David’: Subjective or Objective Genitive?” JSS 23 (1978) 68–90; idem, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982); see also Acts 13:34.

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55:3, from which the phrase is drawn; (2) this view fits the theme of Solomon’s prayer, especially 2 Chr 6:15–17. God’s response to Solomon’s prayer is recorded in 2 Chronicles 7. Here the literal-fulfillment camp finds confirmation that Solomon’s role transcended the building of a temple to include also the establishment of the Davidic Dynasty. 32 In contrast to 1 Kgs 9:6, which lists Solomon and his descendants in the conditional clause, 2 Chr 7:19 limits the conditionality to Solomon alone. The slight contrast between 2 Chr 7:18 and 1 Kgs 9:5 reveals the Chronicler’s reliance on Mic 5:1[2], which represents a royalist hope for Israel (‎‫)מוׁשל ביׂשראל‬. 33 Community: Communal Fulfillment.  The writers who hold to a communal fulfillment of the dynastic promise place greater emphasis in these sections on the communal tone of the various pericopes. Thus, tremendous stress is placed on the fulfillment of the promise of David on “this day” (2 Chr 6:15), referring to the completion of the temple, and shows that the Davidic hope has been “taken out of history and embodied in the temple and cultus.” 34 Although the promise of dynasty is conditional on the behavior of Solomon in 1 Chr 28:7–9 and 2 Chr 7:17–18, 2 Chr 6:16 extends this conditionality to all descendants of David, thus bringing into question the future of the Davidic Dynasty, making it dependent on the faithfulness of the line. 35 The alteration of the final portion of Solomon’s prayer by the infusion of poetic pieces from Ps 132:8–10 and Isa 55:3 is interpreted very differently by those who hold to communal fulfillment. The final phrase, ‎‫זכרה לחסדי דויד‬ ‫עבדך‬, is not a prayer for God to remember the dynastic promise but, rather, a call for God to remember the faithfulness of David. This conclusion is based on interpreting the phrase ‫ חסדי דויד‬as a subjective genitive: ‘the covenant faithfulness of David’. This is in keeping with the tone of Psalm 132 as a whole, especially the introduction in 132:1, where God is asked to “remember David” for all the hardships he had endured as well as his faithful acts in relationship to the temple. This interpretation also matches the majority of uses of the phrase: X + ‫—חסדי‬in particular, other appearances in Chronicles (2 Chr 32:32, 35:26) where it is used of faithful acts of other kings. Additionally, if this phrase is drawn from Isa 55:3 (and there are those who would deny this), it is interesting that it appears there in a passage that broadens the Davidic covenant into a 32.  Idem, “Eschatology in Chronicles.” 33.  See R. B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles (WBC 15; Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 59. 34.  P. R. Ackroyd, “History and Theology in the Writings of the Chronicler,” CTM 38 (1967) 514; cf. Mosis, Untersuchungen. 35. See Pomykala (Davidic Dynasty, 92–93), who refutes Williamson (“Eschatology in Chronicles”). Riley favors the view that this refers to the dynasty because of the “universal quality of the apodosis” but leaves open the possibility that it refers to “the replacement of the offending monarch alone” (Riley, King and Cultus, 89–90).

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communal context. 36 Interestingly, the MT may provide further evidence of a communal interpretation, for it preserves the plural form ‫ך‬‎ ‫ מׁשיחי‬rather than the singular, as in many manuscripts and the Versions and the source Psalm 132. The typical approach in the past has been to bring this unique reading into line with the other witnesses or to interpret this as a reference to the line of David. 37 However, it is also possible to see here a deliberate transformation of Ps 132:8–10. The Chronicler is transforming the original reference to a Davidide into a reference to the people and priests in 2 Chr 6:41. This would match the communal direction alluded to in Isa 55:3. Another difference between Psalm 132 and 2 Chr 6:40–42 has provided further evidence for the communal position. 38 Although the focus of attention in Psalm 132 is the Davidic Dynasty with the temple as subsidiary to this greater theme, the Chronicler has placed greater emphasis on the temple by citing 132:8–10, which begins with the temple, priests, and people before mentioning the king and David. This shows a “playing down of the royalist tone of the opening of Solomon’s prayer, in favour of the more ‘democratic’ view of the temple and its cult evinced by the bulk of that prayer.” 39 A similar communal trend is discerned in God’s reply in 2 Chronicles 7. 40 2 Chr 7:13–15 represents an addition by the Chronicler. While in 1 Kings 9, God’s response proceeds immediately to the concern of an eternal dynasty, the Chronicler’s addition places the emphasis on the role of the temple as a place for the religious life of the people before moving to dynastic considerations. “Clearly, then, for the Chronicler the perdurance of the temple is of greater contemporary concern to the people than the continuance of the dynasty.” 41 Communal interpreters also are not impressed by the claim of an allusion to Mic 5:1[2] in 2 Chr 7:17–18. 42 They argue that the verbal correspondence is slight, the supposed change in Chronicles from its Vorlage may have actually existed in Kings, and in any case, the allusion in Micah appears to point outside the direct line of David. 36.  Goldingay develops the connections between Chronicles and Deutero-Isaiah, using Isa 55:3 as a touch point but also showing the strong communal orientation in both (“The Chronicler as a Theologian,” BTB 5 [1975] 99–126). However, his initial argumentation for the nonroyalist and communal character of Chronicles is extremely weak and largely based on his view of a united Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah corpus. See Riley, King and Cultus, 93. 37. See Dillard, 2 Chronicles, 46. 38.  See D. F. Murray, “Dynasty, People, and the Future: The Message of Chronicles,” JSOT 58 (1993) 84–86. 39.  Ibid., 86. 40.  See ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. See Riley, King and Cultus, 94–95.

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Dialogue.  The arguments provided by proponents of communal fulfillment cannot be ignored. They reveal a stronger communal trend in these texts than has been admitted by many within the literal-fulfillment camp. 43 However, these arguments are unable to excise a dynastic future from the texts discussed. Although there is great focus on the temple and the significance of its completion for Solomon in 2 Chr 6:15, one cannot ignore the two following verses (6:16–17), which look beyond the temple building to the establishment of an eternal dynasty. Even though the addition of 7:13–15 does introduce a stronger communal tone into God’s reply, it does not eliminate the dynastic emphasis in 7:17–19. The argument that 6:16 extends the condition of the dynastic promise to post-Solomonic generations does have some justification. However, this does not undermine the perpetuity of the dynastic promise, especially considering the assurance of perpetuity immediately following the evil reign of Jehoram in 2 Chr 21:4–7. Rather, it reminds the audience that, although the dynastic promise will be solidified in Solomon, the ability of future Davidides to experience this promise remains linked to their faithfulness to temple and law. 44

Post-Solomonic Evidence Community: Communal Fulfillment.  Those who argue for communal fulfillment attach great significance to several aspects of the accounts after Solomon’s death. First of all, references to God’s preservation of the dynasty based on God’s promises to David (‫ ניר‬and/or ‫)למען דוד‬, which are found in 1 Kgs 11:13, 32, 36; 15:4; 2 Kgs 8:19; 19:34; 20:6, are limited to only one instance in Chronicles: 2 Chr 21:7 (2 Kgs 8:19). 45 Second, the Chronicler’s presentation of Hezekiah sets out an agenda for renewal for the Chronicler’s contemporary audience, especially through the king’s speeches in 2 Chr 29:5–11 and 30:6–12. 46 These 43.  Although the citation of Psalm 132 does place great emphasis on the temple, priests, and people, one cannot eradicate the reference to a Davidic king in 2 Chr 6:42, for the narrative continuation in 2 Chr 7:1–2 reports (unique from the Deuteronomistic History) that God answered the prayer of Solomon. This reveals that the reference to ‫ מׁשיח‬in v. 42 does refer to Solomon and not to the priests/people. However, it is still difficult to move with assurance from the conclusion that Solomon is the referent here to the assertion that this is being used to bolster royalist hopes. Pomykala has noted: “The only and obvious referent to the phrase in 1 Chr 6:42 is Solomon, not future kings” (Davidic Dynasty, 98). 44.  Pomykala argues that, if this promise was truly forever and God would provide a “lamp” forever, by the late Persian period, God had violated his covenant for 150–225 years (ibid., 99). He misses the argument that is made clear by 2 Chr 6:16, which is that the dynastic promise was established forever, but this did not mean that they would always have a king on the throne. 45.  Caquot, “Messianisme,” 118–19; Mason, Preaching. 46. Cf. Murray, “Dynasty, People, and the Future.”

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speeches, however, focus on the responsibilities of priests (2 Chr 29:5, 11) and people (30:6–9) but provide no role for a Davidic monarch. Third, the ending of the books of Chronicles does not suggest a future for the royal line, and there are several pieces of evidence to consider. The reign of Josiah is a significant juncture in the books of Chronicles. 47 During his reign, the temple and cultus, the goal of the royal line, are established (2 Chr 35:20). His death marks the rejection of the Davidic line, because the Chronicler alludes to Saul’s rejection in 1 Chronicles 10 as Josiah is killed in a battle with foreigners and is cited for failure to regard the word of God. 48 These allusions to Saul’s rejection continue throughout 2 Chronicles 36 as each king suffers a termination of his reign in the face of foreign invasions. These final four kings of the Kingdom of Judah are given little attention in the Chronicler’s account; 49 even death notices are disregarded, and the focus of attention is placed on the disobedience of each king and the plundering of the temple by foreign kings. Whereas 2 Kings ends with a note of hope for the dynasty and people by mentioning the release of Jehoiachin in Babylon, after 2 Chr 36:13 the king and royal family disappear from the story. 50 Furthermore, the Chronicler alludes to two passages in the closing words of his history (36:21): Leviticus 26 and Jeremiah 29. 51 These passages show a lack of interest in the Davidic Dynasty, focusing attention on shaping the actions of the community in exile. The end of the dynasty is confirmed in the Chronicler’s closing pericope (2 Chr 36:22– 23), which depicts the transfer of royal prerogatives (authority from God and temple building for God) from David to Cyrus. 52 Davidide: Royal Fulfillment.  In the post-Solomonic account of the Chronicler, individuals who see a literal fulfillment to the dynastic promise find support for their position. Although it is true that references to God’s preservation of the dynasty based on God’s promises to David (‫ ניר‬and/or ‫ )למען דוד‬are on the whole missing in the Chronicler’s account, each of these omissions can be attributed to other purposes of the Chronicler. 53 Of course, if the Chronicler was so concerned to expunge his account of these formulas, why did he leave one of them in his account and there accentuate the dynasty by replacing the term ‫‘ יהודה‬Judah’ (2 Kgs 8:19) with ‫‘ בית דויד‬House of David’ (2 Chr 21:7)? 54 Although the Chronicler has omitted reference to God’s preservation of the dy47. See Riley, King and Cultus, 155. 48.  See ibid., 139. 49. See Mosis, Untersuchungen, 213. 50.  Only appearing in 2 Chr 36:18 in a phrase modifying the plunder taken by the Babylonians. 51.  Murray, “Dynasty, People, and the Future.” 52. See Riley, King and Cultus, 151–55; Murray, “Dynasty, People, and the Future.” 53.  Kelly, “Messianic Elements,” 260. 54. See Williamson, “Eschatology in Chronicles,” 148.

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nasty in his account of Abijah (2 Chr 13:2; cf. Abijam 1 Kgs 15:2–6), he then inserts a speech by Abijah to Jeroboam and the Northern Kingdom that contains the strongest evidence after Solomon in favor of the enduring nature of the Davidic Dynasty (2 Chr 13:3–21). Here Abijah declares: “The Lord God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt” (v. 5) and “The kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David” (v. 8). 55 Furthermore, in the Chronicler’s account of Jehoiada’s restoration of the Davidic line (2 Chr 22:20–23:21; cf. 2 Kgs 11:1–20), the Chronicler has inserted an extra piece into 23:3 that is not found in 2 Kings 11 (v. 4): “Let him reign, as the Lord spoke concerning the sons of David.” 56 This is indeed surprising, considering that both of the Davidides with whom Jehoiada is associated are not judged positively by the Chronicler. 57 The presentation of Hezekiah has been shown to contain echoes of the reigns of David and Solomon, and thus it appears that he is cast into the role of the kings who ruled over a united kingdom. 58 Therefore, although his speeches do contain strong communal overtones, one cannot ignore the towering figure of Hezekiah as one who expresses the core values of the Davidic Dynasty. 59 Does this not show the intersection of two major themes in Chronicles: the “all Israel” theme and the “Davidic” theme in that only a future Davidic king under God’s command can unite the tribes in repentance and worship again? Although there are certain anomalies at the end of Josiah’s reign in the Chronicler’s account, it is difficult to accept the argument that with Josiah we reach the climactic moment in the establishment of temple and cultus, as has been argued. 60 This honor must go to Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29–32. 61 Attempts to link 2 Chronicles 35–36 to the end of the dynasty of Saul are faulty on two counts. First of all, there are few lexical connections between 1 Chronicles 10 and 2 Chronicles 35–36. 62 One would expect that, if the end of the 55.  Riley’s argument based on other contexts where the phrase “covenant of salt” appears is not helpful, for the context here does not even suggest a cultic meal; see Riley, King and Cultus, 116–17. The focus must remain on the term ‫עולם‬. 56.  Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles; G. H. Jones, “From Abijam to Abijah,” ZAW 106 (1994) 423. 57.  Williamson, “Eschatology in Chronicles.” 58.  M. A. Throntveit, “Hezekiah in the Books of Chronicles,” in SBL Seminar Papers, 1988 (ed. D. J. Lull; SBLSP; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 302–11. 59.  Murray’s argument that, if the Chronicler had dynastic intentions he would have spelled this out more explicitly, for subtlety is not one of his traits, restricts the Chronicler in a straightjacket that does not fit his work. See Murray, “Dynasty, People, and the Future.” 60.  See the superb critique in Kelly, “Messianic Elements,” 261. 61.  As H. G. M. Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 119–31. 62. As Riley admits: “The Chronicler has not constructed a point-by-point correspondence between 1 Chronicles 10 and 2 Chronicles 36” and in terms of 2 Chr 35:22

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dynasty were the Chronicler’s concern, he would have used his key term ‫מעל‬, 63 a term that in 2 Chronicles 35–36 is reserved only for the actions of the priests and people. 64 Following this argument, one would have the priests and people rejected like Saul with no hope of reinstatement, a point that is unacceptable to all interpreters and in tension with the ending (2 Chr 36:22–23) and beginning (1 Chronicles 9) of Chronicles. The account of the last four kings has also been viewed differently for those who hold to a literal fulfillment of the dynastic promise. Rather than undermining the dynastic promise, the absence of death notices for these four kings may be a rhetorical move to bolster it. This rhetoric leaves one open to the future of these kings, playing down the mortality of the line, 65 and tracing each of them into exile. 66 It also places more attention on the fate of the temple that suffers plundering at the hand of foreigners. In this way, there is a “deliberate parallel between the fate of the temple and that of the Davidic dynasty.” 67 That the Chronicler has some interest in the exilic Davidic Dynasty is clear from the reference to “Jehoiachin, the captive” in 1 Chr 3:17, which is “prospective and anticipates the king’s fate in 2 Chr. 36:10.” 68 Finally, although Cyrus is mentioned in the final paragraph of the book, 69 the Chronicler never claims that David’s kingdom has been eclipsed by Cyrus. 70 Dialogue.  Once again, it is difficult to ignore the Chronicler’s inclusion of material that affirms the ongoing relevance of the dynastic promise for the House of David. However, the account of Abijah has reminded us again of the theocratic tone of the kingdom envisioned by the Chronicler: it is the kingdom finds only a reference to the word of God and the motif of foreign defeat (King and Cultus, 147; cf. p. 139). 63.  On the significance of this term in Chronicles, see especially W. Johnstone, 1  and 2  Chronicles (JSOTSup 253–54; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); idem, Chronicles and Exodus: An Analogy and Its Application (JSOTSup 275; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). 64.  Riley tries to deflect this point by claiming that the people’s actions are seen in continuity with the king’s actions (2 Chr 36:14) and that there are plenty of instances at earlier points in the post-Solomonic period where ‫ מעל‬is used in connection with kings, but the fact remains that at this crucial point when he claims rejection of the dynasty there is no royal ‫( מעל‬King and Cultus, 147). 65.  C. T. Begg, “The Fate of Judah’s Four Last Kings in the Book of Chronicles,” OLP 18 (1987) 79–85. 66.  Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 412. 67. Ibid. 68.  Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology, 164. 69.  However, many see this as a later addition either in order to infuse some hope at the end or to smooth the transition to the book of Ezra; see Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 419. 70.  Laato, David Redivivus, 323; Kelly, “Messianic Elements,” 261.

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of God in the hands of David. Additionally, the accounts of Jehoiada and Hezekiah have shown us the crucial role of the temple personnel and people in the restoration of Davidic Dynasty and priorities. 71 The greatest challenge to this ongoing relevance, however, has come from the ending of Chronicles, which does not make explicit reference to the restoration of the Davidic line. The rhetorical flow of the final chapter appears to collapse the Davidic line into the exilic community. The final word of the Chronicler comes in the form of a broken sentence from the lips of Cyrus. After declaring that God had given him the kingdoms of the earth and appointed him to build the temple, he calls the community to ‘go up’ (‫)ויעל‬. At the beginning of the book of Ezra, we can see the rest of the sentence, which declares that they are to go up and rebuild the temple. However, the Chronicler cuts the account short, transforming an invitation to join Cyrus in rebuilding into an invitation to return to a rebuilt temple. The Chronicler addresses a community for whom the temple is already standing, and its cultus is operational because of the Persian treasury. He addresses the people and invites them to embrace the priorities of the temple, as he has continuously throughout his book. 72 This communal tone, however, has not precluded the ongoing relevance of the Davidic Dynasty anywhere else in the Chronicler’s account. Instead, it appears that the Chronicler sees the community gathered around the temple as key to the ultimate renewal of the dynasty. 73 Conclusion.  This discussion of texts relevant to the shape of the dynastic promise has shown the potential affinity between the two opposing interpretive camps. Rather than choosing an exclusive royalist or communal shape to the dynastic promise, one finds reason to embrace both. The Chronicler lives within a community of individuals who have survived exile, returned to their land, and restored religious rhythm to their lives. The success of this community without sustained royal leadership has highlighted the power of the community, and this emphasis weaves its way into nearly every story within the Chronicler’s account. However, the Chronicler never dissolves the dynastic 71. S. Tuell has noted places where there is an interlinking of the Davidic and Aaronide lines, revealing their close relationship (First and Second Chronicles [IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 2001], e.g., p. 163). Possibly the reference to the priestly “covenant of salt” in 2 Chr 13:5 (cf. Num 18:19) forges these two streams together and shows how the one can enhance the other. 72.  This invitational approach to the ending of Chronicles is adopted by Kelly (Retribution and Eschatology, 189–90) from S. D. Walters (“Saul of Gibeon,” JSOT 52 [1991] 61–76). However, I do not see here an invitation to rebuild, as does Walters. 73.  See on this my “Identity and Empire, Reality and Hope in the Chronicler’s Perspective,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. Knoppers and K. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 249–72.

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promise into a promise to the community but, instead, holds out hope for something yet to come. This is not surprising considering the great hopes communicated in prophetic literature for this restoration community. Possibly the Chronicler retains this royalist hope as the route from the survival mode of the present to the success of the future. One of the Chronicler’s narratives that shows this balancing of royalist and communal aspects is 2 Chr 22:10–23:21, the account of Athaliah, Jehoiada, and Joash. For those who see in the Chronicler a hierocrat disinterested in a royalist future, the inclusion of this story is difficult to explain. It may be that the Chronicler could not ignore this story because it is essential to the overall flow of the history of the Southern Kingdom or because Joash’s priority on the temple redeemed this character for the Chronicler. However, elsewhere, the Chronicler is not beyond abbreviating stories and ignoring aspects of reigns that do not fit his values. A closer look at the Chronicler’s version reveals subtle changes in the story that were designed to apply this story to his own generation. First of all, the Chronicler’s story broadens the involvement of priestly personnel. 74 Whereas the Deuteronomistic account describes Jehoiada as entering into an agreement with military personnel, the Chronicler draws in Levitical personnel who perform this role. This is closely associated with the Chronicler’s careful delineation of who was allowed into sacred areas but uses the priestly character of Jehoiada to endorse the role of the Levites. Second, the Chronicler places great emphasis in his account on the involvement of the people as a whole. 75 Whereas in 2 Kgs 11:4 Jehoiada makes a covenant with the guards, 2 Chr 23:1–3 expands this to a list of men (possibly Levites) who go and gather Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses to come to Jerusalem to enter into covenant with the king. So also, when the plan is distributed by Jehoiada, “all the people” have a role to play in the protection of the royal line (23:5, 10). 76 The account reads more like a people’s movement in Chronicles than the military coup led by the priests in the Deuteronomistic History. Third, the Chronicler makes a crucial change at 2 Chr 23:3 (cf. 2 Kgs 11:4). Whereas his Vorlage used direct narrative for the revelation of Joash (and he showed them the king’s son), the Chronicler transforms this into dramatic narrative, drawing more attention to the child as dynastic figure (“Behold the king’s son! 74.  Riley appropriately notes the heightened cultic emphasis in the coronation of Joash: “The episode is the story of a liturgy, not of a political coup” (King and Cultus, 124). 75.  Williamson claims that this is an attempt to link this narrative with the original affirmation of David in 1 Chronicles 11ff., especially in 2 Chr 23:3 with the promise to David (1 and 2 Chronicles, 313). 76.  Again the Chronicler is concerned about sacred space, placing the people in the courts of the temple (2 Chr 23:5).

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Let him reign, as the Lord spoke concerning the sons of David”). Rather than shying away from the dynastic promise, the Chronicler accentuates it. Furthermore, in 2 Chr 23:11 (cf. 2 Kgs 11:12) the Chronicler reports with his Vorlage that Jeohiada anointed Joash but adds that Jehoiada’s sons accompanied him, possibly an allusion to future generations. Priest, people, and king are bound together in covenant at the beginning and end of this story. While in the Deuteronomistic account Jehoiada enters into a compact with his guards and only later, near the end of his account, leads a covenant between king, people, and God, the Chronicler introduces this covenant ceremony from the beginning (23:3) and then repeats it again with his Vorlage at the end (23:16). The Chronicler also has simplified this later covenant ceremony (23:16). Where the Deuteronomistic version has a threefold covenant between God, king, and people and then a twofold covenant between the people and king (2  Kgs 11:17) all facilitated by the priest, the Chronicler presents only a threefold covenant between priest, people, and king as the Lord’s people (2 Chr 23:16). This reminds us that, although the Chronicler has a royalist hope, the priest’s role will not be eliminated, and the king’s role will not be independent of the priest. The Chronicler embraces the figure of Jehoiada in his story. He presents him as an example of the kind of priesthood he envisions—a priesthood that embraces and uses the Levitical order, is a catalyst among the people, and seeks the reinstatement of the royal line. As even Riley notes in his work on Jehoiada: “Just as the Temple emerged from the Davidic dynasty, now in the incident of Joash’s enthronement the Temple cultus saves the dynasty from permanent eradication and restores the dynasty to the Jerusalem throne.” 77 As in the days of Athaliah, when the dynastic line was fragile, so in the days of the Chronicler, the priests have a role to play facilitating and championing the cause of people and king.

Timing: Future versus Status Quo In contrast to the first controversy over the shape of the fulfillment of the dynastic promise, the issue of its timing and effect has received less direct attention. There are few today who would limit the Chronicler’s historiographic intention to the bare recording of past history. The Chronicler was drawing on the traditions of Israel to speak to his contemporary audience. But beyond this fundamental point, there is little unanimity. For many, the Chronicler is viewed as the ultimate legitimizer, who draws in the past to bolster his agenda in the present: the temple services or rebuilding. Here one can even find the term eschatology (often “realized eschatology”) redefined into the ether. The hierocratic Ackroyd goes so far as to claim that he 77.  Riley, King and Cultus, 124.

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finds “an eschatological element in the Chronicler’s work” but not “a hope for the future.” 78 The royalist Newsome argues for an “eschatological hope” yet speaks of the “immediate restoration of the house of David.” 79 Possibly in his case, we could speak of “inaugurated eschatology.” But for many others, the Chronicler’s agenda transcends legitimation. Increasingly, scholars have argued for a much stronger future agenda in Chronicles, whether this involves a royalist hope or not.  80 Thus the nonroyalist De  Vries sees in the Chronicler the agenda of “showing what ideal Israel should be.” 81 For Jacob M. Myers, the Chronicler “has a kind of realized and ever­-realizable eschatology, that is, the traditions are used to inspire the people to respond to the grace of the Lord who alone is able to free them from their slough of despondency.” 82 William J. Dumbrell restricts the Chronicler’s eschatology to the community. 83 He finds this signaled in the closing section of the work with the appearance of Cyrus and the second-exodus theology of the return to the land. This shows that the conditions created by David and Solomon provide “the model for the end,” 84 and so for Dumbrell the Chronicler is “a theologian of eschatological enthusiasm.” 85 Stinespring calls the Chronicler’s David “an eschatological figure” because the Chronicler compares the picture of David with the lack of dynastic rule in his own day. 86 What evidence has been advanced for these two approaches: legitimizer of the present, visionary of the future?

Legitimation One cannot deny that the Chronicler appears at times to be legitimizing the present state of affairs. Temple Building and Cultus.  The Chronicler is clearly using the description of David’s activity in 1 Chronicles 22–27, Solomon’s building and dedication of the temple in 2  Chronicles 1–7, and the consistent focus on temple and personnel through 2 Chronicles 10–36 to legitimize the temple cultus of the Second Temple period. Whether one sees the Chronicler as writing in the early 78.  Ackroyd, “History and Theology,” 512. 79.  Newsome, “Toward a New Understanding,” 208. 80.  As noted above (n. 4), I speak here of a “future agenda,” and I am purposely avoiding the controversial term eschatology. 81.  S. J. De Vries, “Moses and David as Cult Founders in Chronicles,” JBL 107 (1988) 637. 82.  J. M. Myers, “Kerygma of the Chronicler: History and Theology in the Service of Religion,” Int 20 (1966) 269; cf. p. 266. 83.  W. J. Dumbrell, “The Purpose of the Books of Chronicles,” JETS 27 (1984) 265. 84.  Ibid., 266. 85. Ibid. 86.  W. F. Stinespring, “Eschatology in Chronicles,” JBL 80 (1961) 209–19.

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Persian period or at some later point, the Chronicler’s intention is seen as legitimizing the temple and its services. 2 Chronicles 12:1–16.  The Chronicler’s story of Rehoboam’s discipline in 2  Chronicles 12 appears to be parenetic in orientation. 87 In this story, God announces judgment on the rebellious Rehoboam. When Rehoboam and the princes of Israel humble themselves, God says he will not destroy them completely but, rather, that they will become servants to Shishak to teach them the difference between serving God and serving the nations. This clearly connects with the experience of the Persian-period community. Through Rehoboam’s example, the people are given an explanation for the purpose of exile (to teach the difference between serving the nations and God) are shown the kind of attitude that ultimately brings the people out of exile. It legitimizes the actions of God, while providing the reason that the people have come out of exile. 2 Chronicles 14:7.  In the Chronicler’s account of Asa, the king makes this comment: “The land is still ours, because we have sought the Lord our God; we have sought him, and he has given us peace on every side.” This comment creates a strong linkage between the experience of the Persian-period community and the experience of Asa in the text. This is a legitimizing statement, explaining why the people still have the land: because they have sought the Lord in temple cultus. 2  Chronicles 15:3–4.  The speech of the prophet Azariah to Asa, Judah, and Benjamin intersects the experience of the Persian-period community. He speaks of an Israel without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law who in this time of distress turned to the Lord and sought him. This time of distress is a time without peace when great disturbances afflicted the inhabitants of the land. Through this prophetic character, the Chronicler is clearly speaking to a community that knew of difficult circumstances of this sort throughout the exilic period as well as the early Persian period (see Haggai 1–2; Zechariah 8). Asa responds to this call to repent and seek God with reformation of the temple cultus. The Chronicler appears to be using this story parenetically to show his contemporaries that the temple cultus was and will continue to be the solution to the distress. 2 Chronicles 33:10–20.  The contrast between the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronistic History is highlighted most vividly in the account of Manasseh. The Deuteronomist makes Manasseh the villain in his account of the fall of the nation, while the Chronicler makes him into an example for the nation. In a sense, Manasseh embodies the nation, whose ‘unfaithfulness’ (‫ )מעל‬led to exile (2 Chr 33:19). His humble prayer to God reflects the core values of the Chronicler. Upon his return, he concerns himself with temple 87. See my “Identity and Empire,” 249–72.

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cultus. This shows the Chronicler as a legitimizer, depicting what brings an end to exile (humble prayer) and the resultant behavior (temple cultus). Conclusion.  These examples reveal that the Chronicler is firmly planted in the present as he seeks to legitimize the present structures of the temple and cultus. The examples also show the importance of humility and prayer for ending the exile and the role of temple concern as the appropriate response to this new era of restoration.

Future Dimension But is this all? Is the Chronicler merely a hierocratic legitimizer, or is there evidence of a future dimension in Chronicles? Is he only focused on the present, or does he look to the future? Of course, one easy way to argue for this future dimension would be to appeal to my earlier conclusion that the Chronicler recognizes an enduring validity for the dynastic promise. 88 However, in the following discussion, I lay this conclusion aside and ask whether there is any other evidence of a future dimension to the Chronicler’s message. Idealization (David/Solomon).  It is well known that David and Solomon are presented in a radically different form in the Chronicler’s account than the earlier Deuteronomistic rendition. Throughout the history of research, there has been a consistent stream of opinion that the Chronicler is projecting an image of the ultimate Davidide who would rule God’s kingdom. 89 Opposition to this viewpoint has come from both royalists (e.g., Williamson) and hierocrats (e.g., Braun), who have seen in this idealization nothing more than the Chronicler’s bolstering the foundation of his theocracy—whether this meant an established dynasty (Williamson) or a temple (Braun). Others (Japhet) have pointed out the fact that the Chronicler allows certain negative elements to remain in the David-Solomon account so that the idealization is not complete. Contributions from both sides of the royalist and hierocrat divide have shown, however, how important this idealized presentation of David and Solomon is to the Chronicler’s future expectation for his audience, even if this 88.  There is a stream of royalist interpretation that sees in 1 Chr 17:11 a reference to a future offspring of David who is not Solomon. However, this has been successfully refuted by Williamson (“Eschatology in Chronicles”). 89.  Cf. J. W. Rothstein and J. Hänel, Das erste Buch der Chronik (KAT; Leipzig: Deichert, 1927); G. von Rad, Das Geschichtsbild des chronistischen Werkes (BWANT 3/4; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930); G. J. Botterweck, “Zur Eigenart der chronistischen Davidgeschichte,” TQ 136 (1956) 402–35; Stinespring, “Eschatology in Chronicles”; R.  North, “Theology of the Chronicler,” JBL 82 (1963) 369–81; Dillard, 2  Chronicles, 208; T.-S. Im, Das Davidbild in den Chronikbüchern: David als Idealbild des theokratischen Messianismus für den Chronisten (Europäische Hochschulschriften; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1985).

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does not include a perfect messianic figure. Rodney K. Duke argues how in Chronicles the reigns of David and Solomon serve as an ideal type. This ideal type then functions as a paradigm to which the successive reigns of the Davidic kings were compared, and by which they were evaluated. . . . As a result, the audience is implicitly called on to accept an ideology about how to live in this reality. . . . The possibility of following the ideal model offers the audience the hope of blessing. 90

Similarly, Mosis emphasizes the idealized portrait of the Solomonic era and argues that the Davidic portrait invites the Chronicler’s audience into the story as the ‘turn to Salvation’ (Wende zum Heil) following the apostasy (exile) of Saul. 91 This view is bolstered by work on the final pericopes of Chronicles. Rather than a late and insignificant addition to the book, 2 Chr 36:22–23 has rhetorical intention. It calls for this community, ‘exiled’ (‫גלה‬, v. 20) because of ‘unfaithfulness’ to God (‫מעל‬, v. 14), to ‘go up’ (‫)עלה‬. A rhetorical ending of this sort, as William Johnstone has argued, creates a forward motion. 92 Furthermore, as Stanley D. Walters and Johnstone have argued, the key words ‫ גלה‬and ‫מעל‬ return the reader to the outset of the narrative of Chronicles, where the list of early returnees (1 Chronicles 9) is introduced by these two words (1 Chr 9:2). The appearance of the term ‫ מעל‬to signal the end of Saul’s disastrous reign in 1 Chr 10:13 intertwines the exilic experience with his reign and catapults the community forward to the Davidic-Solomonic ideal. This evidence reveals the role of the David-Solomon era in the Chronicler’s presentation. The Chronicler does not present David and Solomon merely as figures restricted to the past but also as paradigms for the behavior of the community. But this does not necessarily mean that the Chronicler has moved away from legitimation. He could be suggesting that the era in which he lives is an era that has replicated the conditions of the David-Solomon era. However, this is difficult to accept. The key to this is the strong emphasis on both sides 90.  R. K. Duke, The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler: A Rhetorical Analysis (JSOTSup 88; Sheffield: Almond, 1990) 54. Riley sees David as a paradigm for future kings, noting 2 Chr 7:17, 17:3, 28:1, 29:2, and 34:2 (King and Cultus, 55). 91. See Mosis, Untersuchungen, 165; accepted by P. R. Ackroyd, “The Chronicler as Exegete,” JSOT 2 (1977) 3–4; J. Becker, 1  Chronik (NEchtB; Würzburg: Echter, 1986) 86. For other typologies, see Riley, King and Cultus, 41. Kelly’s criticism of Mosis has some merit, but although there are good reasons to link the Chronicler’s portrayal of David and Solomon, this does not preclude diversity in this foundational period. The depiction of David’s period clearly has a future orientation as he prepares for the fulfillment of his dreams for temple and dynasty through Solomon. Riley sees idealization of David and also, but less so, Solomon. The Chronicler establishes these figures as a type of normative past for the Chronicler’s narrative (King and Cultus, 31). 92. See Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 2:275–76.

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of the Solomonic temple-building accounts on the political character of the Solomonic era. Bracketing the temple accounts, the Chronicler has placed an accounting of the great fame, riches, and military readiness of the kingdom under Solomon (2 Chr 1:1, 14–17; 9:1–28). 93 By emphasizing these aspects of the Solomonic era, the Chronicler is creating expectations for the future, whether they involve a revival of the monarchy or not. Call to Prayer (2  Chronicles 6–7).  The Chronicler is using the prayer of Solomon in 2 Chronicles 6 and the subsequent reply of God in 2 Chronicles 7 for parenetic purposes. The inclusion of the long prayer with its various scenarios does more than just legitimize the temple as essential to the community’s survival. The prayer reveals a pattern for transformation of the difficult circumstances in which the Chronicler’s community presently finds itself. That this pattern of transformation is important to the Chronicler can be seen in the fact that the Chronicler inserts 7:13–15 into God’s reply to Solomon. There is little question that the Chronicler is legitimizing the temple cultus as the unique place of prayer in his presentation. But in doing so, he is also providing patterns for experiencing future transformation. Immediate Retribution.  The insertion in 7:13–15 uses vocabulary that will appear regularly throughout the books of Chronicles and that forms the foundation for what is often called “immediate retribution.” 94 This theme of immediate retribution has been highlighted on many occasions in the history of the interpretation of Chronicles. The Chronicler shows how those who replicate his set of positive core values are rewarded with blessing, while those who reject these values are punished through curse. At the heart of these core values is the key feature of temple cultus, which is often equated with “seeking the Lord.” By employing this theme in his account of Israel’s history, the Chronicler is oriented to the future, but he never loses sight of the present in his attention to the cultus. 95 As with his calls to prayer, he is providing a pattern for the transformation of the present circumstances of his contemporaries. Hezekiah’s Letter (2 Chronicles 30:1–12).  Hezekiah’s letter to the people also displays the future-parenesis of the Chronicler’s presentation. In 30:6–9, the Chronicler presents a letter sent by Hezekiah throughout Israel and Judah. References to a remnant (v. 6) whose ancestors were ‘unfaithful’ (‫מעל‬, v. 7) 93. R. B. Dillard notes the chiastic arrangement of the Solomonic presentation (“The Literary Structure of the Chronicler’s Solomon Narrative,” JSOT 30 [1984] 85–93). 94.  Dillard notes well that this is a poor tag for a theme in Chronicles that has both positive and negative implications (“Literary Structure”). 95. See Williamson, Israel; Kelly, “Messianic Elements”; and Dillard, “Literary Structure.”

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resonate with the Chronicler’s depiction of his contemporary generation in 1 Chronicles 9 and 2 Chronicles 36 (see p. 239 above) and show that through this letter the Chronicler addresses his own generation. The letter calls the people to return to God through attention to temple cultus (v. 8). The future dimension can be discerned in v. 9 as Hezekiah declares that this faithfulness will lead to the return of the people’s compatriots from exile. 96 This reveals a future expectation of transformation for the exilic community, but the transformation is unquestionably linked to the present, to faithfulness to the temple cultus. Unity of the Tribes.  I have already noted the strong legitimizing tone in the Chronicler’s treatment of the temple and its services. This has led to the conclusion that the Chronicler is opposing those who have rejected the Jerusalemite tradition and are promoting a Judaism without the Jerusalem temple. 97 Scholars have identified in Chronicles a more conciliatory tone, however, noting that his work represents an invitation to the excluded. Williamson highlighted this aspect through his work on the Hezekiah narratives: This may be seen as an attempt to counter the exclusivism of those who had returned from Babylon by granting some status to those who had never been exiled . . . one of the marks of David, Hezekiah, and Josiah was that they not only were willing to receive, but actively attempted to reach out after, all who could legitimately attach themselves to this nucleus . . . the Chronicler sought to redress the balance with those who, concerned to avoid the dangers of syncretism and assimilation, had allowed the Jerusalem community so to close in on itself as even to exclude some who had a rightful claim to participation. 98

Gwilym H. Jones echoes this conclusion in his work on the Abijah account. 99 He concludes that the Chronicler speaks to the northerners of his day through the sermon of Abijah, announcing that he regards them as legitimate members of Israel and does not blame them for the division of the kingdom, while inviting them to return to legitimacy. In this, however, there is no indication of compromise of the core values of the Davidic temple tradition. Northerners must still submit to these values. 100 96. See Williamson, Israel, 140: “The future of the nation and the regathering of those in exile is dependent upon the faithfulness of the community that remained in the land.” 97.  This theory is often linked to the Samaritan Schism. See, for instance, P. R. Ackroyd, “Theology of the Chronicler,” LTQ 8 (1973) 114. According to Kelly, this theory began with Torrey and Noth; was rejected by Coggins, Williamson, and Japhet; but accepted by Becking and Oeming (Retribution and Eschatology, 140 n. 11). 98.  Williamson, Israel, 140; affirmed by Throntveit, “Hezekiah,” 310. 99.  G. H. Jones, “From Abijam to Abijah,” ZAW 106 (1994) 420–34. 100.  On this, see G. N. Knoppers, “Reform and Regression: The Chronicler’s Presentation of Jehoshaphat,” Bib 72 (1991) 523–24, where he argues that the Chronicler has a vision of unified Israel but rejects any compromise or political treaty with Samaria.

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Living in a community that does not represent the kind of diversity described in his accounts, the Chronicler must be looking to a future ideal. From the few snapshots that we have of the Persian-period community, this future ideal most likely challenged the present communal attitude toward “outsiders,” and in this way it was discontinuous with the present. 101 But it must be stressed that in his invitation the Chronicler never compromises the present values connected with the centralized temple cultus in Jerusalem. Israel and the Nations in Chronicles.  Israel’s interaction with the nations in Chronicles provides further examples of the Chronicler’s future perspective. Writing for a community living in a miniscule province at the edge of the Persian Empire, the Chronicler expands the tiny Kingdom of Judah to imperial dimensions. The Chronicler emphasizes in 1 Chr 14:17 (cf. 2 Sam 5:25) the impact of David’s reign on the world by noting that David’s fame went into ‘all lands’ (‫)כל־הארצות‬, and the Lord brought ‘the fear of him’ (‫ )פחדו‬on ‘all peoples’ (‫)כל־הגוים‬. Later in Chronicles, David’s vision for the temple is similar (1 Chr 22:5), hoping that its exceeding magnificence will bring fame and glory throughout ‘all lands’ (‫)כל־הארצות‬. As David’s reign comes to a close in 1 Chr 29:29–30, the Chronicler expands the impact of David’s reign well beyond Israel to ‘all the kingdoms of the lands’ (‫)כל־ממלכות הארצות‬. Jehoshaphat’s prayer to God as he faces “a great multitude” in 2 Chr 20:6 emphasizes God’s rule over ‘all the kingdoms of the peoples’ (‫)כל ממלכות הגוים‬. When God defeats Sennacherib before Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32, the Chronicler tells his readers that many brought tribute to Hezekiah because he was exalted in the sight of ‘all peoples’ (‫)כל־הגוים‬. The Chronicler’s introduction of these global statements into his story of Israel for the Persian-period community can only be explained as future hope for a subjugated people. 102 This future impact is bolstered by the reappearance of the noun ‫ פחד‬in the accounts of the Jeshoshapat and Asa. Jehoshapahat’s military victory leads to a global fear of the Lord that parallels the fear of God that accompanied David’s rule (2 Chr 20:29: ‫)פחד אלהים על כל־ממלכות הארצות‬. Similarly, after Asa’s miraculous defeat of Zerah the Cushite in 2 Chronicles 14, the dread of the Lord accompanies his army as they despoil the cities. This links the global theme to another theme in Chronicles that holds out a powerful image of the future to the small Jewish community in Yehud—the theme of divine war. 101.  See the tensions presented in Ezra and Nehemiah between northerners and the returned Babylonian Golah. 102.  The Chronicler emphasizes at the end of his account that God is truly in charge of these many kingdoms and has handed them over for his purposes to Cyrus (2 Chr 36:22–23, ‫ )כל־ממלכות הארץ‬in order to restore the temple. But this does not eliminate the earlier portrayals that hold out the hope of a future impact on the nations.

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Battle in Chronicles.  Descriptions of the military appear in two forms in the Chronicler’s accounts. First of all, military readiness and success contribute to the Chronicler’s motif of immediate retribution as he shows that those who are faithful to God are able to amass considerable military resources: fortified cities, personnel, and equipment. 103 However, on several occasions in the post-Solomonic era, the Chronicler describes successful battle scenes in which there is an absence of human resources. In Abijah’s battle against Israel (2 Chr 13:3–21), Asa’s battle against Zerah the Cushite (2  Chr 14:6–15; cf. 2  Chr 16:7–9), Jehoshaphat’s battle against Edom, Ammon, and Moab (2 Chr 20:1– 30), the Chronicler depicts a Davidide leading an army into battle. 104 In each case, the army faces incredible odds 105 and responds by trusting in God, 106 who wages war on its behalf. 107 On the traditio-historical level, these miraculous battles reflect the divine warrior pattern seen especially in the exodus tradition of Israel. 108 On the 103.  See R. B. Dillard, “Reward and Punishment in Chronicles: The Theology of Immediate Retribution,” WTJ 46 (1984) 164–72. 104.  Although the language of 2 Chr 32:5–8 is suggestive of a king preparing for a battle and mustering his military officers for a war that is anticipated, no battle takes place. 105.  For example, “a great multitude” (2 Chr 13:8, 20:2); 400,000 against 800,000 (2 Chr 13:3); 580,000 against 1,000,000 (2 Chr 14:8–9); “this great multitude” (2 Chr 20:12); “the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him” (2 Chr 32:7). 106.  Thus, “They cried to the Lord” (2  Chr 13:14); “they relied upon the Lord” (2 Chr 13:18); “Asa cried to the Lord . . . we rely on you” (2 Chr 14:11); “seek the Lord . . . cry to you . . .” (2 Chr 20:3–4, 9); “believe in the Lord your God” (2 Chr 20:20); “Hezekiah . . . cried to heaven” (2 Chr 32:20). 107.  Thus, “God defeated Jeroboam. . . . God gave them into their hand” (2  Chr 13:15, 16); “the Lord defeated the Ethiopians before Judah” (2 Chr 14:12); “they were broken before the Lord and his army” (2 Chr 14:13); “stand still and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf” (2 Chr 20:17); “the Lord set an ambush against the men” (2  Chr 20:22); “the Lord sent an angel who cut off all the mighty warriors” (2  Chr 32:21); “the Lord saved Hezekiah” (2 Chr 32:22). 108.  Thus, similarly Kelly, who writes: “The ‘Yahweh War’ passages have a special importance in the Chronicler’s hope of redemption” (Retribution and Eschatology, 196) and Dillard: “The persistence of holy war themes in a work addressed to the small restoration community is striking. . . . These holy war motifs make little sense if the community was content with the status quo, ready to live as a hierocracy under foreign rule. To the contrary, the Chronicler’s inclusion of holy war narratives bespeaks the presence of an eschatological hope, a longing for the day of Yahweh, when the divine warrior would conquer in behalf of his people as he had done so often so long ago” (2 Chronicles, 161). See Jones for the presence of holy-war motifs in the post-Solomonic depictions (“Abijam to Abijah”). Deboys’s work on the Abijah account is more concerned with historical veracity than with the motif of war: D. G. Deboys, “History and Theology in the Chronicler’s Portrayal of Abijah,” Bib 71 (1990) 48–62.

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literary level, however, they reflect the tradition of David in Chronicles, in particular 1 Chr 14:13–17, where the Chronicler has drawn in the account of God’s hosts’ preceding David and his army into battle against the Philistines. There the Chronicler adds v. 17, which shows the impact of this victory on the kingdoms of the world. These depictions show God’s breaking into history to bring miraculous victory for his people, who are led by a Davidide. The people have no military resources and have no strategic advantage. In addition, throughout the post-Solomonic period, there is a consistent rejection of military alliance with foreign nations. The community must trust God alone for victory. 109 To a community powerless before a great empire, the Chronicler’s accounts cannot help but create a vision of a hopeful future. Here we see a straining toward what may be considered by some to be the “eschatological”—a hope for God’s miraculous breaking in to remedy the distress of the present. However, lest one think that the Chronicler has been transformed into an apocalyptic visionary, there is a marked interest in the temple cultus in the midst of the battle. 110 The king is presented as a leader who declares powerful prayers of worship and petition as he faces battle (2 Chr 14:11, 20:6–12). Additionally, as Abijah cries out his challenge to the opposing leader and army, his words focus on the faithfulness of his community to temple cultus and the presence of priests at the head of his army to sound the call to battle (13:10–12). The intersection of temple and military personnel reaches a peak in the Chronicler’s account of Jehoshaphat’s battle. There the king places worship singers at the head of the army and notes that, as they began to sing, God defeated the opposing army. These strong cultic connections reveal that the Chronicler does not divorce his vision of the future from his values of the present.

Conclusion This review has traced the parenetic patterns of the Chronicler as he rehearses the tradition of Israel for his generation. I have argued that the Chronicler speaks relevantly to his contemporaries, introducing stories that allude to circumstances similar to those of the Persian-period community. In an era when significant numbers were in the land, the temple was already built and its cultus in operation, some of these materials function as legitimation of the present structures. Even legitimation, however, can never be confined to the present. 109. Cf. Knoppers, “Reform,” 501, 524. In this, I depart from Kelly, who does not see a rejection of foreign alliances. This is based on the Chronicler’s inclusion of interactions between Solomon and Hiram and the Queen of Sheba and the mention of Cyrus in 2 Chronicles 36. These, however, are not military alliances but simply show how God is able to use the resources of the kingdoms of the world for the purposes of his community. 110. See Riley, King and Cultus, 33.

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It functions to ensure that the same values will continue to be replicated. But there is more to the Chronicler’s message than merely legitimation. Some of the materials reveal an orientation toward the future. This future, however, is never divorced from the present, for present values are key to seeing the intrusion of the new day. The future envisioned is usually not cataclysmic but focuses more on common historical acts of salvation, such as rescue from war, exile, plague, or drought. But in the depictions of battles, we have a taste of a more global and cataclysmic future: God’s breaking in on behalf of his people against nations who would threaten his community. 111 The Chronicler cannot be restricted to the priestly or eschatological, to the status quo or the charismatic. Rather, firmly planted in the present, he looks and longs for a future when God’s people will fully realize the core values of God’s kingdom. This both/and approach to the future in Chronicles is expressed well by Dillard: “The Chronicler, as an advocate of the temple and its personnel, could nevertheless have an eschatological program; hierocracy in the status quo is not necessarily opposed to eschatology and apocalypticism, but can exist in the same individuals without being assigned to separate sociological support groups.” 112

Conclusion In this essay, I revisit the well-worn paths of the Chronicler’s perspective on the Davidic Dynasty and Future Hope. I argue that the often-polarized views among scholars represent complementary streams within the Chronicler’s work. Gazing through Wellhausen’s cloud of incense, we see an ideal David embedded within a priestly led community and an expectation of a future ideal that will arise from and for a community that remains faithful to the priorities already established at the temple. In my opinion, this is hardly “a feeble holy picture.” 111. Note especially P. D. Hanson, who sees Chronicles as a late attempt (for him, around 400 b.c.) to accommodate the “visionary” group, especially in light of the Chronicler’s employment of the Davidic and Yahweh war traditions (The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology [rev.  ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 273; cf. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology, 141). 112.  Dillard, 2 Chronicles, 161. Thus also Sæbø, who challenges us not to contrast theocratic and eschatological, for both can be discerned in Chronicles (“Messianism in Chronicles,” 101–3).

Toward a Sense of Balance Remembering the Catastrophe of Monarchic Judah / (Ideological) Israel and Exile through Reading Chronicles in Late Yehud Ehud Ben Zvi University of Alberta This essay and its companion, “Chronicles and Its Reshaping of Memories of Monarchic Period Prophets: Some Observations,” 1 address the potential contribution of Chronicles to a process of balancing the relative mindshare of different memories and sets of memories about monarchic events and figures in the late-Persian (or early-Hellenistic) Yehudite community in which its primary readership was located. As revealed by its title, this paper deals with remembering through reading and rereading. This remembering becomes memorable through the acts of mental imagination involved in re-creating and vicariously living the imagined past that was evoked by the text being read. Since reading evokes and activates memory within the community, within a text-centered community such as (at least) the literati in Yehud, texts to be read and reread affected mindshare. The more the community read (and reread) about a certain event, character, situation, the stronger the tendency to remember them. Conversely, the less something in the (construed) past of the community was mentioned in its authoritative repertoire, the less (we assume) its memory was evoked and the less mindshare it held in the community. This paper is devoted in particular to what reading Chronicles, in the discursive context of the community within which and for which it emerged, may have contributed to its social memory about the exile, its significance, and the significance of closely associated clusters of social memories around the catastrophe at the end of the monarchic period, of which the exile was the outcome. The approach taken here has, at least, the potential to shed additional light on these social memories and the roles they played within the intellectual discourse that characterized the community, and more light on what the reading of Chronicles may have “done” to the community. 2 1.  Published in another collection of works emerging from this seminar—namely, M. J. Boda and L. M. Wray Beal (eds.), Prophets and Prophecy in Ancient Israelite Historiography (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013) 167–88. 2.  It is common in our field that new light on texts and ancient intellectual discourses is shed, not through the discovery of “new evidence,” but by asking new questions and looking at the “old evidence” from new perspectives.

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Contemporary historical studies on how Chronicles dealt with the concept of the exile have tended to focus on relatively few common issues. 3 An excellent illustration is provided by Rainer Albertz, who summarized the matter as follows: Except for the statement that the exiles became the servants or slaves of Nebuchadnezzar and his sons, the Chronicler does not find any concrete historical information concerning the period of the exile worth reporting. Instead, he embeds his meager account of the exilic period in a complex of theological interpretations. First, the exile is the fulfillment of a prophecy spoken by Jeremiah; second, it served as a Sabbath of rest for the land; third it had to last seventy years. 4

The three central issues mentioned in the quotation arise from a very brief note in 2 Chr 36:20–21. As expected in our field, each one of the three has been the subject of some significant debate. For instance, among the many explicit or implicit research questions that have been raised and addressed in various ways, one may mention: (1) Does the reference to Jeremiah’s prophecy point to the beginning or to the end of the exile, or to both? 5 (2) How does one understand the reference to the 70 years? (3) What was the history of this seemingly chronologically odd concept? 6 This said, there seems to be widespread agreement that Chronicles brings together Lev 26:33/34–35, 43; and Jer 29:10 (see also Jer 25:12) and by doing so creates a new text, 7 and that this new text conveys a sense of (1) the importance of the fulfillment of prophecy in history and particularly of the prophetic words associated with Moses and Jeremiah; 8 (2) the presence of the concept of 3.  With the possible exception of S. Japhet, who emphasizes also “the uninterrupted settlement in the land” (The Ideology of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought [BEATAJ 9; 2nd ed.; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997], esp. pp. 364–86). Her positions are discussed below, when relevant to the issue at stake. 4. R. Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century b.c.e. (Studies in Biblical Literature 3; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature) 13. 5.  E.g., ibid.; L. C. Jonker, “The Exile as Sabbath Rest: The Chronicler’s Interpretation of the Exile,” OTE 20 (2007) 703–19 (esp. p. 708); idem, “The Chronicler and the Prophets: Who Were His Authoritative Sources?” in What Was Authoritative for Chronicles? (ed. E. Ben Zvi and D. V. Edelman; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011); S. Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; London: SCM, 1993) 1075–76; and cf. S. Frolov, “The Prophecy of Jeremiah in Esr 1,1,” ZAW 116 (2004) 595–601. 6.  E.g., M. Leuchter, “Jeremiah’s 70-Year Prophecy and the lb qmy /ssk Atbash Codes,” Bib 85 (2004) 503–22; J. Jarick, 2 Chronicles (Readings; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007) 192–95; H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 417–18 and bibliography. 7.  E.g., M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 482–83 (cf. pp. 488–89); I. Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004) 222, 314; E. Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles (London: Equinox, 2006) 150–51, 156–57. 8.  E.g., I. Kalimi, An Ancient Israelite Historian: Studies in The Chronicler, His Time, Place and Writing (SSN 46; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005) 148–51.

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the exile as the sabbath of the land, which in itself implies a temporal limitation, which in turn is explicitly and saliently communicated by the reference to the 70 years that sets clear temporal limits on the exile; and (3) that all this means, as Sara Japhet puts it: “Exile only creates a necessary hiatus, after which life will return to its regular course; with the conclusion of the ‘land’s sabbaths’ the time will come for its ‘redemption’.” 9 Of course, this means also that the terrible judgment “has fully passed and no longer stands as a threat to his readers,” to state this in the words of H. G. M. Williamson. 10 Needless to say, this Chronistic approach to the exile communicates, as Louis Jonker has maintained, a sense that the Persian-period community that emerges after this exile represents a new, positive beginning. 11 Finally, even the most cursory survey of contemporary research on the concept of the exile in Chronicles cannot avoid noticing that 2 Chr 36:20–21 portrays an image of an “Empty Land.” This is not the place to discuss the motif of the “Empty Land” in the postmonarchic period, its history and significance in the discourse of the late-Persian period, or its importance for the self-understanding of a Jerusalem-centered polity. 12 It suffices for the present purposes to say that (1) Chronicles reflected and communicated this common, postmonarchic motif (i.e., the “Empty Land”); (2) as did any other reference to the motif in the discourse of the primary community of readers, it evoked among them an image of the entire land or at least Judah (not just Jerusalem) as empty; and (3) most clearly was not an invention of Chronicles. 13 9.  Japhet, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1075. See, among others, Jonker, “The Exile as Sabbath Rest”; S. L. McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles (AOTC; Nashville: Abingdon, 2004) 371. 10.  Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 417. 11.  Jonker, “The Exile as Sabbath Rest.” 12.  The matter has been extensively discussed. For an illustrative bibliography and my own take on the matter, see my “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyer, 2010) 155–68. 13.  The “empty land” of all Judah: Japhet, among others, has maintained that Chronicles constructs a world in which only Jerusalem suffers from destruction at the hands of the Babylonians (see Japhet, Ideology, 364–68; idem, 1  and  2  Chronicles, 1074). Whether this is the case or not, it is very unlikely that the primary readers of Chronicles would have read the book as stating that only Jerusalem became an “empty land” for 70 years, because there was no reason to understand the sabbath of the land as meaning only the sabbath of the urban area of Jerusalem. The number 70 and the implied 490 years system contradict this position, as well as the Sitz im Diskurs of Chronicles. Regarding Chronicles’ not inventing the “empty land,” note, for instance, 2  Kgs 25:21–26; numerous images in prophetic books of complete desolation that in Yehud served to imagine the situation in Judah after the calamity of the Babylonian wars (e.g., Jer 32:43, 33:6, 44:2; cf. Isa 6:11–12; Zeph 1:2–3; see also Lev 26:34–35; Deut 29:21– 23, 27 as read in Yehud); references to the land’s purging itself (Lev 18:24–28, 20:22,

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I do not intend to contest in any substantive way the positions just mentioned. 14 They are widely accepted for good reasons—namely, they are all well grounded in 2  Chr 36:20–21. This very observation, however, serves as the starting point for my own exploration of the exile in Chronicles and the way that Chronicles may have influenced social memory about the exile. All these comments are based on just 2 verses in a historiographical work that spans 1,765 verses. 15 To be sure, there are explicit references to the exile in a very small number of other verses in Chronicles, particularly in the genealogies. 1 Chr 5:6, 25–26 refer to the exile of the Transjordanian tribes. Unlike the exile of Judah, their exile is presented as still not being revoked (see “to this day” in v. 26) and thus their lands as not being populated by “Israel” since the days of Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria. Chronicles’ portrayal of the demographic situation here stands in sharp contrast to the situation of Cisjordanian northern Israel (see, for instance, 2 Chr 30:1–31:1; 34:6–9). 16 Given the tendency in Chronicles to construe “the land” as populated (only) by “Israel” (and those who associate 26:33–35); and the implied logic of images such as Yhwh’s divorce or at least expulsion from the marital home of Israel. All of these precede Chronicles. On the significance of a particular aspect of this “empty land” motif, see below. 14.  However, I would certainly claim that the mentioned ideological positions are placed in proportion within Chronicles itself, as is usually the case in this book in particular and in the repertoire of the authoritative books of Yehud in general. For instance, within the discourse of the period (and even later periods), exile could be seen as both ending with the rebuilding of the temple (or the “return” and, therefore, as a matter of the past) and ongoing. In Chronicles, exile lasts 70 years and ends with Cyrus, but continues as well. See, for instance, the pragmatic meaning of ‫ה‬ ‎ ‫מי־בכם מכל־עמו יהו‬ ‫ אלהיו עמו ויעל‬in 2 Chr 36:23 (on the matter, see Kalimi, An Ancient Israelite Historian, esp. p. 153; Ben Zvi, History, Literature and Theology, 202–9). Clearly, neither the authorship nor the intended and primary readerships of Chronicles thought that the return of Judah had been complete by the “70 years” and thus “exile” had been banished from Israel. See also 1 Chr 5:6, 26; notice that the return envisaged in 1 Chr 16:35 can be only in the future of the community of readers. (The present discussion deals with “exile” in Chronicles; for a recent study from a different methodological perspective on different concepts of “exile” and what “exile” entails in other texts, see M. A. Halvorson-Taylor, Enduring Exile: The Metaphorization of Exile in the Hebrew Bible [VTSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2011].) 15.  D. N. Freedman, A. D. Forbes, and F. I. Andersen, Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Orthography (BibJS 2; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 304. 16.  It is worth noting that Chronicles shifts images/memories associated with the exile of (mainly) Cisjordanian Israel to the exile of Transjordanian tribes (cf. 1  Chr 5:26 and 2 Kgs 17:6, 18:11) and thus activates them in an, at least by connotation, more restrictive environment. In other words, it reshapes the target group and land associated with these images/memories in the social memory of the community of readers and, therefore, their relative mindshare.

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themselves with “Israel”), 17 this portrayal evokes a sense of boundaries or peripherality. It is not by chance that Transjordanian tribes and space play a substantially less significant role in Chronicles than their counterparts in northern Cisjordanian Israel 18 and, needless to say, incommensurably less than those in Judah. 19 The marginal character of these tribes and their land, along with the rather generic explanation of their exile (1 Chr 5:25) explains why these three verses played only a peripheral role in scholarly reconstructions of the concept of the exile in Chronicles, other than recognizing the rhetorical use of terms from the root ‫( מעל‬cf. 1 Chr 9:1b; 10:13; 2 Chr 12:2; 26:16; 28:19, 22; 29:6; 30:7; 36:14). There are two more explicit references to exile in the genealogies. 1 Chr 9:1b contains a very brief note that explicitly mentions Judah’s exile and explains it in terms of ‘their unfaithfulness’ (‫)במעלם‬. Not only is the explanation “generic,” but also and perhaps more importantly, the main function of this note is clearly not to dwell on the exile, the reasons and historical processes that led to it (see the space given to it in the book), but to introduce (in an extremely sparse way, to be sure) the main themes of restoration and continuity, which are clearly expressed in a way that fits the genre of these chapters in 1 Chr 9:2–34. The second reference occurs in 1 Chr 5:41. Here Jehozadak is described as the Aaronide who “went into exile when the Lord sent Judah and Jerusalem into exile by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.” The addition of Jehozadak to the list of “high priests”—he is not mentioned in Kings—and the reference to him as the Aaronide in exile served not so much to dwell on exile or its causes but mainly to construe an ideological narrative and memory of continuity, because within the world of knowledge and the discourse of the community of readers of Chronicles, he was the father of Joshua, the “high priest” at the time of the rebuilding of the temple (see Hag 1:1, 12, 14; 2:2, 4; Zech 6:11). As in the previous case, it is easy to understand why 1 Chr 5:41 has served, at best, a very peripheral role in scholarly reconstructions of the concept of the exile in Chronicles.  20 17. See Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 46; R. W. Klein, 1  Chronicles (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 46. 18. It is worth noting that different views about the actual extent of “the land” and particularly the inclusion of Transjordan existed in the authoritative literature of the period. Compare the mentioned tendency in Chronicles with Num 34:1–15; Ezek 47:13–23; and cf. 2 Kgs 14:25. A discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this contribution. For studies on this matter see, for instance, M. Weinfeld, “The Extent of the Promised Land: The Status of Transjordan,” in Das Land Israel in biblischer Zeit (ed. G. Strecker; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983) 59–75. 19.  On the issue of land/people peripherality in Chronicles, see my previous work in History, Literature and Theology, 195–209. 20.  1 Chr 8:6–7 does not seem to refer to exile (that is, exile outside “the land”) at all. There is no reason, therefore, to discuss this text here.

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In sum, the exile is (unavoidably) acknowledged in 1 Chronicles 1–9, but the book allocates minimal space to references that evoke memories of exiles. Moreover, in two of the cases it does so for the purpose of conveying a sense that the exile was overcome and that continuity prevailed in Israel. In the other two, it refers to peripheral space. In none of these four brief references is there anything remotely similar to the treatment of the exile in 2 Chr 36:20–21 in terms of an explicit and substantive message about the exile. Moreover, the concept of “the sabbath of the land,” which with good reason is considered to play a central role in the explanation of the exile and its significance, is not mentioned elsewhere in the historical narrative of Chronicles, except in these 2 verses. Although there are still a very few references (e.g., 1  Chr 16:35, 2  Chr 34:23–28) or typological allusions (2 Chr 29:6–9) 21 to the exile in Chronicles besides the aforementioned instances in the genealogies and 2 Chr 36:20–21, none of them addresses the nature of the exile as these two verses or has the exile as its main focus. 22 Thus and returning to the brief summary of the present understanding of the concept of the exile in Chronicles advanced by Albertz, it is with very good reason that scholars focused their attention and developed their positions on the matter on the basis of two crucial verses—namely, 2 Chr 36:20–21. But, this being the case, two questions emerge: (1) What may all the other verses that do not refer directly to the exile contribute to the impact of Chronicles on the construction of social memory about the exile? And (2) may the fact that only two verses out of 1,765 speak directly about exile insinuate something significant in itself on these matters, especially given (a) the social setting of the emergence and first readings and rereadings of Chronicles and (b) the fact that reading involved remembering the past evoked in the reading (and bracketing or momentarily forgetting, or at least displacing one’s active memory of, what was not being read)? Needless to say, Chronicles was not the only book the literati of the period read, nor could it have carried its intended message to the community had this been the case. This, of course, raises the need to take into consideration the implications of the Sitz im Diskurs of Chronicles on the matters to which this 21.  2 Chr 29:6–9 directly comments on and construes the reign of Ahaz, both in terms of the king’s deeds (note the explicit reference to ‫ם‬ ‎ ‫ סגרו דלתות האול‬in v. 7 and cf. 2 Chr 28:24; and see the putative setting of the speech as explicitly and saliently expressed in vv. 3–5). Thus it deals with events more than 100 years earlier than the exile. This said, the particular choice of language used to portray the situation is evocative of images of exile that existed in the discourse of the community (cf. Jer 25:9, Neh 8:17, among others). 22.  To avoid any misunderstanding, the point I want to make is not that Chronicles contains no explicit references to exile but that these are few and brief (i.e., that they do not occupy much “space” in this book) and that none of them develops the matter as 2 Chr 36:20–21 does.

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essay is devoted. 23 Chronicles emerged within and was read by its primary readership, whose discourse was to a large extent obsessed with the exile and with its related ideological constructions and memories (including those dealing with the fall of the monarchic polity) and with a future return, redemption, and related visions of utopian futures. The prophetic corpus saliently attests this concentration of social attention—or more precisely, of mindshare— which reaches the point of what may be called (though not in any pejorative meaning) memory obsession. Outside the prophetic corpus, but still inside the relevant authoritative repertoire, the shadow of the catastrophe and the exile loomed large throughout the Deuteronomistic historical collection, and allusions to it are not only common but at times key interpretive notes for the historical narrative and its didactic/ideological significance. 24 In fact, one can easily discern a teleological trajectory running throughout the Deuteronomistic (and even in the primary) historical collection. The narrative moves toward a widely announced, anticipated, and at times even prefigured catastrophe and exile, even as it also implicitly points to hope and certitude about their reversal following a dystopian period. 25 There are good reasons for this memory obsession. In a short period, Judah suffered a reduction of 70–75% in its population, and close to 90% in some areas (e.g., Jerusalem environs, eastern strip). This was due to war, famine, associated diseases, deportation, and migration caused by the economic collapse that followed and was engendered by the sociopolitical collapse. Even in Benjamin, who was the least affected of all regions, the population dropped by more than 50%. A catastrophe of this magnitude could not but be remembered and become a site of memory or cipher bearing a weighty significance for generations after the event, particularly among those whose self-identity was grounded on a close identification with the individuals who were afflicted by the disaster and within any polity or community that imagined itself and was understood as standing in continuation with the community that suffered such 23.  Considerations regarding the Sitz im Diskurs of Chronicles apply to any historical study of the significance that reading the book had for the literati of the time. In the present contribution, only considerations that have direct bearing on the issues at stake can be discussed. 24.  Some of the instances even involve the creation of memory nodes connecting multiple central threads (e.g., the site/s of memory evoked in 2 Kgs 17:7–23; incidentally, this text informed and was, by the time of Chronicles, informed by Chronicles). 25.  From the perspective of the readers of Joshua–Kings, who knew Deuteronomy (as was the case with the literati of the Persian period), the historical narrative from Joshua to Kings becomes a detailed and strongly didactic elaboration of the fulfillment of the prophecies of Moses in Deut 30:1 and 31:26–29. This being the case, the subsequent chapter in their history had to deal with the fulfillment of the promises of Deut 30:2–10.

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a calamity. 26 In addition, one must assume that ruins were probably seen in the region throughout the Persian period 27 and served to bring home the presence of a past and of its catastrophic fate. Against this background, Chronicles’ relegation of its main, explicit messages concerning its concept of the exile to about two verses warrants some consideration. Of course, one may maintain that Chronicles did not expound much on the exile because, by definition, the exile involved living outside the land of Judah, and anything that happened outside the land of Judah was not conceived within the logic of Chronicles as determinative for the fate of Israel and thus not worth narrating. 28 In this position, thus, Israel in the exile was construed as somewhat akin to Israel in what was the Northern Kingdom—that 26.  Cf. H.-J. Stipp, “The Concept of the Empty Land in Jeremiah 37–43,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyer, 2010) 103–54, esp. pp. 136–50. Stipp compares this shrinkage of population to that caused by the Thirty Years’ War (which was far less dramatic). To put it in today’s numbers, this would be equivalent to the loss of about 25 million Canadians or more than 230 million Americans. It is worth stressing that the demographic (or economic) recovery was nowhere even close to the population or economy of late-monarchic Judah during the Persian and early-Hellenistic periods, that is, the time in which Chronicles was composed and first read and reread. On demographic data about these periods, see, among others, O. Lipschits, “Persian Period Finds from Jerusalem: Facts and Interpretations,” JHS 9 (2009) article 20, http:// www.jhsonline.org; idem, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) esp. pp. 258–71; idem, “Demographic Changes in Judah between the Seventh and the Fifth Centuries b.c.e.” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 323–76; I. Finkelstein, “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder,” JHS 9 (2009) article 24, http://www.jhsonlin.org; idem, “Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall of Nehemiah,” JSOT 32 (2008) 501–20; idem, “Archaeology and the List of Returnees in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah,” PEQ 140 (2008) 7–16; H. Geva, “‫אומדן אוכלוסיית ירושלים‬ ‫ ההצעה המינימליסטית‬:‫“( ”בתקופותיה הקדומות‬Estimating Jerusalem’s Population in Antiquity: A Minimalist View”), ErIsr 28 (Teddy Kollek Volume; 2007) 50–65 [Hebrew]; A. Kloner, “Jerusalem’s Environs in the Persian Period,” in New Studies on Jerusalem (ed. A. Faust and E. Baruch; Ramat Gan: Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, 2001) pp. 91–95 (Hebrew); cf. C. E. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study (JSOTSup 294; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); A. Faust, “Judah in the Sixth Century b.c.e.: A Rural Perspective,” PEQ 126 (2003) 37–53. See also the summary of the situation in K. Valkama, “What Do Archaeological Remains Reveal of the Settlements in Judah during the Mid-Sixth Century bce?” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyer, 2010) 39–59. 27.  Cf. D. Ussishkin, “The Borders and De Facto Size of Jerusalem in the Persian Period,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 147–66. 28. Cf. Japhet, Ideology, 371.

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is, a kind of Israel whose actions are removed from and essentially irrelevant to the main historical narrative of Israel (and the causality governing it). 29 But even if this position is correct (and I think it is), a communicative (implied, but clear) statement that something is not worth writing about in a book meant to instill memory of the past is tantamount to stating that this very something is not worth remembering much, which in itself is a significant observation. 30 Moreover, and following the logic of the position mentioned above, whereas life in the exile may not be worth remembering much, because it takes place outside “the land,” the actions in “the land” that led to the greatest national calamity in “the land”—and whose outcome was the exile, that is, the abandonment of “the land,” the place where “history” took place—are not only memorable but very much worth remembering. In fact, an analysis of these grave actions could only serve as one of the best possible didactic examples for the community. 31 The systemic, generative power of this line of thought is indeed widely attested in both the Deuteronomistic historical collection and the prophetic corpus. But the situation is strikingly different in Chronicles. Moreover, the difference cannot be explained in terms of glossing over negative images. Chronicles allocates substantially far less space than Kings not only to the narrative of the destruction but also to its discursive and ideological counterpart within Israel’s social memory—namely, the nondestruction of Jerusalem during the reign of Sennacherib. In addition, the difference on the matter between Chronicles, on the one hand, and the Deuteronomistic historical collection and the prophetic books set in the monarchic period, on the other, goes far beyond a few literary units in Chronicles. Unlike the other books, Chronicles does not ask its readers to imagine a community walking for 29.  Of course, Israel in the North was in the periphery of the land, whereas Israel in exile was outside the land altogether, but this difference did not have much bearing on the matter discussed here. See my discussion in my History, Literature and Theology, 195–209. 30.  There was a general, systemic tendency within Yehud to write, read, and therefore to remember far more about life and events in “the land” than about life and events in the Babylonian or Egyptian Exile. This tendency is attested across literary genres in the repertoire of the community and is certainly not limited to Yehud. On the matter of “skipping” periods in historiographical works, see K. Stott, “A Comparative Study of the Exilic Gap in Ancient Israelite, Messenian, and Zionist Collective Memory,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 41–58. 31.  This is an important point since Chronicles, like much of the authoritative literature in Yehud, was a didactic book. Moreover, Chronicles shows an extensive array of “persuasive techniques” meant to make memorable not only events of the past as construed in the book but also the ideological messages that they embodied and communicated.

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generations, as it were, toward a well-deserved but catastrophic judgment. 32 The fall of Jerusalem and the exile do not hang over the narratives or the metanarrative of Chronicles. This being so, these questions arise: Why is Chronicles—which after all is a didactic book that emerged within a social discourse strongly informed by these two corpora and sharing much with them 33—unlike them in this respect? And why does the book fail to make the most of the memories about the central catastrophe of the community for didactic purposes? A potential answer to these questions is that the historical narrative in Chronicles was not shaped around a progression toward the calamity, or—and above all—as an explanation for that central catastrophe, because, unlike the Deuteronomistic historical narrative, Chronicles rejected the concept of cumulative sin and, therefore, whatever happened to Judah in the times of Zedekiah could not have been presented in Chronicles as the culmination of a long process of cumulative sin. Moreover, since supposedly in Chronicles sinners are punished for their own sins, not for those of others, even the claims about Manasseh’s responsibility for the catastrophe, which are advanced by one voice in Kings (2 Kgs 24:3; cf. 2 Kgs 21:11–14, 23:26–27; Jer 15:4) cannot hold. Within this logic, then, Chronicles had no option but to place the blame for the fall of Judah and the exile on Zedekiah or on Zedekiah and his people. In other words, there was simply no room within the ideology of Chronicles for the ubiquitous presence of the exile looming large on the historical narrative of Israel, from any of its multiple (discursive) origins to the fall of Jerusalem. To be sure, even if for the sake of argument one would accept this explanation, still the lack of references to the exile would have had an impact on the relative mindshare of the exile in a community that was reading and rereading Chronicles. But this explanation of the relative absence of the exile in Chronicles must be rejected because of the cumulative weight of the following reasons. 34 32. Cf. Japhet, Ideology, 364–73; but also contrast the position advanced here with Japhet’s concluding statement, “[In Chronicles,] foreign armies come and go, but the people’s presence in the land continues uninterrupted” (Ideology, 373). On this matter, see, for instance, 1 Chr 9:1, 2 Chr 36:20–23, and also 1 Chr 9:2–44 and the discussion advanced here. 33.  I discussed matters of sharing elsewhere; see “Reconstructing the Intellectual Discourse of Ancient Yehud,” SR 39 (2010) 7–23; and “Are There Any Bridges Out There? How Wide Was the Conceptual Gap between the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles?” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. G. N. Knoppers and K. A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 59–86. It is precisely against a background of shared discursive tendencies that differences are particularly significant. 34.  Some of these reasons by themselves would have provided sufficient ground to reject this position. The combined weight of all together makes the case even stronger.

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First, it assumes an authorship that lacks the ability to create and rhetorically use exceptions and is unable to stand seeming contradictions. Nothing can be so far from the truth in the case of Chronicles—but, significantly, neither is it the case in any prophetic or historical book within the repertoire of late-Persian Yehud. 35 Second, this explanation fails the test of Chronicles’ own explicit explanations of the catastrophe. Most evidently, the reference to the 70 years of Sabbath rest that is so crucial to the explanation of the exile in Chronicles implies both a span of 420, not 11 years (the length of Zedekiah’s reign according to 2 Chr 36:11), preceding the catastrophe and a clear notion of cumulative burden or sin. 36 The explanation given in 1 Chr 9:1 for the exile of Judah (and Israel; cf. 9:3)—that is, ‫ם‬ ‎ ‫—במעל‬does not need to refer only to the ‘unfaithfulness’ of those living during the reign of Zedekiah and, given its context in the text, it is unlikely to have been so narrowly understood. Third, within the world of Chronicles, the prophecy of Huldah (2  Chr 34:23–28) at the time of Josiah announced the divine judgment that would fall on Judah after the death of Josiah. The account of Josiah in Chronicles requires a separate discussion that goes well beyond the scope of the present contribution 37 but, for the present purposes, suffice it to say that (1) the prophecy of Huldah explicitly refers to a full destruction that is about to happen following the death of Josiah, as it actually does in the world of the book, which moves quickly from his death to the fall of Jerusalem; and (2) the text nowhere states that the announcement of judgment can be averted or cancelled, and it clearly implies a notion of cumulative sin. Significantly, the text is about what a pious leader is supposed to do in the face of an unavoidable catastrophe. Fourth, the notion that one generation may suffer because of the sins of a previous one is explicitly communicated in 2 Chr 29:6–9 and implicitly (and most relevant to the present purposes) communicated by the exile: people who were not even born at the time that monarchic Jerusalem existed experience it and suffer from it. Fifth, this explanation fails to account for the relatively little narrative space allocated to Zedakiah or to the post-Josianic period for that matter. Had Chronicles wanted to convince its intended and primary readership that the fall of Jerusalem, the exile, and the largest catastrophe in Israelite history were all the 35.  I discussed numerous examples of seeming contradictions and exceptions elsewhere. See my History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles. 36.  Compare, for instance, Williamson, 1–2 Chronicles, 418; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 3B; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008) 2324–25. 37.  I have discussed this account in “Observations on Josiah’s Account in Chronicles and Implications for Reconstructing the Worldview of the Chronicler,” in Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Naʾaman (ed. Y. Amit et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 89–106.

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results of Zedekiah’s sins and those who followed him during his relatively short rule, one would have expected a substantial recounting of these sins. 38 Nothing of the sort appears in Chronicles. The sins of Zedekiah receive, if anything, less narrative attention than those of other kings (e.g., Ahaz). In addition, Chronicles does not draw particular attention (and readers’ mindshare) toward the figure of Zedekiah or turn him into one of the most salient kings of Judah. 39 38.  Similarly, the point cannot merely be that the catastrophe was simply caused by Zedekiah’s revolt against its Babylonian suzerain. To be sure, Chronicles reflects a point similar to that of, for instance, Ezek 17:15 (see 2 Chr 36:13a), but this was not construed in the book (or elsewhere in the discourse of Yehud) as the only, main, or even primary reason/cause for the exile and catastrophe. 39.  Compare the narrative about him in Kings and Chronicles. Although, unlike Chronicles, the former contains a strong voice that blames Manasseh (not Zedekiah) for the fall of Jerusalem and the exile, it still devotes more narrative space and makes Zedekiah a more memorable personage than Chronicles. Other considerations further strengthen the case for the relatively low-key characterization of Zedekiah in Chronicles. For instance, the same Manasseh is relatively central but clearly not the most central character in Chronicles’ narrative of the post-Davidic/Solomonic Kingdom of Judah—for reasons other than those in Kings; the Manasseh of Chronicles serves as a “site of memory” that embodied and communicated the ideological motif of repentance. An analysis of the image of Manasseh in Chronicles shows that it was construed at the crucial time in his life (as per the account in Chronicles) as standing parallel with and in contradistinction to the combined image of two kings of the late period: namely, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. Like the first, he is taken captive to Babylon (and compare the precise language in 2 Chr 33:11b with that of 2 Chr 36:6), but in contrast to the second, he humbles himself (compare 2 Chr 33:12b with 2 Chr 36:12b). The general tendency was to construe major characters as encompassing (in a contrasting or noncontrasting way) several minor characters rather than vice versa (compare Manasseh and Josiah in Kings). In other words, the more central the character is, the more s/he tends to attract features/partial images associated with several other characters (thus acquiring a larger mindshare among the intended readers). This tendency suggests that Manasseh was portrayed as a more central character than Zedekiah—that is, someone to whom more attention is drawn than Zedekiah. This suggestion is supported by the relative length of the two regnal accounts in Chronicles and by subtle changes in contrastive references; for instance, whereas Yhwh is portrayed as sending messengers calling for repentance during Zedekiah’s reign (2  Chr 36:15), Yhwh himself addresses Manasseh (and his people) and calls them to repent (2 Chr 33:10). The matter is not trivial or just a product of random chance, because it is consistent with the (contrastive) minor difference in the language of 2 Chr 33:12b and 36:12b. A comprehensive study of Manasseh in Chronicles is beyond the scope of this contribution, but the preceding considerations along with the comparison between the accounts of Zedekiah in Kings and Chronicles suffice to make the point that (and perhaps contrary to some narrative expectations—after all, he is the king at the time of the catastrophe) Chronicles does not focus attention on the figure of Zedekiah in a way that is commensurate with what would have been required had the “sins of Zedekiah” been construed as the main (or only) reason for the calamity. Of course, a study of each (the Zedekiah and the Manasseh of Chronicles) not only deserves but requires a separate discussion that goes well beyond the scope of the present essay. For the Manasseh of Chronicles, see my “Reading Chronicles and Reshaping

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Sixth, had Chronicles consistently communicated to these readers a doctrine of proportional, individually assessed, full coherence between sin and punishment, why would Chronicles not only fail to mention in any direct way the individual punishment of King Zedekiah but also draw the community’s social memory away from the memorable images shaped by 2 Kgs 25:5–7? And seventh, not only does Chronicles devote little narrative space to the fall of Jerusalem and its circumstances, but it clearly reduces the focus on its social-memory counterpart, the non-fall of Jerusalem during Hezekiah’s days. The tendency to diminish the treatment of both closely related events in the discourse of the period suggests that something more than a narrow focus on the sins of the king and the people during the reign of Zedekiah was at stake. This being so, especially considering the failure of the aforementioned approach to explain it away, the questions raised above call for an explanation. Against the background of a society whose memory was obsessed with the exile and its related themes and sites of memory, Chronicles emerged and was read and reread as a national historical narrative in which the fall of Jerusalem and subsequent exile were mentioned, of course, but not provided with the salience given elsewhere. Within Chronicles, neither these events nor their ideological or theological underpinning were given the prominence granted in other texts meant to create and shape social memory (e.g., the Deuteronomistic historical collection, the prophetic corpus) or allowed to inform time and again central narrative accounts or large-scale metanarratives. Neither catastrophe nor the exile nor the theological notions associated with them were hammered down to the readership in Chronicles (note, for instance, the lack of reference to the sabbath of the land anywhere in Chronicles, outside the two mentioned verses). The result from the perspective of the impact of reading and rereading Chronicles on social memory seems clear. By creating a landscape of social memories to be evoked by a community in which the exile, the catastrophe of 586 b.c.e, and associated sites of memory figured far less prominently, Chronicles rebalanced to the best of its possibilities the mindshare allocated to these common topoi. Of course, Chronicles did not ask its intended and primary readership to forget about the fall of monarchic Judah or the exile. It could not have done that, given the social location in which it emerged and the discourse of the period. In fact, Chronicles reminded the readership of the catastrophe not only in its expected location in the narrative (that is, the reign of Zedekiah and its immediate aftermath) but also in places such as 1 Chr 16:35 40 and within the Memory of Manasseh,” in this volume and bibliography there. For the Zedekiah of Chronicles, see my “Reshaping the Memory of Zedekiah and His Period in Chronicles,” to be published in the Congress Volume: Leipzig 2013, by Brill, and bibliography there.. 40.  I discussed this text elsewhere; see my “Who Knew What? The Construction of the Monarchic Past in Chronicles and Implications for the Intellectual Setting of

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the genealogies in 1 Chr 5:6, 26, 41 41; and 9:1 (and by implication, 9:2–34). It even contains an explicit reference to the common early-Second-Temple motif of the rejected, monarchic prophets (2 Chr 36:15–16; cf. Zech 1:4; 7:7, and 12; and the general image of the monarchic prophets that emerged from the prophetic corpus). But Chronicles was about setting these topoi in proportion and subtly decreasing their mindshare. As I mentioned elsewhere, this attitude is typical of Chronicles and is probably necessary for any “national” history that must conform with a set of “facts” about the past that was already agreed upon in the community and fit its general discourse. But why would Chronicles draw (in relative terms) attention away from the calamity of 586 b.c.e. and its surrounding images and concepts? Or in other, more-precise words: which general, systematic, ideological positions within the range of what was potentially acceptable for the community could have generated (or at least been consistent with) the attested Chronistic trend toward a shift on social memory away from the catastrophe, including the themes of Sennacherib’s campaign and an idyllic restoration? An array of diverse but related notions seems to answer this question. To begin with, from the perspective of Chronicles there was nothing of essential value for the community that changed because of the catastrophe. Yhwh’s teachings certainly did not change, nor did Yhwh’s way of governing the world, nor did Israel’s obligation to follow Yhwh. 42 The portrayal of Josiah in Chronicles as a person who acted in accordance with Yhwh’s will while fully aware of the calamity that would follow his death becomes an archetype for proper behavior. For Chronicles, knowing about the impending or already fulfilled destruction does not and could not change what a person should do— that is, follow Yhwh and follow Yhwh’s teachings, which are conceived as

Chronicles,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e. (ed. O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 349–60. 41.  1 Chr 5:6 and 26 refer to the exile of the Transjordanian tribes. Unlike the exile of Judah, their exile is seen as still not being revoked (see “to this day”). These tribes play a substantially less-significant role in Chronicles than the Cisjordanian northern tribes. The differentiation between the Cisjordanian and Transjordanian northern tribes may reflect debates about the actual extent of “the land” or degrees of regional peripherality within the discourse of the community. See n. 18 above. 1 Chr 8:6–7 does not refer to the exile, not even “exile” in the sense of removal from “the (promised) land.” See G. N. Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2003) 482. 42.  In this sense, and despite its obvious differences, Chronicles reflects an ideological response to the calamity of 586 b.c.e. that is partially comparable with the Mishnah’s response, much later, to the catastrophe that ended the Second Temple period. On the latter, see J. Neusner, In the Aftermath of Catastrophe: Founding Judaism 70–640 (M-QSHR 2/51; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

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the same thing. 43 Neither the catastrophe nor the exile constitutes any kind of watershed in this respect. The actual temple may come and go and come again. As important as it is in Chronicles, it may be run properly, be polluted, cleansed, closed, destroyed, and rebuilt through the vicissitudes of history, yet Israel remains. 44 Moreover, no matter how many times the proper temple may cease to exist in actual Jerusalem, it is always re-buildable, because the community’s knowledge of the temple and worship is always available through Yhwh’s teachings, in the form of authoritative texts held by the literati of the community. These texts provide them with a mental temple, accessible through reading and imagination, that cannot be polluted, destroyed, or the like. In addition, although the “wordly” temple (as opposed to the temple in the shared imagination of the literati) may certainly be destroyed, closed, or polluted, it will always be cleansed and rebuilt eventually, because of Yhwh’s will, as demonstrated in the history and prophecy within the world of Chronicles. The calamity of 586 b.c.e. and its eventual aftermath thus provide a good didactic example, but certainly do not constitute a crucial watershed. Nothing in any of these issues that really matters was changed because of the catastrophe. Of course, life according to Yhwh’s wishes is possible without (access to) the temple, as the authorship and readership of Chronicles know, and as the case of the northern Israelites at the time of Oded (2 Chr 28:8–15) exemplified well. 45 What is necessary for society is a successful teacher/prophet who knows Yhwh’s teachings and is successful enough to be able to lead the people to follow them in practical ways. The land itself may be momentarily lost and partially regained. As much as Chronicles teaches that only life in the land is determinative for the history of Israel and worth remembering, and as much as Chronicles consequently shifts, to the best of its ability, the mindshare of the community toward memories of Israel in the land, temporary losses are no watershed and cannot be construed as such. They are part of a long-term system of sabbaths and to a large extent even necessary for purification. Moreover, the notion of the “Empty Land” works to shape, not only the image that all Israel came back from exile, but also that the land was not available to anyone other than Israel for settlement. The land imagined as “empty of 43.  Compare 1 Kgs 8:25 and the rendering of its meaning in 2 Chr 6:16. The concept is already implied in 1 Kgs 9:6, but see Psalm 119. 44.  And, of course, along with it, the divine teachings about how it should behave and what should it remember. Within the world view of Chronicles (and probably of all the discourse of the literati of its original time), these teachings were considered to be what made Israel self-aware, and as such, were not only a key attribute of Israel but also an essential possession for its future and present. 45. I discuss this passage elsewhere; see my History, Literature and Theology, 223–28.

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Israel” is imagined as remaining “empty”—as though Yhwh had set what we would call a “force field” around it. 46 The Davidic Dynasty was certainly important to Chronicles, but again not indispensable. Israel could live and follow Yhwh without a Davidic king, because the readership within which and for which Chronicles emerged certainly knew how and needed to imagine. This was possible because there was no need for a second David to institute instructions for the establishment of the proper (i.e., Davidic) temple and its worship. They were already set, and thus Israel could follow them in the absence of a David. The fact that both temples were established by kings other than David makes the point even more memorable. Again, as devastating as the fall of the monarchy was, it was not a crucial watershed as far as what matters most within Chronicles’ ideology. There are additional considerations that contributed to Chronicles’ tendency to rebalance the weight of the overwhelming memory of the catastrophe in the community. For instance, a community whose mindshare is partially locked onto the catastrophe and who sees monarchic (or even premonarchic) history as greatly informed by the calamity and, to a large extent, as a long trajectory heading toward it is a community whose image of the Israel of the remembered past must on the whole be negative. Their past Israel must be very sinful, because its actions merited extreme divine punishment; in fact, it “forced” a reluctant Yhwh to finally punish Israel as it fully deserved. This image of past Israel is present in the discourse of the community and finds clear expression in both the Deuteronomistic historical collection and the prophetic corpus. But this is a problematic image. Recounting Israel’s sins may be appropriate in confessions of sin, prayers, and the like (e.g., Psalm 106), which serve rhetorical roles. But a social memory that focuses for the most part on the inherently and irremediably sinful character of Israel and the extreme catastrophe that is the unavoidable, just outcome of this sin is not the best image with which to develop hope for the postmonarchic community. Neither does it help develop Israel’s sense that it can follow Yhwh’s teachings, even if imperfectly, or its ability to avoid disasters in the future. Although in times of crisis or calamity, this characterization is necessary to maintain a sense of agency for the community within its own discourse, it is not the best construction for maintaining hope for the future. And hope is necessary for the community and widely attested as a systemic need in the discourse of Yehud, as demonstrated by the production and reception of prophetic literature. 46.  It is worth mentioning that many areas in Judah were not resettled but remained in ruins during the Neo-Babylonian period. This said, the development of the concept of the “Empty Land” should not be understood primarily as dependent on historicity in the narrow sense. Note that it involved forgetting that the majority of the population in Yehud consisted of descendants of the people who never left the land. The issue, however, is beyond the scope of this work, and I address it elsewhere. See my “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud.”

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Some texts in the repertoire of the Yehudite community advanced a solution to the problem: Israel will be changed by Yhwh in the future (see Deut 30:6; Jer 24:7, 31:31–34, 32:38–41; Ezek 11:19–20, 36:25–28; Hos 2:21), so it will not be able to sin. But Chronicles—partially because as historiography it creates sites of memory in the past rather than the future, and partially because it promotes a “down-to-earth” utopia—addresses the issue differently, by rebalancing the remembered past. Thus, for instance, Chronicles adds numerous monarchic-period prophetic voices that were heard in their own putative times and remembered. 47 Thus, past Israel sinned, of course, but from time to time. In addition, Chronicles implicitly constructs an Israel that, when it is free from sinful leadership, tends to accept Yhwh and his ways 48—that is, an Israel that tends by default, as it were, to follow Yhwh. Summing up, Chronicles influenced the social mindshare about the catastrophe and exile within the community of readers. Chronicles did not attempt to erase the memory of the exile or catastrophe of 586 b.c.e. In fact, it recalled this memory and contributed to reshaping its meaning (e.g., the concept of the sabbath of the land), but it tried to put it into proportion and diminish the exile’s mindshare within the community. This trend can be explained as emerging out of (or at least as being consistent with) the ideological agenda of Chronicles. 49 Within this agenda, the issue is not only or merely that nothing that essentially or categorically (not contingently) matters changed after the catastrophe or the exile. The issue is also, relatedly, that attention is turned toward—not away from—a sense of essential (though not contingent) continuity with the past. Furthermore, social memory is nudged to serve this goal better. Within this ideology, this sense of continuity is conceived as being directly related to the continuity throughout the calamity of Yhwh’s teachings and what is required to follow them. It is related to Yhwh’s ways of governing the world that characterizes Chronicles’ world—pre- and post-catastrophe; before, in the middle of, and after the exile. Of course, the continuity of Yhwh’s teachings was predicated on the teachings of foundational written texts and appropriate readings of them as implied 47.  I expanded on this matter in “Chronicles and Its Reshaping.” 48. See my article “A House of Treasures: The Account of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25—Observations and Implications,” SJOT 22 (2008) 63–85. 49.  It also reflects the fact that some time has passed since the catastrophe itself. As Chronicles was written within and for a community that lived far more than a century after the events, it easily passes this test. At the same time, it is worth stressing that Chronicles was probably not the first text within the community to reflect and engage in this type of discourse about the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile. Moreover, there is no need to go as far as the end of the Persian period (or early Hellenistic), the most likely date of Chronicles, to imagine a community in Yehud and even in Jerusalem with the same or a similar viewpoint on the matter. The question of how much temporal distance was necessary in this and similar cases cannot be answered in any categorical way.

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and communicated by Chronicles and its authoritative characters, including its implied author. Likewise, the possibility of learning about Yhwh’s ways in dealing with the world and about what is required to follow Yhwh in the present and future of the community are presented as available for learning through the study of Chronicles, within its appropriate Sitz im Diskurs in late-Persian Yehud (or early-Hellenistic Judah). Taking into consideration the facts that (1) Chronicles was essential and significant to the community precisely because it was essential to a larger shared, communal discourse; and that (2) the foundational and connective 50 issues led Chronicles to draw less attention to the catastrophe and the exile—these facts indicate that it is unlikely that Chronicles emerged as the only voice in the discourse of the period to influence the social memory toward rebalancing the weight of the exile and catastrophe. Despite all the differences between the Pentateuch and Chronicles, the latter as a whole may have fulfilled a comparable function, 51 but this is an issue for another essay. Moreover, the general outlook reflected in Chronicles’ tendency to draw less attention to supposed watersheds and more attention to a sense of continuity based on following Yhwh, no matter what happens, and in the underlying attitude that nothing really new can be learned from even the largest catastrophe that befell Israel is consistent with the general outlook of Qoheleth (cf. Qoh 12:13), despite the obvious differences in literary genres. The presence of similarities in the underlying outlook of these two works is less surprising once one takes into account that both emerged (likely) within decades of each other and in a comparable setting—that is, a very small group of Jerusalem-centered literati. Further research on the respective Sitz im Diskurs of these two works and on the intellectual discourse of late Persian or early Hellenistic Judah is warranted. 52 A final consideration: multiple voices informing and balancing each other were characteristic of the general discourse of Yehud, the related repertoire of authoritative books, and the books themselves. Chronicles was a prominent example of this feature. This observation is particularly relevant to the 50.  That is, core issues or positions that are strongly connected to a significant number of other matters or positions in the discourse of the community. 51.  And compare Sirach’s outlook on this matter. 52.  The issues to be discussed are not constrained to the presence of similar or dissimilar underlying concepts (see my “When Yhwh Tests People: General Considerations and Particular Observations regarding the Books of Chronicles and Job,” in Far from Minimal: Celebrating the Work and Influence of Philip R. Davies [ed. D. Burns and J. W. Rogerson; LHBOTS; London: T. & T. Clark, 2012] 11–20) but also reveal the ways in which a readership well aware of Qoheleth may have read Chronicles and vice versa. For instance, to some extent and granted a substantial element of reductionism and exaggeration, it might be claimed that this chapter presents a partial “Qoheleth-light/like” reading of Chronicles, but what would have been a partial “Chronicles-light/like” reading of Qoheleth?

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present discussion as well. Reading and rereading Chronicles led to a shift in social memory in particular directions. But reading and rereading Chronicles, not only in a way informed by other texts, but even by itself set this shift in proportion. Thus, for instance, the exile is over after the “seventy years” but not over. 53 The relative mindshare of the catastrophe decreased as the literati of the time read and reread Chronicles, but the same book still reminded them of the catastrophe, its reasons, meaning, and nature (see above). Israel was not always sinful, but at times it certainly was, as Chronicles itself reminded its readers. The fall of the monarchy may not be a “big deal” because Israel knows how to establish and run a proper temple and because Yhwh can charge a foreign king to build a Davidic temple, but somehow it is still a “big deal,” as demonstrated by the numerous memories about the roles of kings and their importance in Judah that the text evokes. 54 No reconstruction of the impact of Chronicles on social memory about the exile and the circumstances that led to it can ignore the fact that, as much as Chronicles conveyed to the best of possibilities in the discourse of the time, a sense of balance regarding the exile and the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem and the monarchic polity, its communication was not only a balancing message but also a balanced message. 55 53.  For example, when the readers of Chronicles imagined the Yhwh who caused the catastrophe, they were asked to imagine a deity who had compassion on the people and on the divine dwelling place, the temple in Jerusalem (see 2 Chr 36:15; ‎‫חמל על־עמו‬ ‫)ועל־מעונו‬. The readers knew that the temple was rebuilt, but they were also aware that Yehud was still depopulated. And, of course, Transjordanian exile remained to “this day.” The image of an exile that was overcome but was not overcome, both at the same time, played important roles in many if not most of the discourses that evolved during the Second Temple period, from the Persian to the Roman era. 54. Obviously, the entire matter of Chronicles’ message about the Davidic line has some bearing on this matter as well. Personally, I maintain that Chronicles communicated to its readership a sense that a Davidide is not necessary for Israel (only Torah is) and reminded them of the sharp decline in the status of the Davidides in the post-catastrophe period. None of this, however, means that Chronicles necessarily conveyed (1) a categorical opposition to hopes for a Davidide (in fact, it may have reflected or communicated some [muted] hope for a future Davidide in the genealogy); or (2) a sense that the promise to David had to be, was, and would be fulfilled—all three tenses are correct in Chronicles—only and under any circumstances in terms of the community (compare the exile that was overcome and not overcome at the same time). These matters, however, are well beyond the scope of this essay and deserve a separate discussion. See M. Boda’s contribution to this volume, “Gazing through the Cloud of Incense: Davidic Dynasty and Temple Community in the Chronicler’s Perspective.” 55. See my History, Literature and Theology. I would like to thank the participants in the CSBS seminar in which this paper was read for their helpful comments, in particular John Wright. The research leading to this essay and related works on social memory in ancinet Israel has been supported by a grant of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Response: Reflections on the Book of Chronicles and Second Temple Historiography Christine Mitchell St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon Let me begin by saying that I was honored to have been asked to be the respondent to the papers that were presented at the fifth meeting of the Ancient Historiography Seminar of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in Montreal in 2010. I am similarly privileged with offering the response here to the revised essays, as well as to a few additional pieces that were not discussed in Montreal. With the variety, richness, breadth and depth of the essays, I fear that I cannot do justice to all of them in my allotted space. I beg the forgiveness of the contributors if I do not adequately deal with the intricacies of the argument of each. My remarks here incorporate my oral response in Montreal as well as some further thoughts. In preparation for the Montreal meeting, I was asked to reflect on the future of the study of Chronicles and early Second Temple historiography. As Mark Boda points out in his essay (p. 233), the book of Chronicles itself invites us to think about the future, as it ends with “Let him go up . . .” (2 Chr 36:23). In this response, therefore, I do not focus on the “state of the field,” because the summaries of research given by Rodney Duke in his 2009 article and by Mark Boda in his essay in this volume contain all that one might need to know. 1 I instead pick up on a few questions that I see as potentially fruitful for further work. When I began my study of Chronicles as a doctoral student some 15 years ago, I chose to focus on Chronicles for a number of reasons. One reason included my sense that I could legitimately “master the literature” in a way that was difficult or impossible to do with the scholarship related to many other biblical books. This situation has changed—just look at the bibliography after 1990 1.  R. K. Duke, “Recent Research in Chronicles,” CBR 8 (2009) 10–50. I see his essay as a somewhat idiosyncratic summary of recent research. For example, Duke states that “there still is no consensus on the unity of Chronicles” (p. 14); the essays in this volume belie that statement and seem to me to be a truer reflection of the state of the field.

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in Boda’s essay (p. 218)—and I doubt whether a doctoral student beginning today to study Chronicles could master the literature in the same way. This may be a good thing, because it will force new scholars to begin more imaginative and focused projects rather than attempting to fill gaps in scholarship or undertake broad projects. The groundwork has been laid: we now have a good understanding of how Chronicles works as a text. The publication of the Qumran texts and the resulting shift in text-criticism have cemented the recognition that texts were pluriform in antiquity. With this realization, a realization that is also a caution, the focus of research has shifted from an examination of minute textual differences between Chronicles and its assumed source texts to a more holistic examination of the trends and techniques used by Chronicles. 2 Alongside this realization has come the welcome shift to reading Chronicles in its own right rather than as a defective and slightly tedious version of Samuel– Kings. From my reading of the essays for this volume and my broader sense of the field, I am here going to give a few suggestions for future projects. After working with Chronicles for a great part of the past 15 years, I am not convinced that it is historiography. I am not convinced that it is not, either. But I am concerned that so many have not sufficiently probed this question, including many or even most of the authors in this volume. The assumption of the historiographical genre by most authors here is my major criticism of most of these essays. I remain torn about whether a generic classification of historiography existed in pre-third-century b.c.e. Yehud/Judea. On the one hand, historiography as a Hellenistic genre could well have made an impact by the fourth century b.c.e.; on the other hand, because Chronicles is following and innovating the genre of texts such as Samuel, it might make little sense to use the “invention” of historiography in late-fifth-century b.c.e. Athens as a demarcation line. As a heuristic device, for us, historiography as a genre label may be useful—it allows us to compare Chronicles with other biblical books and with other ancient texts. However, we often lose sight of the tool’s heuristic nature. Notwithstanding the arguments of Marc Zvi Brettler, among others, narratives about the past are not necessarily historiography or historical writing. 3 Labeling Chronicles as “rewritten Bible” or “early exegesis/midrash” may be a closer generic label descriptively, but both terms leave unresolved the question of the Chronicler’s point of view on his pre-texts. “Bible” is anachronistic—as Gary Knoppers acknowledges while still using the term “rewritten Bible,” 4 and “exegesis/midrash” likewise presumes an authoritative text that cannot 2.  See the very useful discussion in D. M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) esp. pp. 57–101. 3.  M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995) 12. 4.  G. N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 130.

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be changed, only commented upon. The uncomfortable thought remains that we do not know what Chronicles is—or at least what it was to its author and intended audience. Whatever it was, it was most definitely not ἱστοριη. During the meeting in Montreal, I noticed that every time the topic genre came up in discussion, there was a distinct and rapid skittering away from it. My sense is that scholars of Chronicles (alongside most biblical scholars) have not thought about the concept of genre theoretically since form criticism gave up the ghost in the early 1990s. This is too bad, because genre, the mixture of prescriptive and descriptive elements of form and content, is an important way that all scholars—nay, all readers—approach texts. Nevertheless, there are a few of the essays that do open up some new possibilities for understanding the genre of Chronicles. In the discussion in Montreal, Gary Knoppers suggested that the Chronicler may have seen himself as one more prophet in a prophetic line. He argues in his essay that “Chronicles reforms images of the classical prophets found in the prophetic books in accordance with its reformation of the Deuteronomic prophetic schema” (p. 164). That is, Chronicles operates within a distinctly Deuteronomic notion of prophecy (especially Deut 18:9–22). 5 As Knoppers points out, all prophecies in Chronicles are fulfilled, all prophets are true, and prophets are never criticized. More tantalizing is his suggestion that Levitical singing was a key component of both temple-based prophecy and a possible prophetic line inaugurated by Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun (1  Chr 25:2–3; pp.  184–191). If I might extend Knoppers’s argument in his essay, not only did Chronicles recast prophecy into a Deuteronomic mode, the Chronistic (singing?) voice became the next incarnation of the prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15). One way into the genre question, therefore, might be to examine Chronicles further as a prophetic text rather than a historiographical. The debate in Second-Temple Yehud about true and false prophets and the status of prophecy was an open debate (see Haggai 1 and Zechariah 13 for opposing views). Perhaps what a prophetic text looked like was also up for debate. That prophets were seen later in the Second Temple period as recorders of the past (i.e., historiographers) is obvious from the canonical organization of “Prophets,” which encompassed Joshua through 2 Kings, as well as from writers such as Josephus. 6 Aligning our genre expectations with some ancient expectations could be a new way into this text for us. It would fully break with the modern reader’s expectation that the book can be used as a source for historical reconstruction of Iron Age Judah. It would force us to confront our own expectations of a text that speaks about the past and reorient ourselves to a different mode of thought. 5.  Contra W. M. Schniedewind, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second Temple Period (JSOTSup 197; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) 247. 6.  Ibid., 227–28, 230.

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Another genre avenue that deserves to be more fully explored is the idea that Chronicles was an educational text—a textbook, as it were. In his essay “A Sense of Balance,” Ehud Ben Zvi points to Chronicles as being “didactic” literature (p.  256), although he notes that most biblical texts, including Samuel–Kings, have this purpose. The work of David Carr, especially, should be more thoroughly discussed as it relates to Chronicles. 7 Duke discusses it briefly in his review article, yet there is much more to be done. 8 There are two ways that Carr’s work could be engaged: (1) understanding the textual transmission process as a process of memory on the orality-literacy continuum; and (2)  understanding the implications of textual production as part of what he terms “education-enculturation”—that is, as a textbook. My sense is that many scholars of Chronicles see the importance of Carr’s work and the potential it has for providing a different way into Chronicles but that the task is too daunting. Putting the genre question another way: Why would the Chronicler write a “history”? What purpose would it serve? What does a text such as Chronicles actually do? I suspect that a serious engagement with Carr’s work would lead to questioning the genre tools we have used and would force us into a new paradigm, just as taking seriously a consideration of Chronicles as prophecy would do. These are uncomfortable thoughts for those of us whose work has been based on the current paradigm. Because of the systematic analysis of the Chronicler’s style over the past two decades, we now have a good idea of how the Chronicler wrote and how he used earlier textual material. This shift in focus from finding redactional layers in Chronicles to understanding the Chronicler’s literary techniques has been a most welcome development. Ehud Ben Zvi’s essay on Manasseh and Paul Evans’s essay on 2  Chronicles 32 in this volume are examples of this kind of work. This systematic analysis of style has, I believe, led to a greater appreciation of the Chronicler as an author and of Chronicles as a text. I am not sure how many people outside the room in Montreal and the contributors to this volume share this appreciation, but certainly we scholars of Chronicles have given others in the future something with which to work. While further work on the style of Chronicles would certainly be welcome, perhaps it is time to turn (or return) our attention to the themes of Chronicles. Mark Boda’s essay is an example of the reexamination of the themes of Chronicles, specifically the theme of the future of the Davidic Dynasty after the restoration of Jerusalem by Cyrus. He attempts a Hegelian synthesis in each of three scholarly debates: (1) Are the promises to David fulfilled in a Davidide or in the community? (2) Are these promises fulfilled in the Chronicler’s present or in a (perhaps eschatological) future? And (3) are these prom7.  D. M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 8.  Duke, “Recent Research,” 38–39.

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ises fulfilled through continuity or through cataclysmic change? Through this method of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, he can conclude that there is a balance between Davidic messianism and communal fulfillment (p.  233). He conflates the second and third debates as a debate between seeing the Chronicler as a “legitimizer of the present” and seeing him as a “visionary of the future” (p. 236). Again, he concludes that Chronicles both legitimates and envisions. While I can certainly sympathize with Boda’s desire to rehabilitate Chronicles from Wellhausen’s derision (pp. 215, 245), I wonder about trying to wrap up Chronicles neatly in a synthesized package. There are tensions in Chronicles, to be sure, and there is a reason why some scholars have read the text as hoping for a future Davidide while others have read it as presenting communal fulfillment of the Davidic promises. The text itself, as Boda so ably shows, contains evidence that supports both readings. To attempt to synthesize these two arguments is to impose an order on the text that is not there. I have always argued that Chronicles is a text of “yes, but. . . .” That the text might hold mutually contradictory elements within it is our problem: What does it say about us? In conclusion, while I hold Boda’s research and analysis in the highest esteem, I disagree with the epistemological premise on which he builds his work: to synthesize Chronicles is not and cannot be possible. Another essay in this volume that works with a theme is Louis Jonker’s on Benjamin and Benjaminites. While he attempts to use the appearance of Benjaminite terminology in Chronicles as an index to identity formation in the Persian period, more interesting is the literary analysis of the Benjaminite theme of the text. As he points out, it is not as though the text holds a single position on Benjamin: “Sometimes Benjamin is used in the service of a Jerusalemite claim, while in other instances it is put in contrast to Jerusalem” (p.  94). Although Jonker labels this portion of his essay “Synthesis,” he is happier to leave the messy loose ends of the text apparent and in fact builds them into his analysis and argument. He demonstrates that it is possible to see a theme in the book without having to reduce this theme to one meaning. One striking feature of this volume is the contribution of the two essays devoted explicitly to the genealogies along with serious engagement with the genealogies in many of the other pieces. Keith Bodner’s and Steven Schweit­ zer’s essays both take as a starting point John Wright’s essay “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles”; 9 both build on this essay as a strong argument for the integration of the genealogies with the succeeding narrative. Yet these essays have less in common with studies of the style of Chronicles (or even the genre—to which I will return) than they share with the explicitly postmodern literary reading of Peter Sabo. Both Bodner and Sabo draw on 9.  J. W. Wright, “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 136–55.

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Canadian Northrop Frye’s assertion about the value of lists. Sabo probes the scholarly compulsion to visit and revisit the story of Saul in 1  Chronicles 10, noting that it is the beginning of the book for many readers who choose to skip the genealogies (p.  47 n. 17). All three of the essays take Chronicles seriously as a text with its own integrity: none of them presupposes a genre label such as historiography for it. Schweitzer’s claim of utopia as an anachronistic genre label highlights the artificiality of the anachronistic historiography used by modern scholars. These three pieces embody for me one of the most fruitful future directions in Chronicles research: reading the text here and now. Peter Sabo’s essay on the compulsion to visit and revisit the death of Saul evoked in my mind another compulsion of Chronicles research: the visiting and revisiting of the death of Josiah and the end of the book. This volume contains two contributions on this second compulsion: Shannon Baines’s and Mark Boda’s. Boda’s essay deals with more than the last four chapters but, since his argument has to do with eschatology and future hopes, the final few chapters figure prominently. Although Boda makes the argument that 2 Chronicles 35–36 and 1 Chronicles 10 should not be linked (pp. 231–232), Baines’s careful exposition of the closing unit highlights sin and judgment as themes (pp.  153–156), themes that must surely be seen in 1  Chronicles 10 as well. Reading Sabo’s and Baines’s essays, I came to the uncomfortable realization that I have participated in both scholarly compulsions: in fact, my very first publication was on 1 Chronicles 10 (as is Sabo’s?). 10 My own unscientific impression of my citation index is that these two pieces have been more frequently cited than any other pieces I have written. I fear that I have both participated in and helped to perpetuate this compulsion. Nevertheless, I take comfort in Sabo’s conclusion, that the compulsion is the symptom of a text that is not dead but is ever returning to make new meanings (p. 63). In the early to mid-twentieth century, it was common to see the features of the language of Chronicles that differed from Standard Biblical Hebrew as Aramaizing. Forty years ago, the work of my own teacher, Robert Polzin, led the way in limiting the Aramaizing hypothesis. 11 Yet in some ways the influence of Aramaic, particularly Imperial Aramaic, on Chronicles may deserve renewed or further study. My twofold question at this point is: what does it mean for 10. C. Mitchell, “The Dialogism of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 311–26; idem, “The Ironic Death of Josiah in 2 Chronicles,” CBQ 68 (2006) 421–35. 11. R. Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward An Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose (HSM 12; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976). Cf. I. Young, R. Re­ zetko, and M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (2 vols.; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2008) 1:221.

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Chronicles to be written in Hebrew rather than Aramaic, and how would the style of Imperial Aramaic have influenced the style of Chronicles? The meeting in Montreal was held in a room in the center of North America’s largest and perhaps only bilingual city. The choice of language to use in literary and other texts is a critical political issue. For me, as a Canadian, whether I spoke English or French when I got my cup of tea in the morning while in Montreal was a political choice. If I chose English, I was speaking the language of Canada’s majority but Quebec’s minority. As a Canadian, it is my right to be served by the government in the official language of my choice, English or French. This right does not extend to ordering a cup of tea at a downtown coffee shop, but many Anglophone Canadians would see it as a natural corollary. However, for two centuries the English dominated Montreal’s politics, economy, and society. To speak English would be an act of colonialism. If I chose French, I was speaking the language of Quebec’s majority. I was standing in solidarity with the Francophones who in the 1950s and 1960s began to assert their right to speak their own language in their own place. I was also revealing myself (with my strong English Canadian accent) as politically identifying with the vision of Pierre Trudeau—where Canadians would be bilingual and speak French in Quebec and other Francophone communities and English in Anglophone areas of Canada. Trudeau’s vision remains contested, as does his legacy, even more than a decade after his death and almost three decades since he left political office. 12 I spoke French in Montreal. This was a conscious decision that was revisited every time I interacted with someone at the hotel, the coffee shop, the art gallery, and so on. It is a decision I revisit every time I go to Montreal. Because of my own context, I find it difficult to imagine that the Chronicler’s choice of Hebrew as his textual language was not a political decision. Yet presumably he had also been trained in Imperial Aramaic, so how did he manage not to Aramaize his Hebrew more than he did? Was he as fluent in both Hebrew and Aramaic as my brother-in-law, who was raised in Montreal to be fluent in both English and French? Was his use of Hebrew an act of resistance? Following up on Louis Jonker’s essay, is the Hebrew of Chronicles perhaps an anti-Benjaminite Hebrew? The interplay of Hebrew and Aramaic should 12.  No Canadian of my generation and social location would need a citation for any of my assertions here. They are part of the common knowledge that informs all of us. However, in the interests of non-Canadians, I suggest the following critical-review essay: D. Wright and T. Cheney, “Pierre Trudeau, Michael Ignatieff, and the Flame of 1968,” Acadiensis 38/2 (2009) 159–67. The interested reader might consult two columns for the journalistic view: D. Frum, “The Disastrous Legacy of Pierre Trudeau,” National Post, March 23, 2011, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/23/david-frum-thedisastrous-legacy-of-pierre-trudeau/; and J. English, “Pierre Trudeau Saved Canada,” National Post, March 25, 2011, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/25/johnenglish-pierre-trudeau-saved-canada/ (accessed September 3, 2013).

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receive broader sociological analysis rather than the linguistic analysis that has usually been done. Given that Chronicles was written in Hebrew in an Aramaic world, how does Chronicles relate to Aramaic-language texts? Do the themes in Chronicles (Temple, Levites, Davidic House, doctrine of immediate retribution, etc.) in some way relate to concerns about living in a world dominated officially by Aramaic—and by extension, imperial forces? Does the literary style of Chronicles bear a relationship to literary style in Imperial Aramaic? These questions about language choice and Aramaic texts pertain to a larger investigation of Chronicles as a text of colonial Yehud. Recently there has been considerable attention paid to Chronicles and its context of colonial Yehud. This is a good thing. Yet as with many studies (in many literary fields) using colonial and/ or postconlonial theory, the conditions are assumed, not investigated. I suggest, therefore, that investigating the texts of the colonizers and comparing Chronicles with these texts would be a worthwhile project. Some beginning steps have been taken by examining the fifth- and fourth-century Greek texts and their similarities with Chronicles. 13 John Wright’s essay in this volume is a welcome addition to this movement, especially as he points out the deep structures of continuity between the Persian and Hellenistic periods: “It is possible to see so-called Hellenization as the continuation and even intensification of ‘Persia-fication’” (p. 197). By examining the theme of divine retribution, Wright brings together two streams of further research that I am calling for in this response: a return to examining the themes of Chronicles, particularly in their literariness, and investigating the comparative evidence. However, these pieces on Greek influence may have been the easy steps. Digging out the Aramaic, Akkadian, and Old Persian texts and examining them are yet to come. As a final direction for Chronicles research, I suggest that contextual readings hold out the most promise. We Canadian biblical scholars have noted in conversation the high number of Canadians involved in Chronicles research. As one of us, John Kessler, said to me a few years ago, on entering a conference room at the (American) Society of Biblical Literature, “It’s quite a Canadian mafia here, isn’t it?” What is it about the Canadian context—social, political, academic, linguistic—that has led to this concentration of research? Nevertheless, what I would propose is a greater explicit link between our social settings as scholars and our work with Chronicles. Rather than pretending it is simply an interesting intellectual problem, we can read out of our context. The movement of “contextual biblical interpretation” is not new any longer, as the 13.  See the cautions in Duke, “Recent Research,” 20–22. See also an important article by G. N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History: A Reexamination,” JBL 122 (2003) 627–50.

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Fortress Press series Texts and Contexts demonstrates. 14 My anecdote about language in Montreal—and, indeed, my explicit framing of this response as having its origin in a real time and place—is meant as an example of this sort of contextualization of our research. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure and contextualization, I would like to use this opportunity to say that I have gained immensely from working on Chronicles. With one or two exceptions, every contributor to this volume and every participant in the Montreal seminar is a person I have come to know over the years and value highly. (The exceptions are students whom I simply have not had the chance to know yet.) Gary Knoppers and Ehud Ben Zvi have been friends and mentors. John Wright and Mark Boda have been great supporters of my own work. Keith Bodner and Mark Leuchter (who participated in Montreal) are latecomers to Chronicles, but I flatter myself that this interest may have arisen in part because of our own academic friendship. Knowing Louis Jonker, Steve Schweitzer, Paul Evans, and Tyler Williams has enriched my own life and work. To all of you, many, many thanks. 14.  See, e.g., the preface in A. Brenner, A. C. C. Lee, and G. A. Yee, Genesis (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010) xi–xvi.

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Whybray, Roger N. The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987. Wilch, John R. Time and Event: An Exegetical Use of ʿeth in the Old Testament in Comparison to Other Temporal Expressions in Clarification of the Concept of Time. Leiden: Brill, 1969. Willi, Thomas. Die Chronik als Auslegung: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Gestaltung der historischen Überlieferung Israels. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972. ______ .  “Late Persian Judaism and Its Conception of an Integral Israel according to Chronicles: Some Observations on Form and Function of the Genealogy of Judah in 1 Chronicles 2.3–4.23.” Pp. 146–62 in Second Temple Studies, volume 2: Temple Community in the Persian Period. Edited by T. C. Eskenazi and K. H. Richards. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 175. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994. Williamson, H. G. M. “The Death of Josiah and the Continuing Development of the Deuteronomic History.” Vetus Testamentum 32 (1982) 242–47. ______ . “The Dynastic Oracle in the Books of Chronicles.” Pp.  305–18 in Isaac Leo Seeligmann Volume: Essays on the Bible and Ancient World. Edited by A. Rofé and Y. Zakovitch. Jerusalem: Rubinstein, 1983. ______ .  “Eschatology in Chronicles.” Tyndale Bulletin 28 (1977) 115–54. ______ .  1 and 2  Chronicles. New Century Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982. ______ .  Israel in the Books of Chronicles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. ______ .  “A Note on I Chronicles vii.12.” Vetus Testamentum 23 (1973) 375–79. ______ .  “Reliving the Death of Josiah: A Reply to C. T. Begg.” Vetus Testamentum 37 (1987) 9–15. ______ .  “Review of S.  L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History.” Vetus Testamentum 37 (1987) 107–14. ______ .  “‘The Sure Mercies of David’: Subjective or Objective Genitive?” Journal of Semitic Studies 23 (1978) 68–90. ______ .  “The Temple in the Books of Chronicles.” Pp.  150–61 in Studies in Persian Period History and Historiography. Edited by H.  G.  M. Williamson. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 38. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Wilson, Robert R. Genealogy and History in the Biblical World. Yale Near Eastern Researches 7. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. ______ .  Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980. Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Wright, Donald, and Thomas Cheney. “Pierre Trudeau, Michael Ignatieff, and the Flame of 1968.” Acadiensis 38 (2009) 159–67. Wright, John W. “Beyond Immanence and Transcendence: The Characterization of the Presence and Activity of God in the Book of Chronicles.” Pp. 240–67 in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in Honor of Ralph Klein. Edited by M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 371. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2003.

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______ . “The Fabula of the Book of Chronicles.” Pp.  136–55 in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture. Edited by M.  P. Graham and S.  L. McKenzie. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 263. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. ______ .  “The Fight for Peace: Narrative and History in the Battle Accounts in Chronicles.” Pp. 150–77 in The Chronicler as Historian. Edited by M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. L. McKenzie. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 238. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. ______ .  “The Founding Father: The Structure of the Chronicler’s David Narrative.” Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998) 45–59. ______ .  “The Innocence of David in I Chronicles 21.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 60 (1993) 87–105. ______ .  “The Legacy of David in Chronicles: The Narrative Function of 1 Chronicles 23–27.” Journal of Biblical Literature 110 (1991) 229–42. ______ .  The Origin and Function of 1 Chronicles 23–27. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1989. Wyatt, Nick. “Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone: El’s Oracle to King Keret (Kirta), and the Problem of the Mechanics of Its Utterance.” Vetus Testamentum 57 (2007) 483–510. Young, Ian, Robert Rezetko, and Martin Ehrensvärd. Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, volume 1: An Introduction to Approaches and Problems. BibleWorld. London: Equinox, 2008. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. Zalewski, Saul. “The Purpose of the Story of the Death of Saul in 1 Chronicles X.” Vetus Testamentum 39 (1989) 448–67. Zevit, Ziony. “A Misunderstanding at Bethel: Amos VII 12–17.” Vetus Testamentum 25 (1975) 783–90. ______ .  The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum, 2001. Zsengellér, József. “Canon and the Samaritans.” Pp. 161–71 in Canonization and Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), Held at Leiden, 9–10 January 1997. Edited by A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn. Studies in the History of Religions 82. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

Index of Authors Abadie, P.  121, 125, 126 Achenbach, R.  164 Ackroyd, P.  44, 51, 66, 120, 138, 215, 227, 235, 236, 239, 241 Adler, J. J.  70 Albertz, R.  164, 165, 248, 252 Allen, L. C.  41 Alter, R.  119 Ambar-Armon, E.  199 Amit, Y.  44, 61, 81, 119, 129, 141, 147, 153, 154, 163, 176, 177, 184 Andersen, F. I.  250 Anderson, A. A.  67 Anderson, C. B.  65 Aristotle  46, 47, 62 Asheri, D.  205 Assante, J.  118 Augustin, M.  37 Auld, A. G.  103 Avenarius, G.  15 Avigad, N.  111 Avioz, M.  54 Bailey, N.  68 Baldwin, J. G.  67 Bal, M.  30 Bar-Efrat, S.  142, 147, 151 Barnes, W. E.  17 Barr, J.  224 Barthes, R.  60 Barton, J.  162 Beal, L. M. W.  247 Becker, J.  215, 223, 239 Becking, B.  178, 241 Beentjes, P.  163, 216 Begg, C.  153, 163, 179, 184, 185, 232

Ben Zvi, E.  37, 51, 52, 66, 116, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 144, 177, 181, 185, 186, 192, 208, 209, 212, 248, 249, 250, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 272 Blenkinsopp, J.  81, 113, 168, 169 Bloom, H.  48 Boda, M. J.  142, 148, 151, 152, 187, 217, 222, 233, 237, 247, 265, 269, 270, 272, 273, 274 Bodner, K.  31, 273 Botterweck, G. J.  238 Braun, R. L.  19, 22, 41, 66, 181, 215, 224, 238 Brenner, A.  277 Brettler, M. Z.  12, 14, 181, 270 Briant, P.  197 Brooks, S. S.  44 Burkert, W.  197, 198 Burket, W.  206 Burrell, D. B.  214 Butler, T.  221 Caquot, A.  215, 223, 224, 229 Carr, D. M.  270, 272 Carter, C. E.  254 Charlesworth, J. H.  122 Chatman, S. B.  31 Cheney, T.  275 Childs, B. S.  72, 104, 105, 106, 109 Cogan, M.  190 Coggins, R. G.  120, 143, 151, 215, 241

311

312

Index of Authors

Corcella, A.  205 Cross, F. M.  150, 215, 216 Curtis, E. L.  37, 71, 74 Dalley, S.  111, 112 Davies, P. R.  79, 81, 82, 94 Davila, J.  123 Davis, C.  53 Day, J.  87 Deboys, D. G.  243 Derrida, J.  46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63 De Vries, S. J.  20, 27, 66, 126, 183, 186, 215, 224, 225, 236 Dexinger, F.  162 Diebner, B. J.  180 Dietrich, W.  163 Dillard, R. B.  146, 149, 215, 224, 227, 228, 238, 240, 243, 245 Dion, P. E.  104 Dionysius  14 Dirksen, P. B.  40, 89, 90, 91, 216, 217 Dörrfuss, E. M.  174, 216 Driver, S. R.  162 Duke, R. K.  217, 239, 269, 272, 276 Dumbrell, W. J.  236 Edelman, D.  83, 188 Edersheim, A.  109 Ehrensvärd, M.  274 Endres, J. C.  133 English, J.  275 Eshel, H.  198, 199 Evans, M. J.  67 Evans, P. S.  1, 68, 88, 106, 110, 113, 115, 117, 119, 142, 144, 272 Ewald, H.  115 Fantalkin, A.  197 Faust, A.  83, 123, 254 Finkelstein, I.  83, 85, 123, 254 Firth, D. G.  67 Fishbane, M.  175, 248 Flower, M. A.  213

Forbes, A. D.  250 Freedman, D. N.  195, 215, 216, 250 Freud, S.  43, 48, 54, 56, 57, 58, 62 Friedman, R. E.  191 Frolov, S.  248 Frum, D.  275 Frye, N.  29, 41, 274 Gallagher, W. R.  118 Gertz, J. C.  165 Geva, H.  254 Gillingham, S.  189 Glatt-Gilad, D.  175 Goldingay, J.  65, 228 Grabbe, L. L.  83, 85, 115 Graham, M. P.  30 Greenberg, M.  65 Greengus, S.  65 Greenwood, K. R.  70 Gruen, E. S.  196, 197 Gunn, D.  58 Hackett, J.  173 Hadas-Lebel, M.  138 Hagedorn, A. C.  200, 214 Halpern, B.  121 Halvorson-Taylor, M. A.  250 Hänel, J.  238 Hanson, P. D.  216, 245 Harrison, T.  201, 202, 207 Hegel, G. W. F.  196 Hendel, R. S.  29 Hentschel, G.  44, 81 Herodotus  14, 15, 195, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, Hilber, J. W.  188 Ho, C. Y. S.  45, 103 Hoglund, K. G.  120, 196 Honor, L. L.  109 Horbury, W.  215 Huffmon, H.  179, 189 Humbert, P.  68

Index of Authors Im, T.-S.  238 Japhet, S.  19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 31, 38, 40, 44, 48, 66, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 89, 90, 92, 106, 108, 111, 114, 116, 123, 125, 132, 134, 142, 143, 144, 146, 149, 150, 151, 157, 158, 163, 164, 176, 179, 181, 183, 186, 208, 209, 212, 213, 215, 238, 241, 248, 249, 251, 254, 256 Jarick, J.  32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 51, 216, 248 Jenni, E.  224, 225 Jobling, D.  52, 53, 56, 58, 59 Johnson, M. D.  10, 11 Johnstone, W.  36, 39, 41, 68, 70, 71, 72, 76, 79, 107, 120, 122, 146, 232, 239 Jones, G. H.  231, 241, 243 Jong, M. J. de  173 Jonker, L.  43, 44, 82, 92, 96, 122, 138, 176, 189, 248, 249, 273, 275 Josephus  14, 50, 69, 271 Josipovici, G.  29, 52, 53 Kalimi, I.  38, 46, 93, 94, 112, 116, 119, 120, 153, 154, 180, 186, 217, 248, 250 Karrer, C.  187 Kartveit, M.  194 Kegler, J.  172, 176, 178, 180 Kelly, B.  39, 40, 123, 152, 153, 200, 215, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 230, 231, 232, 233, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245 Kelso, J.  43, 49, 50, 51, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 Kitchen, K.  114 Kittel, R.  105 Kleinig, J. W.  188 Klein, R. W.  33, 39, 88, 89, 90, 91, 163, 210, 251 Kloner, A.  199, 254 Knauf, E. A.  94, 115, 118, 123

313

Knights, C. H.  23 Knoppers, G. N.  9, 10, 20, 26, 27, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40, 44, 45, 66, 67, 68, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92, 110, 121, 122, 125, 126, 143, 147, 148, 163, 167, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 199, 213, 216, 241, 244, 260, 270, 271, 276 Koch, I.  123 Kooij, A. van der  115, 185 Kuberski, P.  44 Laato, A.  215, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226, 232 Lamb, D. T.  175 Lange, A.  179, 214 Langille, T.  196 Lee, A. C. C.  277 Leeuwen, C. van  114 Leith, M. J. W.  198 Lemaire, A.  198 Lemke, W.  104 Leonard, J. M.  164 Leuchter, M.  248 Levin, Y.  38, 81 Levine, B.  69 Levinson, B. M.  165, 167, 169, 170 Lindblom, J.  178 Linforth, I.  206, 207 Lipschits, O.  83, 84, 85, 123, 198, 254 Lloyd, A.  205 Lohfink, N.  165 Lowery, R. H.  129 Lucian  14, 15, 16 Luke, K.  69 Lux, R.  93, 94 Macaulay, G. C.  206 Madsen, A. A.  37, 71 Mandell, S.  195 Marincola, J.  14, 15, 202 Marshall, J. W.  65 Mason, R.  145, 147, 215, 223, 224, 229 Mauchline, J.  67

314

Index of Authors

Mayer, W.  118 McBride, S. D.  165 McConville, J. G.  142 McKay, J. W.  149 McKenzie, S. L.  30, 38, 89, 103, 104, 120, 124, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 150, 151, 164, 185, 249 Meyers, C. L.  65 Meyers, E.  83 Michaeli, F.  215 Micheel, R.  162, 173, 180 Middlemas, J. A.  83 Mikalson, J. D.  201, 205, 206, 207 Mikolášek, A.  194 Milgrom, J.  257 Miller, J. H.  46, 47, 49 Mitchell, C.  44, 45, 143, 145, 274 Morrow, W. S.  165 Mosis, R.  44, 51, 66, 126, 216, 223, 227, 230, 239 Murray, D. F.  215, 216, 228, 229, 230, 231 Myers, J. M.  116, 236 Naʾaman, N.  81, 82, 94 Neusner, J.  260 Newsome, J. D.  184, 215, 216, 222, 236 Nielsen, A. J. F.  195 Nihan, C.  162 Nissinen, M.  177, 178, 190, 192 North, R. G.  112, 215, 238 Noth, M.  66, 241 Oeming, M.  34, 35, 219, 241 Otto, E.  165 Overholt, T. W.  171 Parpola, S.  190 Patrick, S.  109 Patton, C. L.  226 Perry, M.  154 Person, R. F.  103, 104 Petersen, D. L.  162, 168, 188, 189 Plöger, O.  215, 216 Polybius  14

Polzin, R.  79, 274 Pomykala, K. E.  215, 220, 223, 227, 229 Pongratz-Leisten, B.  190 Radday, Y. T.  35 Rad, G. von  44, 47, 162, 180, 188, 215, 216, 217, 238 Rahskow, I.  55, 56 Redford, D. B.  115 Renz, J.  173 Rezetko, R.  274 Riley, W.  141, 215, 223, 224, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 239, 244 Ristau, K. A.  67, 80, 207, 208 Römer, T. C.  164 Rothstein, J. W.  238 Rudolph, W.  44, 47, 66, 183, 215, 216 Rüterswörden, U.  165, 170 Sabo, P. J.  273, 274 Sæbø, M.  215, 222, 225, 245 Said, E.  46, 47 Samuel, H.  81 Sanders, J. A.  69 Schaper, J.  192 Schearing, L. S.  164 Schmid, K.  164 Schniedewind, W.  107, 122, 123, 126, 163, 172, 173, 174, 184, 188, 215, 271 Schunck, K.-D.  81 Schweitzer, S. J.  1, 9, 16, 22, 26, 32, 141, 142, 143, 216, 273, 274 Scullion, S.  201, 202, 205, 212 Seeligmann, I. L.  162, 175 Selman, M. J.  116 Sergi, O.  123 Sharp, C. J.  172, 179 Shaver, J. R.  175 Shea, W. H.  115 Shipp, R. M.  221 Smelik, K. A. D.  121, 134 Smith, M.  199, 212, 213 Snaith, N. H.  224 Sokolowski, R.  214

Index of Authors Sommer, B. D.  214 Sparks, J. T.  34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 85 Speiser, E. A.  69 Stade, B.  105, 106, 115 Stavrakopoulou, F.  122, 123, 126 Steck, O. H.  215 Sternberg, M.  154 Stinespring, W. F.  215, 236, 238 Stipp, H.-J.  121, 254 Stott, K.  255 Sweeney, M. A.  129 Tal, O.  198 Talshir, Z.  72, 185 Tertel, H. J.  114 Thareani-Sussely, Y.  123 Thomas, R.  9 Thompson, J. A.  225, 231 Thompson, T. L.  138 Throntveit, M. A.  138, 147, 150, 180, 184, 231, 241 Thucydides  14, 15, 114 Tigay, J. H.  165 Tiňo, J.  193 Tomasino, A.  225 Torrey  241 Trotter, J. M.  45 Tuell, S. S.  22, 24, 39, 90, 133, 233 Ulrich, E. C.  104 Ussishkin, D.  254 Valkama, K.  254 Vanderhooft, D.  198 Van Rooy, H. V.  163, 188 Van Seters, J.  104, 140, 195 Viviano, P. A.  181 Wacholder, B. Z.  199 Wagner, D.  44 Walters, S. D.  233, 239

315

Walton, J. H.  80 Warhurst, A. K.  138 Weinberg, J. P.  162 Weinfeld, M.  251 Weippert, H.  180 Welch, A. C.  67, 105, 180 Wellhausen, J.  37, 104, 124, 200, 215, 245, 273 Welten, P.  129 Wesselius, J. W.  195 West, M. L.  9, 198 Whybray, R. N.  195 Wilch, J. R.  224 Williamson, H. G. M.  18, 20, 21, 25, 66, 67, 71, 74, 80, 94, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 116, 126, 141, 142, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 176, 181, 185, 186, 215, 216, 223, 224, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232, 234, 238, 240, 241, 248, 249, 257 Willi, T.  38, 72, 120, 162, 179, 181 Wilson, R. R.  10, 11, 12, 34, 171 Wolfreys, J.  49, 59 Wright, D.  275 Wright, J. W.  13, 14, 16, 30, 31, 32, 37, 40, 66, 67, 126, 187, 210, 212, 273, 276 Wyatt, N.  192 Xenophon  15, 16 Yee, G. A.  277 Yohanan, R.  121 Young, I.  274 Yovel, Y.  196 Zalewski, S.  44, 50 Zevit, Z.  173, 180 Zsengellér, J.  194

Index of Scripture Note to the Reader : Citations in this index follow traditional Hebrew versification. Genesis 2:17  79 4  77 4:7  77 35:23–26  18 37:17  109 38:12  117 46:23  17 Exodus 4:24–26  77 12:13  78 14:13–14  189 14:16  108 17:8–16  40 20:12  124, 130 20:18–21  161 20:19  161 21:23–25  65 21:28–32  77 21:35  78 22:17  166 25:14–15  73, 77 30  69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80 30:11–12  68 30:11–16  3, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75 30:12  69, 73, 78 30:13–14  74 30:16  68 38:25–28  69 Leviticus 2:12  117 4:3  68 5:24  68 10:8  131 13:1  131 15:1  131

Leviticus (cont.) 18:24–28  249 19:31  166 20  171 20:1–6  166 20:22  249 20:27  166, 171 22:16  68 26  230 26:33  248 26:33–35  250 26:34–35  249 Numbers 1:47–49  89 2:33  89 4:30  69 7:5  69 8:19  78 8:24  69 16:20  131 17  78 18:6  69 18:8  131 18:19  233 18:21  69 18:23  69 19:1  131 20:20  109 20:22  109 22:5–24:25  173 24:20  40 31:8  173 31:16  173 34:1–15  251 Deuteronomy 4  135 4:5  169 4:16  122

316

Deuteronomy (cont.) 4:29–31  182 4:35  135 5:16  124, 130 5:22–31  161 5:31  169 5:33  130 6:1  169 6:2  124 7:1–2  70 10:8  73, 77 12:1–31  168 13  170 13:2–3  170, 180 13:2–6  162, 170 13:5  170 13:6  170, 180 14:27–29  168 15:1–18  168 16:1–17  168 16:18  165 16:18–18:22  161, 163, 166, 167 17:2–7  165 17:2–13  167 17:8–13  165 17:9  168 17:14  166, 167 17:14–20  165, 166 17:18  169 17:19  167 17:20  130, 167 18:1–8  165, 166, 167 18:5  166 18:9  170 18:9–14  170 18:9–22  162, 165, 271 18:10–11  122 18:12–13  170

317

Index of Scripture Deuteronomy (cont.) 18:15  162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 180, 187, 188, 271 18:15–20  171 18:15–22  167, 170 18:16  170 18:16–17  161 18:16–18  161 18:17  161, 162 18:18  166, 167, 171, 180 18:19  171, 183 18:20  171 18:20–22  185 18:21  171 18:22  171, 182, 185 19:21  65 20:1–9  169 20:2–4  189 20:12  117 20:19  116, 117 20:20  117 22:7  130 23:5–6  173 25:16  130 25:17–19  40 28  79 28:52  117 28:53  116 28:55  116 28:57  116 29:21–23  249 29:27  249 30:1  253 30:1–10  182 30:2–10  253 30:6  263 31:9–13  168 31:26–29  253 33:10  169 34:10  172 34:10–12  194 34:11  170 Joshua 7  80 7:1  80 10:21  117 10:34  117

Joshua (cont.) 13:22  173 15:8  94 18:16  94 18:25  89 18:28  79, 84, 89 19:1–9  38 20:1  131 20:1–7  104 24:9–10  173 Judges 1:3  38 1:16  23 1:21  84, 87, 89 3:8  79 3:11  79 3:14  79 3:30  79 4:3  79 5:31  79 6:4  117 9  61 19–21  87, 93 19:29  61 20:19  117 21:1–15  61 1 Samuel 1:1  18 2:30  225 5  31 10:5–6  188 11  61 11:1  117 11:7  61 15:6  23 17  104 17:47  189 20:15  117 23:8  117 28:17  52 30:17  2, 40 30:29  23 31  54 31:1–13  87, 99 31:11–13  61 2 Samuel 1  54

2 Samuel (cont.) 1:24  53 5:2  88, 100 5:6–8  70 5:25  101, 242 6  73 6:12  73 6:16  88, 101 7  223 7:14  222 7:16  223 12:28  117 20:15  117 23:16  108 23:29  97 24  3, 66, 69, 73, 76, 88, 89 24:1  80 24:1–25  88 24:2  72 24:4  72 24:9  72 24:13  78 24:15  78 24:21  78 24:25  78 1 Kings 3  87, 88 3:4  88, 102 6:1  35 8  226 8:25  72, 261 8:37  117 8:46  127 8:46–53  226 9  228 9:5  227 9:6  227, 261 9:15  111 11:13  229 11:27  111 11:29–39  178 11:32  229 11:36  229 12:21  97 12:22  174 12:23  86, 97 12:24  104 14:25–28  183

318 1 Kings (cont.) 15:2  87, 102 15:2–6  231 15:4  229 15:6–7  87, 102 15:22  87, 88, 101 16:15  117 18:29  117 20:22  117 20:25  67 22:1–38  178, 179 22:44  134 2 Kings 3:10–19  188 3:26  108 3:27  108 4:8–44  176 6  118 6:19–20  118 6:21  118 6:24  117 8:13  178 8:19  229, 230 8:20–22  183 10:15–27  23 11  231 11:1–20  231 11:4  234 11:12  235 11:17  235 12  74, 76 12:4  74, 134 12:11  67 13:14–19  178 14:4  134 14:25  251 15:4  134 16:5  117 16:9  116 16:12  117 17:5  117 17:6  250 17:7–23  253 17:13–14  181 17:22–23  181 18  118 18–19  3, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120

Index of Scripture 2 Kings (cont.) 18–20  106 18:7  144 18:7–8  107 18:9  117 18:11  250 18:13  107, 108, 109, 117 18:13–16  105 18:13–19:37  105 18:14–16  107 18:17  107, 118 18:17–19:9  105 18:27  119 18:36  114 18:36–37  105 19  118, 119 19:7  115 19:8  108, 109 19:8–9  3 19:9  107, 115, 118 19:9–35  105 19:32  117 19:34  229 20  112 20:1–7  124 20:1–11  178 20:6  229 20:20  110, 111, 112 21:1–10  122 21:1–20  121 21:4  122 21:6  122 21:7  122 21:10  122 21:11–14  256 21:18  122 23:12  121 23:26  121, 139 23:26–27  256 23:31  150 24  153 24:3  121, 139, 256 24:10  116, 117 24:17  150 25:1  117 25:2  116, 117 25:4  108 25:5–7  259 25:21–26  249 25:23  88

Isaiah 1:1  107 1:8  117 2:15  111 6:11–12  249 7:1  117 7:1–17  178 7:6  108 7:9  176 8:14  78 11:11–16  25 20:1–6  178 21:2  117 22  110, 112, 113 22:8–11  109, 112, 113 22:9  111 22:10–11  110 22:11  110, 112 22:15–25  110, 113 22:18  113 23:13  117 29:3  117 36  118 36:1  108 36–37  107, 109, 110, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120 37  119 39  139 40–55  139 52:11–12  137 55:3  226, 227, 228 Jeremiah 6:6  117 7:1–34  181 10:17  116, 117 11:14–17  177 11:18–23  177 11:20  177 12:1–6  177 14:13–22  177 15:1  177 15:4  121, 256 15:10–21  177 15:14  121, 139 16:1–17:7  178 17:14–18  177 18:18–23  177 19:9  116, 117 20:7–13  177

319

Index of Scripture Jeremiah (cont.) 20:14–18  177 22:15–16  146 24:1–10  25, 178 24:7  263 25:4–5  181 25:9  252 25:12  248 26:1–6  181 27:1–28:17  178 29  230 29:10  248 31:31–34  263 32:24  117 32:38–41  263 32:43  249 33:4  117 33:6  249 33:13  67 35  23 35:1–19  178 38:20–23  178 39:1  117 39:2  108 43:8–13  178 44:2  249 50:29  117 52:4  117 52:5  116, 117 52:7  108 Ezekiel 4:1–9  178 4:2  117 4:3  116, 117 8:3  122 8:5  122 11:19–20  263 11:25  178 12:1–7  178 17:15  258 17:17  117 21:23–37  178 21:27  117 24:2  117 24:15–27  178 26:8  117 26:10  108 30:16  108 33:1–6  181 36:25–28  263

Ezekiel (cont.) 37:15–23  25 37:15–28  178 40:1–4  178 47:13–23  251 Hosea 2:21  263 3:4  72 5:15  72 13:8  108 Amos 7:1  7:4  7:7  8:1 

178 178 178 178

Jonah 1:9  186 Micah 4:14  117 5:1  227, 228 6:5  173 Nahum 3:14  117 Habakkuk 1:3  178 Zephaniah 1:2–3  249 Haggai 1–2  237 1:1  251 1:12  251 1:14  251 2:2  251 2:4  251 Zechariah 1:4  260 2:3  178 3–4  222 3:1  178 6:11  251 7:7  260 7:12  260

Zechariah (cont.) 8  237 10:6–12  25 11:14  25 12:2  116, 117 13  271 Psalms 27:3  117 89  225 89:4–5  225 89:30  225 89:37–38  225 91:14–16  124 105  221 105:15  221 106  262 106:1  222 106:47–48  222 119  261 132  221, 226, 227, 228, 229 132:1  227 132:8–10  226, 227, 228 136:26  186 Proverbs 3:1–2  124 10:2  124, 130 11:4  130 12:28  124 Qoheleth 7:20  127 9:13  117 12:13  264 Daniel 1:1  117 2:18–19  186 2:37  186 2:44  186 4  127 Ezra 1:1–3  186 1:2  186 1:2–3  186 1:5  86 2  16

320 Ezra (cont.) 2:62  21 3:2  174 4:1  86 4:1–4  25 5:11–12  186 6:9–10  186 7:21  186 7:23  186 9:1–7  25 10:9  86 Nehemiah 1:4–5  186 2:4  186 2:19–20  25 2:20  186 7  16 7:64  21 8:17  252 9:1–2  25 9:26–31  25 11:3–22  19, 21 12:24  174 12:34  86 12:36  174 13:2  173 13:23–27  25 1 Chronicles 1–9  1, 9, 13, 20, 21, 22, 25, 34, 38, 93, 95, 191, 219, 252 1:1  158 1:1–54  85 2–8  24 2–9  12, 22 2:1–2  17, 18 2:3–4:23  17, 85 2:7  39 2:50–55  18, 22 3:1–9  220 3:10–16  220 3:16–24  26 3:17  232 3:17–24  10, 219 3:21  33 4  2, 30, 36, 37, 38 4:24–27  38 4:24–43  41

Index of Scripture 1 Chronicles (cont.) 4:24–5:26  86 4:27  38 4:31  26 4:40  26 4:41  39 4:42–43  37 4:43  2, 30, 40 5:1–26  19, 41 5:2  219 5:6  250, 260 5:17  26 5:20  210 5:23–26  20 5:25  251 5:25–26  25, 209, 250 5:26  41, 250, 260 5:27–6:66  17 5:41  26, 251, 260 6:1  35 6:1–81  86 6:7–23  18 6:15  35 6:16–17  226 6:16–33  18 6:42  229 6:49  36 7:1–40  86 7:2  26 7:6  17 7:6–12  17 7:12  17 7:13  17, 26 7:21  26 8  85 8:1–40  85 8:6–7  251, 260 9  31, 86, 232, 239, 241 9:1  24, 25, 67, 220, 251, 256, 257, 260 9:1–34  21, 220 9:2  220, 239 9:2–34  85, 251, 260 9:2–44  256 9:3  19, 220, 257 9:22  174, 178 9:23  31 9:35–44  35, 220

1 Chronicles (cont.) 10  2, 13, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 87, 92, 219, 230, 231, 274 10–29  86 10:1  49 10:2  99 10:3  59, 99 10:4  99 10:5  99 10:6  99 10:7  99 10:8  100 10:11  100 10:11–12  61 10:12  100 10:13  100, 239, 251 10:13–14  44, 50, 93, 210 11:2  100 11:3  173, 221 11:4–5  70 11:6  94 11:8  111 11:9  144 11:11  67 11:18  108 11:31  97 12:1  100 12:2  97, 100 12:17  97 12:19  186 12:20  100 12:24  67, 100 12:30  97, 101 12:34–41  19 13  67, 73, 77 13–15  73 13:1  77 13:3  101 13:9–10  210 13:11  73 14:8  221 14:13–17  244 14:16  101 14:17  242 15  73, 75, 77, 79 15:1  75

Index of Scripture 1 Chronicles (cont.) 15:1–3  154 15:1–16:1  154 15:2  73, 77 15:13  73, 77 15:15  73, 77 15:27–16:1  154 15:29  101 16  221, 222 16:1  75 16:4–6  75 16:5  79 16:7–36  221 16:19  26 16:22  173, 221 16:35  250, 252, 259 16:35–36  222 16:39  89, 101 17  67, 76, 222, 223, 226 17:1  173 17:1–15  173 17:2  144 17:5  75 17:11  238 17:11–12  76 17:12  222 17:13  222 17:14  72, 222, 223 17:23–27  225 17:27  222 18:1–20:8  92 18:8  70, 76 18:11  40 18:18–21  70 18:20–21  76 20:1  117 21  2, 3, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 88, 91, 93, 94, 95, 210 21–22  90 21:2  72, 89 21:3  68 21:4  72, 89 21:5  72 21:6  68, 72, 97 21:6–7  89, 92 21:8  67

1 Chronicles (cont.) 21:9  131, 173, 178 21:9–13  173 21:12  78 21:13  78 21:14  78 21:15  78, 79 21:17  69, 177 21:18  91 21:18–19  173 21:26–27  90 21:27–30  90, 92 21:28–30  90, 91 21:28–22:1  91 21:29  76, 102 22  75, 222, 223, 225 22–27  236 22:1  75, 90, 91, 92 22:1–29:30  92 22:2–29:25  187 22:5  76, 242 22:8–10  76 22:15  144 23–27  82 23:3  67, 210 23:14  174 24  73 25:1  173, 174, 188 25:2  188 25:2–3  271 25:3  188 25:5  173, 174, 178 26:26–27  76 26:28  101, 174, 178 27:1–34  67 27:12  97 27:16–24  24 27:21  97 27:24  210 28–29  222, 223 28:1  210 28:2  75 28:3  70 28:4  219 28:5  223 28:7  223 28:7–9  227 28:8  225 28:9  52 28:9–10  210

321 1 Chronicles (cont.) 28:12  186 28:19  70, 222 28:20  144, 224 29  224, 225 29:10–19  177 29:15  26 29:22  221 29:23  223 29:29  173, 174, 178 29:29–30  242 2 Chronicles 1  87, 88 1–7  236 1–9  86 1:1  144, 240 1:3  89, 102 1:3–6  91 1:13  102 1:14–17  240 2:1  67 3  91 3:1  91 5:5  89 6  226, 240 6–7  240 6:10–11  226 6:15  226, 227, 229 6:15–17  227 6:16  72, 227, 229, 261 6:16–17  229 6:28  117 6:40–42  221, 226, 228 6:41  226, 228 6:42  226, 229 7  226, 227, 228, 240 7:1–2  229 7:13–15  228, 229, 240 7:14  135 7:17  239 7:17–18  223, 227, 228 7:17–19  229 7:18  227 7:19  227 8:14  70, 174 8:14–16  210 9:1–28  240 9:8  223 9:29  173, 178

322 2 Chronicles (cont.) 10–36  86, 236 11:1  86, 97 11:2  174 11:2–4  181 11:3  86, 97 11:10  97 11:12  86, 97 11:23  86, 97 12  237 12:1–5  176 12:1–16  237 12:2  251 12:2–8  185 12:5  173, 174, 183 12:5–8  174, 211 12:6  183 12:12  183 12:15  173, 174, 178 12:22  135 13:2  87, 102, 125, 231 13:3  243 13:3–21  231, 243 13:4–7  187 13:4–12  147 13:5  223, 233 13:8  223, 243 13:9  102 13:10  211 13:10–12  244 13:14  243 13:15–16  243 13:15–18  211 13:18  243 13:19  87 13:22  173, 174 14  242 14:6–15  243 14:7  98, 237 14:8–9  243 14:10  177 14:11  243, 244 14:12  243 14:13  243 15:1  186 15:2  86, 98, 144 15:3  72 15:3–4  72, 237 15:8  98, 173 15:8–9  86

Index of Scripture 2 Chronicles (cont.) 15:9  98, 144 15:18–20  211 16:2  211 16:6  87, 101 16:7  174, 178 16:7–9  180, 243 16:7–10  167 16:7–12  183 16:10  174, 178 16:10–12  176 17:3  51, 239 17:13–19  67 17:17  98 18  145 18:1–34  178, 179 18:5  173 18:6  173 18:7  145 18:11–12  173 18:16  145 18:16–34  183 18:17  145 18:19  173 18:21  173 18:27–34  145 18:29  145 18:33  145 19:1–3  167 19:2  174, 178 19:2–3  180 20:1–30  243 20:2  243 20:3–4  243 20:5–12  177 20:6  242 20:6–12  244 20:9  243 20:12  243 20:14  186, 189 20:14–17  189 20:17  243 20:20  173, 176, 243 20:22  243 20:29  242 20:34  167, 180 21:4–7  229 21:7  225, 229, 230 21:12  173 21:12–15  180, 183

2 Chronicles (cont.) 21:16–19  183 21:17  108 22:7  221 22:10–23:21  234 22:20–23:21  231 23:1–3  234 23:3  231, 234, 235 23:5  234 23:10  234 23:11  221, 235 23:16  235 23:16–24…14  71 23:18  71, 72 23–24  71 24  3, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80 24:2–16  211 24:5  74 24:6  71, 75 24:11  71 24:15  124 24:18  211 24:19  173, 181 24:20  186 24:20–22  125 24:20–25  176 24:24  211 25:4  72 25:5  67, 86, 98 25:9  181 25:14–15  51 25:15  181 25:15–16  173 25:15–24  183 25:16  176 25:20  211 26:7  39 26:11  72 26:11–13  67 26:16  251 26:16–20  211 26:22  107, 173 28  116 28:1  124, 125, 239 28:1–27  211 28:5–7  125 28:8–11  182 28:8–15  261 28:9  173

Index of Scripture 2 Chronicles (cont.) 28:9–11  181 28:11  182 28:12–15  182 28:19  251 28:20  116 28:22  251 28:24  127, 252 29–32  143, 231 29:1  147 29:2  239 29:5  230 29:5–11  147, 229 29:6  251 29:6–9  252, 257 29:8  178 29:11  230 29:25  173, 174, 178 29:30  178, 190 29:31  147 30:1  147 30:1–9  148 30:1–12  240 30:1–31:1  250 30:6–9  20, 25, 147, 182, 230, 240 30:6–12  229 30:7  178, 251 30:10–11  19 30:10–22  25 30:16  72, 174 30:22  133, 134 30:26  148 31:1  86, 98 31:12–19  67 32  3, 4, 104, 106, 107, 110, 111, 115, 119, 120, 242, 272 32:1  3, 108, 133 32:3  109 32:4  109, 112 32:5  109, 110, 111, 133 32:5–8  243 32:7  243 32:7–8  106, 113, 114, 147 32:9  116 32:10  115, 117, 119 32:18  119

2 Chronicles (cont.) 32:20  173, 177, 243 32:21  243 32:22  243 32:24  178 32:24–33  143 32:25  108 32:25–26  108, 114, 144 32:26  108, 134, 135, 151, 152 32:30  112 32:32  107, 143, 173, 227 32:33  146, 147 33–36  143, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155 33:1  154 33:1–9  152 33:1–10  122 33:1–13  25 33:1–36:23  4, 141, 142, 147, 154, 157 33:2  155 33:2–13  154 33:4  122 33:5  122 33:7  122 33:8  72 33:10  122, 131, 132, 135, 155, 181, 258 33:10–11  176 33:10–20  25, 237 33:11  132, 152, 258 33:11–13  155 33:11–17  122 33:12  132, 134, 155, 258 33:12–13  135 33:13  135 33:14  133 33:15–16  135, 156 33:15–17  135 33:16  133, 134, 135 33:17  134 33:18  131, 174, 176, 178, 181 33:18–19  132 33:19  132, 136, 237 33:20  122

323 2 Chronicles (cont.) 34:1  124, 147 34:2  239 34:3  154 34:5  154 34:6–9  250 34:9  86, 99 34:14  72 34:21  147 34:22  173 34:23–28  252, 257 34:32  99 34:33  134, 135 35–36  231, 232, 274 35:3–6  147 35:6  72 35:12  72 35:15  173, 174, 178, 190 35:18  173, 174 35:20  230 35:20–24  144, 145 35:21  144, 145, 185 35:22  144, 145, 186, 211, 231 35:23  145 35:24  146 35:26  144, 227 35:27  147 36  13, 152, 230, 231, 241, 244 36:1  150 36:4  150 36:6  132, 152, 258 36:8  150 36:9–10  153 36:10  232 36:11  155, 257 36:11–22  155 36:11–23  154, 155 36:12  132, 173, 258 36:13  230, 258 36:14  189, 232, 251 36:14–16  25, 193 36:15  132, 181, 183, 258, 265 36:15–16  260 36:16  173 36:17–21  27 36:18  230

324

Index of Scripture

2 Chronicles (cont.) 36:20  155 36:20–21  248, 249, 250, 252

2 Chronicles (cont.) 36:20–23  26, 256 36:21  155, 230 36:22  186

2 Chronicles (cont.) 36:22–23  20, 25, 156, 158, 186, 230, 232, 239, 242 36:23  31, 134, 137, 158, 186, 250, 269

Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal Books 1 Esdras 1:15  190 1:23–31  185 Judith 5:8  186 6:19  186

2 Maccabees 2:19–32  14, 15 9:12  127 9:17  127 Ben Sira 46:4–5  178

Ben Sira (cont.) 46:17–18  178 46:20  178 48:2–10  178 48:12–15  178 48:21  178 48:23  178 48:25  178

New Testament Matthew 1:1–17  10 Luke 1:1–4  15 3:23–38  10 John 1:21  162 1:45  162

John (cont.) 6:14  162 7:40  162 Acts 1:1–2  15 3:22–24  162 7:37  162 13:34  226

2 Peter 2:15–16  173 Jude 11  173 Revelation 2:14  173