Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/216

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on the contrary, we read: אל־אחריהם הסב תעלה הסב אל־א לע, Thou shalt not go up (i.e., advance against the enemy to attack them in front); turn thee behind them (i.e., to their rear), and come upon them over against the baca-bushes. Bertheau endeavours to get rid of the discrepancy, by supposing that into both texts corruptions have crept through transcribers' errors. He conjectures that the text of Samuel was originally אחריהם תּעלה לא, while in the Chronicle a transposition of the words עליהם and אחריהם was occasioned by a copyist's error, which in turn resulted in the alteration of עליהם into מעליהם. This supposition, however, stands or falls with the presumption that by תּעלה לא (Sam.) an attack is forbidden; but for that presumption no tenable grounds exist: it would rather involve a contradiction between the first part of the divine answer and the second. The last clause, “Come upon them from over against the baca-bushes,” shows that the attack was not forbidden; all that was forbidden was the making of the attack by advancing straight forward: instead of that, they were to try to fall upon them in the rear, by making a circuit. The chronicler consequently gives us an explanation of the ambiguous words of 2 Samuel, which might easily be misunderstood. As David's question was doubtless expressed as it is in 1Ch 14:10, הפל על האעלה, the answer תּעלה לא might be understood to mean, “Go not up against them, attack them not, but go away behind them;” but with that the following וגו להם וּבאת, “Come upon them from the baca-bushes,” did not seem to harmonize. The chronicler consequently explains the first clauses of the answer thus: “Go not up straight behind them,” i.e., advance not against them so as to attack them openly, “but turn thyself away from them,” i.e., strike off in such a direction as to turn their flank, and come upon them from the front of the baca-bushes. In this way the apparently contradictory texts are reconciled without the alteration of a word. In 1Ch 14:17, which is wanting in Samuel, the author concludes the account of these victories by the remark that they tended greatly to exalt the name of David among the nations. For similar reflections, cf. 2Ch 17:10; 2Ch 20:29; 2Ch 14:13; and for שׁם ויּצא,   2Ch 26:15. The Bringing of the Ark into Jerusalem - 1 Chronicles 15:1-16:3
In the parallel account, 2Sa 6:11-23, only the main facts as to the transfer of the holy ark to Jerusalem, and the setting of it up in a tent erected for its reception on Mount Zion, are shortly narrated; but the author of the Chronicle elaborately