Introduction
1. Name, Contents, Plan, and Aim of the Chronicles.
The two books of the Chronicles originally formed one work, as their plan at once makes manifest, and were received into the Hebrew canon as such. Not only were they reckoned as one in the enumeration of the books of the Old Testament (cf. Joseph. c. Apion, i. 8; Origen, in Euseb. Hist. eccl. vi. 25; and Hieronym. Prolog. galeat.), but they were also regarded by the Masorites as one single work, as we learn from a remark of the Masora at the end of the Chronicle, that the verse 1Ch 27:25 is the middle of the book. The division into two books originated with the Alexandrian translators (lxx), and has been transmitted by the Latin translation of Hieronymus (Vulgata) not only to all the later translations of the Bible, but also, along with the division into chapters, into our versions of the Hebrew Bible. The first book closes, 1Ch 29:29., with the end of the reign of David, which formed a fitting epoch for the division of the work into two books. The Hebrew name of this book in our Bible, by which it was known even by Hieronymus, is הימים דברי, verba, or more correctly res gestae dierum, events of the days, before which ceper is to be supplied (cf. e.g., 1Ki 14:19, 1Ki 14:29; 1Ki 15:7, 1Ki 15:23).
Its full title therefore is, Book of the Events of the Time (Zeitereignisse), corresponding to the annalistic work so often quoted in our canonical books of Kings and Chronicles, the Book of the Events of the Time (Chronicle) of the Kings of Israel and Judah. Instead of this the lxx have chosen the name Baraleipo'mena, in order to mark more exactly the relation of our work to the earlier historical books of the Old Testament, as containing much historical information which is not to be found in them. But the name is not used in the sense of supplementa, - “fragments of other historical works,” as Movers, die Bibl. Chron. S. 95, interprets it, - but in the signification “praetermissa;” because, according to the explanation in the
