6-15]]); of Jotham's fortress-building, and his victory over the Ammonites (2Ch 27:4-6); of the increase of Hezekiah's riches (2Ch 32:27-30); of Manasseh's capture and removal to Babylon, and his return out of captivity (2Ch 33:11-17). But the history of Hezekiah and Josiah more especially is rendered more complete by special accounts of reforms in worship, and of celebrations of the passover (29:3-31, 2Ch 30:21, and 2Ch 35:2-15); while we have only summary notices of the godless conduct of Ahaz (2 Chron 28) and Manasseh (2Ch 33:3-10), of the campaign of Sennacherib against Jerusalem and Judah, of Hezekiah's sickness and the reception of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem (2 Chron 32, cf. 2 Kings 28:13-20, 19); as also of the reigns of the last kings, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. From all this, it is clear that the author of the Chronicle, as Bertheau expresses it, “has turned his attention to those times especially in which Israel's religion had showed itself to be a power dominating the people and their leaders, and bringing them prosperity; and to those men who had endeavoured to give a more enduring form to the arrangements for the service of God, and to restore the true worship of Jahve; and to those events in the history of the worship so intimately bound up with Jerusalem, which had important bearings.”
This purpose appears much more clearly when we take into consideration the narratives which are common to the Chronicle and the books of Samuel and Kings, and observe the difference which is perceptible in the mode of conception and representation in those parallel sections. For our present purpose, however, those narratives in which the chronicler supplements and completes the accounts given in the books of Samuel and Kings by more exact and detailed information, or shortens them by the omission of unimportant details, come less into consideration.[1]
For both additions and abridgments show only that the chronicler has not drawn his information from the canonical books of Samuel and Kings, but from other more circumstantial original
- ↑ Additions are to be found, e.g., in the list of David's heroes, 1Ch 11:42-47; in the history of the building and consecration of Solomon's temple; in the enumeration of the candlesticks, tables, and courts, 2Ch 4:6-9; in the notice of the copper platform on which Solomon kneeled at prayer, 2Ch 6:12-13; and of the fire which fell from heaven upon the burnt-offering, 2Ch 7:1. Also in the histories of the wars they are met with, 1Ch 11:6, 1Ch 11:8,1Ch 11:23, cf. 2Sa 5:8-9; 2Sa 23:21; 1Ch 18:8, 1Ch 18:12, cf. 2Sa 8:8, 2Sa 8:13, etc. More may be found in my Handbook of Introd. §139, 5. Abridgments by the rejection of unimportant details are very frequent; e.g., omission of the Jebusites' mockery of David's attack on their fortress, 1Ch 11:5-6, cf. 2Sa 5:6, 2Sa 5:8; of the details of the storming of Rabbah, 1Ch 20:1-2, cf. 2Sa 12:27-29; and of many more, vide my Handbook of Introduction, 139, 8.
