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nor confuted by Thenius and Bertheau. Even the mention of כּרי and רצים along with the captains and the whole people, in 2Ki 11:19, is not inconsistent with it; for we may without difficulty suppose, as has been said in my commentary on that verse, that the royal body-guard, immediately after the slaughter of Athaliah, went over to the young king just crowned, in order that they, along with the remainder of the people who were assembled in the court, might lead him thence to the royal palace. There is only one statement in the two texts which can scarcely be reconciled with this conjecture, - namely, the mention of the רצים and of the people in the temple before Athaliah was slain (2Ch 23:12 and 2Ki 11:13 Kings), since it follows from that that runners or satellites belonging to the body-guard were either posted, or had assembled with the others, in the court of the temple. To meet this statement, we must suppose that the centurions of the body-guard employed not merely the Levitic temple guard, but also some of the royal satellites, upon whose fidelity they could rely, to occupy the posts mentioned in 2Ki 11:5-7 and 2Ch 23:4, 2Ch 23:5 ; so that the company under the command of the centurions who occupied the various posts in the temple consisted partly of Levitic temple guards, and partly of royal body-guards. But even on this view, the suspicion that the chronicler has mentioned the Levites instead of the body-guard is shown to be groundless and unjust, since the רצים also are mentioned in the Chronicle.
According to this exposition, the true relation between the account in the Chronicle and that in the book of Kings would seem to be something like this: Both accounts mention merely the main points of the proceedings, - the author of the book of Kings emphasizing the part played in the affair by the royal body-guard; the author of the Chronicle, on the other hand, emphasizing that played by the Levites: so that both accounts mutually supplement each other, and only when taken together give a full view of the circumstances. We have still to make the following remarks on the narrative of the Chronicle in detail. The statement (2Ki 11:5) that all those relived on the Sabbath were to keep guard of the house of Jahve, in reference to the king, in two divisions, is in 2Ch 23:5, thus generalized: “all the people were in the courts of the house of Jahve.” כּל־העם is all the people except the before-mentioned bodies of men with their captains, and comprehends not only