Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 14

1. In the cases of Hebron, Gibeon, Shechem, Ramoth, Mahanaim and Tabor (Host v. 1) by historical data; in those of Bethshemesh, Ashtaroth, Kadesh,, perhaps also Rimmon, by the names. Not even here can one venture to credit the Priestly Code with consistent fidelity to history. As for Hosea v. 1, 2, the original meaning seems to be: "A snare have ye become for Mizpah, and an outspread net upon Tabor, and the pit-fall of s.h.i.+ttim (#XT H#+YM) have they made deep." s.h.i.+ttim as a camping-place under Moses and Joshua must certainly have been a sanctuary, just like Kadesh, Gilgal, and s.h.i.+loh; the prophet names these seats at which in his opinion the wors.h.i.+p was especially seductive and soul-destroying; his reproach is levelled at the priests most famous (or according to the later view, infamous) high places, such as Bethel, Dan, Gilgal, and Beersheba are omitted, probably of set purpose.

The immediate starting-point, however, for this territorial donation to the Levites is perhaps to be sought in Ezekiel, in the picture of the future Israel which he draws at the close of his book. He concerns himself there in a thorough-going manner about the demarcation of the national and tribal boundaries, and in doing so sets quite freely to work, taking, so to speak, the yard measure in his hand. Leaving the land eastward of Jordan wholly to the Saracens, he divides the western portion into thirteen parallel transverse sections; in the middle of the thirteenth (the rest of which is a.s.signed to the prince), lying between Judah and Benjamin, the twelve tribes give up a square with a base line of 25,000 ells as a sacred offering to Jehovah. This square is divided into three parallelograms, 25,000 ells long, running east and west; the southernmost of these, 5000 ells broad, includes the capital with its territory; the middle one, 10,000 ells broad, contains the temple and the priestly territory; the northernmost, also 10,000 ells broad, has the inheritance and the cities of the Levites. /1/

1. For (S#RYM L#KT (xlv. 5), read, with the LXX, #(RYM L#BT "to dwell within the gates." Compare a similar transposition of letters in xiii. 3, LXX. The expression "gates" for "cities"

has its origin in Deuteronomy.

Thus we have here also a surrender of land to the clergy on the part of the tribes; the comparison with Josh. xxi. is not to be put aside,--all the less, because nowhere else in the Old Testament is anything similar met with. Now Ezekiel is quite transparent, and requires no interpreter but himself. In order that the temple may be protected in its sanct.i.ty in the best possible manner, it is placed in the centre of the priestly territory, which in its turn is covered by the city on the south, and by the Levites on the north. At the same time the _personnel_ connected with the function of wors.h.i.+p is to dwell as much as possible apart on its own soil and territory, which _shall serve them for separate houses to sanctify them_, as is expressly remarked for the priests (xiv. 4), and in an inferior degree holds good also, of course, for the Levites beside them. Here everything starts from, and has its explanation in, the temple. Its original is unmistakably the temple of Solomon; its site is beside the capital, in the heart of the sacred centre of the land between Judah and Benjamin; there the sons of Zadok have their abode, and beside them are the Levites whom Josiah had brought up from all the country to Jerusalem. Obviously the motives are not here far to seek. In the Priestly Code, on the other hand, which was not in a position to shape the future freely out of the present, but was compelled to accept archaeological restrictions, the motives are historically concealed and almost paralysed. The result has remained, namely, the holding of separate territory by the clergy, but the cause or the purpose of it can no longer be recognised on account of the sanctuary being now an abstract idea. Jerusalem and the temple, which, properly speaking, occasioned the whole arrangement, are buried in silence with a diligence which is in the highest degree surprising; and on the other hand, in remembrance of the priesthoods scattered everywhere among the high places of Israel in earlier days, forty-eight fresh Levitical cities are created, from which, however, their proper focus, a temple to wit, is withheld only in the circ.u.mstance that precisely the thirteen cities of Judah and Benjamin happen to fall to the lot of the sons of Aaron, does the influence of Jerusalem unconsciously betray itself.

V.II.2. Apart from this historical fiction, the other claims that are made for the endowment of the clergy are, however exorbitant, nevertheless practicable and seriously meant. So far as the circ.u.mstances of their origin are concerned, two possibilities present themselves. Either the priests demanded what they could hope to obtain, in which case they were actually supreme over the nation, or they set up claims which at the time were neither justified nor even possible; in which case they were not indeed quite sober, yet at the same time so sane prophetically, that centuries afterwards the revenues they dreamed of became in actuality theirs. Is it to be supposed that it was (say) Moses, who encouraged his people as they were struggling for bare life in the wilderness to concern themselves about a superabundantly rich endowment of their clergy? Or is it believed that it was in the period of the judges, when the individual tribes and families of Israel, after having forced their way among the Canaanites, had a hard fight to maintain their position, get somehow settled in their new dwelling-places and surroundings, that the thought first arose of exacting such taxes from a people that was only beginning to grow into a national unity, for an end that was altogether remote from its interest? What power could then have been able in those days, when every man did what was right in his own eyes, to compel the individual to pay? But even when actually, under the pressure of circ.u.mstances, a political organisation had arisen which embraced all the tribes, it could hardly have occurred to the priests to utilise the secular arm as a means for giving to themselves a place of sovereignty; and still less could they have succeeded WITHOUT the king on whom they were so completely dependent. In short, the claims they make in the Law would in the pre-exilic period have been regarded as utopian in the strict sense of that word; they allow of explanation only by the circ.u.mstances which from the beginning of the Chaldaean rule, and still more that of the Persians, lent themselves to the formation of a hierocracy, to which, as to the truly national and moreover divine authority, the people gave voluntary obedience, and to which the Persians also conceded rights they could not have granted to the family of David. At the very beginning of the exile, Ezekiel begins to augment the revenues of the priests (xliv. 28-30), yet he still confines himself on the whole to the lines of Deuteronomy, and makes no mention of t.i.thes and firstlings. Of the demands of the Priestly Code in their full extent we hear historically in Nehemiah x. for the first time; there it is stated that they were carried through by men who had the authority of Artaxerxes behind them. This was the most difficult and at the same time the most important part of the work Ezra and Nehemiah had to do in introducing the Pentateuch as the law of the Jewish Church; and that is the reason why it is so specially and minutely spoken of. Here plainly lies the material basis of the hierocracy from which the royal throne was ultimately reached.

For all these dues, apart from sacrificial perquisites, flowed into a common coffer, and benefited those who had the control of this, viz., the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem, whom it helped to rise to a truly princely position. The ordinary priests, and especially the Levites, did not gain by all this wealth.

The latter indeed ought, according to law, to have had the t.i.thes, and to have handed over the t.i.thes of these again to the sons of Aaron, but as the general tendency of the time was to depress the Levites, this legal revenue was also gradually withdrawn from them and appropriated by the priests. Afterwards the chief priests claimed the t.i.thes for themselves alone, while their inferior brethren had to suffer severe privation and even hunger itself (Josephus, Ant., xx. 8, 8; 9, 2).

Upon the difference just stated between the later practice and the Law, one argument more has recently been founded against a.s.signing the latter to the Babylonio-Persian period. "Another testimony borne by tradition completely excludes the idea of the Elohistic torah (i.e., the Priestly Code) having been composed by Ezra. As is well known, it is the Elohistic torah that carefully regulates the mutual relations of priests and Levites, while Deuteronomy groups the two together without bringing forward the distinction. It is the former that a.s.signs the t.i.thes to the Levites, while requiring these in their turn to hand over the t.i.the of their t.i.thes as a due to the priests. Such was also the practice (Nehemiah x. 38 seq.) soon after the exile [i.e., a hundred years later; Nehemiah vii. 5]. But subsequently the payment of the t.i.thes to the Levites fell entirely into disuse; these were rendered immediately and exclusively to the priests, so that Jose ben Hanina actually confesses: "We do not pay the t.i.thes according to the command of G.o.d" (Sota, 47b).

But everywhere the Talmud refers this practice back to Ezra. Ezra it was who punished the Levites by withdrawal of the t.i.thes, and that because they had not come out from Babylon (Jebam. 386b; Chullin 11b). The point to be noted is that Ezra, according to the testimony of tradition, superseded a precept of the Elohistic torah, supporting himself in this perhaps by reference to the Deuteronomic torah." So Delitzsch in the Zeitschr. fuer luth.

Theol., 1877, p. 448 seq. That Ezra is not the author of the Priestly Code may readily be granted--only not on such an argument as this. If the genuine historical tradition expressly names Ezra as the man who introduced the Levites' t.i.the just as prescribed by law (Nehemiah x. 38 seq.), what conscientious man can attach any weight to the opposite a.s.sertion of the Talmud ?

But, even a.s.suming that the divergence of practice from the legal statute actually does go back to the time of Ezra, what would follow from that against the post-exilic origin of the Priestly Code? For this is what the question comes to, not to Ezra's authors.h.i.+p, which is made the main point by a mere piece of transparent controversial tactics. The demands of the Priestly Code, which demonstrably were neither laid down, nor in any sense acted on before the exile, attained the force of law one hundred years after the return from Babylon (Nehemiah x.); the whole taxation system of Judaism ever afterwards rested upon it;- - shall this be held to have no meaning as against the trifling circ.u.mstance that the t.i.the also was indeed paid to the clergy, in full accordance with the Priestly Code, and inconsistently with ancient custom, but paid to the higher, and not to the lower order?

In point of fact any other difference whatever between Jewish practice and the Law might better have been adduced against the thesis of Graf,--for example, the absence of Urim and Thummim (Nehemiah vii. 65), or of the forty-eight Levitical cities, the church of the returned exiles instead of that of the twelve tribes of Israel, the second temple instead of the tabernacle, Ezra instead of Moses, the sons of Zadok instead of the sons of Aaron, the absence of the other marks of Mosaicity. For the position of the Levites is the Achilles heel of the Priestly Code.

If the Levites at a later date were still further lowered beneath the priests, and put into a worse position in favour of these, this nevertheless presupposes the distinction between the two; let it first then be shown that the distinction is known to the genuine Old Testament, and that, in particular, it is introduced by Ezekiel not as a new thing, but as of immemorial antiquity. Or is the primary fact that the separation between priests and Levites was set up only in the Priestly Code and in Judaism, and that its genesis can be traced with confidence from the time of Josiah downwards, a fact of less importance than the secondary one that the distinction extended itself somewhat further still in the subsequent development of Judaism ?

B. HISTORY OF TRADITION.

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PLEON (HMISU PANTOS-- Hesiod

CHAPTER VI. CHRONICLES

Under the influence of the spirit of each successive age, traditions originally derived from one source were very variously apprehended and shaped; one way in the ninth and eighth centuries, another way in the seventh and sixth, and yet another in the fifth and fourth. Now, the strata of the tradition show the same arrangement as do those of the legislation. And here it makes no difference whether the tradition be legendary or historical, whether it relates to pre-historic or to historic times; the change in the prevailing ideas shows itself equally in either case. To show the truth of this in the case of the Hexateuch is of course our primary object, but we make our commencement rather with the properly historical books. For on various grounds we are here able with greater certainty to a.s.sert: Such was the aspect of history at this period and such at that; such were the influences that had the ascendancy at one time, and such those which prevailed at another.

We begin the inquiry where the matter is clearest--namely, with the Book of Chronicles. Chronicles, which properly speaking forms but a single book along with Ezra and Nehemiah, is a second history running parallel with the Books of Samuel and Kings, and we are here in the favourable position of starting with the objects of comparison distinctly defined, instead of having as usual to begin by a critical separation of sources of various age combined in one doc.u.ment. And, what is more, we can also date the rival histories with tolerable certainty. The Books of Samuel and of Kings were edited in the Babylonian exile; Chronicles, on the other hand, was composed fully three hundred years later, after the downfall of the Persian empire, out of the very midst of fully developed Judaism. We shall now proceed to show that the mere difference of date fully accounts for the varying ways in which the two histories represent the same facts and events, and the difference of spirit arises from the influence of the Priestly Code which came into existence in the interval. De Wette's "Critical Essay on the Credibility of the Books of Chronicles" (Beitraege, i.; 1806), is throughout taken as the basis of the discussion: that essay has not been improved on by Graf (Gesch. Bucher d.

A. T. p. 114 seq.), for here the difficulty, better grappled with by the former, is not to collect the details of evidence, but so to shape the superabundant material as to convey a right total impression.

VI.I.

VI.I.1. After Jehovah had slain Saul (so begins the narrative of Chronicles), He turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.

All Israel gathered themselves unto David to Hebron and anointed him king over Israel, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel (I Chronicles x. 1.-xi. 3). How simply and smoothly and wholly without human intervention according to this version did the thing come to pa.s.s! Quite otherwise is it in the narrative of the Book of Samuel. This also indeed has the statement of Chronicles word for word, but it has something over and above which gives a quite different aspect to the matter. Here David, on the lowest step to the throne, is the guerilla leader in the wilderness of Judah who finally is compelled by Saul's persecutions to pa.s.s over to Philistine territory, there under the protection of the enemies of his nation, carrying on his freebooter life. After the battle of Gilboa he avails himself of the dissolution of the kingdom to set up a separate princ.i.p.ality in the south as a va.s.sal of the Philistines; he is not chosen, but comes with a following six hundred strong, and offers himself to the elders of Judah, whom he has already at an earlier period laid under obligations to him by various favours and gifts. In the meantime Saul's cousin Abner takes over what of the kingdom there is, not for himself but for the legitimate heir Ishbaal; from Gilead, whither the government had been transferred after the great catastrophe, he gradually reconquers the territory west of Jordan, and is scheming how to recover also the lost Judah. Thus it comes to protracted struggles between Abner and David, in which fortune is most on the side of the latter; yet he does not leave the defensive or gain the sovereignty over Israel. That falls into his hands rather by treachery. Abner himself, indignant at the ingrat.i.tude of his royal nephew, offers the crown to his rival, and enters into negotiations with him about it; but as he immediately afterwards falls a victim to blood revenge, nothing comes of the matter until Ishbaal is privily murdered in his sleep by two of his captains; then at last the elders of Israel come to Hebron, and David becomes king in succession to Saul. What a length of time these affairs demand, how natural is their development, how many human elements mingle in their course,--cunning, and treachery, and battle, and murder!

Chronicles indeed knows them all well enough, as is clear from incidental expressions in chaps. xi. and xii., but they are pa.s.sed over in silence. Immediately after his predecessor's death the son of Jesse is freely chosen by all Israel to be king, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel. The sequence of x.

13, 14, xi. 1 does not admit of being understood in any other way, nor is it in point of fact otherwise understood, for it has actually been successful, at least to this extent, that the kings.h.i.+p of Ishbaal has virtually dropped out of traditional Bible history; after Saul came David is what is said. We have before us a deliberate and in its motives a very transparent mutilation of the original narrative as preserved for us in the Book of Samuel.

As all Israel has made David the successor of Saul, and all Israel gone out with him to the conquest of Jerusalem (xi. 4),--in 2Samuel v. 6 we hear only of David's following,--so now immediately afterwards, the n.o.blest representatives of all the tribes of Israel, who even before he had attained the throne were in sympathy and indeed already on his side, are enumerated by name and numbers in three lists (xi. 10-xii. 40), which are introduced between what is said in 2Samuel v. 1-1110 and in 2Samuel v. 11 seq. The first (xi. 10-47: "these are the mighty men who took part with him with all Israel to make him king") is the list of 2Samuel xxiii., which the Chronicler, as he betrays in chaps. xx., xxi., was acquainted with as it stood in that place, and here gives much too early, for it is for the most part warriors of David's later campaigns who are enumerated. /1/ The second list (xii.

1. The division into a group of three and another of thirty heroes, obscured in 2Samuel xxiii. by corruption of the text (Text der BB. Sam. p. 213-216), has not been understood by the Chronicler, and thus been made quite unrecognisable. In this way he has been able to bring in at the end (xi. 42-47) a string of additional names exceeding the number of thirty. In ver. 42 his style unmistakably betrays itself, wherever it may be that he met with the elements.

1-22: "these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul") is not taken from the Book of Samuel, but one also observes this difference: along with old and genuine there are extremely common names, and hardly one that occurs here only; the notes of ancestry carefully given in chap. xi. are almost always wanting; and instead of performing before our eyes such deeds as the rescue of a field of barley from the enemy, the purchase of a draught of water with blood, the slaying of a lion in a pit, the heroes receive all sorts of _epitheta ornantia_ (xii. 1-3) and t.i.tles of honour (xii. 14, 20), and ordinarily talk a highly spiritual language (xii. 17, 18).

And as for the historical situation, how impossible that a great Israelite army should have been gathered around David as the feudatory of the Philistines in Ziklag (xii. 2 2), with a crowd of captains of hundreds and thousands! Plainly the banished fugitive is according to this representation the splendid king and ill.u.s.trious ancestor of the established dynasty; hence also the naive remark of ver. 29. No better is it with the third list (xii. 23-40: "these are the numbers of the bands, ready armed for the war, who came to David to Hebron"). Observe the regular enumeration of the twelve tribes, which nowhere occurs in the older historical books, and is quite artificial; then the vast numbers, which are not matters of indifference here, but the princ.i.p.al thing and make up the entire contents; finally, the 4600 Levites and 3700 priests, who also take their place in the martial train, and const.i.tute the proper guard of the king; to Chronicles the distinction between secular and spiritual soldiers is not altogether clear. There are but a few details of a special kind; the remark in xii. 32 is perhaps connected with 2Samuel xx. 18; Jehoiada the prince of the house of Aaron, i.e., the high priest, alongside of the historically certain series,--Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahiah (Ahimelech ), Abiathar,--an utterly impossible person, is a reflection of the Jehoiada of 2Kings xi., xii., and the allegation that Zadok at that time joined David at the head of twenty-two chief priests is a hardly credible subst.i.tute for what is stated in Samuel, according to which Abiathar, whose older claims were disagreeable to the B'ne Zadok and those who came later, was the priest who from the beginning held with David; the twenty-two chief priests appear to correspond to the heads of the twenty-two post-exilian priestly families (Nehemiah xii. 1-7, 12-21, x. 3-9; 1Chronicles xxiv. 7-18). Yet it is hardly necessary to go so minutely into the contents of the above lists, for the purpose with which they are given is stated without circ.u.mlocution at the close (2Chronicles xii. 38, 39): "All these men of war, in order of battle, came with a perfect heart to Hebron to make David king over all Israel, and all the rest of Israel also were of one heart to make David king. And they were there with David three days, eating and drinking, for there was joy in Israel."

After the explication of the idea "all Israel" thus inappropriately interpolated, the narrative proceeds to reproduce the contents of 2 Samuel v.-vii. David's first deed, after the conquest of the stronghold of Jebus, is in Chronicles to make it the holy city by transferring the ark of Jehovah thither (xiii. 1 seq.). It seems as if the building of a palace and the Philistine war (2Samuel v. 11-25) were to be omitted; but after the narrative in 2Samuel vi. 1 seq. has been given down to the place "and the ark of Jehovah abode in the house of Obed-edom three months " (1Chronicles xiii. 14 = 2Samuel vi. 11), the pause of a quarter of a year is utilised for the purpose of overtaking what had been left out (xiv. 1-17 = 2Samuel v. 11-25), and then the history of the ark is completed. This indeed is to separate things mutually connected, but at the same time the secular business which, according to the older narrative, is the nearest and most pressing, is reduced to the level of a mere episode in the midst of the sacred. That there is no room for the building of a house and a Philistine war within the three months which offer themselves so conveniently for the interpolation is a subordinate affair.

As regards the sacred business, the transference of the ark to Zion, almost everything that is said in 2Samuel vi. is repeated word for word in Chronicles also (xiii., xv., xvi., xvii. 1).

Two traits only are absent in Chronicles, and in neither case is the omission helpful to the connection David's wife Michal, it is said in 2Samuel vi. 16, 20-23, when she saw the king dancing and leaping in the procession, despised him in her heart; afterwards when he came home she told him what she thought of his unworthy conduct. The first of these two statements is found in Chronicles also (xv. 29), but the second is (all but the introductory notice, xvi. 43 = 2Samuel vi. 20, here torn from its connection) omitted, although it contains the princ.i.p.al fact, for the historical event was the expression of her contempt, not its psychological origin; a woman--such is the idea--must not say a thing like that to David. The other case is quite similar. On account of the calamity by which those who were bringing up the ark were overtaken, David does not at first venture to receive it into his citadel, but deposits it in the house of Obed-edom, one of his captains; but when Jehovah blesses the house of Obed-edom, he takes courage to bring the ark to his own home (2Samuel vi. 10-12).

Chronicles also tells that Jehovah blessed the house of Obed-edom (xiii. 14), but mentions no consequent result; again the cause is given without the effect. Another explanation is subst.i.tuted; David perceived that the disaster connected with the removal of the ark was due to the fact of its not having been carried by the Levites in accordance with the Law; the Levites accordingly were made to bear it and no harm ensued (xv. 2, 13-15). This is in complete and manifest contradiction to the older narrative, and as Chronicles (chapter xiii.) copies that narrative, it also contradicts itself (xiii. 10), and that all the more strikingly as by the addition in xiii. 2 it represents the accompanying clergy as tacitly approving the carrying of the ark on the ox-cart. Then due partic.i.p.ation in the sacred procession having been thus once secured them, 1Chronicles xv. positively revels in priests and Levites, of whom not a sing]e word is to be found in 2 Samuel vi., and moreover a sort of musical service is inst.i.tuted by David himself before the ark, and a festal cantata made up by him out of post-exilian psalms is quoted (chapter xvi.). In this way, out of the original narrative, the scattered fragments of which now show themselves very strangely in the new connection, something quite different has grown. "In the former everything is free, simply the affair of king and people, here all is priestly ceremonial; there the people with their king shout and dance with joy before the ark,, here the levites are the musicians and singers in formal order. To seek to combine the two versions is wholly against the laws of historical interpretation. If the first were curt and condensed the unification of the two might perhaps be possible, but no story could be more particular or graphic, and could it have been that the Levites alone should be pa.s.sed over in silence if they had played so very important a part? The author of Chronicles was able to introduce them only by distorting and mutilating his original and landing himself in contradiction after all. He cannot allow anything to happen without Levites; and was the ark of the covenant to be fetched to Jerusalem without them? was the Law to be even a second time broken under the pious king David? This seemed to him impossible.

That Uzzah perished in the first attempt to fetch the ark, and that on the second occasion--when only a quite short journey is spoken of--the ark was carried, ~2Samuel vi. 13, may have been the suggestions by which he was led. Fertile in combinations, he profited by the hint." So, justly, De Wette (Beitraege, i.

88-91).

The narrative of 2Samuel vi. having been broken off at the first half of ver. 19 (1Chronicles xvi. 3), the second half of the verse and the beginning of the next are reproduced (xvi. 43) after the interpolation of xvi. 4-42, and then 2Samuel vii. is appended word for word (1Chronicles xvii.),--the resolution of David to build a house for the ark, and what Jehovah said to him about the subject through Nathan. The point of the prophet's address turns on the ant.i.thesis (2Samuel vii.). "Thou wilt build a house FOR ME? rather will I build a house FOR THEE;" the house of David is of course the Davidic dynasty. But an interpolation has already crept into the text of Samuel (vii. 13), which apprehends the ant.i.thesis thus: "THOU wilt build a house for me?

Nay, THY SON shall build a house for me." Now Chronicles, for which David comes into consideration merely as the proper founder of the Solomonic temple, takes up the narrative of 2 Samuel vii. precisely on account of this interpolation, as is clear from xxii. 9, 10-- increases the misunderstanding by going back to it in an addition (xvii. 14)--and at the outset destroys the original ant.i.thesis by the innocent alteration, "Thou shalt not build THE HOUSE for me"

instead of "Wilt thou build A house for me? "The house can here mean only that imperatively needed one, long kept in view alike by G.o.d and men, which must by all means he built, only not by David but by Solomon; it is without any ambiguity the temple, and does not, like a house, contain that possibility of a double meaning on which the original point depends. It is interesting also to compare 2Samuel vii. 14 with 1Chronicles xvii. 13: "I will be to thy seed a father, and he shall be to me a son. _If he commit iniquity, then I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the sons of men; but_ my mercy shall not depart from him."

The words in italics are wanting in Chronicles; the meaning, that Jehovah will not withdraw His grace from the dynasty of Judah altogether, even though some of its members should deserve punishment, is thereby destroyed and volatilised into an abstract idealism, which shows that to the writer the Davidic kingly family is known only as a dissolving view, and not by historical experience as it is to the author of 2Samuel vii.

In chaps xviii.-xx., Chronicles seems to refresh itself with a little variety, relating as it does the foreign wars of David after the order of 2Samuel, viii., x., xi. 1, xii. 30, 30, xxi.

18-22. But in this it still keeps in view its purpose, which is directed towards David as founder of the Jerusalem wors.h.i.+p; those wars brought him the wealth that was required for the building of the temple. On the other hand, everything so fully and beautifully told in the Book of Samuel about the home occurrences of that period is omitted, for after all it does not contribute much to the glorification of the king.

So the story of Meribaal and Ziba (chap. ix.), of Bathsheba and Uriah (xi., xii.), of Tamar and Amnon (xiii., xiv.), of Absalom's rebellion (xv.-xx.), and of the delivering-up of the sons of Saul (xxi. 1-14). The rude and mechanical manner in which statements about foreign wars are torn from the connection with domestic events in which they stand in the older narrative is shown in 1Chronicles xx. 1, 2, as compared with 2Samuel xi. 1, xii. 30.

In 2Samuel xi. the mention of the fact that David remained in Jerusalem when the army set out against Rabbah, prepares for the story of his adultery with the wife of a captain engaged in active service in the field; but 1Chronicles xx. 1 is meaningless, and involves a contradiction with ver. 2. according to which David appears after all in the camp at Rabbah, although the connection,--namely, that he followed the army--and all the intermediate occurrences relating to Bathsheba and Uriah, are left out (De Wette, pp. 19, 20, 60). To what extent the veil is drawn over the scandalous falls of saints may be judged also from the fact that from the list of David's foreign encounters also, which are otherwise fully given, a single one is omitted which he is supposed not to have come through with absolute honour, that with the giant Ishbi-ben.o.b (2Samuel xxi. 15-17). Lastly, the alteration made in 1Chronicles xx. 5 is remarkable. Elhanan the son of Jair of Bethlehem, we read in 2Samuel xxi. 19, was he who slew Goliath of Gath, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam. But on the other hand, had not David of Bethlehem according to 1Samuel xvii. vanquished Goliath the giant, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver's beam? In Chronicles accordingly Elhanan smites the brother of the veritable Goliath.

2. The closing chapters of 2Samuel (xxi.-xxiv.) are, admittedly, an appendix of very peculiar structure. The thread of xxi. 1-14 is continued in xxiv. 1-25, but in the interval between the two pa.s.sages occurs xxi. 15-xxiii. 39, in a very irrational manner, perhaps wholly due to chance. In this interposed pa.s.sage itself, again, the quite similar lists xxi. 15-22 and xxiii. 8-39 are very closely connected; and the two songs, xxii. 1-51, xxiii.

1-7, are thus an interpolation within an interpolation. This want of order is imitated by the author of Chronicles also, who takes 2Samuel xxiii. 8-39 as separated from xxi. 15-22, and gives 2Samuel xxiv. last, a position which does not belong to it from any material considerations, but merely because it had originally been tagged on as an appendix, and besides had been separated from its connection with xxi. 1-14 by a large interpolation.

1Chronicles xxi. (the pestilence as punishment of David's sin in numbering the people, and the theophany as occasioning the building of an altar on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Araunah) is on the whole a copy of 2Samuel xxiv., but with omission of the precise and interesting geographical details of ver. 5 seq, and with introduction of a variety of improving touches. Thus (xxi. 1): "And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David;" instead of: "And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David." Similarly (xxi. 6): "Levi and Benjamin Joab counted not among them; for the king's word was abominable to him,"-- an addition which finds its explanation on the one hand in Numbers i. 49, and on the other in the circ.u.mstance that the holy city lay within the territory of Benjamin. Again (xxi. 16, 27): "David saw the angel of Jehovah standing between heaven and earth, and his sword drawn in his hand and stretched out towards Jerusalem;"

compare this with Sam xxiv. 16 (1Chronicles xxi. t5): "The angel stretched out his hand to Jerusalem to destroy it, and he was by the thres.h.i.+ng floor of Araunah;" according to the older view, angels have no wings (Genesis xxviii.). Further (xxi. 25): "David gave to Araunah for his thres.h.i.+ng-floor 600 shekels of gold ;" compare with 2Samuel xxiv. 24, 50 shekels of silver; to make the king pay right royally costs the Chronicler nothing.

But lastly, his most significant addition is the fire from heaven which consumes the burnt-offering (xxi. 26); by this means the altar on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Araunah, in other words, that of the sanctuary of Jerusalem, is intended to be put on a level with that of the tabernacle, its predecessor, the fire on which was also kindled from heaven (Leviticus ix. 24).

Whoever has understood the narratives of altar-buildings by the Patriarchs, by Joshua, Gideon, and Manoah, will grant that the author of Chronicles has quite correctly understood the intention of 2Samuel xxiv., in accordance with which he here proposes to relate the divine inauguration of the place of wors.h.i.+p at Jerusalem; but what in that pa.s.sage, as in similar older legends about the indication of consecrated places by means of a theophany, is only hinted at for contemporaries who understood the idea conveyed, he requires to retouch strongly in order that a later generation may notice it; and yet he has half spoiled the point by making the angel not stand by the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Araunah on the sacred spot, but hover aloft in the air.

2Samuel xxiv. = 1Chronicles xxi. serves further as a starting point for the free construction of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. The circ.u.mstance that in the last chapter of the Book of Samuel David builds the altar at Jerusalem is expanded into the statement that in the last year of his reign he prepared beforehand the building of the temple of Solomon in all its parts down to the minutest detail. Unhampered by historical tradition, the author here expatiates with absolute freedom in his proper element. All that has. .h.i.therto been said about the king on the basis of the older source is by means of additions and omissions fas.h.i.+oned into what shall serve as a mere prologue to the proper work of his life, which is now described thoroughly _con amore_. He himself unfortunately has not been allowed to build the house, having shed much blood and carried on great wars (xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), but he yet in the last year of his reign forestalls from his successor the whole merit of the business (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1).

My son Solomon, he says, is young and tender, but the house to be built for Jehovah must be great and glorious; I will therefore prepare it for him (xxii. 5). Accordingly he gets ready beforehand the workmen and artificers, in particular bringing into requisition the non-Israelitic population; he provides the material, stone and wood and bra.s.s and iron, and gold and silver and jewels without number; he also gives the plan or rather receives it direct from Jehovah, and that in black and white (xxviii. 19), while Moses built the tabernacle only according to his recollection of the heavenly pattern which had been shown to him on Sinai. But before all he appoints the _personnel_ for the temple service,--priests, Levites, porters, singers,-divides their thousands into cla.s.ses, and a.s.signs to them their functions by lot. In doing so he interests himself, naturally, with special preference, in the music, being the designer of the instruments (xxiii. 5), and himself acting as princ.i.p.al conductor (xxv. 2, 6). And as he is still king after all, he at the close takes an inventory also of his secular state, after having duly ordered the spiritual. All this he does for the future, for his son and successor; not in reality, but only in plan, are the door-keepers, for example, a.s.signed to their posts (xxvi. 12 seq.), but none the less with strictest specification and designation of the localities of the temple,--and that too the second temple! His preparations concluded, David calls a great a.s.sembly of prelates and notables (xxiii. 1, xxviii. 1), has Solomon anointed as king, and Zadok as priest (xxix. 22), and in a long discourse hands over to the former along with the kingdom the task of his reign, namely, the execution of what he himself has prepared and appointed; on this occasion yet more precious stones and n.o.ble metals--among them gold of Ophir and Persian darics--are presented by David and the princes for the sacred building. The whole section 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix. is a startling instance of that statistical phantasy of the Jews which revels in vast sums of money on paper (xxii. 14), in artificial marshallings of names and numbers (xxiii.-xxvii.), in the enumeration of mere subjects without predicates, which simply stand on parade and neither signify nor do anything. The monotony is occasionally broken only by unctuous phrases, but without refres.h.i.+ng the reader.

Let the experiment of reading the chapters through be tried.

According to 1Kings i., ii., King David in his closing days was sick and feeble in body and mind, and very far from being in a condition thus to make preparations on behalf of his successor shortly before his own death, or to prepare his bread for him so far that nothing remained but to put it into the oven. His purpose of building a house to Jehovah is indeed spoken of in 2 Samuel vii. in connection with vi. 17, but it is definitively abandoned in consequence of Jehovah's refusal, on the ground that it is not man's part to build a house for G.o.d, but G.o.d's to build a house for man. In strange contrast with this explanation is that of Chronicles that David is a man of war and has shed much blood, and therefore dare not set up the temple; that he had waged the wars of Jehovah, that Jehovah had given victory by his hand, would in the older warlike time have seemed no reason against but rather an argument establis.h.i.+ng his fitness for such a work. But the worst discrepancy is that between the solemn installation of Solomon as king and of Zadok as priest with all the forms of law and publicity as related in 1Chronicles xxviii., xxix. (comp.

xxii., xxiii. 1) and the older narrative of 1Kings i., ii.

According to the latter it was much more an ordinary palace intrigue, by means of which one party at court succeeded in obtaining from the old king, enfeebled with age, his sanction for Solomon's succession. Until then Adonijah had been regarded as heir-apparent to the throne, by David himself, by all Israel, and the great officers of the kingdom, Joab and Abiathar; what above all things turned the scale in favour of Solomon was the weight of Benaiah's six hundred praetorians, a formidable force in the circ.u.mstances of the period. The author of Chronicles naively supposes he has successfully evaded all difficulties by giving out the coronation of Solomon related by himself to be the second (xxix. 22),--an advertence to 1Kings i., ii.

which does not remove but only betrays the contradiction.

Yet this is as nothing over against the disharmony of the total impression. See what Chronicles has made out of David! The founder of the kingdom has become the founder of the temple and the public wors.h.i.+p, 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 clearly cut figure has become a feeble holy picture, seen through a cloud of incense. It is obviously vain to try to combine the fundamentally different portraits into one stereoscopic image; it is only the tradition of the older source that possesses historical value. In Chronicles this is clericalised in the taste of the post-exilian time, which had no feeling longer for anything but cultus and torah, which accordingly treated as alien the old history (which, nevertheless, was bound to be a sacred history), if it did not conform with its ideas and metamorphose itself into church history. Just as the law framed by Ezra as the foundation of Judaism was regarded as having been the work of Moses, so what upon this basis had been developed after Moses--particularly the music of the sanctuary and the ordering of the temple _personnel_---was carried back to King David, the sweet singer of Israel, who had now to place his music at the service of the cultus, and write psalms along with Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, the Levitical singing families.

VI.I.3. With regard to Solomon, Chronicles (2Chronicles i.-ix.) nowhere departs very far from the lines of the Book of Kings.

As the story of 1Kings i., ii., which is not an edifying one, and mercilessly a.s.sails that of 1Chronicles xxii.-xxix., required to be omitted, the narrative accordingly begins with 1Kings iii., with Solomon's accession, sacrifices on the great altar at Gibeon, and the revelation of Jehovah, which was thereupon communicated to him in a dream. This last is transcribed with slight alterations, but at the outset a characteristic divergence is found. "Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places (because there was no house built unto the name of Jehovah until those days). And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place; a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar, and Jehovah appeared unto him in a dream: Ask what I shall give thee." So 1Kings iii. 2 seq. Chronicles, after its manner, first surrounds the king with a great a.s.semblage of captains of hundreds and thousands, of judges and princes and heads of houses, and purely Pentateuchal dignities, and then proceeds: "And Solomon and all the congregation with him went to the high place in Gibeon, for there was G.o.d's tent of meeting, which Moses, the servant of G.o.d, had made in the wilderness.

But the ark of G.o.d had David brought up from Kirjath-jearim, where he had prepared for it; for he had pitched a tent for it at Jerusalem. But the brazen altar that Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, stood there, before the tabernacle of Jehovah, and Solomon and the congregation sought unto it. And Solomon offered there, upon the brazen altar, before Jehovah, by the tent of meeting, he offered a thousand burnt-offerings, and G.o.d appeared to him in a dream, saying, Ask what I shall give thee" (2Chronicles i. 3 seq.).