I And II Chronicles: A Commentary (The Old Testament Library)

by Sara Japhet

The Chronicler’s familiar tendency to add ‘positive’ information for the righteous kings, especially victorious wars,

According to this verse, when Ahaz died at the age of thirty-six, his son and successor Hezekiah was twenty-five; this certainly makes Ahaz the youngest father in the Bible!

the Chronicler’s consistent effort to incorporate into his story, and from a Judaean perspective, every piece of information concerning the history of the kingdom of Israel; and the firm emphasis on the kinship between Judah and Israel. They are all ‘the children of Israel’ and ‘the people of the Lord’, and it is only their political circumstances, not any difference in national or religious identity, which estrange them.

That is, in the present context, the people of Israel have no right to enslave the Judahites, since it was not they, but God himself, who defeated them in battle! The prepositional phrase ‘to yourselves’ (lākem) has an emphatic position which is ignored by the translation. It is not you who smote them, you have no right to subjugate them! In order not to aggravate their own guilt, the Israelites should now let the captives free.

As very often occurs in Chronicles, the dominant feature of Hezekiah’s address is that of persuasion.

Rather, the description reflects a peculiar Chronistic view of the vicissitudes of the Lord’s worship, which diverges considerably from that of the Deuteronomist. Its leading principle is that of the mutual exclusivity of idolatry and the worship of the Lord, and entails the complete cancellation of the one during the prevalence of the other (cf. also on II Chron. 24.7, and Japhet, Ideology, 203–16). The accounts of the closing down of the Temple in Ahaz’ time and its reopening, purification and the restoration of the Lord’s service in Hezekiah’s time are all the work of the Chronicler, their ultimate origin lying in his own view of the history of the cult, rather than in historical facts.

The literary movement from the general to the specific is parallel to that of vv. 6–7, thus granting a formal expression to the sequence ‘sin – punishment’. Both the sin and the punishment refer to the days of Ahaz, with the details of punishment hearkening back to 28.6–8: ‘For Pekah . . . slew a hundred and twenty thousand in Judah . . . because they had forsaken the Lord . . . the men of Israel took captive two hundred thousand of their kinsfolk, women, sons and daughters.’ This chain of events, which links so strongly the stories of Ahaz and Hezekiah, now demands a change.

The preparation of the Temple is described by two terms: ‘purify’ (ṭhr) and ‘sanctify’ (qdš). Notwithstanding some unclarity at the beginning of v. 17, ‘purify’ denotes the cleansing, the deliverance of the Temple from a state of ‘pollution’, the removal of an essentially negative condition; ‘sanctify’ or ‘hallow’ goes beyond ‘purity’ and brings the Temple to the elevated state of sanctity.

This verse, with its unequivocal praise of the Levites at the expense of the priests, plays a prominent role in many commentaries on Chronicles, as well as in the history of Chronicles research. It serves as the ultimate proof of the Chronicler’s negative view of the priesthood, and his clear favouritism of the Levites

Going backwards, v. 2 now describes the manner in which the decision was made, illustrating the Chronicler’s distinct habit of making the people partners not only in the events, but also in the decision-making process, and thereby sharing responsibility with the king.

How is Hezekiah’s Passover related to the law of Num. 9.6–13, which regulates the keeping of a ‘second Passover’? As the texts stand, there is really no connection between them. Hezekiah does not point out that a postponement of the Passover has already been provided by the Law, nor is there any literal affinity between the two texts.

Hezekiah’s Passover is not a ‘second Passover’ but a general postponement of the main feast.

Whether purposefully or not, there is some hidden irony in Hezekiah’s desire to celebrate the Passover ‘as prescribed’, for this is precisely the opposite of what would eventually happen, when the people ‘ate the passover otherwise than prescribed’ (v. 18).

This is in fact the first pilgrimage to Jerusalem actually described in the Bible.

This, however, is not the picture which one takes from the Chronicler’s presentation. According to his account, Sennacherib did not actually conquer the cities of Judah but only thought ‘to win them for himself’. Therefore, the move against Jerusalem is not the end but the beginning of this campaign, part of his plans for the whole of Judah. The theological significance of this change is transparent. According to the Chronicler’s most basic theological principles, the conquest of the Judaean cities would constitute a divine punishment. Cf. II Chron. 12.2–4: ‘In the fifth year of king Rehoboam, because they had been unfaithful to the Lord, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem . . . And he took the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem’, which includes the telling Chronistic addition ‘because they were unfaithful to the Lord’. At this point in Judah’s history, any kind of punishment would be quite inappropriate, and thus all we have is Sennacherib’s ‘plan’ to take over these cities. The change of the historical picture is so very clearly the result of theological considerations that hardly any historical value should be assigned to it.

Hezekiah acts with confidence and resolution as he attends to three essential matters: water (vv. 3–4), fortification and weapons (v. 5), and the military organization of the people (v. 6). Yet his words to the people (vv. 7–8a) disclose that the true source of his confidence is not his own might but his trust in the Lord, who is the source of all strength. This is a very clear illustration of the Chronicler’s theological stand with regard to divine aid. God’s help is provided to those who trust him, and he often grants to the few and weak victory over the many and strong. This decision, however, is absolutely at God’s discretion and is not to be presumed upon by man. The Lord’s miraculous intervention does not exempt man from taking all necessary steps demanded by the concrete situation.

The Lord’s ‘being with’ individuals or the whole people, particularly in battle, is a common biblical theme (cf. Num. 14.43; Deut. 20.4; Judg. 6.12–16, etc.), but it is specifically in the context of the Assyrian threat that it is epitomized by Isaiah as Immanuel, ‘God is with us’, to become a token of faith (Isa. 7.14; 8.8, 10).

The address also presents Hezekiah himself in a different light from the prophetic story of Kings. Although he appears there as a person of strong faith in the Lord, praying to him and sending a delegation to Isaiah to seek his word, the general tone is one of despair and loss of direction: ‘This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace’ (II Kings 19.3). In Chronicles, Hezekiah is a man of faith and resolution, and he is fully capable of leading and inspiring his people.

In rephrasing the Rabshakeh’s words, the Chronicler emphasizes the Assyrians’ claim that the Lord is unable to save his people

Sennacherib’s claim that Hezekiah had removed the Lord’s altars and high places is cited in full from II Kings 18.22 but contains one further emphasis. In place of ‘you shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’ the Chronicler reads ‘before one altar’ (LXX, however, here displays the reading of II Kings 18.22). The significance of this statement for the history of the Israelite cult has been pointed out repeatedly; notwithstanding its actual source, it proves that the movement for the centralization of the cult was initiated by Hezekiah, and it is only the Deuteronomist’s preference for Josiah which made him the almost exclusive hero of this cultic revolution.

Furthermore, in the Rabshakeh’s addresses, the hero of these conquests is Sennacherib himself (II Kings 18.29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35), and it is only in a different context that his predecessors are mentioned (19.12: ‘the nations which my fathers destroyed’). By contrast, the Chronicler emphasizes that these wide conquests are the work of many Assyrian kings, referred to in the mouth of Sennacherib as ‘I and my fathers’ (vv. 13, 14, 15). For the Chrounicler, then, ‘Assyria’ is not one single king, but an existential threat to the world of nations.

The Chronicler also employs alternating titles for the God of Israel. In these four verses the Lord is designated as ‘the Lord God’ (v. 16), ‘the Lord the God of Israel’, ‘the God of Hezekiah’ (v. 17), and finally ‘the God of Jerusalem’ (v. 19). All these should be understood in their very specific context: this major threat to the people of Israel, to king Hezekiah, and to the city of Jerusalem, will come to nothing because the Lord is very specifically their God.

In the light of the Chronicler’s high opinion of Hezekiah, and the miraculous divine response to Hezekiah’s prayer (v. 21), this unusual brevity should be seen as a tribute to Hezekiah. His devoted behaviour so far, and his address to the people on this very occasion (vv. 7–8), are such a perfect expression of faith and trust in the Lord that nothing more need be said about it. A mere statement of his prayer suffices to initiate the Lord’s response – expected and foreseen – in view of all that preceded

The present text avoids the sensational number and carefully lists the slain: ‘all the mighty warriors and commanders and officers in the camp of the king of Assyria’ – that is, all the military leadership, without whom any further action would be impossible.

Did Hezekiah ‘pass the test’? While II Kings 20.12–19 does not allude to the concept of ‘test’, some elements of the story may have encouraged the Chronicler in this direction. To the divine message by Isaiah, Hezekiah responds with: ‘the word of the Lord which you have spoken is good’ (II Kings 20.19), an expression of absolute resignation to the divine will. In its spiritual disposition this statement may be compared to that of Job, in his famous words ‘the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1.21), or further on, ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ (2.10). If this is how the Chronicler interpreted the story, then Hezekiah indeed passed the test.

Hezekiah thus receives the most elaborate and distinguished burial description of all of Judah’s kings, a sign of exceptional distinction in the particular Chronistic theological lexicon

The removal of these altars is attributed to Josiah in II Kings 23.12, but according to Chronicles, it was Manasseh himself who was responsible for their removal: ‘all the altars that he had built . . . he threw them outside the city’ (v. 15).

The record of the battle, the king’s injury, his death and burial, is a mosaic of borrowed motifs and complete citations, culled from various biblical contexts, illustrating the Chronicler’s anthological style

From the moment a king crosses the borders of the land of Israel, he leaves the orbit of the Chronicler’s interest. Even Jehoiachin’s favourable fortune and his rehabilitation in Babylon (II Kings 25.27–30) are of no interest to the Chronicler. This consistent line of adaptation, executed with different techniques and with a varying degree of intervention in his source material, is a telling expression of the centrality of the land in the Chronicler’s overall view of history: the arena of the history of Israel is the land of Israel; whatever happens outside it is beyond the Chronicler’s purview.

It is noteworthy that in all this there is not even one reference to the cultic transgressions or idolatry which characterized earlier kings such as Jehoram, Ahaz and Manasseh (II Chron. 21.6, 10b–11; 28.2–4, 22–25; 33.3–7 following its Deuteronomistic source). The apogee of the king’s transgression, according to this view, is his unwillingness to listen to the Lord’s word, the wilful spurning of the Lord’s authority.

It is certainly no coincidence that at this crucial point the Levites are absent. They do not share the people’s responsibility for its most terrible catastrophe.

This verse draws very clearly on Ezek. 9.5–7, employing not merely its contents but actual phrases: ‘Pass through the city . . . and smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity, slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women . . . And begin at my sanctuary’ (cf. also Lam. 2.20–21). In Chronicles the vision of terror has become a historical fact.

In a perfect example of midrashic exegesis, he combines the view of Lev. 26 with Jeremiah’s prophecy to form one statement. While the view of exile as ‘the land’s sabbaths’ demands that it is limited in time, Leviticus does not allude to its duration, either actual or theoretical. Even in the secondary layer of Lev. 26.43–45, with its view that after the land has enjoyed its Sabbaths, and the people have served their time and have repented, the Lord will forgive and renew the covenant, there is no hint regarding the chronological terms of these expectations. Jeremiah’s prophecy, by contrast, which focusses on the nations’ subordination to the king of Babylon, views this subordination as of seventy years’ duration.

This reversal of historical fortunes is also expressed by close affinity of literary detail. In the same way that the destruction was brought about by a foreign king, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, so its reversal is initiated by a foreign king, the successor to world power – Cyrus the king of Persia.