It really is a challenge keeping the names of all
these kings of Judah and Israel straight, especially when I go back and try to
compare the lists in Chronicles with those in Kings. It is startling to
me on this reading how different Kings and Chronicles really are. I had
forgotten, if I ever knew it before, that Kings focuses so much more on the
kings and prophets (Elijah and Elisha) of Israel, whereas Chronicles focuses on
Judah. Elijah and Elisha get very little mention in Chronicles.
2 Chronicles 21 zooms in on the life of King
Jehoram of Judah, son of Jehoshaphat. He gets a whole chapter here, whereas in
Kings he gets only nine verses. (See 2 Kings 8:16-24.) When the Chronicler
wants to point out how bad a certain king was, he says: “He walked in the way
of the kings of Israel…” (2 Chronicles 21:6) rather than simply saying, as
Kings does, “he did evil in the sight of the Lord”. Of course, the reason the Chronicler does this is because he wants to
emphasize how evil the northern kingdom was and the fact that the southern
kingdom of Judah was better and perhaps that is why Judah is restored after the
exile whereas the northern kingdom is not.
Nonetheless, the Chronicler goes into great detail about the
evils of Jehoram, unlike the record in Kings. He points out that Libnah
revolted against his rule because he had forsaken the Lord (2 Chronicles
21:10). Furthermore, Jehoram made high places in the hill country of Judah, in
order for his subjects to worship other gods.
This chapter does mention Elijah. The prophet
sends Jehoram a letter. This is unusual since Elijah is a prophet to the north.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Elijah was still alive at this time. What
does seem likely is that the Chronicler was aware of Elijah’s reputation as a
prophet. Thus, to make the case even stronger for Jehoram’s evil nature, the
Chronicler has Elijah rebuke him. The letter informs Jehoram that because of
his wickedness God will send a plague on Judah and he, Jehoram, will die with a
painful bowel disease. Jehoram dies as predicted. Intriguingly, the bowel
disease is not mentioned in Kings. Perhaps Ezra, or whoever the author of
Chronicles is, wants to make the point to the people of Judah in his own day
that if they forsake the Lord their end is going to be painful.
Furthermore, the author of Chronicles says that
the Lord aroused the Philistines and the Arabs near Ethiopia against Jehoram.
We have not heard of the Philistines for a while so this is interesting. Verse
17 says that Jehoram had no son left to him except Jehoahaz, his youngest.
However, just a few verses later, the Chronicler says that Jehoram’s youngest
son is named Ahaziah, and that is who succeeds him on the throne. Jehoahaz may
be a Hebrew variant of the name Ahaziah. Like I said, it is hard to keep all
the names straight, and the variations on certain names in Kings and Chronicles
do not make it any easier.
Chapter 22 focuses on Ahaziah who also “walked in
the ways of the house of Ahab” like his father before him. For once, the
Chronicler’s account of this king is shorter than the parallel account in the
Book of Kings. This is probably due to the fact that Kings focuses on the
rebellion of Jehu and the downfall of the dynasty of Omri, events in the
northern kingdom that are not of interest to the Chronicler.
There is an error in 2 Chronicles 22:2. The text
here says that Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign. 2 Kings 8:26 says that he
was 22 years old. 2 Kings must be correct because if Ahaziah was 42 when he began to
reign that would make him older than his father: obviously an impossibility!
Little points like this make it clear that there are errors in the Bible.
Ignoring such errors seems pointless, as does trying to explain these errors away as
some conservative scholars try to do. Furthermore, trying to maintain that the
original manuscripts of the Bible are without error also seems to me to be a
way of simply dodging the question. After all, we do not have the original
manuscripts to examine. Personally, I think the best way of dealing with this
is the honest way that C. S. Lewis took. In Reflections
on the Psalms Lewis says this regarding Scripture,
The human qualities of the raw materials show through.
Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are
not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every
passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of
God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser
than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may
have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an
encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its
overall message.[1]
The Chronicler seems to spend a little more time
dwelling on the ministry of Jehoiada the priest, in chapters 23 and 24, than
what the authors/editors of Kings do. Jehoiada is the one who rescues Joash son
of Ahaziah from the queen mother, wicked Athaliah, who wants to reign in his
place. Jehoiada rallies the Levites as well as leaders of the army of Judah in
support of Joash. He also makes a covenant between himself and all the people
and the king that they will be the Lord’s people (2 Chronicles 23:16).
Furthermore, Jehoiada assigns the care of the house of the Lord to the levitical
priests and stations gatekeepers at the gates of the Temple to keep anyone
unclean out. These are all details that would be very important to Ezra, or
whoever is writing Chronicles, because he wants to emphasize the role of the
Levites and the Temple and the priests. Under Jehoiada’s leadership, Joash
decides to restore the Temple of the Lord and institutes a box for collection
of contributions. Of course, this is exactly what Ezra was trying to accomplish
hundreds of years later, namely the restoration of the Temple and its proper
services.
Unfortunately, after the death of Jehoiada (who
is so greatly honored that he is buried among the kings in the city of David), Joash falls away from the
Lord, and leads all of Judah and Jerusalem in his downward spiral. They even
refuse to listen to the prophets that the Lord sends, and Joash kills Zechariah,
the prophetic son of Jehoiada. Kings does not spell out how Joash went astray
after the death of Jehoiada. However, the Chronicler does spell out that
Joash’s servants kill him in his bed to avenge the blood of Zechariah. Clearly,
the Chronicler wants to emphasize the goodness and the proper role of priests
and at the same time show that anyone who persecutes them will come to a bitter
end.
[1] C. S. Lewis,
Reflections on the Psalms, San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958, pp. 111-112.
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