Chapter 30

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 assert: 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 document. 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 pass! 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 pass 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 principality in the south as a vassal 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 ingratitude 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 passed 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 kingship 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