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omitted. Böttcher's opinion (N. kr. Aehrenl. iii. S. 224), that the Chaldaizing מכרבל can scarcely have been written by the chronicler, because it is not at all like his pure Hebrew style, and that consequently a later reader, who considered it objectionable that a Levite should dance, and perhaps impossible that the bearers should (forgetting that they were released in turn from performing their office), while holding as closely to the letter of the text as possible, corrected עז בכל מכרכר into בוץ במעיל מכרבל, and that the same person, or perhaps a later, added besides וּכנניה והמשׁררים, is still less probable. In that way, indeed, we get no explanation of the main difficulty, viz., how the words from הלויּם to המּשׁררים came into the text of the Chronicle, instead of the יהוה לפני of Samuel. The supposition that originally the words from וכל־הלויּם בּכל־עז מכרכּר ודויד to והמשׁררים stood in the text, when of course the statement would be, not only that David danced with all his might, but also that all the Levites who bore the ark danced, is in the highest degree unsatisfactory; for this reason, if for no other, that we cannot conceive how the singers could play the nebel and the kinnor and dance at the same time, since it is not alternations between singing and playing, and dancing and leaping that are spoken of.
The discrepancy can only be got rid of by supposing that both narratives are abridged extracts from a more detailed statement, which contained, besides David's dancing, a completer account of the clothing of the king, and of the Levites who took part in the procession. Of these the author of the books of Samuel has communicated only the two characteristic facts, that David danced with all his might before the Lord, and wore an ephod of white; while the author of the Chronicle gives us an account of David's clothing and that of the Levites, while he omits David's dancing. This he does, not because he was scandalized thereby, for he not only gives a hint of it in 1Ch 15:29, but mentions it in 1Ch 13:8, which is parallel to 2Sa 6:5; but because the account of the king's clothing, and of that of the Levites, in so far as the religious meaning of the solemn progress was thereby brought out, appeared to him more important for his design of depicting at length the religious side of the procession. For the clothing of the king had a priestly character; and not only the ephod of white (see on 2Sa 6:14), but also the me‛il of בּוּץ, white byssus, distinguished the king as head of a priestly people. The me‛il as such was,it is true, an outer garment