that of his source. Not a word, for instance, is said that would detract from the picture of David as the man after God's heart and the ideal monarch of Israel. The perils of his youth, Saul's enmity and the long struggle against Ishbosheth are omitted[1]. His murder of Uriah and the disastrous rebellion of Absalom are ignored; but the result is a David very different from the great yet sometimes erring monarch depicted in Samuel (see the head-note to 1 Chr. xxviii.). Another significant omission is 2 Kin. xviii. 14—16, Hezekiah's payment of tribute to Babylonia, a tradition which doubtless seemed to the Chronicler a sign of weakness and lack of faith incredible in a king so pious and successful. Above all, we notice the omission of the affairs of the Northern Kingdom, except for a few derogatory notices. The consequence is that if Chronicles stood alone, our conception of the relative importance of Judah as compared with Israel would be very far removed from the actual facts. It is a simple matter to see how imperative it is that the impression given by Chronicles should here be corrected by the records in Kings, and the student will find it instructive to consider the point with some care.
The conclusions to be drawn from the above are clear. First, in passages of the type instanced in (ii) above, where the differences between Kings and Chronicles are considerable and not confined to changes made on transparently religious grounds, the possibility that we have to do with a variant form of the tradition in Kings should be carefully considered. If there be any such distinct traditions, even though they are few or in a late stage of development, they are of high value, for they may be as worthy of consideration as the form in Kings. Moreover a slight variation in a tradition may occasionally
- ↑ Such omissions are very skilfully managed by the Chronicler. Even so, they generally entail some abrupt transition or obscurity, as in the present instance for which see the note on 1 Chr. xi. 1. Here the cause of the obscurity can be shown by direct comparison of the earlier history in Samuel. Mark how usefully Chronicles thus demonstrates the legitimacy of the argument that similar difficulties elsewhere in the O.T. are perhaps due to a similar cause, although the earlier source may not be extant to prove that the conjecture is correct.
