Second (Joel)

Two OT books, historical records of King David and his successors in the land of Judah. The books of Chronicles are among the most neglected books in the Bible, partly because most of the material can be found in Samuel, Kings, or elsewhere in the OT. Fourteen chapters (1 Chr 1–9; 23–27) are little more than lists of names; the rest of the material is primarily historical narrative, which some people find almost as boring as lists. Yet the content of Chronicles is not history in a professional or academic sense because the materials used are comparable to the annals compiled by ancient Near Eastern court scribes. Those sources recorded each year’s most important events and were frequently more propagandistic than objectively historical. The records in Chronicles, somewhat eclectic in nature and ignoring certain facets of national history while emphasizing others, deal with only a selected portion of the history of the Israelites. A good deal of the criticism that the work is historically unreliable has come from lack of understanding the book’s character. Chronicles is not so much a history as a metaphysical interpretation of events in Israelite life in light of covenantal values. It was not sufficient for the Chronicler that kings rose and fell; the events were interpreted from a special religious standpoint.

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