Israel meant above all things the
history of Jerusalem, of the Temple, and of the Temple ordinances. Now
the writer of Chronicles betrays on every page his essentially Levitical
habit of mind. It even seems possible from a close attention to his
descriptions of sacred ordinances to conclude that his special interests
are those of a common Levite rather than of a priest, and that of all
Levitical functions he is most partial to those of the singers, a member
of whose guild he may have been. From the standpoint of the post-exilic
age, the older delineation of the history of Israel, especially in the
books of Samuel and Kings, could not but appear to be deficient in some
directions, while in other respects its narrative seemed superfluous or
open to misunderstanding, as for example by recording, and that without
condemnation, things inconsistent with the later, post-exilic law. The
history of the ordinances of worship holds a very small place in the
older record. Jerusalem and the Temple have not that central place in
the book of Kings which they occupied in the minds of the Jewish
community after the Exile. Large sections of the old history are devoted
to the religion and politics of the ten tribes, which are altogether
unintelligible and uninteresting when measured by a strictly Levitical
standard; and in general the whole problems and struggles of the
prophetic period turn on points which had ceased to be cardinal in the
life of the New Jerusalem, which was no longer called to decide between
the claims of the Word of Yahweh and the exigencies of political affairs
and social customs, and which could not comprehend that men absorbed in
deeper spiritual contests had no leisure for the niceties of Levitical
legislation. Thus there seemed to be room for a new history, which
should confine itself to matters still interesting to the theocracy of
Zion, keeping Jerusalem and the Temple in the foreground, and developing
the divine pragmatism of the history, not so much with reference to the
prophetic word as to the fixed legislation of the Pentateuch, so that
the whole narrative might be made to teach that the glory of Israel lies
in the observance of the divine law and ritual.

Contents.

For the sake of systematic completeness the book begins with Adam, as is
the custom with later Oriental writers. But there was nothing to add to
the Pentateuch, and the period from Moses to David contained little that
served the purpose.