Week 18 II Chronicles
Earlier this week I didn’t need to have ears like a bat to detect an echo when I started reading the stories of David in I Chronicles because I remembered most of them from II Samuel.
Of course, there’s also a bunch of stuff missing. The chronicler says nothing about Goliath, Jonathan, Abigail, David’s escape from Saul, Bathsheba, Uriah, the Absalom rebellion. But he’s interested in David the King, and he ends up painting a pretty complimentary picture of a pretty ideal king.
I’m a modern-day Albertan so my first thought is cover-up – the chronicler’s tying-off loose ends. But even though that’s a kind of appealing default I have doubts about it right away. For a couple of reasons. First, my guess is that those downside stories were pretty well-known events – I’d be surprised if people in the ancient near east didn’t have an ear for scandal. The other thing I noticed is that the chronicler actually tells readers to check other accounts of the events: now the acts of King David, from first to last, are written in the chronicles of Samuel the seer, in the chronicles of Nathan the seer, and in the chronicles of Gad the seer.
Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning this now is that I’m seeing the same pattern in Solomon’s story in II Chronicles – repetition and, so far, the sound of lots of clapping. So I’ll wait & see how Solomon’s story ends.
Note: quote is from I Chronicles 29:29 (NASB version).