All right. Well, I welcome you for our final session of lecture discussion in this course. I wish there could be more discussion, but because we're taping that makes it a little bit difficult to allow you to say as much as you might might like to say, but I do welcome you for this last time. Do recall, do remember to be here next time for the test, which will be administered same time, same place in this room. And I will be here probably for the entire time unless I have to flee for my life, which I don't anticipate doing. I'm not planning that kind of test. I will also probably have a student assistant here with me as a bodyguard or whatever may be necessary. So please be here next time for the test, and I'll try to give you some hints later on today as to how you might best prepare for it later on tonight. As we begin tonight, though, we want to commit the time to the Lord in prayer. So if you would bow with me, please. Father, as we come before you tonight, we are very mindful of how very dependent we are on you to help us in our thinking, to help us in our considerations of your word to lead us into truth, to illumine our minds as well as our hearts. We also recognize how dependent we are on your spirit to lead us into obedience and we recognize our own sinfulness. We pray, Father, that you would be with us this evening. We thank you that you are a gracious and a good God, and that that has shown us in your word. And we pray, Father, that we would come to you boldly not because of who we are in ourselves, but because of who we are in Christ. We thank you for the position that we enjoy and that we can approach you boldly. And we do ask for your help. We ask for your enlighten, and we ask for your blessing. I pray for each student here. We don't have time to articulate individual needs, but we know that as your people we come to you as children very much needing your fatherly care. And so we pray for that at this time in the semester, and we pray with confidence knowing that you hear us because Christ intercedes for us, and it's in his name that we pray. Amen. All right. Tonight we want to pick up in part with the outline that we had handed out last time, and that is we want to talk about the synoptic histories of the Old Testament. And so if you can take that outline from last time, we want to do that first, and then after a break or so, or two, we will eventually get to Ezra Nehemiah, and we'll spend some time on Ezra Nehemiah tonight. It's our last chance, so we better. And we will. But we want to speak first about the synoptic histories of the Old Testament. Where have you heard the term synoptic before? Gospels. Okay, everyone is aware of the synoptic gospels. What do we mean by synoptic gospels? They are, they are gospels that are alike, or similar, thus you can look at them together. Perhaps you hear optic in synoptic, which has to do with viewing something, and soon in Greek would mean with or together viewing something together would be a fairly simplistic etymology of that term. So the synoptic gospels are individual gospels that are parallel in some way, so that they can be viewed together and compared. They are however not identical. Similarly, in the Old Testament we have synoptic histories, and by that I mean we have the history recorded in, well let's say, Samuel Kings, and it stretches beyond the boundaries of Samuel Kings, but then that is parallel by material that we have in the books of Chronicles. Now in this course you've not been asked to read the books of Chronicles, although perhaps if I were assigning Christmas reading or summer reading or whatever, which I'm not, I would assign that. I think the book of Chronicles, or the books of Chronicles first and second Chronicles are unfortunately sometimes overlooked, whereas they are very rich books that have a great deal to teach us. They are not simply repetitions of what we have in Samuel Kings as we shall see, and so don't neglect these even if some of what you read there sounds like something you've read before as you get to it, please value these books and read them. But we do have, in the Old Testament, two histories, Samuel Kings and Chronicles. These could be compared to the four gospels, the four treatments of the life and ministry of Jesus. Now Samuel Kings spends a period of about 450 years from around their sum debate as to when Saul's reign would have begun. I tend to think it probably began around 1032 as to do with my view that Saul's reign probably lasted about 22 years. Acts 13, 21, not with standing. I'm not saying I disagree with Acts 13, 21. I disagree with sometimes the way in which that particular verse is interpreted. This is not something of which I'm sure, also, but I would say perhaps starting about 1032 with the Kingdom of Saul and spanning then to 586, the fall of Judah. So Samuel Kings spans a period of at least 450 years. A second treatment of the monarchic period is presented in the books of first and second Chronicles. And as in the case of Samuel and Kings, the two books of Chronicles were probably originally only one book in the division between the two having been introduced first in the Greek translation in the Septuagint. Now Chronicles covers approximately the same period as Samuel Kings. Though unlike Samuel Kings, it opens with extensive genealogies. Probably one of the reasons that people don't tend to read Chronicles very often. They have to wade through nine chapters of predominantly genealogical material which tends to discourage even the most stalwart Bible readers. And this is partially because we don't really understand the value of genealogies, other cultures, other literary traditions, value genealogies, I think more than we do. We can hardly remember who our great grandmother or our great grandfather was. But Chronicles then covers approximately the same period, opening with genealogies. But if you look at where these genealogies begin, you discover that in fact Chronicles begins at the beginning of time, the genealogies, the first genealogy begins by mentioning Adam. And in the course of the first nine chapters, given over almost entirely to genealogies, we have included even a list of those who resettled Jerusalem after the exile. And so in fact Chronicles does have in view a longer period than what we had in Samuel Kings. In chapter 10, first Chronicles offers an abbreviated version of the reign of Saul. We don't hear much about Saul at all. In fact, if you have a Bible before you, you may want to open to the book of Chronicles and we'll look at various things from time to time. In chapter 10, we have only a brief resume of Saul's reign in the latter half of the chapter, and it concludes this way in verse 13, Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance and did not inquire of the Lord, so the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David, son of Jesse, first Chronicles 10, 13. So we have an abbreviated version of the career of Saul before moving on in chapter 11 to the main interest of the books of Chronicles, which is in the Davidic royal line. Now, if you look at your outline, you'll see that I have a section entitled The Two Histories Compared, and they're just given a very brief outline, very simple outline of first and second Chronicles and then of Samuel and Kings, so that we can compare them in this very, very broad fashion. In Chronicles, we have the first nine chapters of first Chronicles dealing with genealogies, then we have chapters 10 to 29 dealing with the reigns of Saul and David. Saul very, very briefly, most of that material was taken up with the reign of David, so the reign of David occupies most of the book of first Chronicles, then in second Chronicles we have Solomon's reign recorded in the first nine chapters, and then from 10 to 36, the last chapter of second Chronicles, we have the divided kingdom, the division of the kingdom to the exile, and then even the restoration of those who had gone into exile. The focus in Chronicles is predominantly on the southern kingdom of Judah, whereas in kings you have this toggling back and forth between discussion of the kings of Israel and then the kings of Judah, in Chronicles the focus is more on the South, though in a way Israel is included as part of the remnant, and sometimes the Chronicle will speak of all Israel, meaning really Israel's hopes rest now in the southern kingdom. Now looking at Samuel Kings, again just by way of rehearsal, we see Samuel is prominent in the first seven chapters, then we have chapters 8 to 15 which deal with Saul's election and his subsequent rejection, then we have for the rest of the book of, and I have a typo there, I see it should be 16 to 31, first Samuel 16 to 31, we have a description of David's rise and Saul's demise, so David and Saul occupy the remainder of first Samuel. Second Samuel deals with David's reign predominantly, first Kings opens with Solomon's reign, chapters 1 to 11, and then in chapter 12 we have the division of the kingdom under Rehoboam, the North going to Jeroboam, and then we have a discussion of kings of Israel, kings of Judah, with that very important central section dealing with Elijah and Elijah. In the middle of the books it really spans the border between the end of first Kings and the beginning of second Kings, it is important that you have some rough sense of what took place during the ministries of Elijah and Elijah. In other words you should know that it's Elijah who thought that battle for the Lord on Mount Carmel in first Kings 18 and call down fire, you should know that that's Elijah and not Elijah, for instance. You should know that Naaman was cured under the ministry of Elijah. So try to have a rough sequence at least an idea of what happens in the ministries of Elijah and Elijah. That's a little tip for the test, so bear that in mind. And then at the end of second Kings we have Judah alone, after the fall of the North in second Kings 17 and we have Judah alone up to and including the exile. So looking at just this very brief comparison, and of course you know much more about Samuel Kings than what I've said here, but comparing Samuel Kings and Chronicles, we discover that though these are two treatments of essentially the same period, nevertheless to side, side, we have graphically illustrated that history writing inevitably involves selection and arrangement of available material depending on the interests and the purposes of that. In other words, whenever you're reading historiography, the writing of history, you should expect that there will be selection, perspective, slant, there's something that the historian brings to the task of writing up the history of a particular period. That's why we have more than one history of all the different periods of human history. Historian will come along and say, I think I'll write a history of this period, fully knowing that others have done so before, but he thinks perhaps or she thinks perhaps that he or she will discover a better angle on things, a clearer view of what actually happened during that period of time. And so history writing, as is demonstrated right here in the Bible, involves selection, involves a certain creativity on the part of the historian. The difference between Samuel Kings and Chronicles, such as the Chronicles greater interest in genealogies, its extreme reduction of the soil material, it's failure to mention David's sin against Uriah and Bathsheba, or Solomon's foreign wives, adultery and idolatry, trying to conflate those two. His accumulation of gold, all the ways in which he broke the law of the king, those are not really foregrounded in the books of Chronicles. And that raises some questions that we'll talk about in a little while, but all of these choices on the part of the Chronicleer, I think are a reflection of the distinctive perspectives and purposes that the Chronicleer had and then by contrast that the writers of Samuel and Kings had. It is apparent that about half of what we have in the books of Chronicles about half is taken over from the Samuel Kings corpus. The Chronicleer, the writer of Chronicles, knew Samuel Kings, whether exactly in the final form that we have in Scripture, it's hard to say, but the Chronicleer knew the material in Samuel Kings. Thus we may be sure, because he knew it, it's reasonable to assume that his audience also would have known Samuel Kings, and this will become important. The Chronicleer's selective handling of the material then does not constitute on his part a distortion of the facts. He's not interested in rewriting Israel's history in such a way as to over-paint that earlier history or to distort the facts. Rather, the knowledge of the facts would have been presupposed. The Chronicleer certainly knew what was in that earlier material or that other material, and I think his audience would have known as well. Rather, I think what's going on in the book of Chronicles is much like what goes on sometimes when a modern preacher will draw selectively on what the biblical account offers in order to infer and draw out a message from that portion of the material that is particularly pertinent to his audience, to those hearing the message, which he is bringing from Scripture. He's not reading it into Scripture. He is deriving it from Scripture, but sometimes he will work selectively with all that is there in order to highlight a particular message from Scripture. So the Chronicleer, I think it's fair to say, has selectively drawn from Israel's history to construct his sermon, as it were, to an audience probably composed of former exiles who now find themselves back in the land of promise. And his focus on who the Chronicleer's audience was is important for us to discover, it helps us in discovering what the Chronicleer's purpose was and what his theme, what his message is. Now all of this business about selectivity and slant and even creativity in the same sense in which a representational artist is creative in the choices that are made in terms of how to paint a particular picture, while being constrained by the representational purpose. All of this does raise some questions as to the historical accuracy of what the Chronicleer has done. At least in some people's minds they'll say, well, when you begin to talk like that, then I'm assuming that what he wrote is not historically accurate. Well, let me assure you that wherever one can check the historical accuracy of the Chronicleer, and here I would cite Jay and Myers in his anchor Bible commentary on Chronicles, and Jay and Myers was certainly no conservative, he says within the limits of its purpose, the Chronicleer's story is accurate wherever it can be checked, though the method of presentation is homiletical. That is, he has the same kind of method of presentation that a preacher might, a homiletical presentation, but wherever it can be checked, it is accurate. Now, if you read carefully, you'll discover that there's a lot of differences in numbers and so forth and so on, and even in some of the ways in which certain individuals are portrayed, but I would say that the challenge is for us is to see how, in fact, those different portrayals are complementary rather than contradictory. At least that's the direction in which I would want to nudge us as a thoughtful group of people. Some people will choose to stress the differences and even assert that they're contradictory with one another. I would suggest that given sufficient study, I think we will probably be able to discover, or at least some future generations will be able to discover how these, in fact, are complementary. So I think we should adopt a humble attitude toward the text when we come to it and say if it looks problematic it may well be that I'm not understanding it fully. Now, so we've got synoptic histories which are also, as we move on to the next point in the outline, they are also, and predominantly, theological histories. And here we kind of come full circle in terms of where we began in this course. We talked about how, at the beginning of the course, that the Bible displays several impulses, a historical impulse, certainly a theological impulse, and also an aesthetic or literary impulse. And all of these impulses we see now coming to the fore in our analysis of Samuel Kings and Chronicles. Chronicles, as well as Samuel Kings, were deeply interested in theology in adopting God's perspective on the events recorded. So we want to think first then about the theme and purpose of the books of Kings, and then we'll move on and talk about the theme and purpose of the books of Chronicles. So we want to discuss them in summary fashion independent of one another. Perhaps the place to begin in discussing theme and purpose is to state that the focus in the books of Kings seems to be on this question. A question asked by the exiles and that is, what happened? You know, how is it that we now find ourselves in exile? What happened? Well, what about the promises God made to us? What about God's covenant? How is it that we're sitting here now in exile? Now, first and second Kings do not offer an explicit statement of purpose, but it does seem to be clear, and true to the name, to the name that is given to these books, that their major focus is upon kingship in Israel through its various phases, the phases being the United Monarchy, the divided Monarchy, and then Judah alone after the fall of the North. Thus, Kings covers, again, the first major division in Kings covers that period from about 970 to 930. That's the reign of Solomon. And some of these dates that I'm mentioning now, again, if you will look back at that sheep that I handed out that has the kings of Israel and Judah on it, there are some dates that are in bold. Those are dates you should know. It is well for you to know those dates that are on that sheet. If you don't have that sheet, you may want to grab one of your fellow students and say, let me make a quick photocopy of that sheet. Because you want to know the kings of Israel and Judah, you want to know some of those particularly important dates. There are not many of them, certainly not for a history course, but those at least you'll want to know. 970 to 930, Solomon's reign, then the divided monarchy covers a period from 930 to 722. Some people say 721, but they're about 722. That is the United Monarchy, the fall of the North takes place, 722, 721 in that range. And thus we have Judah alone until 586, very important dates. And we have then in the northern, sorry, we have then up to, let me see, I'm getting confused here, after the division of the kingdom, the history of the northern kingdom spans 20 rulers. My point, I'm sorry, to get so confused on you, but my point is it's interesting to look then at the time period covered by the kings of the north and the kings of the south because they're approximately 20 depending on how you figure them in north and in south. In the north, the time span covered is about 210 years. In the south, it's about 345, so again half again is long in the south for the same number of kings. And this is a simple reflection of the fact that there was far greater stability in the southern kingdom than there was in the north. In the north, they were averaging about 10 years per king, some much longer, much, much longer, and some much, much briefer than that. Now, so there's a focus in kings really on getting the facts straight. Again, there's selection and there's perspective and so forth, but there is a focus on trying to record the history. There's an obvious historical and graphical tip in the books of kings. There is, however, also a focus on covenants. If you turn your page on your outline, you'll see there another heading. The books of kings are strongly historical in character and that they're concerned with what happened, but they are not interested simply in recounting what happened in the political or social spheres, which is the focus of many modern histories. If you pick up a modern history, you're going to get usually political history, sometimes economic or social history or some anthropology thrown in, but a focus on the human arena. In the books of kings, there is a focus certainly on political matters and the human arena, but rather the experiences are viewed in the light of how God views them. The experiences of the monarchy period are consistently set against the background of Israel's covenant relationship with God, with Yahweh. It is He who continues to be regarded as the great king and the human king is but his vice-region is a vassal to the great king. As we saw, for instance, in the story of Saul and Samuel, we saw there that Samuel, at the outset, established an authority structure whereby the earthly king, Saul, in that case, was to remain obedient to, subservient to, the great king who would mediate his word either directly to the king or through a prophet, as was more often the case, in Saul's life, through a prophet to him. And so there was this important dynamic in Israelite kingship that the human king was not to assume an autonomous stance and to think, well, I'm in charge here. God was in charge. The theocracy was not overturned by human kingship, but rather the human king was called upon to be obedient to the great king. Thus there was this ideology or this theology of limited kingship which is very prominent, not only in Samuel, it was established there that also into the book of kings. This means that in the book of kings we have a recurring theme which is the efficacy of the prophetic word. If the view is that God continues to reign as he reveals his will through the prophets, it is not insignificant that the prophetic word proves itself to be true over and over and over again. And so we have, for instance, second Samuel 713 being picked up and repeated in 1 Kings 820. In the relationship of promise and fulfillment, 2 Kings 713 followed by 1 Kings 820. I'll give you a little grocery list of references not to be memorized, but you may want to jot them down. 1 Kings 1129 to 39. Some of these you might be able to figure what's going on in the 1 Kings 11, 29 to 39, fulfillment in 1 Kings 12, 15. That would be the division of the kingdom. 1 Kings 13, the strange story that we looked at last time of a young prophet who came north to the altar of Jeroboam, fulfilled in 2 Kings 23, 16 to 18, much later in history and much later in the books of kings. 1 Kings 14, 10, fulfillment in 1 Kings 15, 29. And 2 Kings 1, 6, fulfilled in 2 Kings 1, 17. And the list could be expanded. I had a student once who did a project on looking at some of these promised fulfillment sequences in the books of kings and he came up with a list far longer than these are only some of the more obvious examples. So if the focus is on the question, what happened? Why are we in exile? The focus is also on God's covenant relationship with His people. This helps to explain the consequent principles of selection, which is a point on your outline you may want to follow, that we find in the books of kings. The importance of various kings is judged not in political terms but in terms of their positive or negative stance vis-à-vis the covenant relationship. The primary example, I think we mentioned very early in this course, is the king Omri, who is the father of Ahab, as you know, by now. And Omri was a very important king politically, so much so that some of his neighbors referred to the land of Israel as the land of Omri. I'm so prominent, was he? And yet he receives only six verses of coverage in the books of kings, that's 1 Kings 16, 23 to 28, that's it for Omri. By contrast, his son Ahab, who was certainly no more prominent than his father in political terms, receives extensive treatment. In fact, he gets chapter after chapter after chapter. This is due primarily to two factors. One, the religious challenge to Israel's covenant heritage was issued by Ahab's infamous wife, Jezebel. So in a sense, by being linked up with a colorful figure like Jezebel, who did issue a significant challenge to Yahwism. And of course Ahab went right along with it. He was not really the leader, it did not seem. This of course means that he was theologically very significant. Omri was bad. Ahab was bad in a way that's worth describing. And so he gets more coverage than his father. A second reason is that Ahab was strongly opposed by the prophet Elijah. And so Ahab's connection with Elijah, his association with Elijah meant that it was also of greater interest to this book of kings, which is interested in God's view of things, and the way in which God continued to issue his mandates through his prophets. He's obviously much more interested in the king who had this ongoing relationship albeit not a friendly relationship with a significant prophet. So it's the prophetic presence that also causes the treatment to seem imbalanced from a political perspective, but quite on target in terms of the theological interests of the text. Now not only was the king's stance vis-à-vis the covenant of central interest but also the question then of his involvement with other religious personnel, with the prophet as we've been saying. In this sense the book of kings might be called, as it appropriately is called, in Jewish tradition, the former prophets. They don't even refer, the kings is included among the former prophets which would also include Joshua Judges and Samuel. Now this leads us then to ask what then is the overarching purpose of the books of kings. And we want to look at a couple of things in trying to answer that question. First of all, the original audience. Again, I think we can become a little more precise about that and also talk a little bit about how you determine what the original audience of a book is. When you're reading a book, how do you know what the original audience might or must have been? What would be some factors which one should consider? What are some criteria? Who has an idea? Okay, when it was written, how are you going to establish when it was written? If it doesn't say, if it makes no explicit claim, how are you going to know? Clues from the text? Okay, what kinds of clues? Okay, talking about other kings' reigns or cross-referencing with kings from outside the Bible for whom we do have dates and can be dated and cross-referencing can help us establish dating for the kings involved. And for the material described, but in terms of the composition of the book, how do we know when the book was written or how can we at least narrow the field of possibility? I heard someone say something over here. Okay, if it leaves out certain events that you would assume would be included, were it written after those events had taken place? Okay, yeah, that's the kind of thing that can be used. Also, the idea of establishing a terminus aquo which would be the earliest possible date at which time a piece of literature could have been finalized if you take the last recorded event in the book. One then assumes that at least the final version of the text before us must have occurred after that final event took place, unless the recording of that final event is cast as a prophecy. Now, certainly if it's predicting the future, prophesying the future, then that would, if one believes that God can predict the future, which I certainly do, then that would not be a solid criterion for dating. But if it's simply the description of a certain event in the life of a particular king, then we would assume that the inclusion of that event would be an indication of the earliest possible date for the version of the text which we have before us. Now, this is not at all to say that the text may not have been growing up over time as individual prophets or historians, I think often the prophets, were probably the historians of Israel would have been reflecting on their time periods. So a book like the Books of King, the Book of Kings, probably did grow up over a period of time and didn't just emerge at one session as one individual sat down at his desk and said, I think I'll make up the Book of Kings, it's hardly a plausible theory. So what would be a good terminus or quote for the Books of Kings? Well, we look at the very end of the Book of Kings and we read about the release of Johoyakin of Judah from prison in Babylon. So it's suggest if that about 562 is when the release of Johoyakin is often mentioned, that would suggest that the text before us could not have taken the shape in which we now find it prior to that time. It must have come after that time. In other words, it must have been written as late as the exilic period in terms of the final version of it. Now, there are a few things that tend to confuse us. If you look at 1 Kings 8-8, one might become confused by a reference like this, 1 Kings 8, verse 8, or beginning in verse 6. The priest then brought the ark of the Lord's covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the most holy place, and put it beneath the wings of the cherubum. The cherubum spread their wings over the place of the ark and overshadowed the ark, and it's carrying poles. These poles were so long that their ends could be seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary, but not from outside the holy place, and they are still there today, to this day. Or, in other words, they are still there today. Well, now, what is today? What does that indicate? Is that today, in terms of the final finishing off of this book, or is it today that was present at the time that this portion of the book was written? I would suggest that it has to be the latter. It has to be the today that was present to the writer who wrote this portion of the book, which then was included by the, if we want to use the word, editor or author, who was responsible for the final shape of the book, which we now have. Now, the reason I think we have to insist on that is, of course, by the time Johoyakin was being released from prison, the temple had been destroyed, and we can assume that there was no inner sanctuary there for the ark to indowel so that the poles would have been visible to that day. And furthermore, even in the book of Chronicles, we have a similar reference in Second Chronicles 5.9. And it's clear that the book of Chronicles, I think, was being written to those who were returning out of exile back to Israel to rebuild the temple. Okay, so don't be confused by those kinds of references. The reason I mention them is sometimes people use that kind of material and say, well, this helps me to date the entire book. Because as it, you know, something is still visible to this day, that must mean that in the day that this entire book was written and finished in this form, that was still visible. These examples prove that that can't be the case. So really what we have here is the retention of a statement in the source that is being used by the chronicler or by kings in this case. And this may have been a sort of a way of saying, look, I'm drawing on reliable ancient material, material that was written at a time when it could be checked, because when this material was written, it could be said, this is still visible to this day, those who originally read this could go and check it. Okay, so there was not any kind of updating of that language. It may have been retained for that reason, if not for some other. Now again, I think all of this accords well with my view that probably those who were the historians of Israel were a succession of prophets as they came and spoke God's word to their societies and said, does say at the Lord, I think they were also perhaps some of them at least committing these words and events to writing and reflecting on them as historians would do. So if that's the original audience, those who have gone into exile, that's the original audience of the final form of the text before us. What might be the message? Again, we're still pursuing the idea of the theme and purpose of the book. What might have been the message? Well, again, I think the question is what's happened and so the books of kings want to offer an explanation of the exile to people who very much need an explanation. And the explanation is quite clear, if we read the book of kings, covenant breaking has brought about the covenant curses. That is to say the stipulations, in this instance, the negative stipulations of the mosaic covenant have come into play. Regarding the northern kingdom, one can read in 2 Kings 1811 and 12 about the law of Moses in 2 Kings 1713 about the warnings of the prophets which were ignored in 2 Kings 17, 14 to 16 about specific abuses of which the northern kingdom was guilty. And in 2 Kings 17 verses 18 to 20, Judah is also included in these abuses. Again, then regarding the southern kingdom, 2 Kings 21, especially 7 and following deal with the sins of Manasseh. And so the books of kings offer an explanation of how it is that God's elect people who are His inheritance now find themselves pitched out of their land in exile. They needed a theological explanation and that's what King's offers. However, it offers not only this rather somber message of, well, this is how we got ourselves in this mess, but rather it also offers a basis for hope. And that is it continues to speak of the Davidic covenant, the Davidic promise, the Davidic covenant is still in effect regardless of how same things seem. And in fact, it's important to realize that if God has been true in terms of that which He threatened, then that's a testimony also to the fact that God will be true in terms of His promised blessing to the house of David. Even the disobedience of man cannot overcome God's ultimate purpose. Now, throughout the books of kings we have in particular various references to a lamp being kept lighted for David. Look at when we saw, I think maybe last time, 1 Kings 11 verse 36 is a first of a number of these that will show you what I'm talking about. First Kings 11, 36, I will give one tribe to his son so that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my name. Verse 39 in the same chapter, I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever. See, God is true in terms of His threats, but because we can see that He's true in terms of His disciplinary action, we can take hope that He is also true and has the power to bring about the blessings He promises. One can perhaps compare this to children of parents who are consistent with them, those children tend to have more confidence that their parents mean what they say, they mean what they say when they threaten discipline and didn't follow through. And they also mean what they say when they promise that something good will happen. If we are utterly inconsistent with our kids, I'm going to count to three and if you don't get out of the street, I'm going to back the car over you or something, actually we shouldn't probably threaten that. But if we're constantly issuing empty threats and we never follow through on them, then our children learn to laugh at us and say, well, I know how valuable your word is. And so I think there's a basis of hope even when God disciplines His people. Now, we can take encouragement from that because it shows that God is true. He said He would do it. He did it. And God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding and mercy, and we can also be thankful for that. So it's not a mechanical thing, but God does, at times, sometimes find it necessary to follow through on those threats. And that's what Israel is learning as they're sitting there in exile. By the way, other references that deal with the Lamb of David, you might want to note down, 1 Kings 15, 4, 2 Kings 8, 19, and then already back in 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel 21, 17, introduces this phrase of the Lamb of David. There are also in the Book of Kings some explicit references to the promise to David as in 8 25, 1 Kings 8 25, and also allusions to the promise to David as in 9, 4 to 5 when God appeared to Solomon a second time in 1 Kings 11, 12 to 13. So in all these ways, the books of Kings, while explaining why the exile was necessary and how God is true in putting His people in this position of discipline, also bringing great deal of hope to the people in stressing the Lamb of David and God's promise to David. So the theme and purpose of the Book of Kings is to explain the exile. What happened? Now, any questions there before we go on and talk a bit about the theme and purpose of the books of Chronicles? You've read King, so that maybe is a little more obvious to you.
Well, let's go on and talk about the theme and purpose of the books of Chronicles. The Chronicleer's audience and his central concern will again be the means by which we can begin to press toward an answer to this question. Why was the book of Chronicles written? Why was the Chronicle not simply content to read to the people, Samuel Kings, if he had his disposal, if they already knew it? Well, if the book of Kings was written to the exiles and was concerned primarily with the question, what happened and why? The book of Chronicles, or the books of 1st and 2nd Chronicles, were written to the restored community, those returning from the exile, and they take up the question, what happens now? Okay, we know why we were in the exile, we know where we've been, we have felt the rod of discipline, but what happens now? The fall of Judah had entailed the deposing of the Davidic King, the destruction of the temple, and of Jerusalem, and the wholesale deportation to Babylon of large segments of the population. At the time Chronicles was written the 70 years of exile had elapsed, and the former nation of Israel, or more properly, Judah, although the Chronicleer often employs again this term Israel to describe those who returned. Because that was all that was left, this former nation of Israel was attempting to regroup from 2nd Chronicles 36, 20, and following, we may establish a terminus aquo for the book of Chronicles, that is the earliest possible date at which the book could have been written. Let's look at 2nd Chronicles 36, 20, and following. Beginning in verse 20, here at the end of the book of Chronicles and 2nd Chronicles, and remember Chronicles was probably originally a single book and not two books, the division really wasn't introduced until the 15th century. We read this in verse 20, he carried into exile to Babylon the remnant who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons, this would be Nebuchadnezzar, and his sons, until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests, all the time of its desolation it rested until the 70 years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord, spoken by Jeremiah. In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord, spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, King of Persia, to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing. This is what Cyrus, King of Persia, says, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any one of his people among you, may the Lord be with him and let him go up. We hear at the very end of the book of Chronicles that the terminus aqua, the earliest possible date for the completion of the writing of this book, at least the earliest, not the latest, but the earliest, was the return or the Cyrus edict which allowed the remnant to begin to return to the promised land. So this would be the terminus aqua. Now the terminus odd quim which would be the latest possible date is a little harder to establish and there there can be considerable debate as to exactly where to date this book. But it is clear at least that it is exiled Israel now returning to the land that is the audience. After the devastating judgment which had the fallen Israel, it is not at all surprising that there seemed to be now profound doubt or we can assume that there was profound doubt of Yahweh's, the Lord's continued interest in his people. Ray Dillard looking at these various factors has suggested that the fundamental question addressed in the books of Chronicles is this or were these two variations on the theme, is God still interested in us? Are his covenant still in force? Is there anything left after our sin and punishment? Is God still interested in us? Are his covenant still in force? Again we can think of the way in which we should go about disciplining our children, one of the disciplines should be effective and somewhat painful so that it means something it should be followed immediately by reassurance that we love them and that we have their interest in our heart and that they are still ours and that it is past. The children of Israel were asking that question, is God still interested in us? The Chronicles answer is yes. God is still interested in us. Of course he is still interested in us. Yes, the covenants are still in force, though we can now see them from an expanded perspective. Something of the Chronicles concerns can be discerned by comparing his account of the Davidic covenant in 1 Chronicles 17 with the earlier account in 2 Samuel 7. That is what we want to do when we come back after a break. We want to look at that, you have seen it before, at least if you have been thorough in your preparations, but we want to talk about those two accounts of the same event. Because I think they have something to teach us about the nature of biblical historiography, what is allowed in and how we should view it, what kinds of questions we should ask of it, can really just train us to approach the biblical literature more on its own terms rather than just in terms of what we expect from it. We can also learn something about the purpose of the writer of Samuel and the writer of Chronicles from looking at those two. When we come back after the break, which we will take in just a minute, I want us to look at that first, and we will talk some about that. For those of you who are here last time, you may have noticed at the back of the outline, there is those two sheets where you were to do a little looking in the interim and some comparison. So we will come back after the break and deal with that.