KINGS
royal buildings, particularly of the temple, and the account of the dedication of the house (chaps, vi. -ix. 9); and the greater part of the latter account is either due to the redactor or largely rewritten. The whole section is descriptive rather than narrative, and the accurate details might have been got by actual observation of the temple at a date long subsequent to Solomon. In fact, they are not all due to a single hand. Thus we can still reconstruct a shorter text of vi. 17-21, which says only that "the house before the oracle was forty cubits long, and the oracle in the midst of the house within where the ark of Jehovah's covenant was to be placed was twenty cubits in length, breadth, and height; and he overlaid it with gold and made an altar of cedar [the table of shewbread] before the oracle and overlaid it with gold." The original author used the book of Jashar for the account of the dedication, and had access to some exact particulars as to dates, the artist Hiram, &c., which may have been contained in the temple records. The immediate environment of this section, if we set aside the floating elements in chap. ix. already referred to, is occupied with Solomon's dealings with King Hiram, who aided him in his architectural schemes and in the commercial enterprises which procured the funds for such costly works (chap. v. [Heb., v. 15-32] and ch. ix. 10 sq.). On each side of this context lies a complex of various narratives and notices illustrating Solomon's wisdom and greatness, but also, in chap, xi., his weakness and the incipient decay of his kingdom. It is evident that the rise of the adversaries who, according to xi. 25, troubled Solomon through all his reign cannot originally have been related as the punishment of the sins of his old age. The pragmatism as usual belongs to the redactor (xi. 4). We have seen that there was once another version of the history of Jeroboam.
In the history of the divided kingdom the redactor, as we have seen, follows a fixed scheme determined by the order of accessions, and gives a short epitome of the chief facts about each king, with an estimate of his religious character, which for the schismatic north is always unfavourable. The epitome, as the religious standpoint shows, belongs to the same hand throughout, i.e., to the Deuteronomistic redactor; but so much of it as relates to Judah is plainly based on good written sources, which from the nature of the particulars recorded may be identified with the book of Royal Chronicles referred to under each reign, which seems to have been a digest of official notices.
A similar chronicle is named for the kings of Israel, but if it actually lay before the editor he at least did not make such excerpts from it as we find in the Judæan history, for the epitome for Ephraim is very bare of concrete details. Besides the epitome, however, and the short excerpts from the Judæan chronicles which go with it, the history includes a variety of longer narratives, which alike in their subject-matter and their treatment are plainly distinct from the somewhat dry bones of the official records. The northern narratives are all distinguished in a greater or less degree by the prominence assigned to prophets. In the southern kingdom we hear less of the prophets, with the great exception of Isaiah; but the temple occupies a very prominent place.
The history of the man of God from Judah (1 Kings xiii.) is indubitably of Judæan origin. Its attitude to the altar at Bethel – the golden calf does not appear as the ground of offence – is not only diverse from that of Elijah and Elisha, but even from that of Hosea.[1] The other narratives that deal with the history of Ephraim are all by northern authors (see, for example, 1 Kings xix. 3; 2 Kings ix. 6), and have their centre in the events of the Syrian wars and the persons of Elijah and Elisha. But they are not all of one origin, as appears most clearly by comparing the account of the death of Naboth in the history of Elijah, 1 Kings xxi., and the history of Elisha and Jehu, 2 Kings ix. In the latter narrative Naboth's "field" lies a little way from Jezreel, in the former it is close to Ahab's palace (query, in Samaria? – see ver. 18 and variants of LXX. in ver. 1), and is described as a vineyard. The "burden" quoted by Jehu is not in the words of 1 Kings xxi., and mentions the additional fact that Naboth's sons were killed. 2 In other words, the history of Jehu presupposes events recorded in the extant accounts of Elijah, but not these accounts themselves. And the narrative in 2 Kings seems to be the more accurate; it contains precise details lacking in the other.
Now it is plain that 1 Kings xxi. belongs to the same history of Elijah with chaps, xvii.-xix. The figure of the prophet is displayed in the same weird grandeur, and his words (omitting the addition already noted in verses 20b sq.) have the same original and impressive force. That history, a work of the highest literary art, has come down to us as a fragment. For in 1 Kings xix. 15 Elijah is commanded to take the desert route to Damascus, i.e., the route east of the Jordan. He could not, therefore, reach Abel Meholah in the Jordan valley, near Bethshean, when he "departed thence" (ver. 19), if "thence" means from Horeb. The journey to Damascus, the anointing of Hazael and Jehu, must once have intervened; but they have been omitted because another account ascribed these acts to Elisha (2 Kings viii. ix.). Now there is no question that we possess an accurate historical account of the anointing of Jehu. Elisha, long in opposition to the reigning dynasty (2 Kings iii.), and always keeping alive the remembrance of the murder of Naboth and his sons (vi. 32), waited his moment to effect a revolution. It is true that the prime impulse in this revolution came from Elijah : but, when the history in 1 Kings represents Elijah as per sonally commissioned to inaugurate it by anointing Jehu and Hazael as well as Elisha, we see that the author's design is to gather up the whole contest between Jehovah and Baal in an ideal picture of Elijah and his work. In doing this he also places Ahab in a different light from that in which he appears in the other extant histories. Had we only his account we might suppose that Ahab had altogether rejected Jehovah and aimed at introducing a new national worship. But, in fact, we learn from the other records that, while like Solomon before him he gave countenance to his wife's religion, Ahab still regarded Jehovah as the God of Israel, consulted His prophets, and gave to his sons names expressive of devotion to the old faith. The ideal delineation of Elijah conveys a vivid picture of his imposing personality and permanent influence; but it records the impression he left behind him rather than the literal details of his life, and is no doubt of younger date than the more photographic picture of the accession of Jehu, though prior to the rise of the new prophecy mirier Amos and Hosea.[2]
2 [3]
- ↑ The expression "cities of Samaria" (ver. 32) reappears only after the deportation of Ephraim (2 Kings xvii. 24, 26), and seems to have come in here from 2 Kings xxiii. 19. Even in that passage the last clause of ver. 18, which alone refers to details of the history of 1 Kings xiii., is clearly erroneous; the old prophet did not come from Samaria. Another and later Jewish prophet foretold the fall of the altar of Bethel, viz., Amos of Tekoa.
- ↑ Some expressions that point to a later date are certainly added by another hand, e.g., the last part of xviii. 18. In old Israel, up to the time of Hosea, the Baalim (pl.) are the golden calves, which have no place in this context. A late insertion also is the definition of time by the stated oblation in the temple at Jerusalem, xviii. 29, 36. At ver. 36 this is lacking in the LXX.; at ver. 29 the longer insertion of the LXX. reveals the motive for the interpolation, viz., to assimilate Elijah's sacrifice to the legal service. The true text says that, when noon was
- ↑ The standing phrases common to 1 Kings xxi. 20b sq., 2 Kings ix. 7-10a, belong to the redaction, as is plain in the latter case from ix. 3.
