Psalms in chronicles

By the time of the Chronicler the post-exilic community had existed for a century and a half with a fully functioning temple but without a king. If the Chronicler had felt any need for the reinstitution of the monarchy, he would have had to make a strong case for it. Instead, his additional paragraph in 2 Chronicles 7 puts the onus of responsibility exclusively on the people. Yahweh promises to forgive and to heal provided that Israel humbles itself, prays, seeks Yahweh's face, and repents. The promise in this programmatic verse is that there will always be forgiveness and healing for those who wholeheartedly participate in Israel's religious life and in the temple's worship.

When the Chronicler rejoins the text of 1 Kings 9 in v. 16, after his inserted paragraph, the emphasis is on the permanence of Yahweh's commitment to the temple: Yahweh's name will be there forever, his eyes and heart always. The Chronicler does not even include the reference in Kings to Solomon's building of the house.

The Chronicler does include in 2 Chr 7:17-18 an equivalent for 1 Kgs 9:4-5, the conditional dynastic promise to the house of David based on the king's behavior. But this conditional promise is relativized by being preceded and followed by longer paragraphs dealing with the positive and negative consequences of community behavior. The Chronicler significantly omits the words "over Israel forever" from Kings when speaking of the monarchy. (2) This fits with our thesis that the Chronicler placed little or no emphasis on the reinstitution of the monarchy. While he retains both references in the previous paragraph to Yahweh's permanent residence in the temple, he deletes the reference to permanence when it comes to the house of David. In the final paragraph of 2 Chronicles 7 (vv. 19-22) he follows the text of his Vorlage fairly consistently. (3)

What is clear is that the Chronicler in 2 Chronicles 7 has put his emphasis on the positive and negative consequences of the behavior of the people as a whole. His call for renewal comes in his inserted paragraph, in which the king plays no role, just as the king had played no role in the period of reconstruction up to the Chronicler's time. When kings like Hezekiah are praised in the Chronicler's history, it is as religious leaders who humble themselves, pray, seek the face of Yahweh, and repent.

The Chronicler seems to have had no great desire of or hope for a future king with political powers. His new psalm, 2 Chr 6:41-42, created from fragments of Psalm 132, also lacks completely the latter's messianic, hymnic emphases. Instead it prays for Yahweh to go to his place of rest in the temple, for the priests and loyal folk to receive material blessings, and for king Solomon merely to have his long prayer answered: "Yahweh God, do not refuse your anointed one."

The Chronicler's emphasis in this context on the importance of the temple and on the behavior of his audience, the people in general, is composed by citations from three psalms and a passage from 1 Kings 9. But in both cases he transforms the meaning of the earlier passages by deft editing and skilled additions and omissions. The Chronicler is a parade example of carrying out the hermeneutical assignment that summons each generation of God's people, including our own, to tell the faith of the parents in the language of and in the context of the children.