Sunday Sermonette: Sketchy History

In Ch. 14 we get a lot of random, poorly explained factoids about kings of Judah and Israel, with several references to the full story being told in The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. These books have been lost. This does not refer to the Book of Chronicles, which merely selectively recapitulates stories from the Torah and the Deuteronomic History without adding anything except a lot of genealogy consisting of nothing but lists of contextless names. It does contradict the Deuteronomic History in certain details, for example it offers yet a fourth version of the death of Saul.The stories in Ch. 14 seem largely pointless, although it is of interest that Israel could go to war against Judah and literally plunder Jerusalem.  I ' m not sure why this story would be here unless something like it had actually happened. The same goes for the unexplained conspiracies against kings. We may be getting close enough to the time this was written that we are leaving the realm of pure mythology and entering a realm inspired by real events, although likely not very reliably reported.One passage in Ch. 14 is ridiculous, verse 6, which refers to Deuteronomy 24:16, which commands that children not be put to death for the sins of the fathers. But as we have seen, this is a routine practice throughout both the Torah and the Deuteronomic History, often extending for multiple generations and resulting in the massacre of dozens of grandchildren.SAB rou...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs