Ill. CONTENTS AND PURPOSE. It must be remembered, however, that the history of the kings of the chosen people will necessarily have a different character and a different design from the chronicles of all other reigns and dynastieg ; it will, in fact, • be such history as a pious Jew would naturally write. Such a one, even without the guidance of Inspiration, would inevitably view all the events in the history both of his own and of neighbouring nations, not so much in their secular or purely historical as in their religious aspect. His firm belief in a particular Providence superintending the affairs of men, and re- quiting them according to their deserts by temporal rewards and punishment3, would alone give a stamp and colour to his narrative very different from that of the profane historian. But when we remember that the historians of Israel were in every case prophets; that is, that they were the advocates and spokesmen* of the Most High, we may be quite sure that history in their hands will have a "purpose,'' and that they will write with a distinctly religious aim. Such was assuredly the case with the author of the Krnos. His is an ecclesiastical or theocratic rather than a civil history. Indeed, as Bahr well observes, "Hebrew antiquity does not know the secular historian." t The different kings, consequently, are pourtrayed not so much in their relations to their subjects, or to other nations, as to the Invisible Ruler of Israel, whose representatives they were, whose religion they were charged to uphold, and of whose holy law they were the executors. It is this consideration accounts, as Rawlinson remarks, for the great length at which certain reigns are recorded as compared with others. It is this again, and not any "prophetico-didactic tendency,'' or any idea of advancing the prophetic order, accounts for the prominence given to the ministries o.f Elijah and Elisha, and to the interpositions of various prophets at different crises of the nation's life (see 1 Kings t 45; xi. 29-40; xiii. 12, 21-24; xiv. 5-16; xxii. 8; 2 Kings xiL 20; xx. 16; xxii. 14, &c.) It explains too the constant references to the Pentateuch, and to the previous history of the race (1 Kings ii. 3; iii. 14; vi. 11, 12; viii. 56, &c.; 2 Kings x. 31; • The 7rpo•pfirqi; is properly one who speaks for another, as advocate or interpreter. It is a mistake to explain the word of prediction or foretelling. The 7rpo has no reference to time. Apollo is called A,or; 7rpopfiT7Jr:-" the interpreter of Jove" (Aesch. Eumen. 19). And Plato calls poets Movawv 7rpo'f)ijrai (Phaedr. 262 D). It is true that the term 1:( 1:JJ conveys primarily the idea. of inspiration, or possession (::q~, ebu!livit, Gesenius: Thesaurus, ii. 838; of. µavrir; from µaivoµa,), but this word also, at o.n early period, had the meaning of " spokesman," as in Exod. vii. I, " Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." The "propheta" of the New Testament (1 Cor. xi. 4, 6; xiv. passim), it is well known, were preachers rather than predicters, and the term "prophesying '' WD.S formerly nsed in our own language of expounding. t In the American translation of Lange's " Bibelwerk'' unfortunately rendered, " The aeoula.r histo1io.n does not know Hebrew 11.utiquity," iv INTRODUCTION TO
xiv. 6; xvii. 18, 15, 87; xV'iii. 4-6, &c.), and the constant comparison of the successive monarchs with the king "after God's own heart" (1 Kings xi. 4, 38; xiv. 8; xv. 8, 11, &c.), and their judgment by the standard of the Mosaic law (1 Kings iii. 14; vi. 11, 12; viii. 56, &c.) The object of the historian clearly was, not to chronicle the naked facts of Jewish history, but to show how the rise, the glories, the decline and the fall of the Hebrew kingdoms were respectively the results of the piety and faithfulness or of the in·eligion and idolatry of the different kings and their subjects. Writing during the captivity, he would teach his countrymen· how all the miseries which had come upon them, miseries which had culminated in the destruction of their temple, the overthrow of their monarchy, and their own transporta- tion from the land of their forefathers, were the judgments of God upon their sins and the fruits of the national apostasy, He would trace, too, the fulfilment, through successive generations, of the great promise of 2 Sam. vii. 12-16, the charter of the house of David, on which promise indeed the history is a continuous and striking commentary. True to his mission as the Divine ambassador, he would teach them everywhere to see the finger of God in their nation's history, and by the record of incontrovertible facts, and especially by showing the fulfilment of the promises and threateninge of the Law, he would preach a return to the faith and morale of a purer age, and would urge " his contemporaries, living in exile with him, to cling faithfully to the covenant made by God through Moses, and to honour steadfastly the one true God." * The two Books embrace a period of four and a half centuries ; viz. from the accession of Solomon in B.:J. 1015 to the close of the captivity of Jehoiachin in B.o. 562. IV. DATE. The date of the composition of the Kings can be fixed, with much greater facility and certainty than that of many portions of Scripture, from the contents of the Books themselves. It must lie somewhere between B.c. 561 and B.c. 588 ; that is to say, it must have been in the latter part of the Babylonian captivity. It cannot have been before B.o. 561, for that is the year of the accession of Evil-Merodach, whose kindly treatment of Jehoiachin, '' in the year that he began to reign," is the last event men- tioned in the history. Assuming that this is not an addition by a later hand, which we have no reason to think is the case, t we have thus one limit-a ma:eimum of antiquity-fixed with certainty. And it cannot have been after B.o. 588, the date of the return under Zerubbabel, as it ie quite inconceivable that the historian should have omitted to notice an event of such profound importance, and one too which had such a direct bearing on • Theniue. t See Keil, Introduction to Kings, p. 9, THE BOOKS OF THE KINGS. V