Books of the Old Testament
Chronicles
"Divrai Hay-yahmeem" - The Lord's Words on Man's Works
from The Names and Order of the Books of the Old Testament
by E.W. Bullinger
The two books of Chronicles (like Samuel,
Kings, and Ezra-Nehemiah) form only a single book
in the manuscripts and early printed Hebrew
Bibles. The enumeration of the twenty-five Sedarim
runs right through the two books without a
break.
Unlike other books, it is not named from the
first word or words, or from the author, or from
the principal subject matter; but it has come
down to us with this special title. No one can
tell us by whom it was given. It comes with the
same authority as the text.
Divrai Hay-Yahmeem means literally words
of the days. It is difficult to find an
English equivalent which shall exactly represent
this expression. “The course of events,”
or “current events” or “annals”
etc., have been suggested, but they fail to
represent the idea that these are words,
and Divine words concerning those events:
the Divine comment and judgment of those works,
rather than the mere historical chronicle of them.
The Greek translators called the book paraleipomena,
things omitted, because they saw that many
things are recorded here which are not contained
in the parallel histories of Samuel and Kings.
Jerome discarded this, and called the book Chronica
or Liber Chronicorum, from which we have
our english title “Chronicles”.
The point of the Book is this - that while the
same events are recorded, they are viewed from a
different standpoint. In Samuel and Kings we have
the facts of the history; here we have
the Divine words and thoughts about
those facts. In the former books they are
regarded from Man’s standpoint;
here they are viewed from the Divine
standpoint.
Hence in Samuel (1 Samuel 31) we have the bare
history of Saul’s death, but in 1 Chronicles
(10:13-14) we have the Divine “words”
on that event. “So Saul died for his
transgression which he committed against the
Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he
kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that
had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it and
enquired not of the Lord; therefore He slew him,
and turned the kingdom unto David the son of
Jesse.” In 1 Samuel it was the true fact
that the Philistines slew him; but in 1
Chronicles we are taken behind the history and it
is revealed to us that it was the Lord’s
doing.
So the actions of the Kings are represented as
they stood in connection with the Lord or with
His service.
A key to the design of the whole book is
furnished by the way in which Hezekiah’s
reign is presented in the two books of Kings and
Chronicles respectively. Hezekiah’s reign
consisted of two great classes of events -
religious and secular, his Reformation of the
Worship of Jehovah, and the ordinary historical
events.
In Kings, the Religious Reformation is dismissed
in three verses; while the Secular history was
eighty-eight verses, or three chapters, devoted
to it (2 Kings 18:7-30, 19, and 20.)
In Chronicles it is just the opposite. Three
chapters (2 Chronicles 29, 30, and 31) or eighty-four
verses are devoted to the great Religious
Reformation; while one chapter (32) suffices to
record the Secular history.
Other parallels may be similarly traced and
worked out. Thus we have the divine words
respecting man’s works, illustrating to us
the important fact that “the Lord seeth not
as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart”
(1 Samuel 16:7). <--
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