If
a man sin against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him
swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house; Then hear thou from
heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, by requiting the wicked, by
recompensing his way upon his own head; and by justifying the righteous, by
giving him according to his righteousness. (2 Chron 6:22-23)
Commenting on the above, Sara
Japhet in her excellent commentary on 1-2 Chronicles, wrote:
[22-23] With this passage Solomon begins to list all
the occasions on which the people may petition God's attention. The first
example given, however, deals not with man's relation to God, but with that of
a man to his neighbor. The Leitmotif of the prayer, 'hearken . . . and
forgive', is then absent here, for God appears not as one who 'hearkens to the
prayer of the sinner' but as one who 'judges his servants'. God's intervention
is expressly requested in the context of an 'oath', a matter from the broad
realm of legal practice, which cannot be left to human discretion, but only to
God's decision. To open this prayer with divine justice as the guarantee of the
social order is very much in line with Solomon's image as arbitrator.
The
social situation described here is of the same kind as those cited in Exod.
22.7-11. In cases of transgressions of an inter-personal nature which cannot be
settled through the regular judicial system, the damaged party requires the
other to take an oath concerning his innocence. This oath by nature requires
divine intervention, 'God do so to me and more if . . .', and there is no way
to ascertain the truth of the sworn statement except through God's response.
Solomon makes this his first request: that God may answer this human need and
reveal his judgment.
The
terms 'righteous' and 'guilty' are seen in this case in their judicial context:
they serve to distinguish between the person who takes an oath and is indeed
blameless and the other who uses the oath as a cover for his wickedness.
Since
the oath is sworn 'before thy altar', some kind of accompanying sacrifice seems
to be implied. It seems, however, that this offering should not be identified
with Lev. 6.1-7 [MT 5.20-26]. There, the sinner is required to make a
guilt-offering in addition to restitution of the actual loss, but nothing is
said how his guilt was proven. This is the only mention of the altar in
Solomon's prayer; the passage probably reflects ancient customs and is
important direct evidence of the existence and significance of this juridical procedure.
The
text of v. 22 (wenāšā’bō ‘ālāh) should be understood 'and he exacts
an oath from him' (assuming an exchange of he and alef (in the
verb nšh), the subject being the damaged party, 'the neighbour'. (In
order to avoid the awkward change of subject, the translations render the
active verb as passive; RSV 'is made to take an oath'; JPS 'an oath is exacted
from him'). As the damaged party cannot 'exact' anything concrete, he is
entitled to demand an oath, an occasion for God's intervention on his behalf.
Another
linguistic point concerns the change from I Kings 8.32 'condemn the guilty' (lehar
šī'a rāšā’) to 'requite the guilty (lehāšīb lehā šā)
in Chronicles. This was necessitated by a shift in the general connotation of
the hiphil conjugation, so that haršī'a (= condemn) came to mean
simply 'be wicked' . . . The Chronicler guards against possible misunderstanding by replacing the judicial term haršī'a (Deut. 25.1; Prov. 17.15; Exod.
22.8 etc.) with a more general 'to requite'. (Sara Japhet, I & II
Chronicles: A Commentary [Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1993], location 14840-14871 of 26645 of the Kindle
ed.)
The importance of this passage is
that, even in forensic contexts, the language of justifying/justified (צדק-/δικαι- word groups) is never used in the sense
of a legal fiction or imputation; instead, someone is judged to be “righteous”
because they are intrinsically “righteous” (or innocent of the legal
charges made against them). For more, see:
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
