Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Müller, Pakkala, and ter Haar Romeny on the Chronicler's Theologically-Driven Reworking of 2 Kings 12:1-3 in 2 Chronicles 24:1-2


Commenting on a small, purposeful and theologically-motivated change to the biblical texts by the Chronicler, Müller, Pakkala, and ter Haar Romeny wrote:

A Small Omission with a Large Impact:
Jehoiada the Priest Teaches Joash

The Chronicler’s account of Joash’s reign in 2 Chr 24:1-27 is thoroughly different from that of 2 Kgs 12:1-22, but the beginning of the story was taken almost word for word from 2 Kgs 12. Many details in the source text conflicted with the Chronicler’s theological and other conceptions, but especially the basic development of the events as described in 2 Kgs 12 would have been difficult if not impossible for him to accept

According to 2 Kgs 12, King Joash was a good king because Jehoiada, the priest, had taught him, and consequently Joash took interest in the temple and restored it. Except for the high places, which are a recurrent sin of all good and evil kings of Judah up to King Hezekiah, King Joash is said to have done nothing wrong. According to 2 Kgs 12:19, however, he said to give all the votive gifts (כל-הקדשים) from the temple as well as the gold of the temple and of the palace to King Hazael of Aram. This was done in order to save Jerusalem from an imminent attack by the Arameans. The author of 2 Kgs 12 does not appear to blame the king at all, and the event is described rather neutrally as a necessary action to save Jerusalem from destruction.

For the Chronicler the temple was the center of his theology, and he would have regarded Joash’s act of giving the votive offerings and temple measures to the Arameans as a total catastrophe and a sign of Yhweh’s anger and punishment. In view of his conceptions of divine justice and just retribution, there was an evident contradiction between the goodness of King Joash and the robbing of the temple. The course and development of the events as described in 2 Kgs 12 would hardly have been possible for the Chronicler, and this is probably the main reason for most of the changes he made in relation to the source text.

It may have been difficult for the Chronicler to change the general evaluation of Joash as a good king, because he is said to have done many good deeds, such as the repairing of the temple, but at the same time the plundering of the temple had to be given an interpretation. A small omission in the evaluation of the king’s reign solved the problem.

2 Kgs 12:1-3

בן־שבע שנים יהואש במלכו
בשנת־שבע ליהוא מלך יהואש וארבעים שנה מלך בירושלם ושם אמו צביה מבארשבע
ויעש יהואש הישר בעיני יהוה כל־ימיו אשר הורהו יהוידע הכהן

1 Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, 2 in the seventh year of Jehu Joash began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah from Beer-sheba. 3 Joash did what was right in the sight of Yhweh all his days, because the priest Jehoiada instructed him.

2 Chron 24:1-2

בן־שבע שנים יאש במלכו וארבעים שנה מלך בירושלם ושם אמו צביה
 מבאר שבע
ויעש יואש הישר בעיני יהוה כל־ימי יהוידע הכהן

1 Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah from Beer-sheba. 2 Joash did what was right in the sight of Yhweh all the days of the priest Jehoiada.

According to 2 Kgs 12:3, Joash was a good king all the days of his life (כל-ימין) because Jehoiada had taught him. However, the Chronicler omitted a small section of this sentence, thereby changing the whole idea. According to his account, Joash was a good king all the days of Jehoiada (כל-ימין יהוידע), which implies that he was not good al the days of his own life. It is not explicitly stated that Joash was evil, but it is implied that Jehoiada kept him from committing evil deeds. That the sentence in 2 Kgs is somewhat ambiguous (whether אשר should be understood as introducing a relative or explicative clause) may have been caused by earlier editing, since the whole sentence beginning with אשר could be a later addition to 2 Kgs 12:3, as some scholars have suggested. Nonetheless, this does not change our case, because the Chronicler was evidently aware of this part of the text: in Chronicles the references to Jehoiada has been changed so that Joash’s piety is limited to a part of his life.

Once Joash’s piety was restricted to the time that Jehoiada lived, the door was open for the other changes in the passage that explained the contradiction between the king’s goodness and the restoration of the temple on the one hand (2 Kgs 12:2-17) and the catastrophe later in the king’s reign is divided by Jehoiada’s death into two different periods. The temple is restored during the time that Jehoiada lived, whereas the time after his death is characterized by sin and punishment. Because of this division, the idea of Jehoiada’s death had to be added to the Chronicler’s account (2 Chr 24:15-16). This was followed by several other insertions. Immediately after Jehoiada has died, Joash listens to the leaders of Judah (v. 17), which then leads to the neglect of the temple and the worship of the Asherim and the idols (v. 18). The prophets sent by Yhweh (vv. 19-20) are ignored, and finally Joash orders Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, to be stoned to death (vv. 21-22). The words of the dying Zechariah function as the bridge from the sins to the ensuing catastrophe: “May Yhwh see and avenge” (v. 22).

The attack of the Arameans is described in the following verse. The additional material in vv. 15-22 serves the Chronicler’s broader conception that a catastrophe is always a punishment for sins. These verses explain how the king’s initial goodness eventually turned into evil. They are necessary to the Chronicler’s attempt to transform the story to conform to his theological conceptions.

Consequently, a comparison between 2 Kgs 12:1-3 and 2 Chr 24:1-2 illustrates how theological reasoning could justify an omission of a part of the source text that changed the meaning of the sentence substantially. This small omission then enabled the Chronicler to make other more extensive changes throughout the passage. (Reinhard Müller, Juha Pakkala, and Bas ter Haar Romeny, Evidence of Editing: Growth and Change of Texts in the Hebrew Bible [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014], 209-12)

For more examples of the Chronicler editing his source material, including biblical texts, for theological and other reasons, see: