Thursday, September 22, 2022

Sara Japhet on 2 Chronicles 6:22-23

  

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