Similar to 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles was originally just one book, Chronicles, so that’s how I’ve been treating it: as one book, instead of two.
And the comparison doesn’t stop there: the books of Kings and Chronicles cover a lot of the same ground, going over the history of God’s people from the time of King David through to the exile. At the history of the nation when it was called Israel and then, after the split, the two nations of Israel to the North and Judah to the South. The books differ in their approach, however, with Kings being more comprehensive, going into detail on both nations, and Chronicles focusing more on the Southern nation of Judah, mostly only mentioning Israel when there is a need to because the story impacts Judah.
I think much of the reason for this is that Chronicles was written after the exile of God’s people into Babylon. (Later Persia, when the the Persians defeated the Babylonians.) The author(s) of Chronicles have clear goals: to remind the people of God, as they come back to their homeland, about their past and, more importantly, to remind them of the God they [are supposed to] serve. Did they fail Him in the past? They clearly did – but that doesn’t mean they’re doomed to do so again. At least, the author(s) hope not.
Chronicles might seem like a boring read after going through the book of Kings, since there is so much overlap. Many of the stories are almost word-for-word identical in both books! Careful readers, however, will see that there are differences between the two: a detail here or there that’s given in one book but not the other. In one or two cases there are even kings who are completely dismissed as sinful in one book but have a redemption story recounted in the other! So, while comparisons between the two are helpful, and while there is a lot of overlap, we can’t just decide to skip Chronicles because we’ve read Kings.
The reader could be forgiven, however, for deciding to leave some time between the reading of the two books, rather than reading them back to back, so that things won’t seem quite so repetitive…
I’m sure I’ve said similar things many times over the course of this blog, but I don’t believe the reader should come into the Old Testament—especially books like Kings or Chronicles—with a judging heart. Yes, there are stories of people in these books who fail God, and they really did fail God – just as there are stories of people who do the right thing, and set a good example for us. But seeing only examples (positive or negative) in these pages is a shallow reading of the text. We should see a God who is infinitely Holy, who demands perfection from His people, but who is also patient and loving and forgiving, allowing them to fail time and time again before finally, finally delivering the judgement He had promised all along. This isn’t a message that is delivered to us directly; God doesn’t keep telling us, page after page, “I’m being patient with them… I’m being patient with them…” We have to sit back and think about it. Instead of focusing on the judgement that finally comes to the nations of Israel and Judah, we see how much time went by in which He didn’t send His judgement.
And then we look ahead hundreds of years into the future, when His Son takes the final judgement owed to us all, making us right with Him.
Passages from 1 Chronicles
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Passages from 2 Chronicles
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