Theopedia

2 Chronicles

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

— 2 Chronicles 7:14

Overview

2 Chronicles continues the retelling of Israel’s history begun in 1 Chronicles, covering Solomon’s reign and the temple’s construction, then the subsequent history of the kingdom of Judah alone down to the exile and Cyrus’s decree.1 Like its companion volume, the book is not simply a copy of Kings: the Chronicler selects, omits, and rearranges that earlier material for a specific audience, the Jewish community newly returned from Babylon and engaged in rebuilding its national and religious life.1

Timeline

  • Solomon asks for wisdom: At Gibeon the LORD offers Solomon anything he wishes; Solomon asks for wisdom to govern Israel, and God grants it along with riches and honor (2 Chron. 1).
  • Solomon builds and dedicates the temple: Solomon builds the temple David prepared for, and at its dedication the LORD’s glory fills the house so that the priests cannot minister (2 Chron. 2-7).
  • The kingdom divides under Rehoboam: Rehoboam’s harsh response to Israel’s request for relief drives ten tribes to rebel, splitting the united kingdom and leaving Rehoboam only Judah (2 Chron. 10).
  • Asa’s reforms and covenant renewal: Asa removes idols from Judah, defeats a vast Cushite army by calling on the LORD, and leads the people into a solemn covenant renewal (2 Chron. 14-15).
  • Jehoshaphat’s reforms and prayer: Jehoshaphat sends teachers to instruct Judah in the law, then, facing a vast invading coalition, leads the nation in prayer and sees the LORD rout the enemy (2 Chron. 17; 20).
  • Athaliah’s usurpation and Joash’s rescue: Athaliah seizes the throne and slaughters the royal line, but the infant Joash is hidden in the temple and later crowned king by the priest Jehoiada (2 Chron. 22-23).
  • Uzziah’s pride and leprosy: After a long, successful reign, Uzziah proudly burns incense in the temple against the law, and the LORD strikes him with leprosy for life (2 Chron. 26).
  • Ahaz’s apostasy closes the temple: Ahaz sacrifices to foreign gods, shuts the temple doors, and brings Judah low, provoking the LORD’s anger during his reign (2 Chron. 28).
  • Hezekiah reconsecrates the temple: Hezekiah reopens and cleanses the temple, then leads Judah and remnants of Israel in a great Passover celebration unmatched since Solomon’s day (2 Chron. 29-30).
  • Manasseh’s apostasy and repentance: Manasseh fills Judah with idolatry during the kingdom’s longest reign, but after being carried captive to Babylon, he humbles himself and the LORD restores him (2 Chron. 33).
  • Josiah’s reforms and Passover: Josiah purges idolatry, repairs the temple where the book of the law is found, and leads Judah in the last great Passover before the exile (2 Chron. 34-35).
  • Judah falls; Cyrus’s decree ends the exile: After repeated warnings through the prophets, Babylon destroys Jerusalem and the temple; the book closes with Cyrus’s decree permitting the exiles to return (2 Chron. 36).

Author and Date

Like 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles is assigned by tradition to Ezra the priest and scribe, written after the return from the Babylonian captivity, during the process of Judah’s restoration as a nation.2 The author had access to public records also used by the writer of Kings but made different selections from them “in part at least,” which accounts for both the overlap and the divergence between the two histories.2

Historical and Literary Context

Because the book was written for a community that already knew the outcome, the exile, it presents Judah’s kings with an eye to what their example could still teach a nation trying to reconstitute itself: it passes over Solomon’s idolatry in relative silence even as it does not spare the sins of the kings who came after him (2 Chron. 16:7-12; 19:2; 32:25, 31; 35:21-22).2 2 Chronicles follows Judah’s throne alone after the kingdom divides, omitting the history of the northern kingdom of Israel except where it touches Judah’s own story, since the ten tribes offered the restoration community no example worth following.2

Structure

2 Chronicles falls into three movements, continuing directly from 1 Chronicles:1

  1. Solomon’s reign and the building of the temple (chs. 1-9). Solomon’s wisdom, the construction and dedication of the temple, and the glory of his kingdom.
  2. The kings of Judah, from Rehoboam to Zedekiah (chs. 10-36:21). The Chronicler follows Judah’s throne alone after the kingdom divides.
  3. The exile and Cyrus’s decree (ch. 36:15-23). Judah’s fall to Babylon for persistent covenant unfaithfulness, followed by the book’s closing note of hope in Cyrus’s proclamation permitting the exiles to return and rebuild the temple.

Major Themes

A theologically curated retelling of Samuel and Kings

The Chronicler omits the history of the northern kingdom almost entirely, since it offered the restoration community no usable example, and passes over Solomon’s idolatry even while still recording the sins of later, less prominent kings (2 Chron. 16:7-12; 19:2; 32:25, 31; 35:21-22).2 The retelling is therefore selective by design, shaped to serve the returned community’s need for a usable, hope-giving account of its own royal and priestly heritage rather than a complete record of the monarchy’s failures.2

The centrality of temple worship

2 Chronicles carries the emphasis of 1 Chronicles’s temple-preparation chapters forward: Solomon’s building and dedication of the temple opens the book (2 Chron. 2-7), and the narrative repeatedly returns to the sanctuary and its service through the reigns that follow, from Asa’s covenant renewal (2 Chron. 15:1-15) to Hezekiah’s reconsecration of the temple (2 Chron. 29-31) to Josiah’s Passover (2 Chron. 35:1-19).1

“If my people… will humble themselves and pray” as a recurring pattern

God’s word to Solomon at the temple’s dedication, that he will hear and heal the land when his people humble themselves, pray, and turn from wickedness (2 Chron. 7:14), is not left as a single promise but plays out repeatedly across the book: Asa leads Judah into a solemn covenant with the Lord, Jehoshaphat’s reforms and his prayer in the face of invasion are recorded at length, and Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s own reforms follow the same pattern of humbling and turning back to the Lord.1

God’s faithfulness despite covenant unfaithfulness

Judah’s kings repeatedly break covenant, and the Chronicler does not conceal it. Yet the Lord preserves the Davidic line through that unfaithfulness rather than extinguishing it: even after Jehoram’s apostasy, “the LORD was not willing to destroy the house of David, because of the covenant that he had made with David” (2 Chron. 21:7).

Hope beyond exile in Cyrus’s decree

2 Chronicles ends not with Jerusalem’s fall but with Cyrus’s proclamation that the Lord had charged him to build a house at Jerusalem and that any of God’s people could go up to do it (2 Chron. 36:22-23). Michael Kruger observes that ending the Hebrew canon on this note “places the reader in a posture of eschatological expectation, looking ahead to the time when the Messiah, the son of David, will come to Jerusalem and bring full deliverance to his people,” since the physical return the decree makes possible is not itself the promised change of heart.3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 256. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Barrows, 257. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), 49. ↩