Imagine some earnest young theological scholar who, out of a surplus of enthusiasm and devotion, sets himself the task of reading through all 66 books of the Christian Bible, front to back, Genesis to the Revelation to John. Let's for the sake of a speculative question I mean to pose endow the youngster with more than the usual amount of determination without making him a hero--say, he's in the top quintile for perseverance, but not the top decile. The betting question is how far will he have proceeded when he gives up on the project. I think a reasonable estimate would be somewhere in First or Second Kings. If the bet is of the over-under variety, and the mark set at Deuteronomy, I'd take the over for sure. Genesis is often sublime, Exodus of intermittent interest, and, by the end of the Pentateuch, which is where Deuteronomy stands, the diminishing returns will not have yet knocked out someone who embarks with enthusiasm and top-quintile credentials. But if the mark is set at the end of II Chronicles--I and II Chronicles follow I and II Kings--I want the under. These historical books are oppressively dull, and the division of each into two books can be for no other reason than their oppressive lengths. To persevere past the Chronicles toward the Old Testament's wisdom literature, the next relief in sight, would require unusual tolerance for boredom, or maybe a mystic's confidence in the favorable effects of forcing one's eyes to move over all the words--something, anyway, not possessed by most of us.
Yet we must acknowledge that, just as some people peruse with avidity the uniform commercial code, others are devoted to biblical literature. I'm not counting those who profess interest out of religious duty, just those who on Crusoe's island could be employed, happily and for all time, with the part of the Old Testament occupying the bulk between Deuteronomy and Job. What difficulties have they surmounted? And, having surmounted them, what view, unobscured by the dreary weather, have they attained?
Many of the challenges are by now familiar, and we may begin with the matter of multiple sources that one could not say have been woven together into a spellbinding tapestry by a skilled editor. The result is that what one supposes to be "the narrative" is actually several narratives that are constantly interrupting one another and giving a general reader the strong impression of incoherence. A modest example might be the sequence of stories about the prophet Elijah in chapters 17, 18, 19, and 21 of I Kings. These four chapters make a single unit that for some reason is presented, on account of the unrelated chapter 20, nonconsecutively. What the hell, editor?
It is possible to detect in Kings the hand of an unambitious editor, often referred to as "the Deuteronomic editor" because of his evident allegiance to the general outlook of the Deuteronomic source for the Pentateuch. Recall that, in the Pentateuch, the so-called Yahwist source is responsible for the sublimity--man created by God kneeling in the earth and dirtying his hands, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, the "handmaid" and Ishmael, and the story of Jacob's family, featuring preeminently the proto-picaresque adventures of Joseph and his brothers. By contrast, the Deuteronomist's calling card is--well, when I say his hand may be "detected" in I Kings, I'm thinking of chapter 3 concerning the bureaucratic organization of King Solomon's government, and chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 concerning his construction projects, including an extraordinary level of detail on the building specs. This longueur draws to a blessed conclusion when, in chapter 9, God appears to Solomon in a vision and says:
[I]f you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel for ever . . . . But if you turn aside from following me . . . .
It's not necessary to continue since anyone may, using their own words, produce an apt paraphrase of the recitation of dire consequences following upon disobedience.
And what a lot of disobedience ensued! Not just Solomon, either. If you can keep your eyes open, you might notice the formulaic phrases with which the deficiencies of successive kings are identically summarized. They come to power in the nth year of So-and-So, rule for some number of years, fall well short of the example of David, may be read about further in a certain named (but now lost) work, and then "slept with their fathers," necessitating the ascension of a new So-and-So. Their shortcomings aren't vivid but appear to arise mainly from excessive libido and excessive tolerance of the religions of Israel's neighbors. This would be a good time to mention that in about 920 B.C. the United Kingdom of Israel divided into a northern kingdom ("Israel," including the cities of Shechem and Samaria) and a southern kingdom ("Judah," with a principal city of Jerusalem). More kingdoms, more kings, more unfamiliar geographic references, more insufficiently labeled and alternating histories of north and south--those in the top decile, though soldiering onward, have lost their enthusiasm.
Quite a lot is known of the actual history of this period, and, reading around in it a little, the Deuteronomist turns out to be an unreliable guide. For example, one would conclude from I Kings that Omri, quite a consequential figure in secular history, was just another in the line of Israel's undistinguished libertine rulers. Moreover, the effort to make events conform with the notion that God lavished his blessings on his people during the reigns of pious kings but sent hardship during the reigns of the impious required some--shall we say--manipulations. A careful general reader may catch the scent of this in the bifurcated portrait of King Solomon. In the early chapters, he's wise and devout--the famous story of his deciding which of the competing mothers should get the baby is in chapter 3--but chapter 11 begins, ominously, "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women." Predictably, it develops that trouble is afoot in the kingdom, and the explanation appears to be that the king's declining moral status must account for it.
Is it possible that Solomon, as he approached his dotage, became more randy and cosmopolitan? If so, he reversed the common trend. It seems more likely that the Deuteronomist is struggling to make history align with a religious doctrine requiring that God reward good kings and punish the bad. Viewed in this light, the tedium recedes to some modest degree, and it's possible to sense a bit of life behind the wooden exposition. More about all the excitement when we progress into II Kings!
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