Days 99-103: 2 Chronicles

Again this week, we are taking a brief reprieve from the daily blog for a weekly one instead. This week and last, we have included a good introduction to the books that are the focus of our readings – 1 and 2 Chronicles. Both introductions come from a resource we have recommended previously, an online study resource called, The ESV Literary Study Bible. If you enjoy the resource, perhaps you would like to use it more often. You may access The ESV Literary Study Bible at http://www.esvliterarystudybible.org/ . Here is an introduction to 2 Chronicles.

The book at a glance.
36 chapters, 822 verses. Second Chronicles records the history of a nation over a span of about four hundred years, yet the focus is so thoroughly on individual kings that the book seems less like the history of a nation than an anthology of brief biographies. Sometimes the compiler focuses on individual events, giving us information equivalent to what a modern television crew might film on site. But this is supplemented by factual data that resembles material that the writer of a feature article might uncover in the national archives. The incidents about which we read are representative of the spiritual flavor of the nation and its kings. While the original audience had a patriotic or nationalistic interest in the facts and characters the historian put before them, our interest is in the timeless principles that come through the particulars. The writer makes the latter task easy by keeping the facts of national history within a strong interpretive framework in which people and events are regarded in spiritual terms. Political and religious history mingle with biographical sketches. The primary literary impulse is to give us positive examples to emulate and negative examples to avoid.