Commentary on the Third Book of Kings

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 The 3rd and 4th books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible originally constituted one book, Kings, Heb. Melachim, and only from the beginning of the 16th century. according to the Nativity of Christ, this book is divided into two - starting from the Bomberg edition of the Hebrew Bible of 1517, the two parts of the previously undivided book are called special titles: Melachim I and Melachim II - undoubtedly under the influence of the Greek Bible LXX, in which from the very beginning there were two books, in connection with the books of Samuel (or 1 and 2 Samuel) called: βασιλειων τρίη, βασιλειων τεττάρτη. However, in this Greek version, on the one hand, the terminology itself is not entirely accurate - the transfer of melachim (kings) through Βασιλειαί (kingdoms). Blessed Jerome says: “Melachim id est Regum, qui tertio et tquarto Regum (Regnorum) volumine continetur... Meliusque multo Melachim id est Regum, quam Mamlachoth id est Regnorum dicere. Non enim multarum gentium ragna describit, sed inius israelitici populi.” Indeed, the 3rd and 4th books of Kings contain the history of the actual royal power and kings (not theocracy in general) of the same Jewish people, which is why the name “Kings” is more consistent with their content than “Kingdoms”. On the other hand, there is no real basis for dividing a single story into two books: the last chapter of the 3rd book of Kings and the first chapter of the 4th book of Kings, setting out one story of the king of Israel Ahaziah, could only be artificially divided into two books. In fact, both books, both in form and in content, represent a single indivisible whole, even having an advantage over other biblical Old Testament books in terms of unity and completeness. They begin with the story of the most glorious of the Jewish kings, Solomon, who, by the providence of God, was destined to build the only church to Jehovah according to the law; and ends with the depiction of the death of the Kingdom of Judah, the end of the Davidic dynasty and the burning of the Temple of Jerusalem, and thus contain the history of a whole, completely completed period of biblical Jewish history (cf. 1 Kings 6:1): if the period from the exodus of the Jews from Egypt to Solomon was a transitional time of wanderings and wars, and David was also a “man of war” (1 Chronicles 28:3), and in religious terms the indicated time was the period of a mobile sanctuary - the tabernacle (2 Kings 7:6-7), then from Solomon, “the man of peace” (1 Chronicles 22:9), the time came for Israel complete, peaceful, lasting possession of the promised land (2 Kings 7:10–11; 1 Kings 5:3–4), according to which exactly Solomon built a fixed “house” of the name of Jehovah (2 Kings 7:13; 1 Kings 5:5, 6:12,38, 7:51). The unity of both books also extends to the form of presentation, style and writing techniques of the sacred author. One, strictly consistent point of view runs through the entire book - the theocratic view of the dependence of the historical destinies of Israel on the sincerity and purity of its faith; Everywhere here there are remarks of an instructive, religious and moral nature, so that the stories of the Jewish “kings” are, one might say, a church-historical work on Old Testament soil. The form and method of historiography of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings are strictly defined and the same throughout their entire length: the time of his accession to the kingdom is reported about each king, the total duration of his reign is determined, a characterization and a more or less detailed description of his activities is made; finally, the date of death and an indication of the source of information about this king. The time period covered by the contents of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings is approximately four hundred and fifty years: from the reign of Solomon - about 1015 BC. before the release in Babylon from prison of King Jehoiachin (2 Kings 25:27–30) in the year 37 after his resettlement into captivity, i.e. (599 - 37) in 562 BC. According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 10, Chapter 8, §4), kings from the line of David reigned 514 years, therefore without David, whose reign is described in the 2nd book of Samuel, - 474 years; the burning of the church, according to the named historian (ibid., § 5), occurred 476 years after its construction 1 . This period of the history of Israel itself breaks down into three smaller periods or eras, according to which the 3rd and 4th books of Kings can be divided into three parts: 1) the period of the reign of Solomon (1 Kings 1–11); 2) the period of synchronistic history of both kingdoms of the Jews, Judah and Israel, from the division to the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 12–22; 2 Kings 1–17); 3) the period of the solitary existence of the southern kingdom of Judah from the moment of the destruction of the kingdom of Israel until the fall of Jerusalem and Judea under the arms of the Chaldeans (2 Kings 18–25). For each of these eras, the sacred writer had his own special source: a) for the history of Solomon, such a source was the “Book of the Deeds of Solomon,” Heb. Sepher dibre – Schelomoh, LXX: βιβλίον τῶν ῥημάτων Σαλομών, Vulg.: liber verborum dierum Salomons, slav.: “The Book of the Words of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:41); b) for the history of the kings of the southern kingdom, from Rehoboam to Joachim inclusive, - “the chronicle of the kings of Judah”, Sepher dibre - ha-jamim lemalche lehudah, βιβλίον λόγων τῶν ἡμερῶν τοῖς βασιλεῦσι Ἰοῦδα, liber verborum dierum regum Juda, “The Book of the Words of the Kings of Judah” (1 Kings 14:29, 15:7, 22:45; 2 Kings 8:23, 12:19, 14:18, 15:6,15,36, 24:5, etc.) and c) for the history of the kings of the northern kingdom - “the chronicle of the kings of Israel” (1 Kings 14:19, 15:31, 16:5,14,20,27, 22:39; 2 Kings 1:18,10:34,13:8,12, etc.). The content and nature of the cited sources remain unknown; however, there is no doubt that they were separate, independent works (for each of the three indicated eras, the sacred writer uses one source, without mentioning the other two); that they contained more than what the writer borrowed from them (his usual formula: “other things are written in the book...”) and that when the 3rd and 4th books of Kings were written, the indicated sources not only existed, but were also very well known among the people. From the combination of the quotations in question from the books of Kings with parallel passages from the book of 2 Chronicles, one can see that all three mentioned sources were the writings of the prophets, who were generally the only historiographers in biblical antiquity (cf. 1 Kings 11:41 with 2 Chronicles 9:29; 1 Kings 14:21 with 2 Chronicles 12:15; 1 Kings 15:1-8 with 2 Chronicles 13:22; cf. also 2 Kings 18:13–20:19 with Is. 36–39; In contrast, the opinion of Delic et al. about the secular origin of the chronicles of the kings, which served as sources for the 3rd and 4th books of Kings, - about their compilation by the mazkir mentioned in (2 Kings 8:16; 1 Kings 4:3) (LXX: ὑπομνημάτογραψος, slav.: “memory writer” , Russian: “de-writer”), cannot find confirmation for itself in the biblical text. According to Blessed Theodoret, “every prophet had the custom of describing events that took place at that time that were contemporary to him. Others, putting it together, compiled the books of Kings” (“Commentary on the Books of Kings,” preface, see question 4 on 2 Kings and 49 on 4 Kings). The divinely inspired merits of the books of Kings are automatically assumed by this. The time of writing of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings can be determined with probability - from the mention of the liberation of Jehoiachin (562) and the absence in the books of an indication of the end of the captivity and the decree of Cyrus (536), the second half of the Babylonian captivity, around the half of the 6th century BC. The writer of the books is unknown: there are no definite indications of the author in the books. Talmudic tradition (Baba batra 15 f. 5) considers the prophet Jeremiah to be the writer of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings. But if this assumption could be supported by the similarity of some places from the books of Kings with the books of the prophet Jeremiah (cf. 2 Kings 2 with Jer. 52), then directly against it speaks: a) the time and b) the place of writing the 3rd and 4th books of Kings, since this time and place can be determined with probability. We have seen that the 3rd and 4th books of Kings could have been written no earlier than the second half of the Babylonian captivity; in this case, the prophet Jeremiah would then have been a hundred-year-old man; but it is known that the prophet Jeremiah, in the very first years of captivity, was taken by the Jews to Egypt (Jer. 43:6), where he soon suffered martyrdom from his fellow tribesmen (cf. Cheti-Minea, on May 1). It is also incredible that Egypt was the place where the 3rd and 4th books of Kings were written: it was not for a small group of Egyptian fugitives from the Jews that such a work was required to be compiled, but for the main part of the people of God, that is, those captive in Babylon. The latter is the probable place of origin of both books (an indication of this was seen, by the way, in 2 Kings 24), and if there are almost no indications of the life of Egypt in our books, then Babylonian life and events from the history of the New Chaldean kingdom were reflected in these books in many different ways. But if the prophet Jeremiah was not the writer of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings, then he still influenced the sacred writer of the 3rd and 4th books of Kings with his book (cf. Jer. 52 and 2 Kings 25). The acceptance of books into the canon (in the section “nebim rischonim” - “first, early prophets”) in any case speaks of their high dignity and authority in the Jewish church. The purpose of the books is moralizing - to show that “while Israel knew how to use Divine Providence, he lived in peace and silence, and everyone was submissive to him; but when he lost God’s help, he was subjected to unpleasant attacks” (Blessed Theodoret, commentary. on the 4th book of Kings, question. 31). According to the calculations of I. Spassky (later Sergius, Archbishop of Vladimir), 407 years passed from the founding of the church to its destruction. Study of Biblical Chronology. Kyiv, 1857, p. 131 You might be interested in: