The Literature of the Old Testament

by George Foot Moore

By the side of these are stories celebrating the magnificence and wisdom of Solomon, the beginnings of the exuberant Solomonic legend. The judgment of Solomon in the case of the two harlots and of the visit of the Queen of Sheba are examples of the popular tale, and relatively old. The dedication of the temple has been much expanded by the author of the Book of Kings; 1 Kings viii. 14-66 are wholly his composition; ix. 1-9 is an appendix to c. 8. In viii. 1-12 an older account of the dedication has been improved by various hands. Comparison with the Greek translation shows that this process went on to very late times; the latest additions are akin to the priestly stratum in the Pentateuch. Chapter xi. 1-13 also is by the author of the Book of Kings, built about a few words from his source in vs. 7; vss. 29-40 are of the same sort.

1 Kings 12-2 Kings 17 contains the parallel history of Israel and Judah. The method of the author is to follow the reign of a king, say of Israel, to its end and then go back to take up the king of Judah who came to the throne during this reign, follow him to his death, and return to pick up the Israelite history again in the same way. The result is, thus, interlocking histories, rather than a parallel history. The length of each reign is given, probably ultimately from the annals, with a computed synchronism which is at some points demonstrably in error. With the introduction of each king a comprehensive judgment by the standard of the deuteronomic law is pronounced upon his reign. Thus, "In the eighteenth year of the king Jeroboam the son of Nebat [king of Israel], began Abijah to reign over Judah. Three years reigned he in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Maacah the daughter of Abishalom. And he walked in all the sins of his father which he had done before him," etc. "In the third year of Asa king of Judah began Baasha the son of Abijah to reign over all Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned twenty and four years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin." These judgments are so stereotyped that they are pronounced even on kings who reigned but a short time—Zimri, for instance, who lasted only seven days. In the case of godly kings of Judah, even of such as are credited with commendable zeal against the worships that Deuteronomy denounces as Canaanitish heathenism, the reproach of leaving the worship of Jehovah at the "high places" unmolested is not spared them; see, e.g., 1 Kings xv. 1-14; xxii. 43.

The conflict between the tribes to whom the name Israel by historical right belonged, headed by Ephraim, intent on reclaiming the ancient liberties which Solomon had curtailed and securing adequate guarantees for them, and Rehoboam, obstinate to maintain the despotism which his father had established and the supremacy of Judah, ended in the Israelite tribes refusing to acknowledge the succession and setting up a kingdom of their own with Jeroboam the son Nebat as king. These critical events are narrated in the source, 1 Kings xii. 1-20, with noteworthy impartiality; a comparison with the treatment of the matter by the author of the Book of Kings himself in xi. 29-39; xii. 21-24, is instructive. The account of Jeroboam's religious foundations and innovations in c. xii. 26-33 (with which xiii. 33^b belongs) is probably based on an old Israelite source (the temples Jeroboam built, etc.), on which the author of the book has put his own construction and made his own comments. 1 Kings 13 is a specimen of the edifying stories—religious fiction—which were added to the historical books at a very late time and are especially numerous in Chronicles; the reference to it in 2 Kings xxiii. 17 f. is an interpolation in a context itself post-exilic. The story of the visit of Jeroboam's wife to the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings xiv. 1-18) is in the manner of the author, but seems to have an older basis. The fluid state of the text at a very late time is again shown by the fact that in some recensions of the Greek version the story is not found in this place, but, together with other matter about Jeroboam (in part variant parallel to 1 Kings xi. 26 ff., 40), in a long passage which stands in c. 12 between vss. 24 and 25.

The invasion of Shishak, king of Egypt (1 Kings xiv. 25-28), is introduced by the author with a catalogue of the deuteronomic transgressions which provoked God to punish the kingdom in this way; the similarity to the introduction to the oppressions in Judges is apparent. So in the following chapters: the author's facts probably come from annalistic sources which can in places be recognized, but the religious interpretation of the events, which he sometimes gives in his own quality as historian, sometimes puts into the mouth of a prophet (e.g. xvi. 1-7, cf. xiv. 1-18), is from the point of view of the deuteronomist school.

Another characteristic of the author's method is illustrated by his treatment of the reign of Omri (1 Kings xvi. 23-28). Omri was the founder of the greatest dynasty of the northern kingdom, and was one of its greatest kings. From an inscription of the Moabite king Mesha, we learn that Omri subjugated the lands east of the Jordan (see also 2 Kings i. 1; iii. 4 ff.), and it is probable that his conquests were pushed to the north-east into Syria; the Assyrian kings long after his death call Israel the "house of Omri." But the long and brilliantly successful reign of a king who in religion followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel before him, "golden calves" and all, obviously could not be made to exemplify the doctrine that such sins are regularly visited by condign judgment in national disaster. Consequently, all that our author records of Omri, beyond the revolutions which paved for him the way to the throne (1 Kings xvi. 16-18), is contained in one verse, 1 Kings xvi. 24—he built a capital on a new site, Samaria!

In the following reign, however, Israel had troubles enough; the conquests east of the Jordan were lost, and the long chapter of Syrian wars began. This was material more to the author's purpose, and he makes good use of it. Here also, in addition to the annals and whatever other sources were at his hand for the preceding period, he had a new and peculiarly grateful source in the stories of Elijah and Elisha. To the fact that these prophets were outstanding figures in some of the crises of the Syrian wars we owe it that so much of the history of that struggle is preserved; for what the author has extracted from the annals is as meagre as elsewhere.

From such "lives and times" of the prophets is derived much the greater part of 1 Kings 17-2 Kings 10, with 2 Kings xiii. 14-21. The stories of Elijah (1 Kings 17-19; 21; 2 Kings 1; ii. 1-18) are among the most striking in the Old Testament; the supernatural in them seems the natural setting for a figure of such heroic mould, and is a stronger testimony than any record of fact could be to the impression of the superman on the imagination of ordinary mortals. Through the vesture of legend, we too have the impression of a something titanic in the man who dared solitary to stand for his God against kings, priests, prophets, and people, and, worse than all, the vengeful fury of a woman! We can see, also, that his conflict against the prophets of Baal makes an era in the history of religion in Israel. "If Jehovah be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him," he thunders at the people on Mt. Carmel. It was not the first assertion of the jealousy of Jehovah and the exclusiveness of the true religion; but the issue had never before been so dramatically joined. The intolerant monotheism of Judaism had found its war cry.

1 Kings 17-19, Elijah at Sarepta, on Carmel, and at Horeb, belong together; the beginning, which must in some way have brought Elijah upon the stage, is not preserved; 1 Kings 21 (Naboth's vineyard) may very well be from the same source; in the end of the chapter (vs. 20^b-26) the author of the Book of Kings has the word, and in the other chapters there are slight traces of the same hand. With these small exceptions the stories are old, and probably received their present literary form in the ninth century, certainly before the prophetic movement of the eighth. 2 Kings i. 2-17 is a legend of a different kind and presumably considerably younger. 2 Kings ii. 1-18, on the other hand, is akin to the older stories in 1 Kings 17-19, 21; it forms the connecting link with Elisha.

Among the stories of Elijah stand other episodes of the Syrian wars in which prophets figure, 1 Kings 20; xxii. 1-38. The second of these, Micaiah ben Imlah before Ahab and Jehoshaphat, is of peculiar interest. They are apparently of the same age with their surroundings. In both a few verses are from later editors. To the same cycle probably belong 2 Kings iii. 4-27, the campaign against Moab, as well as 2 Kings ix. 1-x. 27, Jehu's revolt instigated by Elisha, the murder of King Ahaziah and of the queen mother, Jezebel, the massacre of the princes of the house of Omri and the extirpation of the worship of Baal.

Beside these are a group of stories about Elisha, chiefly celebrating him as a wonder-worker, and bringing him into connection with the "sons of the prophets," who seem to have formed a kind of dervish order. The collector or editor has accumulated them all in one reign, probably against their original intention. Scattered through the narratives drawn from the lives of the prophets are brief notices from the annals and the usual deuteronomist appraisals by the author of Kings.