(3) The same style and diction are found in both works (excepting of course in such sentences and passages as are transcribed from older sources). Characteristic phrases are the following:
(a) “Fathers’ houses”; compare 1 Chronicles vii. 2, note.
(b) “The house of God,” very frequently in Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah in place of the usual “house of the Lord” (Jehovah). With this compare the avoidance of the use of the name Jehovah (Jahveh) in such places as 2 Chronicles xvii. 4 (compare Authorized Version with Revised Version), xx. 12, 30; Ezra viii. 18, 21.
(c) “genealogy” (“reckon by genealogy”); compare 1 Chronicles v. 17, note; Ezra ii. 62.
(d) “to oversee”; 1 Chronicles xxiii. 4; 2 Chronicles ii. 2 [ii. 1 Hebrew]; Ezra iii. 8 (Revised Version “to have the oversight”).
(e) “willingly offer”; 1 Chronicles xxix. 14; Ezra i. 6.
These are merely a few instances out of very many which might be given. This similarity of style and language is far more striking in the Hebrew (compare [§ 3, C], and for full particulars the long list in Curtis, Chronicles, pp. 27 ff.).
When fully stated, the evidence indicated under (2) and (3) above is of a convincing character, and the conclusion that Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah were at one time a single work should be unhesitatingly adopted.