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Unformatted text preview: 《The Pulpit Commentaries – 1 Kings
(Vol. 1)》(Joseph S. Exell)
Contents and the Editors
One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind.
Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The
Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble
this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of
pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight
on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.
This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better
preaching: Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the
Bible. Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text. Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.
In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as
historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and
Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.
All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from
a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of
God's Word.
About the Editors
Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The
Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for
several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit
Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.
Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836.
He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in
1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following
year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's
College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of
Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of
St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select
preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and
1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy.
In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary
(48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he
himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated
the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual
titles.
00 Introduction
Introduction.
1. UNITY OF THE WORK
THE Books now known to us as the First and Second Books of the Kings, like 1
and 2 Samuel, were originally and are really but one work, by one writer or
compiler, and it is only for convenience of reference and because of long
established usage that we here treat them as two. In all Hebrew MSS. down to
the time of Jerome certainly, and probably down to A.D. 1518, when the Hebrew
text was first printed by D. Bomberg at Venice, the division into two books was
unknown. It was first made in the Greek version by the Septuagint translators,
who followed a prevailing custom of the Alexandrine Greeks of dividing ancient
works for facility of reference. The division thus introduced was perpetuated in
the Latin version of Jerome, who took care, however, while following the LXX.
usage, to notice the essential unity of the work; and the authority of the
Septuagint in the Eastern, and of the Vulgate in the Western Church, has
ensured the continuance of this bipartite arrangement in all later time.
That the two books, however, are really one is proved by the strongest internal
evidence. Not only is there no break between them — the separation at 1 Kings
22:53 being so purely arbitrary and artificial that it is actually made haphazard in
the middle both of the reign of Ahaziah and of the ministry of Elijah — but the
unity of purpose is conspicuous throughout. Together they afford us a continuous
and complete history of the kings and kingdoms of the chosen people. And the
language of the two books points conclusively to a single writer. While there are
no indications of the manner of speech of a later period, no contradictions or confusions such as would arise from different writers, there are many phrases
and formulae, tricks of expression, and turns of thought, which show the same
hand and mind throughout the entire work, and effectually exclude the idea of a
divided authorship.
While, however, it is indisputable that we have in these two portions of Holy
Scripture the production of a single writer, we have no sufficient warrant for
concluding as some (Eichhorn, Jahn, al.) have done, that the division Between
them and the Books of Samuel is equally artificial, and that they are parts of a
much greater work (called by Ewald "the Great Book of the Kings") — a work
which comprised along with them Judges, Ruth, and 1 and 2 Samuel. The
arguments in support of this view are stated at considerable length by Lord Arthur
Hervey in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible", but to my thinking they are entirely
inconclusive, and have been effectually disposed of by, among others, Bahr, Keil,
and Rawlinson, each of whom cites a number of peculiarities not only of diction,
but of manner, arrangement, materials, etc., which clearly distinguish the Books
of Kings from those which precede them in the sacred Canon.
2. TITLE.
The name KINGS ( )מלכיםrequires but little notice. Whether these scriptures
bore this name from the first or not — and it is hardly likely that they did, the
probability being that the Book was originally cited, like those of the Pentateuch,
etc., By its initial words, <והמלדsup> </sup> דיד, and was only called "Kings"
from its contents (like the Book of "Samuel") at a later period — this one word
aptly describes the character and subject matter of this composition and
sufficiently distinguishes it from the rest of its class. It is simply a history of the
kings of Israel and Judah, in the order of their reigns. The LXX. Title, βασιλειων
γ<sup>.δ.</sup>. (i.e. "Kingdoms"), expresses the same idea, for in Eastern
despotisms, and especially under the Hebrew theocracy, the history of the
kingdom was practically that of its kings.
3. CONTENTS AND PURPOSE.
It must be remembered, however, that the history of the kings of the chosen
people will necessarily have a different character and a different design from the
chronicles of all other reigns and dynasties; it will, in fact, be such history as a
pious Jew would naturally write. Such a one, even without the guidance of
Inspiration, would inevitably view all the events in the history both of his own and
of neighbouring nations, not so much in their secular or purely historical as in
their religious aspect. His firm belief in a particular Providence superintending the affairs of men, and requiting them according to their deserts by temporal rewards
and punishments, would alone give a stamp and colour to his narrative very
different from that of the profane historian. But when we remember that the
historians of Israel were in every case prophets; that is, that they were the
advocates and spokesmen of the Most High, we may be quite sure that history in
their hands will have a "purpose," and that they will write with a distinctly religious
aim. Such was assuredly the case with the author of the KINGS. His is an
ecclesiastical or theocratic rather than a civil history. Indeed, as Bahr well
observes, "Hebrew antiquity does not know the secular. historian." The different
kings, consequently, are pourtrayed not so much in their relations to their
subjects, or to other nations, as to the Invisible Ruler of Israel, whose
representatives they were, whose religion they were charged to uphold, and of
whose holy law they were the executors. It is this consideration accounts, as
Rawlinson remarks, for the great length at which certain reigns are recorded as
compared with others. It is this again, and not any "prophetico-didaetic tendency,"
or any idea of advancing the prophetic order, accounts for the prominence given
to the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and to the interpositions of various prophets
at different crises of the nation's life [see 1 Kings 1:45; 11:29-40; 13:12, 21-24;
14:5-16; 22:8; 2 Kings 19:20; 20:16; 22:14, etc.) It explains too the constant
references to the Pentateuch, and to the previous history of the race (1 Kings
2:8; 3:14; 6:11, 12; 8:56, etc.; 2 Kings 10:31; 14:6; 17:13, 15, 37; 18:4-6, etc.),
and the constant comparison of the successive monarchs with the king "after
God's own heart" (1 Kings 11:4, 38; 14:8; 15:3, 11, etc.), and their judgment by
the standard of the Mosaic law (1 Kings 3:14; 6:11, 12; 8:56, etc.) The object of
the historian clearly was, not to chronicle the naked facts of Jewish history, hut to
show how the rise, the glories, the decline and the fall of the Hebrew kingdoms
were respectively the results of the piety and faithfulness or of the irreligion and
idolatry of the different kings and their subjects. Writing during the captivity, he
would teach his countrymen how all the miseries which had come upon them,
miseries which had culminated in the destruction of their temple, the overthrow of
their monarchy, and their own transportation from the land of their forefathers,
were the judgments of God upon their sins and the fruits of the national apostasy,
He would trace, too, the fulfilment, through successive generations, of the great
promise of 2 Samuel 7:12-16, the charter of the house of David, on which
promise indeed the history is a continuous and striking commentary. True to his
mission as the Divine ambassador, he would teach them everywhere to see the finger of God in their nation's history, and by the record of incontrovertible facts,
and especially by showing the fulfilment of the promises and threatenings of the
Law, he would preach a return to the faith and morals of a purer age, and would
urge "his contemporaries, living in exile with him, to cling faithfully to the
covenant made by God through Moses, and to honour steadfastly the one true
God."
The two Books embrace a period of four and a half centuries; viz. from the
accession of Solomon in B.C. 1015 to the close of the captivity of Jehoiachin in
B.C. 562.
4. DATE.
The date of the composition of the Kings can be fixed, with much greater facility
and certainty than that of many portions of Scripture, from the contents of the
Books themselves. It must lie somewhere between B.C. 561 and B.C. 588; that is
to say, it must have been in the latter part of the Babylonian captivity. It cannot
have been before B.C. 561, for that is the year of the accession of EvilMerodach, whose kindly treatment of Jehoiachin, "in the year that he began to
reign," is the last event mentioned in the history. Assuming that this is not an
addition by a later band, which we have no reason to think is the case, we have
thus one limit — a maximum of antiquity — fixed with certainty. And it cannot
have been after B.C. 538, the date of the return under Zerubbabel, as it is quite
inconceivable that the historian should have omitted to notice an event of such
profound importance, and one too which had such a direct bearing on the
purpose for which the history was penned — which was partly, as we have
already remarked, to trace the fulfilment of 2 Samuel 7:12-16, in the fortunes of
David's house — had that event occurred at the time when he wrote. We may
safely assign this year, consequently, as the minimum date for the composition of
the work.
And with this conclusion, that the Books of Kings were written during the
captivity, the style and diction of the Books themselves agree. "The language of
Kings belongs unmistakably to the period of the captivity". Lord A. Hervey,
indeed, contends that "the general character of the language is that of the time
before the Babylonish captivity" — elsewhere he mentions "the age of Jeremiah"
— but even if we allow this, it does not in the least invalidate the conclusion that
the work was given to the world between B.C. 460 and B.C. 440, and probably
about B.C. 460.
5. THE AUTHORSHIP is a question of much greater difficulty. It was long held, and it is still maintained
by many scholars, that the Kings are the work of the prophet Jeremiah. And in
support of this view may be alleged —
1. Jewish tradition. The Talmud (Baba Bathra, f. 15.1) unhesitatingly ascribes the
work to him. Jeremias scripsit librum suum et librum regum et threnos.
2. The last chapter of 2 Kings agrees, except in some few particulars, with
Jeremiah 52. The spelling in the latter is more archaic and the facts recorded in
vers. 28-30 differ from those of 2 Kings 25:22-26, but the general agreement is
very striking. It is alleged, accordingly, and not without reason, that the two
narratives must have had a common origin, and more, that the final page of
Jeremiah's history of the Kings, with a few alterations and additions made by a
later hand, was appended to his collection of prophecies, as forming a fitting
conclusion to those writings. And certainly this arrangement, though it does not
prove Jeremiah's authorship of the KINGS, does afford evidence of a very
ancient belief that he was the writer.
3. There is in many cases a marked resemblance between the language of Kings
and that of Jeremiah. Havernick, perhaps the most powerful and energetic
advocate of this view, has furnished a striking list of phrases and expressions
common to both. And so marked are the correspondences between them that
even Bahr, who summarily rejects this hypothesis, is constrained to allow that
"the mode of thinking and expression resembles that of Jeremiah," and he
accounts for the similarity by the conjecture that our author had before him the
writings of the prophet or was, perhaps, his pupil, while Stahelin is driven to the
conclusion that the writer was an imitator of Jeremiah. But the resemblance is not
confined to words and phrases: there is in both writings the same tone, the same
air of despondency and hopelessness, while many of the facts and narratives
again are more or less common to the history and the prophecy.
4. Another consideration which is equally striking is the omission of all mention of
the prophet Jeremiah in the Books of Kings — an omission easily accounted for if
he was the author of those Books, but difficult to explain on any other
supposition. Modesty would very naturally lead the historian to omit all mention of
the share he himself had taken in the transactions of his time, especially as it
was recorded at length elsewhere. But the part Jeremiah sustained in the closing
scenes of the history of the kingdom of Judah was one of so much importance
that it is hard to conceive any impartial, not to say pious or theocratic historian,
completely ignoring both his name and his work. But a string of arguments, equally numerous and equally influential, can be
adduced against the authorship of Jeremiah, prominent among which are the
following:
1. That if Jeremiah did compile these histories, he must have been at the time
about eighty-six or eighty.seven years of age. Bahr regards this one
consideration as conclusive. He, like Keil and others, points out that Jeremiah's
ministry began in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2), when,
it is urged, he must have been at least twenty years of age. But the Book of
KINGS, as we have just seen, cannot have been penned earlier than B.C. 562;
that is to say, at least sixty-six years afterwards. In reply to this, however, it may
fairly be remarked
(1) that it is quite possible that Jeremiah's entrance upon the prophetic office took
place before he was twenty years old. He calls himself a child ( נ ַעַ רJeremiah
1:6), and though the word is not always to be taken literally, or as furnishing any
definite chronological datum, yet the tradition that he was but a boy of fourteen is
not wholly irrational or incredible.
(2) It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the work may have been written
by an octogenarian. We have had conspicuous instances amongst our own
contemporaries of men far advanced in years retaining all their mental vigour and
engaging in arduous literary labours. And
(3) it does not absolutely follow, because the last paragraph of the Kings carries
us down to B.C. 562 that that is also the date of the composition or compilation of
the rest. It is quite obvious that the bulk of the work might have been written by
Jeremiah some years before, and that these concluding sentences might have
been added by him in extreme old age. There is much greater force, however, in
a second objection, viz., that the KINGS must have been written or completed in
Babylon, whilst Jeremiah spent the concluding years of his life and died in Egypt.
For, though it is not absolutely certain, it is extremely probable that the work was
finished and published in Babylon. There is not much weight perhaps in Bahr's
remark that it cannot have been composed for the handful of fugitives who
accompanied Jeremiah to Egypt, but must have been designed for the kernel of
the people in captivity, for the prophet may have composed the work in
Tahpenes, and have at the same time hoped, perhaps even provided, for its
transmission to Babylon. But it cannot be denied that while the writer was
evidently familiar with what transpired in the court of Evil-Merodach, and was
acquainted with details which could hardly have been known to a resident in Egypt, there is an absence of all reference to the latter country and the fortunes
of the remnant there. The last chapter of the work, that is to say, points to
Babylon as the place where it was written. So also, prima facie, does the
expression of 1 Kings 4:24, "beyond the river" (Auth. Vers. "on this side the
river"). The "region beyond the river" can only mean that west of the Euphrates,
and therefore the natural conclusion is that the writer must have dwelt east of the
Euphrates, i.e., in Babylon. It is alleged, however, that this expression, which is
also found in Ezra and Nehemiah, had come at this time to have a meaning
different from its strict geographical signification, and was used by Jews,
wherever they might happen to reside, of the provinces of the Babylonian Empire
(including Palestine), west of the Great River, just as a Roman, even after
residing in the country, might speak of Gallia Transalpina, and it cannot be denied
that the expression is used indifferently of either side of the Jordan, and therefore
presumably it may designate either side of the Euphrates. But it is to be observed
—
1. that in the majority of instances where the expression is used of the Euphrates
(Ezra 6:6; 7:21, 25; Nehemiah 2:7), it is found in the lips of persons residing in
Babylonia or Media;
2. that in other instances (Ezra 4:10, 11, 16) it is used in letters of state by
Persian officers, who would naturally adapt their language to the usages of the
Persian court and of their own country, even when resident abroad, and lastly,
that in the one instance (Ezra 8:36) where the words are employed of Jews
resident in Palestine, it is by a Jew who had just returned from Persia. While
therefore it is perhaps impossible to arrive at any positive conclusion from the
use of this formula, it is difficult to resist the impression that on the whole it
suggests that the Book was written in Babylon, and therefore not by Jeremiah.
3. A third consideration alleged by Keil in his earlier edition, viz., that the
variations of style and diction between 2 Kings 25. and Jeremiah 52. are such as
to negative the supposition of their having proceeded from the same pen, or
rather such as to compel the belief that "this section has been extracted by the
author or editor in the two cases from a common or more copious source," is too
precarious to require much notice, the more so, ...
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