of the Solomonic temple, takes up the narrative of 2 Samuel vii. precisely on account of this interpolation, as is clear from xxii. 9, 10—­ increases the misunderstanding by going back to it in an addition (xvii. 14)—­and at the outset destroys the original antithesis by the innocent alteration, “Thou shalt not build THE HOUSE for me” instead of “Wilt thou build A house for me?  “The house can here mean only that imperatively needed one, long kept in view alike by God and men, which must by all means he built, only not by David but by Solomon; it is without any ambiguity the temple, and does not, like a house, contain that possibility of a double meaning on which the original point depends.  It is interesting also to compare 2Samuel vii. 14 with 1Chronicles xvii. 13:  “I will be to thy seed a father, and he shall be to me a son. If he commit iniquity, then I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the sons of men; but my mercy shall not depart from him.”  The words in italics are wanting in Chronicles; the meaning, that Jehovah will not withdraw His grace from the dynasty of Judah altogether, even though some of its members should deserve punishment, is thereby destroyed and volatilised into an abstract idealism, which shows that to the writer the Davidic kingly family is known only as a dissolving view, and not by historical experience as it is to the author of 2Samuel vii.

In chaps xviii.-xx., Chronicles seems to refresh itself with a little variety, relating as it does the foreign wars of David after the order of 2Samuel, viii., x., xi. 1, xii. 30, 30, xxi. 18-22.  But in this it still keeps in view its purpose, which is directed towards David as founder of the Jerusalem worship; those wars brought him the wealth that was required for the building of the temple.  On the other hand, everything so fully and beautifully told in the Book of Samuel about the home occurrences of that period is omitted, for after all it does not contribute much to the glorification of the king.  So the story of Meribaal and Ziba (chap. ix.), of Bathsheba and Uriah (xi., xii.), of Tamar and Amnon (xiii., xiv.), of Absalom’s rebellion (xv.-xx.), and of the delivering-up of the sons of Saul (xxi. 1-14).  The rude and mechanical manner in which statements about foreign wars are torn from the connection with domestic events in which they stand in the older narrative is shown in 1Chronicles xx. 1, 2, as compared with 2Samuel xi. 1, xii. 30.  In 2Samuel xi. the mention of the fact that David remained in Jerusalem when the army set out against Rabbah, prepares for the story of his adultery with the wife of a captain engaged in active service in the field; but 1Chronicles xx. 1 is meaningless, and involves a contradiction with ver. 2. according to which David appears after all in the camp at Rabbah, although the connection,—­namely, that he followed the army—­and all the intermediate occurrences relating to Bathsheba and Uriah, are left