out (De Wette, pp. 19, 20, 60).  To what extent the veil is drawn over the scandalous falls of saints may be judged also from the fact that from the list of David’s foreign encounters also, which are otherwise fully given, a single one is omitted which he is supposed not to have come through with absolute honour, that with the giant Ishbi-benob (2Samuel xxi. 15-17).  Lastly, the alteration made in 1Chronicles xx. 5 is remarkable.  Elhanan the son of Jair of Bethlehem, we read in 2Samuel xxi. 19, was he who slew Goliath of Gath, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam.  But on the other hand, had not David of Bethlehem according to 1Samuel xvii. vanquished Goliath the giant, the shaft of whose spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam?  In Chronicles accordingly Elhanan smites the brother of the veritable Goliath.

2.  The closing chapters of 2Samuel (xxi.-xxiv.) are, admittedly, an appendix of very peculiar structure.  The thread of xxi. 1-14 is continued in xxiv. 1-25, but in the interval between the two passages occurs xxi. 15-xxiii. 39, in a very irrational manner, perhaps wholly due to chance.  In this interposed passage itself, again, the quite similar lists xxi. 15-22 and xxiii. 8-39 are very closely connected; and the two songs, xxii. 1-51, xxiii. 1-7, are thus an interpolation within an interpolation.  This want of order is imitated by the author of Chronicles also, who takes 2Samuel xxiii. 8-39 as separated from xxi. 15-22, and gives 2Samuel xxiv. last, a position which does not belong to it from any material considerations, but merely because it had originally been tagged on as an appendix, and besides had been separated from its connection with xxi. 1-14 by a large interpolation.

1Chronicles xxi. (the pestilence as punishment of David’s sin in numbering the people, and the theophany as occasioning the building of an altar on the threshing-floor of Araunah) is on the whole a copy of 2Samuel xxiv., but with omission of the precise and interesting geographical details of ver. 5 seq, and with introduction of a variety of improving touches.  Thus (xxi. 1):  “And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David;” instead of:  “And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David.”  Similarly (xxi. 6):  “Levi and Benjamin Joab counted not among them; for the king’s word was abominable to him,”—­ an addition which finds its explanation on the one hand in Numbers i. 49, and on the other in the circumstance that the holy city lay within the territory of Benjamin.  Again (xxi. 16, 27):  “David saw the angel of Jehovah standing between heaven and earth, and his sword drawn in his hand and stretched out towards Jerusalem;” compare this with Sam xxiv. 16 (1Chronicles xxi. t5):  “The angel stretched out his hand to Jerusalem to destroy it, and he was by the threshing floor of Araunah;” according to the older view, angels have no wings (Genesis xxviii.).  Further (xxi. 25):  “David gave to Araunah