The history of the son is treated after the same plan and by the same means as that of the father, only the subject accommodates itself more readily to the purpose of the change.  The old picture is retouched in such wise that all dark and repulsive features are removed, and their place taken by new and brilliant bits of colour not in the style of the original but in the taste of the author’s period,—­priests and Levites and fire from heaven, and the fulfilment of all righteousness of the law, and much music, and all sorts of harmless legendary anachronisms and exaggerations besides.  The material of tradition seems broken up in an extraneous medium, the spirit of post-exilian Judaism.

VI.II.

VI.II.1.  After Solomon’s death the history of Israel in Chronicles is traced only through Jehovah’s kingdom in the hand of the sons of David, and all that relates to the ten tribes is put aside.  For according to the notions of the Judaistic period Israel is the congregation of true worship, and this last is connected with the temple at Jerusalem, in which of course the Samaritans have no part.  Abijah of Judah makes this point of view clear to Jeroboam I. and his army in a speech delivered from Mount Zemaraim before the battle.  “Think ye to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah in the hand of the sons of David, because ye are a great multitude, and with you are the golden calves which Jeroboam made you for gods ?  Have ye not cast out the priests of Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests after the manner of the Gentiles? so that whosoever cometh to fill his hands with a young bullock and seven rams, even he may become a priest for the false gods?  But as for us, we have not forsaken Jehovah our God, and our priests minister to Jehovah, the sons of Aaron and the Levites in the service; and they burn unto Jehovah every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shewbread also is upon the pure table; for we have maintained the service of Jehovah our God, but ye have forsaken Him.  And behold, God Himself is with us at our head, and His priests, and the loud-sounding trumpets to cry an alarm against you.  O children of Israel, fight ye not against Jehovah the God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper” (2Chronicles xiii. 8-12; comp. xi. 13-17).

The kingdom which bore the name of Israel was actually in point of fact in the olden time the proper Israel, and Judah was merely a kind of appendage to it.  When Amaziah of Judah after the conquest of the Edomites challenged to battle King Jehoash of Samaria, whose territory had at that time suffered to the utmost under the continual wars with the Syrians, the latter bid say to him:  “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife;—­then passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle.  Thou hast indeed smitten Edom,