music leading the van, with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets to the house of Jehovah (2Chronicles xx. 1-28).  Hezekiah is glorified in a similar manner.  Of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem and the memorable relief, comparatively little is made (xxxii. 1 seq.; comp.  De Wette, i. 75); according to Chronicles, his master-work is that, as soon as he has mounted the throne, in the first month of the year, and of his reign (Exodus xl. 2; Leviticus ix. 1). he institutes by means of the priests and Levites, whom he addresses quite paternally as his children (xxix. 11), a great feast of consecration of the temple, alleged to have been closed and wasted by Ahaz; thereupon in the second month to celebrate the passover in the most sumptuous manner; and finally, from the third to the seventh month to concern himself about the accurate rendering of their dues to the clergy.  All is described in the accustomed style, in the course of three long chapters, which tell us nothing indeed about the time of Hezekiah, but are full of information for the period in which the writer lived, particularly with reference to the method then followed in offering the sacred dues (xxix. 1-xxxi. 21).  In the case of Josiah also the account of his epoch-making reformation of the worship is, on the whole, reproduced in Chronicles only in a mutilated manner, but the short notice of 2Kings xxiii. 21-23 is amplified into a very minute description of a splendid passover feast, in which, as always, the priests and above all the Levites figure as the leading personalities.  In this last connection one little trait worth noticing remains, namely, that the great assembly in which the king causes the Book of the Law to be sworn to, is, in every other respect, made up in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 29 seq. exactly as it is in 2Kings xxiii. 1, , except that instead of “the priests and prophets” we find “the priests and Levites.”  The significance of this is best seen from the Targum, where “the priests and prophets” are translated into “the priests and scribes.”

By this projection of the legitimate cultus prescribed in the Law and realised in Judaism, the Chronicler is brought however into a peculiar conflict with the statements of his authority, which show that the said cultus was not a mature thing which preceded all history, but came gradually into being in the course of history; he makes his escape as well as he can, but yet not without a strange vacillation between the timeless manner of looking at things which is natural to him, and the historical tradition which he uses and appropriates.  The verses in 1Kings (xiv. 22, 23):  Judah (not Rehoboam merely) did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah and provoked Him to jealousy by their sins which they sinned, above all that their fathers had done; and they set up for themselves high places, macceboth and asherim, &c., which in the passage where they occur are, like the parallel statement regarding Israel (xii. 25 seq.), of primary importance, and