In the Book of Samuel, no clear explanation is given as to why Uzza’s offense is so grave that it warrants instant death. The author of Chronicles, finding this unsatisfactory, rewrites parts of the story and provides a concrete explanation for Uzza’s fatal punishment.
The prophet Zechariah, son of the high priest Jehoiada, is stoned to death in the Temple (2 Chronicles 24:21). According to the Talmud, his blood bubbled for two centuries, until the destruction of the Temple. Is “a priest and prophet were killed in the Temple” (Lamentations 2:20) a reference to this incident, presenting a reason for the destruction?
The Tabernacle is completed on the first of Nisan (Exodus 40) and is consecrated eight days later (Leviticus 9). And yet, the Book of Chronicles, Biblical Antiquities, and the Rabbis read these accounts as describing the same event. Indeed, the Torah’s final editor may have understood the texts as a continuous narrative, but chose to emphasize different themes of the Tabernacle by separating them.
Deuteronomy does not have the festival of Shemini Atzeret (“the eighth day of assembly”), while Leviticus and Numbers do. This difference helps explain why the festival is absent in the story of Solomon’s dedication of the Temple in Kings but appears in the version of this same story in Chronicles.
The genealogy of the tribe of Manasseh appears in Numbers 26 and again in Joshua 17 with slight differences. It appears a third time, in 1 Chronicles 7, wholly reconceived, highlighting how certain biblical genealogies represent tribal kinship patterns that shift over time.
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The Bible knows about many priestly families, including the Levites, the Mushites (descendants of Moses), and the Zadokites. By the time of Ezra and Chronicles, however, only Aaronide priests were legitimate, and other families either merged with them or were demoted.
Upon purifying the Temple in his first year as king, Hezekiah delays the celebration of Passover until the 14th of Iyar, the date of the Torah’s Pesach Sheni, “Second Passover.” A close examination of the story (2 Chr 29–30) demonstrates that this wasn’t a simple application of the Pesach Sheni law, but that Hezekiah was innovating in order to create unity between the northern Israelites and southern Judahites.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence defends the Jews’ right to establish a state by invoking their connection to the land going back to biblical times. Does this declaration conform to biblical thought?
The history and geography of the Judahite clan of Shelah as portrayed in the Bible and in the extra-biblical Sources.
The Book of Chronicles updates and reinterprets Deuteronomy’s court system.
King David conducts a census, which brings about a divine plague killing 70,000 people. During the first wilderness census, Exodus requires the Israelites to pay a half shekel to avoid a plague. What’s so dangerous about a census?
When does God reward and when does God inflict punishment and why? A comparison of the books of Kings and Chronicles demonstrates that the Chronicler, troubled by the theology of Kings in which children can be punished for the sins of their parents, rewrote Israel’s history.
The books of Samuel and Kings portray monarchs—specifically, David, Solomon, and Ahab—as Israel’s chief judicial authority, hearing cases and dispensing justice. Deuteronomy, however, leaves the king out of its justice system, assigning authority instead to local elders and judges, or else to a central court. Does this system reflect how justice actually worked in ancient Israel—or an ideal meant to replace royal justice?
The Cow That Laid an Egg (!)
And the re-imagining of the Harvest Festival in the wake of the Babylonian exile.
Reuben’s sin and its consequences in the Torah, Pseudepigrapha and Midrash.
