Can you comment on the literary structure of 1 and 2 Chronicles?
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2009.
You ask about Chronicles. I know little about 2 Chronicles, but this I have observed about 1 Chronicles: it starts with the name of the first human being, Adam. It ends with the astonishing statement: 'then Solomon sat on the throne of the lord' (1 Chronicles 29:23). Taken historically, that phrase presumably means that Solomon sat on the throne which the Lord had established in Israel. But Christians reading 1 Chronicles will scarcely be able to restrain themselves from remembering another trajectory in literal history. This trajectory starts with the first man, Adam, and ends, likewise historically, with another man, Jesus our Lord, truly human though divine, seated on the throne of the Lord, literally so at this present moment.
This may provoke us to ask: by what stages in history did you get from Adam, the first man, to the time when Solomon sat upon the throne of the Lord?
It seems to me that 1 Chronicles indicates those stages explicitly. Each stage records a further advance in David's divinely-guided career. It is true that, in the first four stages, a prominent and grievous mistake was made. But to concentrate for the moment on the progress, we can list the advances as follows:
The rise of Israel from among the nations, and the handing over of the kingdom to David.
The unifying of the nation under David, and the building of Jerusalem city as the capital of all ten tribes. That city is with us still, and is a bone of contention politically for all the nations of the world.
The bringing up of the ark to Jerusalem. But since Israel believed that the Lord sat enthroned upon the cherubim (see 1 Chronicles 13), when the Israelites saw the ark slowly processing into Jerusalem, it would have been for them a coming of the Lord.
The putting down of the last enemies.
David's semi-retirement, spent in preparing the materials for the building of the house of the Lord; and that in preparation for the coming of the great golden age of peace and prosperity under Solomon.
With love and greetings,
