Chronicles, Book

Deuteronomy does not have the festival of Shemini Atzeret (“the eighth day of assembly”), while Leviticus and Numbers do. This difference can help 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. This highlights how certain biblical genealogies represent tribal kinship patterns that shift over time.

Upon purifying the Temple in his first year as king, Hezekiah delays the celebration of Passover until the 14^th 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.

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.

How the Book of Chronicles updates and reinterprets Deuteronomy

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.*

And the Re-imagining of the Harvest Festival in the Wake of the Babylonian Exile

Israel’s Declaration of Independence defends the right of Jews to the land, invoking the ancient connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel going back to biblical times. But does Ben-Gurion’s Declaration conform to biblical thought?

Deuteronomy’s legal system is complex, combining descriptions of how law actually functioned with elements of ideal law.

Reuben’s sin and its consequences in the Torah, Pseudepigrapha and Midrash

Census is a necessary and standard procedure for governing. Indeed, the Bible contains numerous stories of censuses that are mundane and unproblematic. Only two texts suggest otherwise: Exodus 30, and 2 Samuel 24 (=1 Chronicles 21), a census by King David.^[1]

The history and geography of the Judahite clan of Shelah as portrayed in the Bible and in the extra-biblical Sources.