Martin Noth hypothesized the literary unity of the work of the Chronicler in creating the combined work of Chronicles and Ezra/Nehemiah. That hypothesis began to be undone in the work of Sara Japhet and others. Not only has it become commonplace now to question the unity of authorship of the two works–Chronicles and Ezra/Nehemiah–but it is even suggested, despite the overlapping text of Cyrus’s decree at the end of Chronicles and beginning of Ezra/Nehemiah, that the Chronicler may have written his work after the completion of Ezra/Nehemiah. If that is true, then the scriptural inclusio of Genesis at the beginning of Chronicles and the decree of Cyrus borrowed from Ezra/Nehemiah and the end of Chronicles may give us insight into the larger purpose of the Chronicler. Of course, the center of that inclusio, and the bulk of the Chronicler’s work is his massive borrowing, reworking, and addition to the Deuteronomic History, particularly from 2 Samuel to 2 Kings.
The thesis of this paper is that the Chronicler has based his history of Israel on his knowledge of Israel’s scripture and that his inclusion of the small portion of Cyrus’s decree should be read as a nod to the generation of the return from exile. The fragmentary nature of the quote from the decree, however, is a recognition that the benefits of the return from exile are still open-ended.
This paper is introductory to a larger commentary exploring the place of Chronicles in biblical theology.