During my daily prayer regimen, I read through the New Testament at morning prayer and the Old Testament in the evening, one chapter at a time. At evening prayer I am now making my way through the two books of Chronicles, which many believe form a unit with Ezra and Nehemiah, composed after the return from Babylonian exile, possibly by Ezra himself.
When I’ve read Chronicles in the past, I’ve sometimes thought that they are redundant, simply repeating what the books of Samuel and Kings had already recounted. In the larger biblical narrative, it feels as though the story, which thus far has been smoothly told from Genesis to the exile, is suddenly interrupted by an apparently unnecessary flashback, taking us all the way back to, well, Adam, the first human being. Then we are treated to a long series of proper names, some of whom are familiar but most of whom are not, leaving us wondering what relevance they could possibly have to the larger story of salvation. What harm would have been done by leaving them out and simply skipping from 2 Kings to Ezra?
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