If the Deuteronomic law is the standard of judgment in 1 and 2 Kings, then the Priests Code is the standard in 1 and 2 Chronicles. Chronicles’ history appears to have been written later than Kings’; the date usually given is approximately 300 B.C. The authors of the two books have the advantage of using the Deuteronomic history, as well as the many other documents that appeared prior to 300 B.C., as source material. Apparently, they accepted the older histories’ idea that personal suffering and national disasters are punishments for wrongdoing, while long life and material prosperity are rewards for righteous conduct.

This conception of punishments and rewards adequately explains some historical events, but other events contradict this view. For example, King Uzziah, whose reign preceded Isaiah’s becoming a prophet, was regarded as one of the ablest and best kings of Judah, yet he was smitten with leprosy and died in a leper colony; King Manasseh, judged by all the accepted standards of both priests and prophets, was a wicked man but reigned for more than half a century and died a natural death; and Josiah, the good king who started the Deuteronomic reformation and followed as closely as he could the teachings of the great prophets, was slain on the field of battle, and his son was taken to Egypt as a prisoner. The chronicler felt it necessary to explain these events. Believing as he did that Yahweh orders the course of events, he interpreted the entire course of Hebrew history from the point of view of the laws and regulations embodied in the Priests Code.

The introduction to Chronicles consists of a brief sketch of the period from Adam to David, whom the chronicler idealizes — in contrast to the record preserved in 1 and 2 Samuel. The law of the Central Sanctuary is projected back into this early period by identifying it with the tabernacle that the Israelites carried with them in their march through the wilderness. The Priests Code, too, is presumed to have been in force during the early periods of Hebrew history. No mention is made of the kings of northern Israel: The assumption is that the people in that kingdom were no better than heathens and, as a consequence of their behavior, were no longer to be counted among the true people of Israel.