Kings I and II : A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings

No extract of this content is available for previewPreface starts: "Our book is of like category on the human side, from ships ' and ' seals ' and ' the hyssop that grows on the wall ' to ' kicgs ' arid queens, as well as ordinary folk. But the collection is inspired and dominated by the belief in a unity, which gives the clue to the seemingly crazy checkerboard pattern of human history. I t is a t once a book ' of the ways of God ' and ' of men.' Hence the extent and variety of subject- matter involved in the following composition, which has gone beyond the bounds of the normal Commentary of the day. In English the last extensive Commentary on Kings is that of G. liawlinson in 1873, largely inspired by the fresh archao- logical discoveries in Egypt and Mesopotamia ; in German, the too little known but admirable work of the Catholic scholar, A. Sanda, of over a thousand pages, now almost thirty years old. Current interest has lain naturally in the more religiously inspiring books of the Iiebrew Bible, the Prophets and the Poets, or critically in the still vexed Penta- teuchal problems, or those of many of the Prophetical books. hlany notable current histories indeed have included the materials of our book, as a source of history, yet only with indirect display of its character. But the equally divine and human aspect of this book, the compilation of which was inspired by the belief in the God of a people who is also God of human history, deserves attention as part of the catena of the earliest surviving attempt at history in the large sense of the word, and that coming from a politically insignificant people, but unique among the ancients in its sense of a universal Providence, tending mistily t o " One far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves. ..."