John Jarick, 2 Chronicles, (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007),,pp 207, ISBN:978-1-905048-97-7.

Jarick’s commentary on 2 Chronicles continues his reading of the final form of the text, which he believes was written by a group of authors he calls The Annalists.

Nearly a quarter of the text is taken up by two excursuses: A Survey of Solomon’s Temple and A Survey of Judah’s Kings. The first survey accepts the reading of the Masoretic Text that the height of the vestibule was one hundred twenty cubits (usually dismissed as a textual error) and emphasizes that the work was accomplished by non-Israelite slave labour.

In the second survey Jarick claims that the account of the kings is marked with a playfulness with the names of each of these kings. Scholars have long noticed the play on the name Solomon as a man of peace in 1 Chr 22:7-9, and have suspected that the judicial reform of Jehoshaphat (not recorded in Kings) has something to do with the etymology of his name. A few have found irony in Asa’s resort to physicians when the etymology of his name—in Aramaic—means something like healer.

Jarick recognizes that the names of the kings are theophoric and that Jehoshaphat means Yahweh judges and Jehoram Yahweh is exalted, but his chapter headings turn these into epithets such as Abijah the fatherly, Ahaziah the seized, and Josiah the strong. Neither in antiquity nor today is the verbal root in the names Joash and Josiah clear, but Jarick decides on an etymology of “heal,” which then plays a major role in his interpretation. It is not at all clear that The Annalists understood the kings’ names in this way. Rehoboam the enlarger (in his etymology) lost ten of the ten tribes, but did his own expanding by siring sixty-eight children. Manasseh the forgetful supposedly forgot about the piety of his father Hezekiah, but then remembered the god of his fathers. The verb remembered is not used of Manasseh in the Hebrew text. The playfulness with the kings’ names is what most readers will take away from this commentary and in almost all cases is unconvincing.

Ralph W. Klein

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago