002_cudworth_498_523 24/02/15 11:52 Pagina 506 506 TROY D. CUDWORTH 3. Divine sanction of “all Israel’s” entreaty An even more significant item the Chronicler should have re- moved appears in the remarks of divine determinism (10,15; 11,4). Williamson cited these verses as evidence that the northerners likely had good reason for their separation from Judah since, con- sonant with the evidence presented above, this event runs contrary to the “all Israel” theme the Chronicler painstakingly establishes before it 26. Beyond this, the Chronicler makes adaptations to these texts so that they continue to develop his theme of all Israel. He binds the first (10,15) to the verse after it by removing the verb har and thus attaches the conjunction waw directly to larXy-lk (10,16; cf. 1 Kgs 12,15-16) 27. With this change, Ahijah no longer commands YHWH’s prophetic word to only Jeroboam but also to all Israel (cf. 1 Kgs 11,29-39). To this may be added that, by re- moving har from the sentence, the Chronicler has also changed the yk clause after it (“the king did not listen to them”) so that it no longer gives the content of what all Israel saw but the reason for the ensuing conflict: “Because (yk) the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king […] and all Israel went to their tents” (v. 16). In other words, rather than merely narrate the unfortunate course of events, the Chronicler explicitly makes the fall-out a result of Rehoboam’s foolish decision. This last use of all Israel to denote the unified, idealized people concludes and brings cohesion to the literary unit 10,1-16, wherein Jeroboam and all Israel present the word of YHWH to Rehoboam (v. 3), but the latter foolishly squan- ders his dominion over them by rejecting this prophetic word (vv. 15-16a) 28. This second reference to the prophecy of Ahijah (see also 9,29), carefully crafted by the Chronicler to suit his purposes, 26 WILLIAMSON, Israel in Chronicles, 110-114. 27 Cf. WILLIAMSON, Israel in Chronicles, 108. Followed by KLEIN, 2 Chronicles, 152. Though BHS lists witnesses (e.g. Mss, Syr, Tg, VL) that show no change from 1 Kgs 12,16, LXX reads the same as MT for 2 Chr 10,16. Also, while one might expect the insertion of another preposition la before larXy-lk, several cases exist where the preposition is not repeated (“preposition override”); cf. B.K. WALTKE – M.P. O’CONNOR, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN 1990) 222-223. 28 In this light, the Chronicler has patterned Rehoboam after Saul (cf. 1 Chr 10,13-14).