Sol Abrams has agreed to let me reply to the foregoing article by Roger Hutchinson. Over the years, I have developed a sort of admiration of Hutchinson, who always seems to come back for more no matter how thoroughly he had been trounced in his previous apologetic efforts. Whenever he comes back, I can't resist the opportunity to trounce him again. I have said many times in TSR that biblicists are their own worst enemies, because the articles they write in defense of their belief in biblical inerrancy give readers the opportunity to see both the lack of evidence they have and the far-fetched speculations they will resort to in order to defend the Bible. Hutchinson's latest article illustrates just how woefully short he is of evidence to prove that biblical prophecies were "neither retroactive nor fiction."
Before I reply directly to Hutchinson's latest article, I want to point out first that all of the biblical quotations he used came from the King James version of the Bible. This is noteworthy, because in the exchanges between Hutchinson and Stephen Van Eck over the authorship of the Pentateuch, Jeremiah 7:21 became an issue. This is the passage where Jeremiah said that "in the day that [Yahweh] brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, [he] did not speak to them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices," a statement that clearly contradicts many passages in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Hutchinson tried to explain this problem by interpreting it to mean that Yahweh didn't speak to the Israelites only about burnt offerings and sacrifices but had also spoken to them about other matters. To support his position, Hutchinson quoted the NIV translation of Jeremiah 7:22, which inserted the word just in this verse, and said, "Many regard the New International Version of the Bible as a better translation for the modern reader" (TSR, May/June 2000, p. 7). In my reply to him, in the same issue, I pointed out that after having submitted his article for publication, Hutchinson, who consistently quotes the KJV in his articles, had the audacity to accuse Dave Matson of translation shopping on another matter in dispute. The fact that Hutchinson's article above quoted entirely from the KJV shows just how little he must think that the NIV is a "better translation for the modern reader." If he really thought that, he would surely use it consistently instead of quoting almost entirely from the KJV and using the NIV only when it puts a spin on a verse that seems to support his view.
Conditional or unconditional prophecy? Hutchinson claimed that Mr. Abrams failed to look at prophecies of the Davidic dynasty that show this prophecy was conditional, and to support his case, he quoted two passages from 1 Chronicles that did attach conditions to the prophecy originally made in 2 Samuel 7:13ff that David's house and throne would be established forever through a "seed" of David that would come after him. Hutchinson's quotation of this passage put Solomon in parenthetical brackets, so he evidently concedes that this seed was supposed to be Solomon. This concession will save me the time of analyzing related passages to show that this prophecy did refer to Solomon.
Since Hutchinson quoted the prophecy above, readers can look at it and see that it attached no conditions. Yahweh plainly said that he would "establish the throne of [Solomon's] kingdom forever" (v:13). As this passage was written, Yahweh didn't say that he would establish the throne of Solomon's kingdom forever if Solomon were a good guy. Instead, he recognized that there would probably be times when Solomon would do things that were wrong, but he didn't say that if Solomon erred in any way, the kingdom would be taken away from him.
Verses 14-16 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me your throne shall be established forever.Go back now and read Hutchinson's quotation of this passage and notice the ellipsis [...], which indicates that Hutchinson left something out. What did he leave out? He left out the verse that I have printed in bold print above, which was a flat-out promise that if Solomon committed iniquity, Yahweh would punish him with "a rod" but that he would not take his steadfast love from him, as he had taken it from Saul. Yahweh then ended the prophecy by stating not once but twice that the kingdom and throne of David would be established forever.
The two references to the prophecy in 1 Chronicles, however, did clearly state conditions. There was an "if" in the promise. If Solomon would "take heed to fulfill the statutes and judgments that Yahweh charged Moses with concerning Israel," then Solomon would prosper. If Solomon were "constant to do [Yahweh's] commandments and judgments," then Yahweh would establish his kingdom forever, and so on.
So does Hutchinson have a point here? Not when the retrospective aspects of many Old Testament prophecies and "historical" accounts are factored in. In past articles, I have noted that it wasn't at all uncommon for early biblical writers to take positions that were later contradicted by those who came after them. Jehu, for example, was praised by the writer of 2 Kings (10:30) for the massacre of the royal family at Jezreel, but Hosea afterwards pinned the blame for Israel's downfall on "the blood of Jezreel" (1:4).
As we will be seeing if Robert Turkel attempts to reply to my article "Yahweh's Failed Land Promise," extravagant promises were made about the boundaries of the land that the Israelites would occupy in Canaan. Every place that the soles of Israelite feet would tread on was promised to them, and their boundaries would extend from the wilderness [of the Sinai] to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, i.e., the Mediterranean (Josh. 1:1-6), but when the reality finally sank in that their kingdom was not going to be quite so extensive, writers began to rationalize reasons for their failure to occupy all the land promised. Even though Yahweh was with them, they couldn't drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had iron chariots (Judges 1:19). At times, the Israelites "did evil in the sight of Yahweh," and so he would deliver them into the hand of some foreign king. They were delivered into the hand of Cushanrishathaim, the king of Mesopotamia, for eight years (Judges 3:7-8). They were delivered into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who had 900 chariots of iron, and remained oppressed for 20 years (Judges 4:1-3). They were delivered into the hand of Midian for seven years (Judges 6:1-2).
With all of this deliverance into bondage, it is no wonder that the Israelites never succeeded in taking all the land they had been promised. To their credit, biblical writers were never at a loss to explain why the promises of their god Yahweh sometimes failed to materialize.
As Abrams pointed out, blame for the division of the united kingdom was put on Solomon's idolatry (1 Kings 11:9ff), and later blame for the fall of the northern kingdom to Assyria was attributed to their failure to obey the voice of Yahweh as he had spoken through Moses (2 Kings 18:11). When the northern kingdom separated from Judah, Yahweh promised that he would keep Judah intact for the sake of David who had kept his statutes and commandments (1 Kings 11:34-35) so that Jerusalem, the city that Yahweh had chosen to put his name in, would always be a lamp before him (v:36). Whenever a Judean king would "do evil in the sight of Yahweh," Yahweh would not destroy it for the sake of his servant David to whom Yahweh had promised a "lamp for his children always" (2 Kings 8:19 19:34 20:6). The time came, however, when Judah fell to the Babylonians, so a scapegoat was needed. As I explained in "The Jehu Failure" (TSR, January/February 2002, p. 10), the sins of Manasseh became the scapegoat to someone who rewrote 2 Kings to give a retrospective explanation for Judah's fall despite all of the prophecies that it would be kept intact forever for David's sake. This retrospective explanation was written into the text at 2 Kings 23:26-27 and 24:3-4).
Retrospective revision, then, is the most reasonable explanation for why the unconditional prophecy in 2 Samuel 7 to establish Solomon's throne forever (which emphatically promised that despite any acts of iniquity on Solomon's part Yahweh would preserve his kingdom and throne forever) became conditional when the Chronicler rewrote the prophecy. Scholars with no inerrancy axes to grind agree that the books of Chronicles are "clearly postexilic" (Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987, p. 212), which means that these books were written by someone who knew that the kingdom of Judah had fallen and had not been restored. Some scholars date these books as late as the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, at which time the author would have known that the Davidic dynasty, which was supposed to last forever, had been extinct for centuries.
No self-respecting Yahwist would allow a situation like this to go unexplained, so the Chronicler provided an explanation by just retrospectively rewriting the prophecy to make it conditional. That gave the failure of David's dynasty an explanation that would have satisfied the mentality of that era. Yahweh had failed to preserve David's throne because Solomon and his successors had not kept Yahweh's commandments.
That the Chronicler was a revisionist should be evident to anyone who takes the time to compare his "history" to records in the books of Samuel and Kings. David's sordid side, such as his life as a guerrilla marauder, who raided villages and massacred entire populations when he was on the run from Saul (1 Sam. 28:8-12), and his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam. 11-12), were edited out by the Chronicler, who would sometimes copy almost verbatim from the earlier records. The writer of 2 Samuel said that Yahweh moved David to take the census that brought about the plague that killed 70,000 (24:1), but the Chronicler said that it was Satan who had tempted David to do this (1 Chron. 21:1). This writer obviously wanted to glorify David and present him in a more favorable light, and he did this by revising the earlier histories to leave out the uncomplimentary parts. Why then is it so unreasonable to think that a writer like this would doctor a failed prophecy by rewriting it to state a condition that would explain its failure.
Hutchinson, of course, will never see any of this, so I'll conclude by dumping into his lap a Davidic prophecy obviously written after 2 Samuel 7 in which an unconditional promise was made that there would always be a Davidic king to sit on the throne.
Hutchinson will no doubt claim that this Davidic king was Jesus, who now reigns on David's throne, but the next verse shows why that quibble won't fly.Jeremiah 33:15-16 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "Yahweh is our righteousness." For thus says Yahweh: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel...
This was a prophecy that obviously meant that the Levitical system would continue forever in a kingdom over which a descendant of David would always reign.(A)nd the levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time.
Revisionists overlooked this prophecy, so it remains on record
as
proof that some biblical writers thought that David's literal kingdom,
ruled by his descendants, would unconditionally last forever.
