Nay, he even exaggerates this improvement, and makes of
Asa another Josiah (2Chronicles xv. 1-15), represents him also
(xiv. 3) as abolishing the high places, and yet after all (xv. 1
7) repeats the statement of 1Kings xv. 14 that the high places
were not removed. So also of Jehoshaphat, we are told in the
first place that he walked in the first ways of his father Asa
and abolished the high places in Judah (2Chronicles xvii. 3, 6,
xix. 3), a false generalisation from 1Kings (xxii. 43, 47);
and then afterwards we learn (xx. 32, 33) that the high places
still remained, word for word according to 1Kings xxii. 43, 44.
To thc author it seems on the one hand an impossibility that
the worship of the high places, which in spite of xxxiii.17 is
to him fundamentally idolatry, should not have been repressed
even by pious, i.e., law-observing kings, and yet on the other
hand he mechanically transcribes his copy.
In the case of the notoriously wicked rulers his resort is to make
them simply heathen and persecutors of the covenant religion,
for to him they are inconceivable within the limits of Jehovism,
which always in his view has had the Law for its norm, and is one
and the same with the exclusive Mosaism cf Judaism.
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