His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with
regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of
Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance,
with the liberation from prison of the Davidide Jehoiachin; this
is the earnest of greater things yet in store. In the words of
Abijah to Jeroboam, also, when he says that the humiliation of
the house of David and the revolt from it of the ten tribes will
not last for ever, we see the Messianic hope appear, which, as we
learn from Haggai and Zechariah, largely occupied the minds of
the Jews at the time of the exile and after it.
In the case of the books of Judges and Samuel it is not perhaps
possible to decide with perfect certainty what was the norm
applied by the last reviser in forming his estimates of the past.
In the Books of Kings there can be no doubt on this point. The
writer deals not only in indefinite references to the will of
Jehovah, which Israel ought to obey, but resists; he speaks now
and again (1Kings ii. 3, 2Kings xiv. 6, xvii. 37) of the written
Torah in which the judgments and statutes of Jehovah are contained,
a difference which indicates, one must allow, a historical feeling.
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