Africa and Africans in the Books of Chronicles

Currents in Theology and Mission, August, 2004 by Ralph W. Klein

16. K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 116. Kitchen doubts that she was a regnant queen but supposes she was a queen by marriage. Cf. Isa 45:14; 60:6; Jer 6:20.

17. The earlier part of this claim is recorded in Kebra Negast, the national saga of Ethiopia (13th or 14th century C.E.). The saga claims that the queen, who was called Makeda, converted to Solomon's religion. Their son Menelik, as an adult, visited his father, stole the ark of the covenant, and took it home with him. The Selassie connection is a 20th-century phenomenon. When asked about his origins, Selassie said, "This is not a legend. It is based on the most universal book in the world--the Holy Bible." See discussion in Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible, 90-105. An offshoot of this tradition is the Rastafarian religion. The Jewish historian Josephus calls her Nikaulis, the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia (Ant. viii. 165).

18. David's contact with the descendants of Hagar is seen in his appointing Obil the Ishmaelite to be over his camels and Jaziz the Hagrite to be over his flocks (1 Chr 27:30).

19. The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls set his height at about six feet four.

20. Libyans also appear in the army of Zerah (2 Chr 16:8). See the discussion of Zerah below.

21. Other references to abandoning Yahweh occur at 1 Chr 28:9 and 2 Chr 15:2; 24:20.

22. A very large army in antiquity might number thirty thousand.

23. There are at least four opinions defended in current scholarship: (1) He was in fact a Nubian general of the Egyptian Pharaoh Osorkon I; (2) Shishak had established a buffer state around Gerar, protected by Nubian mercenaries [the inhabitants of Gedor=Gerar in 1 Chr 4:40 are called Hamites], who eventually attacked Judah; (3) Cush does not refer to Nubia but to an otherwise unknown bedouin group living in the vicinity of Judah (note the reference to tents, sheep, goats, and camels in 2 Chr 14:15); or (4) Zerah is largely fictitious, but this battle may represent a skirmish in the vicinity of Mareshah in the postexilic period.

24. Neco's capture of Gaza may be reflected in Jer 47:1-7. See Herodotus, History, 2.159.

25. Egypt and Assyria were eventually routed by Babylon in 605 at Carchemish (cf. Jer 46:2-12).

26. The borders of Israel were set from Lebo-Hamath or the Euphrates in the north to the Wadi of Egypt in the south (2 Chr 7:8; 9:26; 26:8). The latter is usually identified with the Wadi el Arish in the Sinai peninsula.

27. Trade with Africa may also be involved in the references to Ophir (1 Chr 1:23; 29:4; 2 Chr 8:18; 9:10, but its exact location is uncertain. A major goal of Christopher Columbus's expedition was to find Solomon's Ophir (Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible, 89).

28. The latter is a Neo-Hittite state in southeast Turkey.

29. Ancient prices are hard to compare with modern money, although it makes sense that a chariot was worth four times as much as a single horse (600 shekels to 150 shekels).

Ralph W. Klein

Christ Seminary-Seminex Professor of Old Testament