Hobbes On Politics And Religion

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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Hobbes on Politics and Religion

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Hobbes on Politics
and Religion

edited by
Laurens van Apeldoorn
and Robin Douglass

1
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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First Edition published in 2018
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Contributors ix
Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1
Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass
1. The Theocratic Leviathan: Hobbes’s Arguments for the Identity of
Church and State 10
Johan Olsthoorn
2. Natural Sovereignty and Omnipotence in Hobbes’s Leviathan 29
A. P. Martinich
3. First Impressions: Hobbes on Religion, Education, and the
Metaphor of Imprinting 45
Teresa M. Bejan
4. Tolerance as a Dimension of Hobbes’s Absolutism 63
Franck Lessay
5. Hobbes on the Motives of Martyrs 79
Alexandra Chadwick
6. Hobbes, Calvinism, and Determinism 95
Alan Cromartie
7. Mosaic Leviathan: Religion and Rhetoric in Hobbes’s Political Thought 116
Alison McQueen
8. Devil in the Details: Hobbes’s Use and Abuse of Scripture 135
Paul B. Davis
9. The Politics of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica 150
Patricia Springborg
10. A Profile in Cowardice? Hobbes, Personation, and the Trinity 167
Glen Newey
11. Hobbes and the Future of Religion 184
Jon Parkin
12. Hobbes and Early English Deism 202
Elad Carmel
13. All the Wars of Christendom: Hobbes’s Theory of Religious Conflict 219
Jeffrey Collins
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

vi contents

14. Religious Conflict and Moral Consensus: Hobbes, Rawls, and

Two Types of Moral Justification 239
Daniel Eggers
15. Hobbes on the Duty Not to Act on Conscience 256
S. A. Lloyd

Bibliography 273
Index 295
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Acknowledgements

This volume marks the culmination of the inaugural research project of the European
Hobbes Society. The Society originated as an informal network of European-based
Hobbes scholars in 2011, which was later formalized—that is, we launched a website—
in 2015. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped to get
the Society off the ground in its early days, without whom we would not be where we
are now: Adrian Blau, Dirk Brantl, Alexandra Chadwick, Daniel Eggers, Signy Gutnick
Allen, Johan Olsthoorn, Dietrich Schotte, Gabriella Slomp, and Luciano Venezia. Thanks
are also due to all those who have more recently joined the Society and are helping to
take it forward as we write.
The majority of chapters in this volume were presented at two workshops in 2015,
the first at King’s College London and the second at Leiden University. We are very
grateful for the financial support of both institutions, and, most of all, to everyone who
attended and helped to make this volume possible. We would especially like to thank
Adrian Blau, who was closely involved in the early stages of organizing the project.
We are also very grateful to the two referees for Oxford University Press, who offered
invaluable feedback on a full draft of the volume.
One of the aims of the European Hobbes Society is to bring together the most
promising young Hobbes scholars with established experts in the field. We hope this
volume does justice to that aspiration and sets the mark for more to come.
* * *
While this volume was in press, we were saddened to learn of the untimely death of
Glen Newey. Glen was a fine scholar and a good friend of the European Hobbes Society.
His chapter in this volume showcases the philosophical and historical nuance—along
with just the right measure of dry wit—that characterized all his research and made it
so enjoyable to read. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Glen’s
considerable contribution to Hobbes scholarship and all his support for the Society.
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Contributors

Laurens van Apeldoorn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a member of

the Centre for Political Philosophy at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research
has appeared in journals including Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, History of
European Ideas, and Hobbes Studies.
Teresa M. Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of
Oxford. She is the author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration
(2017) and her research on early modern political thought and contemporary theory
has appeared in journals including the Journal of Politics, History of Political Thought,
Review of Politics, and History of European Ideas.
Elad Carmel is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His
DPhil thesis, completed at the University of Oxford, is entitled ‘ “When Reason Is
Against a Man, a Man Will Be Against Reason”: Hobbes, Deism, and Politics’ (2016).
Alexandra Chadwick is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of the
History of Philosophy at the University of Groningen. She completed her PhD in
2016, and from 2016–17 was a Max Weber Fellow in the Department for History and
Civilization at the European University Institute.
Jeffrey Collins is an Associate Professor of History at Queen’s University in
Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (2005) and of
many journal articles and chapters on both Hobbes and the religious and political
history of seventeenth-century Britain.
Alan Cromartie is Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University
of Reading. He is the author of The Constitutionalist Revolution (2006) and the editor
of Thomas Hobbes, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common
Laws of England (2005).
Paul B. Davis studied history as an undergraduate at Harvard University and a
graduate student at Princeton University. From 2014 to 2016, he worked at the New
York Public Library. Since 2016 he has worked in the biopharmaceutical industry,
managing corporate communications for Roivant Sciences.
Robin Douglass is Senior Lecturer of Political Theory at King’s College London.
He is the author of Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will, and the Passions (2015)
and his research on Hobbes has appeared in journals including the European Journal
of Political Theory, History of European Ideas, and History of Political Thought.
Daniel Eggers is Assistant Professor in Moral and Political Philosophy at the
University of Cologne. He is the author of Die Naturzustandstheorie des Thomas
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

x contributors

Hobbes: Eine vergleichende Analyse von ‘The Elements of Law’, ‘De Cive’ und den eng-
lischen und lateinischen Fassungen des ‘Leviathan’ (2008). His works on the history of
political philosophy have appeared in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, The
Southern Journal of Philosophy, Intellectual History Review, and Hobbes Studies.
Franck Lessay is Emeritus Professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University.
He has published Souveraineté et légitimité chez Hobbes (1988), Le débat Locke-Filmer
(1998), Les fondements philosophiques de la tolérance (2002, as co-editor), and about
a hundred articles on various subjects of political theory in French, English, and
Italian journals. He has translated several short treatises of Hobbes into French.
S. A. Lloyd is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Southern
California. She is author of Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan (1992) and Morality
in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (2009), and editor of
Hobbes Today (2012), The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes (2012), and Interpreting
Hobbes’s Political Thought (forthcoming).
A. P. Martinich is Vaughan Centennial Professor in Philosophy and Professor of
History and Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The
Two Gods of Leviathan (1992), A Hobbes Dictionary (1995), Hobbes: A Biography
(1999), Hobbes (2005), and co-editor (with Kinch Hoekstra) of The Oxford Handbook
of Hobbes (2016).
Alison McQueen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science
at Stanford University. Her work focuses on religion in early modern political thought,
political realism, and the ethics and politics of catastrophe. She is the author of Political
Realism in Apocalyptic Times (2018). Her work has appeared in The Journal of Politics,
Perspectives on Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, and American Political
Thought.
Glen Newey was, until his death in 2017, Professor of Practical Philosophy at
Leiden University in the Netherlands. He was the author of Hobbes and Leviathan
(London: Routledge; revised and expanded edition 2014), and several other books on
political philosophy, as well as numerous articles.
Johan Olsthoorn is Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the University of
Amsterdam and Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO)
(2015–21) at KU Leuven. He has published widely on Hobbes and early modern
moral and political philosophy.
Jon Parkin is Fellow and Tutor in History at St Hugh’s College Oxford. He has held
posts at Cambridge, London, and York and is the author of Science, Religion, and Politics
in Restoration England (1999), Taming the Leviathan (2007) and co-editor (with Timothy
Stanton) of Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment (2013).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

contributors xi

Patricia Springborg is Guest Professor and Fellow at the Centre for British
Studies of the Humboldt University, Berlin. She edited Mary Astell: Political Writings
(1996) and The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (2007), and co-authored
the first English translation and critical edition of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica
(2008). Her research in political theory has been published in the American Political
Science Review, Political Theory, Political Studies, History of Political Thought, Journal
of the History of Ideas, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited works of Hobbes:

AW Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined, trans. Harold Whitmore Jones

(London: Bradford University Press, 1976).
B Behemoth or The Long Parliament, ed. Paul Seaward (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2010).
C The Correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994).
DCo De Corpore, trans. as Elements of Philosophy. The First Section, Concerning
Body, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, i, ed. William
Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839), 388–90.
DCv De Cive, trans. as On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
DH De Homine, trans. in Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1991).
DPS A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of
England, in Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right, ed. Alan Cromartie
and Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 1–152.
EL The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De
Corpore Politico, ed. J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
EW The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. William Molesworth,
10 vols (London: John Bohn, 1839–45).
HE Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. Patricia Springborg, Patricia Stablein,
and Paul Wilson (Paris: Champion, 2008).
L Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts, ed. Noel Malcolm (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2012).
LL Latin Leviathan, in Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts, ed. Noel Malcolm
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012).
LLA ‘Appendix to Leviathan’, in Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts, ed. Noel
Malcolm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012).
OL Thomae Hobbes malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae latine scripsit
omnia, ed. William Molesworth, 5 vols (London: John Bohn, 1839–45).
QLNC Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance (London, 1656).

References to AW, DCo, DCv, DH, and EL are given by chapter and section numbers.
References to EW and OL are given by volume and page numbers. References to L and
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

xiv abbreviations

LL are given by chapter and page numbers in the Clarendon edition. For other works,
references are given by page number to the edition cited. For full details of works of
Hobbes cited see the Bibliography.
Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation generally follow the conventions in the
editions cited, although rounded and pointed forms of ‘u’ and ‘v’ have been modern-
ized appropriately. When not quoting directly from Hobbes, chapter contributors have
been given the freedom to decide whether to follow seventeenth-century conventions
of referring to ‘man’ and use of the male pronoun, or to update such language into
gender-neutral terms.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Introduction
Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass

This volume investigates the complex and rich intersections between Thomas Hobbes’s
political and religious thought. Hobbes is often credited with being one of the first
great theorists of the modern state,1 but the state he theorized, as the title of his most
famous work announces, was a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civil. One of the
main goals of Leviathan (1651) was to unite ‘the two heads of the eagle’, to use Jean-
Jacques Rousseau’s memorable phrase,2 for ‘Temporall and Spirituall Government, are
but two words brought into the world, to make men see double, and mistake their
Lawfull Soveraign’.3
Religion is central to an understanding of seventeenth-century politics, and so too
Hobbes’s politics. Politics is, amongst other things, a response to problems of human
conflict and disagreement, and the greatest conflicts and disagreements of Hobbes’s
day were of religious inspiration. As early as 1641 he wrote to William Cavendish, third
Earl of Devonshire, that ‘the dispute for precedence betwene the spirituall and civill
power, has of late more than any other thing in the world, bene the cause of civill warres,
in all places of Christendome’.4 The English Civil War soon served to confirm this,
which Hobbes later diagnosed as arising from the conflicts between Catholicism and
Anglicanism, and within Anglicanism between Episcopalians and Presbyterians.5 The
kingdom of darkness, propagated chiefly by the Roman clergy and Presbyterian minis-
ters, looms whenever people believe that the church has greater authority than the
sovereign. Long-lasting peace could only ever be attained by overcoming the disputes
between spiritual and civil powers, for which people would need to understand that
the authority of any church derives from that of the sovereign.

1
E.g. Quentin Skinner, ‘A Genealogy of the Modern State’, Proceedings of the British Academy 162
(2009), 325–70.
2
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social; ou principes du droit politique (Amsterdam, 1762), book 4,
chapter 8.
3
L, 39, pp. 732–4.
4
C, p. 120. Cf. DCv, 6.11. Referring to religious views supporting the belief that citizens ‘have the right
and the duty to refuse obedience to the commonwealth’, Hobbes wrote: ‘What war ever broke out in the
Christian world that did not spring from this root or was fed by it?’
5
LLA, p. 1226; B, pp. 181, 232.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

2 Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass

In The Elements of Law (1640), the first instalment of his political philosophy,
Hobbes had argued for the authority of the supreme magistrate over all doctrinal mat-
ters largely on the basis of secular premises. After the Civil War he became increasingly
aware of the need to show that his position would also be acceptable from a theological
point of view, giving rise to the two-pronged approach so characteristic of Leviathan:
while the first two books develop a defence of absolutism on the basis of a naturalistic
human psychology, the second two books do so on the basis of a study of Scripture and
church history. This strategy does much to explain the complex relationship between
his political and religious views.
In considering the appropriate place of religious institutions in society, Hobbes
approached religion primarily as a political phenomenon of natural origins. Religious
institutions, he recognized, serve to exercise power over others. This led him, on the
one hand, to engage in notorious invectives against deceiving theologians who deny
the supremacy of civil over religious authorities. He exposed them as envious and
ambitious men who abuse Scripture and the ‘Vain philosophy’ of Aristotle for their
own ‘worldly Benefits’—sovereign power first among them, but also the right to
­determine successions in hereditary kingdoms, and exemptions from taxation.6 He
explained their motives from his conception of human nature, which reserved a prom-
inent role for the pursuit of glory and power, while simultaneously drawing on his
epistemology, most fully developed in De Corpore (1655), to denounce their teachings
as meaningless canting.
On the other hand, Hobbes also recognized that religious institutions could be
enlisted in support of social tranquillity. The seeds of religion are natural to humans
and are cultivated in society ‘with a purpose to make those men that relyed on them,
the more apt to Obedience, Lawes, Peace, Charity, and civill Society’.7 While it is tempt-
ing to focus solely on Hobbes’s biting criticisms of certain religious doctrines and sects,
it is also worth keeping in mind, as Sarah Mortimer has recently reminded us, that he
appreciated the power of Christianity ‘not only to destroy commonwealths but to sup-
port them’.8 To this end, for instance, he proposed ambitious reforms of the univer-
sities, which he condemned as a hotbed of seditious teaching, and in Behemoth (1681)
expressed his hope that ‘the Polyticks there taught be made to be (as true Polyticks
should be) such as are fit to make men know that it is their duty to obey all Laws what-
soever shall by the Authority of the King be enacted’.9 Hobbes was a theorist of civil
religion and many of his criticisms of specific religious ideas and practices are based on
their failing to serve the ends of the state.10

6
L, 47, pp. 1104–10. 7
L, 12, p. 170.
8
Sarah Mortimer, ‘Christianity and Civil Religion in Hobbes’s Leviathan’, in The Oxford Handbook of
Hobbes, ed. A. P. Martinich and Kinch Hoekstra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 517.
9
B, p. 182.
10
L, 29, p. 517. On Hobbes’s civil religion see e.g. Richard Tuck, ‘The “Christian Atheism” of Thomas
Hobbes’, in Atheism from Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. M. Hunter and D. Wootton (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992), 111–30; Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Political Discourse
in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Introduction 3

To make his political doctrines acceptable to a religious audience Hobbes pursued

an elaborate rereading of Scripture. He understood all too well that if one were to be
required to obey a command ‘as cannot be obeyed, without being damned to Eternall
Death, then it were madnesse to obey it’.11 That is why he sought to show the consist-
ency of the near unlimited obedience he demanded from citizens of a well-ordered
commonwealth with the requirements for their salvation. His engagement with
Scripture, moreover, aimed to square the teachings of the Bible with the ontological
and epistemological commitments that informed his conception of human nature and
ultimately underpinned his politics. This led him, for example, to find scriptural evi-
dence for the corporality of God and the soul, and for the temporary nature of the tor-
ments of Hell.12 After writing Leviathan he increasingly turned to ecclesiastical history.
In works such as Behemoth (his history of the Civil War), the Historia Ecclesiastica
(1688), and A Historical Narration Concerning Heresy (1668), he further defended—
and, as in the case of his highly inflammatory reading of the Trinity, revised—his theo-
logical positions. One of the persistent themes in these writings remained his critique
of the clergy, ‘for whom war was useful’,13 and who attempted to undermine the author-
ity of civil authorities with potentially grave consequences.
Hobbes’s project, then, committed him to dangerously heterodox theological posi-
tions and it is unsurprising that, in his own day, his religious views courted at least as
much controversy as his civil ones. Commentators expressed outrage over his materi-
alistic metaphysics, which they regarded as coming dangerously close to denying the
existence of God and rendering the grounds of religion and morality uncertain.14
Henry More, in The Immortality of the Soul (1659), worried that Hobbes held that
‘there is no Religion, no Piety nor Impiety, no Vertue nor Vice, Justice nor Injustice, but
what it pleases him that has the longest Sword to call so’.15 Hobbes’s critics were equally
concerned by his scriptural interpretations. Upon reading Leviathan’s deflationary
account of Hell and eternal suffering, Bishop John Bramhall remarked, quite accur-
ately, that Hobbes ‘hath killed the great infernal Devil, and all his black angels, and left
no devils to be feared, but devils incarnate, that is, wicked men’.16 Hobbes’s Erastianism

Press, 2010), 120–38; Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion’, in Pluralismo e religione
­civile, ed. Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (Milan: Bruno Mondatori, 2003), 61–98; Ronald Beiner,
Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010), especially chapters 5–6; Mortimer, ‘Christianity and Civil Religion’.
11
L, 43, pp. 928–30.
12
EW 4, p. 313; L, 38, pp. 716–18; LLA, pp. 1128–30. 13
HE, line 29, p. 307.
14
Responding to Hobbes’s materialism, John Wallis in Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae wrote: ‘Who
does not see that thereby you not only deny . . . angels and immortal souls, but the great and good God him-
self ’, quoted in Jon Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of the Political and Religious Ideas of
Thomas Hobbes in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 152.
15
Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, So farre forth as it is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of
Nature and the Light of Reason (London, 1659), 56.
16
John Bramhall, quoted in EW 4, p. 356. For evidence that these fears were better grounded than is
often suspected, see Jon Parkin, ‘Baiting the Bear: The Anglican Attack on Hobbes in the Later 1660s’,
History of Political Thought 34.3 (2013), 421–58.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

4 Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass

was also attacked, with George Lawson maintaining that it is ‘as great an offence for the
State to encroach upon the Church, as for the Church to encroach upon the State’.17 By
the late 1660s, as John Aubrey famously reported, the opposition Hobbes’s views had
generated apparently left him fearful of a motion proposed to Parliament by some of
the bishops ‘to have the good old gentleman burn’t for a heretique’.18
If Hobbes’s seventeenth-century readers appreciated that questions of religion and
politics are inextricably bound, this did not last. By the middle of the twentieth century
Hobbes had been recast as a secular forefather of modernity. His lengthy discussions of
religion and the Bible could thus be abridged with no great loss.19 Even John Rawls,
who praised Leviathan as ‘the greatest single work of political thought in the English
language’, taught his students that Hobbes’s ‘secular political and moral system is fully
intelligible as regards its structure of ideas and the content of its principles when [its]
theological assumptions are left aside’.20 One of the most important developments of
late twentieth-century Hobbes scholarship was the rediscovery of the importance of
religion, but even in 1992, in what remains one of the most comprehensive studies
of the relationship between Hobbes’s political and religious thought, A. P. Martinich
could write that: ‘Most Hobbes scholars are secularists. One consequence is that they
present a bowdlerized version of his philosophy from which all the religious elements
have been expurgated.’21 Happily, things have continued to improve over the last
twenty-five years and increased scholarly attention has been devoted to the religious
dimensions of Hobbes’s thought. Yet it arguably remains the case, as Jeffrey Collins
remarked in his landmark study of 2005, that ‘there has been a pronounced tendency
to treat Hobbes’s religion and his political views as discrete subjects’, such that conven-
tional scholarship ‘has failed to grasp the fundamentally religious nature of the
Hobbesian project’.22
This volume seeks to bring these two subjects together, exploring the relationship
between Hobbes’s political and religious thought from various perspectives. The focus
is principally on Hobbes’s religious politics, rather than his own religious beliefs, or
lack thereof.23 All chapters in this volume engage, in one way or another, with his treat-
ment of religion as a political phenomenon or with the political dimensions of his

17
George Lawson, An Examination of the Political Part of Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan (London, 1657), 138.
18
John Aubrey, Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries, ed. A. Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), i, 339.
19
See Sterling P. Lamprecht’s edition of De Cive (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), and
Herbert W. Schneider’s edition of Leviathan: Parts One and Two (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958).
Thanks to Paul Davis for these references.
20
John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 23, 26. Even if this view is less widely endorsed by
Hobbes scholars today, it remains the impression that many undergraduate students encountering Hobbes
for the first time, especially those studying philosophy or politics, will be left with.
21
A. P. Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 14.
22
Jeffrey Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4.
23
A contrast adopted from Glen Newey, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hobbes’ Leviathan, 2nd
­edition (New York: Routledge, 2014), 232.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 04/27/2018, SPi

Introduction 5

engagement with Christian doctrines and their history. In particular, the volume seeks
to move beyond questions that have attracted much scholarly attention in the past—
most notably, ‘was Hobbes an atheist?’,24 or ‘should the laws of nature be understood as
divine commands?’25—to open up new directions for thinking about the relationship
between politics and religion in Hobbes. Our aim is not to provide exhaustive coverage
of this relationship, but rather to ask new questions and illuminate perspectives that
have not previously received the attention they deserve.
In order to open up new directions of research it helps to take a pluralistic approach,
which is reflected in the methodological diversity of the chapters in this volume. Some
authors pursue mainly historical inquiries about the motives and circumstances of
Hobbes’s political and religious writings. These contributions seek to unearth the pres-
sures that led him to pursue certain lines of argument over others, allowing us to better
understand the meaning of his ideas. Others test their philosophical coherence and
examine their relevance for contemporary concerns. We, too, live in an age of religious
diversity, which often manifests itself in disagreement and conflict. While Hobbes’s
world was no doubt very different from ours, these authors show that we may profit
from looking closely at his strategies to overcome religious disagreement in the pursuit
of peace.
In Chapter 1, Johan Olsthoorn traces the development of Hobbes’s views on the
relationship between civil and religious authority from De Cive (1642, 2nd edition
1647) to Leviathan. He shows that Hobbes defended a view that went beyond
Erastianism—requiring that the church is subordinate to the state—arguing for the
much stronger thesis that the church is identical with the state. Olsthoorn reveals that
Hobbes’s arguments for this identity change in Leviathan, based on his new authoriza-
tion and representation doctrine, and highlights that the work introduces a number of
‘theocratic’ elements, so substituting ‘a Priesthood of Kings’ for ‘a Kingdome of Priests’.
Where Olsthoorn examines how Hobbes’s theory of civil sovereignty comes to encom-
pass the church, in Chapter 2, A. P. Martinich focuses on Hobbes’s account of God’s

24
E.g. J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes’, in his Politics,
Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Athenaeum, 1971), 148–201;
Willis B. Glover, ‘God and Thomas Hobbes’, in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965),
141–68; Arrigo Pacchi, ‘Hobbes and the Problem of God’, in Perspective on Thomas Hobbes, ed. G. A. J. Rogers
and Alan Ryan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 171–88; Martinich, Two Gods, especially chap-
ter 1; Edwin Curley, ‘ “I durst not write so boldly” or, How to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise’,
in Hobbes and Spinoza: Science and Politics, ed. D. Bostrenghi (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1992), 497–593; Curley,
‘Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 34.2 (1996),
257–71; Douglas M. Jesseph, ‘Hobbes’s Atheism’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002), 140–66; Alan
Cromartie, ‘The God of Thomas Hobbes’, The Historical Journal 51.4 (2008), 857–79.
25
E.g. A. E. Taylor, ‘The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes’, Philosophy 13.52 (1938), 406–24; Howard
Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957);
John Plamenatz, ‘Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes’, Political Studies 5.3 (1957), 295–308; F. C. Hood, The Divine
Politics of Thomas Hobbes: An Interpretation of Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964); Brian Barry,
‘Warrender and His Critics’, Philosophy 43.64 (1968), 117–37; Martinich, Two Gods, especially chapter 4;
David Gauthier, ‘Hobbes: The Laws of Nature’, Pacific Philosophy Quarterly 82.3–4 (2001), 258–84; Perez
Zagorin, Hobbes and the Law of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 begat children of Azubah his wife, and of Jerioth] the Hebrew
seems to be corrupt. Read perhaps begat children of Azubah, his
wife, daughter of Jerioth; or took Azubah the wife of Jerioth. The
name Azubah = forsaken is significant: see the note on verse 42,
Caleb, ad fin.

²⁰And Hur begat Uri, and Uri begat Bezalel.

20. Bezalel] the Chronicler is naturally pleased to give
prominence in his list to Bezalel, who in Exodus xxx. (P) is
mentioned as the artificer of the Tabernacle.

²¹And afterward Hezron went in to the

daughter of Machir the father of Gilead; whom
he took to wife when he was threescore years
old; and she bare him Segub.
21. The table of Caleb is broken off at this point to introduce
verses 21‒23 a statement of further descendants of Hezron (verse
9) by another wife, the daughter of Machir. The interruption is not
unnatural, for it is convenient to refer to Hezron’s “son of old age”
immediately before the notice of his death (verse 24).

Machir] the most important clan of Manasseh (compare Numbers

xxvi. 29; Judges v. 14). The affinity of Judean Hezronites with
members of the tribe of Manasseh, implied by this verse, is
surprising. Whether the tradition has a basis in fact, or arose through
some genealogical confusion, cannot as yet be determined. There is
however considerable evidence in favour of the view that the
relationship between Machir and Caleb is at least “no isolated detail,
still less is it the invention of the Chronicler’s age,” and there may be
real historical ground for a tradition that besides the northern
movement of the Hezronites upwards to Judah there was also at
some time a movement across the northern end of Edom into the
lands east of Jordan, ending in the settlements of Machir and Jair in
Gilead here recorded; compare Numbers xxxii. 39, and for
discussion of the problem see Cook, Notes on Old Testament
History, pp. 92, 93, etc.

²²And Segub begat Jair, who had three and

twenty cities in the land of Gilead.
22. Jair] one of the Judges (Judges x. 3, 4 where thirty cities, not
twenty-three, are assigned him).

the land of Gilead] This name is sometimes restricted to that part

of the land east of Jordan which lies south of the wady Yarmuk.
Here, as often, it is applied to all the land east of Jordan occupied by
Israel.

²³And Geshur and Aram took the towns ¹ of Jair

from them, with Kenath, and the villages ²
thereof, even threescore cities. All these were
the sons of Machir the father of Gilead.
¹ Or, Havvoth-jair. ² Hebrew daughters.

23. And Geshur and Aram] Geshur was an Aramean kingdom

east of Jordan on the north-east border of Manasseh. Aram,
commonly translated “Syria” or “the Syrians,” probably here signifies
the kingdom of which Damascus was the capital. The conquest of
Manassite territory by the Arameans (“Syrians”) here described
probably took place before the days of Ahab, for in his reign they
were already established as far south as Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings
xxii. 3).

the towns of Jair] note margin Havvoth-jair, compare

Deuteronomy iii. 14; Judges x. 4. The name perhaps means “the
tent-villages of Jair” (Arabic Ḥĭvâ = “a collection of tents near
together”).
 ²⁴And after that Hezron was dead in Caleb-
ephrathah, then Abijah Hezron’s wife bare him
Ashhur the father of Tekoa.
24. And after that Hezron was dead in Caleb-ephrathah] The
Hebrew is certainly corrupt, but can easily be emended with the help
of the LXX. Read And after Hezron was dead Caleb went in to
Ephrath (verse 19) his father Hezron’s wife and she bare him,
etc. Ephrath (= Ephrathah, verse 50, iv. 4) is a name of Bethlehem
(Ruth iv. 11; Micah v. 2). “The taking of a father’s wife signified a
claim to inherit the father’s possessions (compare 2 Samuel xvi. 22),
and the phrase here expresses the legitimacy of Caleb’s residence
in northern Judea” (see note on verse 42).

Ashhur] compare iv. 4, 5. Ashhur might be a younger brother of

Hur (verses 19, 50); but quite possibly they are one and the same
(compare the contraction of Jehoahaz into Ahaz); see also iv. 5.

the father of Tekoa] i.e. the founder of the town or the eponymous
ancestor of its inhabitants. For Tekoa see 2 Chronicles xx. 20, note.

25‒41.
The Genealogy of the Jerahmeelites.

²⁵And the sons of Jerahmeel the firstborn of

Hezron were Ram the firstborn, and Bunah,
and Oren, and Ozem, Ahijah.
25. Jerahmeel] In David’s time they were, like Caleb, a semi-
nomadic clan in the south of Judah; compare 1 Samuel xxvii. 10;
xxx. 29. They shared in the northern movements of Caleb (see note
on verse 42), and eventually formed part of the post-exilic Jewish
community; hence their records do not appear in earlier parts of the
Old Testament, but are known to the Chronicler.
 Ozem, Ahijah] By a slight change in the Hebrew we get Ozem
his brother (so LXX.); compare xxvi. 20 for a similar confusion of
reading.

²⁶And Jerahmeel had another wife, whose

name was Atarah; she was the mother of
Onam. ²⁷And the sons of Ram the firstborn of
Jerahmeel were Maaz, and Jamin, and Eker.
²⁸And the sons of Onam were Shammai, and
Jada: and the sons of Shammai; Nadab, and
Abishur. ²⁹And the name of the wife of Abishur
was Abihail; and she bare him Ahban, and
Molid. ³⁰And the sons of Nadab; Seled, and
Appaim: but Seled died without children ¹.
¹ Or, sons.

26. Atarah] see note on Hezron, verse 5.

³¹And the sons of Appaim; Ishi. And the sons

of Ishi; Sheshan. And the sons of Sheshan;
Ahlai. ³²And the sons of Jada the brother of
Shammai; Jether, and Jonathan: and Jether
died without children ¹. ³³And the sons of
Jonathan; Peleth, and Zaza. These were the
sons of Jerahmeel.
¹ Or, sons.
 31. the sons of Sheshan; Ahlai] Ahlai is perhaps a gentilic name,
not the name of an individual, since in verse 34 Sheshan is said to
have had “no sons, but daughters.” More probably however the
Chronicler is using a different source for verses 34‒41.

³⁴Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters.

And Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian,
whose name was Jarha.
34. an Egyptian] Hebrew Miṣri. Render probably a Muṣrite, i.e.
inhabitant of the north Arabian district to the south of Palestine,
known as Muṣri and apparently confused at times with Miṣraim
(Egypt). For some suggestive conjectures regarding this table of
Jarha’s descendants see S. A. Cook, Encyclopedia Biblica ii. 2364.

³⁵And Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his

servant to wife; and she bare him Attai. ³⁶And
Attai begat Nathan, and Nathan begat Zabad;
³⁷and Zabad begat Ephlal, and Ephlal begat
Obed; ³⁸and Obed begat Jehu, and Jehu
begat Azariah; ³⁹and Azariah begat Helez, and
Helez begat Eleasah; ⁴⁰and Eleasah begat
Sismai, and Sismai begat Shallum; ⁴¹and
Shallum begat Jekamiah, and Jekamiah begat
Elishama.
35. Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha] This was equivalent to
making his servant his heir. Thus Abraham at first (Genesis xv. 2, 3)
regarded Eliezer his steward as his heir. The list of thirteen
descendants of Jarha ending with Elishama (verse 41) is perhaps a
proper genealogy: at least the names may be those of individuals,
although it is impossible to say why this pedigree of Elishama should
have been so carefully preserved (so Curtis). On the other hand
Cook (see previous note) regards Jarha as perhaps an eponym of
Jerahmeel, and, connecting Sheshan with the Hebronite Sheshai,
thinks the genealogy may signify a northward movement of
Jerahmeel from Muṣri to the district of Hebron.

42‒49 (compare verses 18‒24).

The Descendants of Caleb.

⁴²And the sons of Caleb the brother of

Jerahmeel were Mesha his firstborn, which
was the father of Ziph; and the sons of
Mareshah the father of Hebron. ⁴³And the
sons of Hebron; Korah, and Tappuah, and
Rekem, and Shema. ⁴⁴And Shema begat
Raham, the father of Jorkeam; and Rekem
begat Shammai.
42. Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel] Called Chelubai (verse 9)
and Caleb the son of Hezron (verse 18). As eponym of the tribe
Caleb is described as “son” of Hezron “son” of Judah, and of course
is not to be distinguished from the Caleb son of Jephunneh who is
classed as a Kenizzite in various passages (iv. 15; Numbers xiii. 6;
Joshua xiv. 6).

Important features of the fortunes of the Caleb clan can be

discerned from the lists in this chapter, verses 18‒24, 42‒50. It
appears that at first their seats were in the southern parts of Judah—
witness verses 42‒49, in which several of the names, viz. Ziph
(Joshua xv. 24 or 25), Mareshah (2 Chronicles xi. 8), Hebron,
Tappuah (Joshua xv. 34), Maon (Joshua xv. 55), and Beth-zur
(Joshua xv. 58) are names of towns in the south or south-west of
Judah. From these, their pre-exilic homes, they were driven
northwards, and during the exilic period and afterwards they
occupied many of the townships not far from Jerusalem, e.g.
Bethlehem (see verses 50‒55). Apart from the names in verses 50‒
55, we have a testimony to this northward movement in verse 24
(where see note), and probably also in verse 18, where the names
Jerioth (tents) and Azubah (forsaken) hint at the abandonment first
of nomadic life and then of the south Judean settlements. This
movement was largely no doubt compulsory, under pressure from
the Edomites to the south (compare above i. 43, note) who in their
turn were being forced north by a strong and fairly constant
encroachment of Arab tribes (see Wellhausen, De Gentibus, and
more recently Hölscher, Palästina, pp. 22, 30, on the importance of
such evidence as this notice in Chronicles for determining the
composition and conditions of Palestine in the post-exilic period).

Mesha] The Moabite king whose deeds are recorded on the

Moabite Stone bore this name. LXX. reads Mareshah (Μαρεισά) as
in the latter part of the verse.

⁴⁵And the son of Shammai was Maon; and

Maon was the father of Beth-zur. ⁴⁶And Ephah,
Caleb’s concubine, bare Haran, and Moza,
and Gazez: and Haran begat Gazez. ⁴⁷And
the sons of Jahdai; Regem, and Jotham, and
Geshan, and Pelet, and Ephah, and Shaaph.
⁴⁸Maacah, Caleb’s concubine, bare Sheber
and Tirhanah.
45. Maon] Nabal who was a Calebite lived at the town of Maon (1
Samuel xxv. 2, 3). It is improbable that Maon was ever used as the
name of a person; compare Buchanan Gray, Hebrew Proper Names,
pp. 127 f. See note on verse 42.

⁴⁹She bare also Shaaph the father of

Madmannah, Sheva the father of Machbena,
 and the father of Gibea; and the daughter of
Caleb was Achsah.
49. the daughter of Caleb was Achsah] Compare Judges i. 12.

50‒55. These verses give the post-exilic settlements of the

Calebites in the townships of northern Judea, not far from
Jerusalem: see verse 42, note.

⁵⁰These were the sons of Caleb; the son ¹ of

Hur, the firstborn of Ephrathah, Shobal the
father of Kiriath-jearim; ⁵¹Salma the father of
Beth-lehem, Hareph the father of Beth-gader.
¹ The Septuagint has, sons.

50. the son of Hur] Read with the LXX., the sons of Hur. Hur
was the son of Caleb (verse 19).

the firstborn of Ephrathah] see note verse 24.

⁵²And Shobal the father of Kiriath-jearim had

sons; Haroeh, half of the Menuhoth.
52. Haroeh, half of the Menuhoth] The Hebrew is quite obscure,
but may perhaps be rendered, who provided for half the resting-
places, the description applying to Shobal, i.e. his work was to
supervise some of the halting stations of the caravans which passed
through the territory of Judah. Compare similar details in iv. 21‒23,
and the title Prince of the resting-places (margin quarter-master)
given to Seraiah in Jeremiah li. 59. Almost certainly, however, the
text in the present passage is corrupt, and, following iv. 2 and verse
54, we may read Reaiah and half of the Manahathites. For the
latter see below, verse 54.
 ⁵³And the families of Kiriath-jearim; the Ithrites,
and the Puthites, and the Shumathites, and
the Mishraites; of them came the Zorathites
and the Eshtaolites.
53. Zorathites, Eshtaolites] for Zorah (modern Surah) and Eshtaol
(modern Eshua), compare Judges xiii. 25.

⁵⁴The sons of Salma; Beth-lehem, and the

Netophathites, Atrothbeth-Joab, and half of
the Manahathites, the Zorites.
54. Manahathites, the Zorites] The Manahathites of Zorah must
be associated with Manoah, the father of Samson, according to the
tradition of Judges xiii. 2, 25, and an inhabitant of Zorah (see Cooke,
Judges, pp. 131, 138, in this series).

⁵⁵And the families of scribes which dwelt at

Jabez; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, the
Sucathites. These are the Kenites that came
of Hammath, the father of the house of
Rechab.
55. families of scribes] an indication of post-exilic date.

the Kenites that came of Hammath] or perhaps, the Kenites who

came in (i.e. who attached themselves to Israel), who were from
Hammath.

father of the house of Rechab] The verse is somewhat obscure,

but it is most probable that the Chronicler preserves a correct
tradition in the connection here alleged between the Rechabites and
the Kenites. On the ancient zeal for Jehovah displayed by the
Rechabites, see 2 Kings x. 15 ff.; and for their distinctive standpoint,
Jeremiah xxxv.

Chapter III.
1‒24.
The Genealogy of the House of David.

1‒4 (= 2 Samuel iii. 2‒5).

The Sons born to David in Hebron.

¹Now these were the sons of David, which

were born unto him in Hebron: the firstborn,
Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the
second, Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess;
1. Daniel] LXX. (B) Δαμνιήλ, (A) Δαλουιά. In 2 Samuel iii. 3
Chileab, but LXX. Δαλουιά. The real name of David’s second son
remains therefore uncertain.

²the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the

daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; the fourth,
Adonijah the son of Haggith;
2. Geshur] Compare ii. 23, note.

³the fifth, Shephatiah of Abital; the sixth,

Ithream by Eglah his wife. ⁴Six were born unto
him in Hebron; and there he reigned seven
 years and six months: and in Jerusalem he
reigned thirty and three years.
3. Eglah his wife] In 2 Samuel iii. 5 “Eglah David’s wife,” where
however David is probably a wrong reading for the name of a
previous husband of Eglah.

5‒9 (= chapter xiv. 4‒7 and 2 Samuel v. 14‒16).

The Sons born to David in Jerusalem.

⁵And these were born unto him in

Jerusalem: Shimea, and Shobab, and Nathan,
and Solomon, four, of Bath-shua the daughter
of Ammiel:
5. Shimea] in xiv. 4 and 2 Samuel v. 14 (Revised Version)
Shammua.

Nathan] Through him our Lord’s descent is traced in Luke iii. 31.

Solomon] Only here are other sons besides Solomon attributed to

Bath-sheba.

Bath-shua] is a slight variation in pronunciation of Bath-sheba.

the daughter of Ammiel] of Eliam (perhaps a by-form of Ammiel)

in 2 Samuel xi. 3. An Eliam son of Ahithophel, David’s counsellor, is
mentioned in 2 Samuel xxiii. 34; Bath-sheba may therefore have
been grand-daughter to Ahithophel. Notice that the Chronicler does
not call Bath-sheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite; he nowhere refers to
David’s great sin; compare xx. 1‒3, where the silence of Chronicles
on this matter is specially to be noted.

⁶and Ibhar, and Elishama, and Eliphelet; ⁷and

Nogah, and Nepheg, and Japhia;
 6. Elishama] in xiv. 5 and 2 Samuel v. 15 Elishua, no doubt the
right reading, for otherwise (compare verse 8) we have two sons of
David named Elishama.

Eliphelet] in xiv. 5 Elpelet. Eliphelet cannot be right, for it occurs

again as the name of the thirteenth son in verse 8. Elpelet may be
right here and Eliphelet in verse 8, for according to Hebrew custom
two brothers might bear names of similar sound and significance.
But both Eliphelet and Nogah, the following word, are lacking in 2
Samuel v. 15; and are probably only textual errors due to
dittography.

⁸and Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphelet,

nine. ⁹All these were the sons of David, beside
the sons of the concubines; and Tamar was
their sister.
8. Eliada] so in 2 Samuel v. 16, but in 1 Chronicles xiv. 7 Beeliada
(i.e. Baaliada, “The Lord—the Baal—knows”). This seems to have
been changed to Eliada (i.e. God knows), when the title Baal had
come to have only heathen associations, and was accordingly
repudiated by the Jews: see the note on viii. 33.

10‒16.
The Line of Davidic Kings.

¹⁰And Solomon’s son was Rehoboam,

Abijah his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his
son; ¹¹Joram his son, Ahaziah his son, Joash
his son;
Two things are to be noted in this list: (1) Johanan’s name is
given in verse 15, though he was never king, (2) Zedekiah’s name
appears to be twice given, once among the sons of Josiah (verse 15)
and again in his place according to the succession (verse 16).
 10. Abijah] called Abijam in 1 Kings xiv. 31, xv. 1 ff. Abia is the
Greek form of the name; Matthew i. 7 (Authorized Version).

¹²Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham

his son; ¹³Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son,
Manasseh his son; ¹⁴Amon his son, Josiah his
son.
12. Azariah] This king is usually called Uzziah, compare Isaiah vi.
1; see note on 2 Chronicles xxvi. 1.

¹⁵And the sons of Josiah; the firstborn

Johanan, the second Jehoiakim, the third
Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum.
15. the firstborn Johanan] This son of Josiah never came to the
throne, nor is anything known of him except from this passage.

Zedekiah] Though reckoned third here, he was younger than

Shallum (= Jehoahaz); compare 2 Chronicles xxxvi. 2 (= 2 Kings
xxiii. 31) with 2 Chronicles xxxvi. 11 (= 2 Kings xxiv. 18).

Shallum] To be identified with Jehoahaz; compare 2 Chronicles

xxxvi. 1 with Jeremiah xxii. 11.

¹⁶And the sons of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah his

son, Zedekiah his son.
16. Jeconiah] This name is sometimes shortened to Coniah
(Jeremiah xxii. 24) and written (with a slight change of meaning)
Jehoiachin (2 Chronicles xxxvi. 8, 9; 2 Kings xxiv. 6 ff.).

Zedekiah his son] Zedekiah was heir, not son, to Jeconiah, whom
he succeeded in the kingdom. His relationship to Jeconiah was that
of uncle.
 17‒19a.
The Davidic Line from Jeconiah to Zerubbabel.

Note that whereas Zerubbabel is here represented apparently as

the son of Pedaiah and consequently nephew of Shealtiel (=
Salathiel), he is elsewhere called the son of Shealtiel (Ezra iii. 2;
Haggai i. 1, ii. 2; compare Luke iii. 27‒31). The LXX. solves the
difficulty by reading Salathiel (= Shealtiel) in verse 19. The view that
the names given in verse 18 (including Pedaiah) are the names of
the sons of Shealtiel is not probable. Another suggestion is that
Zerubbabel was grand-son both to Shealtiel and Pedaiah, according
to such a scheme as the following:

Pedaiah Shealtiel
| |
a daughter = a son
|
Zerubbabel.

A minor difficulty that Shealtiel (= Salathiel) is here connected

with David through Solomon, whereas in Luke iii. 27‒31 his descent
is traced through Solomon’s brother Nathan, could be explained by
an intermarriage at some point in the genealogy between the two
Davidic families.

¹⁷And the sons of Jeconiah, the captive ¹;

Shealtiel his son, ¹⁸and Malchiram, and
Pedaiah, and Shenazzar, Jekamiah,
Hoshama, and Nedabiah.
¹ Or, Assir.

17. the sons of Jeconiah] That Jeconiah had sons is not at

variance with Jeremiah’s denunciation of him (Jeremiah xxii. 30).
That passage gives the answer to Jeconiah’s expectation of a
speedy return to his kingdom (Jeremiah xxii. verse 27); Jeremiah
says that neither he nor any of his seed shall recover the lost throne:
“Reckon him childless, for no son of his shall succeed him on his
throne.”

the captive] Hebrew assir, which the Revised Version margin (=

Authorized Version), following the ancient Versions, has wrongly
taken to be a proper name. The Revised Version margin is here only
a survival of Authorized Version. The rendering of the text (the
captive) no doubt expresses the real judgment of the Revisers.

Shealtiel] the Greek form Salathiel (Authorized Version) occurs in

Luke iii. 27 (Authorized Version).

¹⁹And the sons of Pedaiah; Zerubbabel, and

Shimei: and the sons ¹ of Zerubbabel;
¹ Hebrew son.

19. the sons of Zerubbabel] so the LXX. The Hebrew has son, as
Revised Version margin.

19b‒24.
The Davidic Line from Zerubbabel.

The text of these verses is very uncertain. In verse 20 the names

of five sons are given, but their father’s name (perhaps Meshullam)
is wanting. In verses 21, 22 the LXX. differs from the Hebrew in such
a way as to affect the number of steps in the genealogy; the Hebrew
seems to reckon but one generation between Hananiah and
Shemaiah, the LXX. on the contrary reckons six; the result on the
whole genealogy being that the LXX. counts eleven generations after
Zerubbabel as against six in the Hebrew In verse 22 again the sons
of Shemaiah are reckoned to be six, but only five names are given in
both Hebrew and LXX. For the bearing of these verses upon the
date of Chronicles, see the Introduction § 3.
 Meshullam, and Hananiah; and Shelomith was
their sister: ²⁰and Hashubah, and Ohel, and
Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushab-hesed, five.
20. and Hashubah] Perhaps we should read “The sons of
Meshullam: Hashubah.” See above.

Jushab-hesed] The name means “Mercy is restored.” Many such

significant names are found in the present list, and, in general, are
characteristic of the exilic and later periods.

²¹And the sons ¹ of Hananiah; Pelatiah, and

Jeshaiah: the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of
Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of
Shecaniah. ²²And the sons of Shecaniah;
Shemaiah: and the sons of Shemaiah;
Hattush, and Igal, and Bariah, and Neariah,
and Shaphat, six.
¹ Hebrew son.

21. and Jeshaiah ... Shecaniah] The LXX. reads (with some
blunders in reproducing the names), “and Jeshaiah his son,
Rephaiah his son, Arnan his son, Obadiah his son, Shecaniah his
son,” thus adding five steps to the genealogy. The difference of
reading in the Hebrew text thus suggested is very slight. It is quite
uncertain whether the Hebrew or the reading of the LXX. is to be
preferred: see the Introduction § 3, A 2.

²³And the sons ¹ of Neariah; Elioenai, and

Hizkiah, and Azrikam, three. ²⁴And the sons of
Elioenai; Hodaviah, and Eliashib, and Pelaiah,
 and Akkub, and Johanan, and Delaiah, and
Anani, seven.
¹ Hebrew son.

23. Elioenai] A name meaning, “Mine eyes are towards Jehovah,”

compare Psalms xxv. 15; compare Jushab-hesed (verse 20) and
Hodaviah (“Give thanks to Jehovah” = Hoduiah), verse 24.
 Chapter IV.
1‒23 (compare ii. 3 ff.)
Genealogies of the Tribes of Judah.

The material contained in these verses gives rise to no little

perplexity, not only in itself but also when considered along with the
genealogies of Judah in ii. 3 ff. Whether the Chronicler himself could
have thrown any light on the points which puzzle us may well be
doubted: he was more concerned to preserve all available
genealogical matter than to consider or attempt to reconcile
conflicting elements. Both the date and relationship of these notices
must be confessed to be as yet uncertain, opinion being divided
even on the question whether the list represents pre-exilic or post-
exilic conditions. Remark that the list is essentially a Calebite one.

¹The sons of Judah; Perez, Hezron, and

Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal.
1. As Hezron was the son of Perez (chapter ii. 5) and (if the LXX.
be right) Shobal was the son of Hur (ii. 50, note), we have in this
verse five, if not six, generations.

Carmi] for the name, compare ii. 7, and v. 3. Here, however,

Carmi is certainly an error for Caleb: see ii. 4, 5, 9, 50 and also the
structure of the present chapter. Thus in accord with the usual
practice of the Chronicler the chief ancestors are first named (verse
1), and then, in reverse order, their descendants—sons of Shobal
and Hur (verses 2‒10), and sons of Chelub (= Caleb) (verses 11‒
15).
 ²And Reaiah the son of Shobal begat Jahath;
and Jahath begat Ahumai and Lahad. These
are the families of the Zorathites.
2. Reaiah] Compare note on ii. 52.

the Zorathites] Compare note on ii. 53.

³And these were the sons of the father of

Etam; Jezreel, and Ishma, and Idbash: and
the name of their sister was Hazzelelponi:
3. these were the sons of the father of Etam] The Hebrew has not
got the words the sons of, and is certainly corrupt. The LXX. reads,
These were the sons of Etam. Correction is difficult, largely owing to
the obscurity of Etam. If Etam had been named as a son of Shobal in
verse 2, we might follow the LXX. It is perhaps best to suppose that
Etam begins the list of descendants of Hur, and to read “these were
the sons of Hur the father of Etam.” Etam was a place, but whether
near Bethlehem (the Etam of 2 Chronicles xi. 6) or in southern Judah
(the Simeonite Etam of verse 32) is uncertain.

⁴and Penuel the father of Gedor, and Ezer the

father of Hushah. These are the sons of Hur,
the firstborn of Ephrathah, the father of Beth-
lehem.
4. Hur] the first born of Ephrathah (= Ephrath) one of the wives of
Caleb (ii. 19). Hur was father of Bethlehem through his son Salma (ii.
50, 51, LXX.). For the name of the city compare Genesis xxxv. 19
(Ephrath the same is Bethlehem) and Micah v. 2 (Revised Version
Thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah).
 ⁵And Ashhur the father of Tekoa had two
wives, Helah and Naarah. ⁶And Naarah bare
him Ahuzzam, and Hepher, and Temeni, and
Haahashtari. These were the sons of Naarah.
⁷And the sons of Helah were Zereth, Izhar ¹,
and Ethnan.
¹ Another reading is, and Zohar.

5. Ashhur the father of Tekoa] Ashhur is probably only a variant

of Hur (see note ii. 24). Hur then is the exilic or post-exilic “father”
(founder) of the Calebite population of Tekoa (5 miles from
Bethlehem), and of Bethlehem, etc., through his sons (ii. 50‒52).

Helah and Naarah] Neither the names of the wives nor those of
the children yield any certain information.

⁸And Hakkoz begat Anub, and Zobebah, and

the families of Aharhel the son of Harum.
8. And Hakkoz] But Hebrew Koz. The absence of connection with
the preceding verse is striking. Perhaps Koz was properly one of the
sons of Helah (verse 7), and a motive for the severance of his name
may be found in the wish to make less obvious his Calebite (i.e. non-
Levitical) origin, in case he were identified with the priestly Hakkoz of
xxiv. 10; Ezekiel ii. 61, a family who were unable to prove an
untainted pedigree.

⁹And Jabez was more honourable than his

brethren: and his mother called his name
Jabez, saying. Because I bare him with
sorrow.