By this projection of the legitimate cultus prescribed in the Law and realised in Judaism, the Chronicler is brought however into a peculiar conflict with the statements of his authority, which show that the said cultus was not a mature thing which preceded all history, but came gradually into being in the course of history; he makes his escape as well as he can, but yet not without a strange vacillation between the timeless manner of looking at things which is natural to him, and the historical tradition which he uses and appropriates. The verses in 1Kings (xiv. 22, 23): Judah (not Rehoboam merely) did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah and provoked Him to jealousy by their sins which they sinned, above all that their fathers had done; and they set up for themselves high places, macceboth and asherim, &c., which in the passage where they occur are, like the parallel statement regarding Israel (xii. 25 seq.), of primary importance, and cancel by one bold stroke the alleged difference of worship between the Levitical and non-Levitical kingdom, are omitted as quite too impossible, although the whole remaining context is preserved (2Chronicles xii. 1-16). In the same way the unfavourable judgment upon Rehoboam's successor Abijah (1Kings xv. 3-5) is dropped, because the first kings of Judah, inasmuch as they maintain the true religion against those of Israel who have fallen away from it, must of necessity have been good. But though the Chronicler is silent about what is bad, for the sake of Judah's honour, he cannot venture to pass over the improvement which, according to 1Kings xv. 12 seq., was introduced in Asa's day, although one does not in the least know what need there was for it, everything already having been in the best possible state. 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.