6. The date of the book as it stands was _after_ B.C. 542, for the last event mentioned in it is the mercy extended by Evil-merodach, King of Babylon, to his unfortunate prisoner Jehoiachin (2 Kings xxv. 27) in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity. The language--later than that of Isaiah, and earlier than that of Ezra--confirms this conclusion. That the book appeared before B.C. 536 is clear from the fact that the compiler makes no allusion to Zerubbabel, Jeshua, or the first exiles who returned to Jerusalem after the decree of Cyrus. But it is generally agreed that the book was _substantially_ complete before the Exile (about B.C. 600), though some exilic additions may have been made by a later editor.[14] "The writer was already removed by at least six hundred years from the days of Samuel, a space of time as long as that which separates us from the first Parliament of Edward I." This date of the book--which cannot but have some bearing on its historic value--is admitted by all, since the peculiarities of the language from the beginning to the end are marked by the usages of later Hebrew.[15] The chronicler lived some two centuries later "in about the same chronological relation to David as Professor Freeman stands to William Rufus."[16] 7. Criticism cannot furnish us with the name of this great compiler.[17] Jewish tradition, as preserved in the Talmud,[18] assigned the Books of Kings to the prophet Jeremiah, and in the Jewish canon they are reckoned among "the earlier prophets." This would account for the strange silence about Jeremiah in the Second Book of Kings, whereas he is prominently mentioned in the Book of Chronicles, in the Apocrypha, and in Josephus. But unless we accept the late and worthless Jewish assertion that, after being carried to Egypt by Johanan, son of Kareah (Jer. xlii. 6, 7), Jeremiah escaped to Babylon,[19] he could not have been the author of the last section of the book (2 Kings xxv. 27-30).[20] Yet it is precisely in the closing chapters of the second book (in and after chap. xvii.) that the resemblances to the style of Jeremiah are most marked.[21] That the writer was a _contemporary_ of that prophet, was closely akin to him in his religious attitude, and was filled with the same melancholy feelings, is plain; but this, as recent critics have pointed out, is due to the fact that both writers reflect the opinions and the phraseology which we find in the Book of Deuteronomy. 8. The critics who are so often charged with rash assumptions have been led to the conclusions which they adopt by intense and infinite labour, including the examination of various books of Scripture phrase by phrase, and even word by word. The sum total of their most important results as regards the Books of Kings is as follows:--