The author has an exaggerated interest in this liturgy, and especially in the part taken in it by the minor orders of the clergy, levites, musicians, singers, door-keepers, and the rest. The levites are provided for in the Pentateuch, but the orchestra and choruses, according to the Chronicler, were organized by David (1 Chron. 23-26), who thus provided for the proper execution of his Psalms. When a great religious function is described, the music invariably comes in for a prominent notice (e.g. 2 Chron. v. 12 f.). We have seen that the historians of the seventh and following centuries, the so-called deuteronomist school, wrote or interpreted the history to exemplify the doctrine that defection from the national religion is surely punished by national calamities. The Chronicler's doctrine of retribution is at once harder and more individual. He also turns it about: unusual suffering is proof of sin. Thus, Asa was, according to Kings, a conspicuously good king, but in his old age he had the gout. The Chronicler, by the mouth of a prophet, explains why: he relied on the king of Syria to help him against Israel, instead of relying on the Lord. The king clapped the prophet into prison for meddling with affairs of state, and so added another affront to God. He was impenitent, however, for though the gout was very bad, "yet sought he not unto the Lord, but to the physicians." Uzziah, another godly king, was in his later years afflicted with leprosy, a disease which was regarded as peculiarly the stroke of God. The Chronicler gives the reason: the king presumed to burn incense on the altar in spite of the protest of the priest, and was smitten with leprosy on the spot. There is no reason to impugn the author's good faith in such emendations of his sources. He thought he knew the laws of history, and if in the particular instance the record did not correspond, it must be defective. But whatever apology may be made for his good intentions, it need hardly be said that the unsupported testimony of a doctrinaire historian who deals so sovereignly with the facts is of no weight.