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The Book of Chronicles presents itself as a historiographical work. Events are directly observable, not time per se, and accordingly, events rather than abstract conceptions of time are explicitly reported in narrative and historiographical works that try to communicate verisimilitude. Moreover, genre considerations apply: historical narratives are not philosophical treatises. Yet historiographical works (a) presuppose certain notions of time and (b) construct time. Turning to the book of Chronicles, this observation becomes obvious as soon as one recognizes the ubiquitous presence of sequential time and the central role given to the maintenance of the proper cult, which surely involves a notion of circular or recurrent time. In fact, as it will be shown, Chronicles implies, shapes, and communicates a multi-faceted concept or concepts of time.

To begin with, the very existence and production of the book implies a notion that it is important for the present community of (re)readers and their future generations to know about their past – however it is constructed – and to understand the cause-effect relations that shaped it – according to the claims of the text. Such a notion carries by necessity temporal dimensions.

There is clear evidence of both (a) circular, recurrent, or cyclical and (b) mono-directional, linear, or sequential times in Chronicles. The former involves temporal subdivisions of the day, days within a week, weeks, seasons, cycles of years, festival and pilgrimage times. Most often, this type of time blended together cosmic/astronomic and cultic attributes of time.