The name of these books is a misnomer – it’s not really “chronicles” in terms of a linear history. Rather, it’s a theological exploration of the history from Adam to King Cyrus with a particular focus on sin and the consequences of sin.
Author and Date
Basically, there are multiple authors and the writing is hard to date. Like much of the Old Testament, this is probably a product of the post-exilic community – those who had returned to the land of Israel from Babylon.
Features
One significant contribution is that these books highlight the actions of many women
The author is concerned with Temple ritual, God’s word, and how to please God in worship. The theme throughout is that ignoring these things is what ultimately leads to the destruction of the nation. The people have been in exile and, although they have returned to their homeland, their Temple is gone and many of the practices that made them Jews are not longer available to them. They are trying to make sense of their future by making sense of the past.
Retribution theology is heavy throughout. This is an image of a God who’s just waiting for us to mess up so he can zap us. We can think of it in terms of “I do this bad thing -> God punishes me.” Or we can think of it in terms of “I do this bad thing -> natural consequences follow.” I could interpret those consequences as a punishment directly from God. And maybe they are. But I could also view it as something that naturally follows what I did and might even be positive in that it allows me to grow. In a very general sense, there is a connection between sin and its consequences.
For the Israelites, the Babylonian captivity wasn’t the punishment for a singular sin but rather the consequence of generations of cutting themselves off from a life with God. God sent messengers (early and often) and those messages went unheeded. In a sense, the deportation to Babylon was acting out very literally what the people had already done: they had already removed themselves from God’s presence.