1. Introduction

Several works have addressed the royal speeches in the book of Chronicles, typically focusing on the speeches of the Judahite and Israelite kings. This tendency is not surprising since (1) the immense majority of royal speeches in Chronicles are set in the mouths of these kings; (2) Israel (or Judah) and Jerusalem are at the center of the book; and (3) foreign monarchs are referred to only insofar as they interact with Israel or Judah and never in terms of their own importance.

The present article, however, deals with the speech of non-Israelite monarchs. In five cases the narrator in Chronicles presents the narratee with the (subjective) perspective of a foreign monarch as expressed in the monarch's own words, be this in oral or written form. In other words, five times in the book of Chronicles the narrator directly transmits the speech of a foreign monarch or quotes a document written by a foreign ruler. These direct quotations serve as strong indicators of the character of the person quoted. As such, the quotations shed considerable light on the world of knowledge and worldview held by the foreign monarchs, as well as on their use of language as characters within the world of the book. Significantly, the information so provided has clear bearings on the ideology or theology that is reflected and shaped by the relevant pericopes in the book of Chronicles and by the book as a whole.