In the Christian Bible, the two Books of Chronicles (commonly referred to as 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, or First Chronicles and Second Chronicles) generally follow the two Books of Kings and precede Ezra–Nehemiah, thus concluding the history-oriented books of the Old Testament, often referred to as the Deuteronomistic history.
In the Hebrew Bible, Chronicles is a single book, called Diḇrê Hayyāmîm (Hebrew: דִּבְרֵי־הַיָּמִים, "The Matters [of] the Days"), and is the final book of Ketuvim, the third and last part of the Tanakh. Chronicles was divided into two books in the Septuagint and called I and II Paralipoménōn (Greek: Παραλειπομένων, "things left on one side"). The English name comes from the Latin name chronikon, which was given to the text by scholar Jerome in the 5th century.
Chronicles present the biblical narrative from the first human being, Adam, through the history of ancient Judah and Israel until the proclamation of King Cyrus the Great (ca. 540 BCE).
The Chronicles narrative begins with Adam and the story is then carried forward, almost entirely by genealogical lists, down to the founding of the first Kingdom of Israel (1 Chronicles 1–9). The bulk of the remainder of 1 Chronicles, after a brief account of Saul, is concerned with the reign of David (1 Chronicles 11–29). The next long section concerns David's son Solomon (2 Chronicles 1–9), and the final part is concerned with the Kingdom of Judah with occasional references to the second kingdom of Israel (2 Chronicles 10–36). In the last chapter Judah is destroyed and the people taken into exile in Babylon, and in the final verses the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquers the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and authorises the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the return of the exiles.