Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 24-26.

Today’s account is largely a genealogy of the priesthood and Levites, but it contains some interesting things.  First, I find it interesting that the two priests who David selected to work with the group which assigned priests and Levites to their various divisions were Zadok and Ahimelek son of Abiathar, not Zadok and Abiathar.  It makes me wonder whether there was a connection between this and Abiathar supporting Adonijah’s bid for the throne.  Perhaps, Abiathar supported Adonijah because he had become caught up with those who spent all of their time in political maneuvering and left his actual duties to his son.  Which would suggest that Zadok supported Solomon over Adonijah because Solomon was involved in the details, such as this activity, while Adonijah spent his time currying favor with the courtiers.

In any case, more practically for us, I want to bring up where at the start of chapter twenty-five the passage talks about the ministry of prophesying.  It says that prophecy was accompanied by instruments.  A little later it tells us that sex men prophesied using the harp and that thanking and praising the Lord was part of doing so.  This makes me think that today we make a mistake when we separate our worship in music from prophecy.  We tend to divide out service between portions where we have music and portions where people talk.  This passage suggests to me that we make a mistake by doing so, that music and prophecy go together.  I want to note that when Elisha was called upon to prophesy for the kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom during their invasion of Moab, he called for a harp to be played before he began his prophecy.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 20-23.

Today’s passage tells us that David relayed to Solomon what had happened when he first thought to build a temple for God.  He tells his son that God told him not to build the temple because he had shed much blood, but that Solomon would be a man of peace and so would be an appropriate person to build the temple.  Many people look at this and conclude that this was the reason God told David not to build a temple.  However, the passage does not say that God told David that.  It says that David said that God told him that.  It seems to me that the writer is being very careful in how he words this.  In fact, considering that just a couple of chapters earlier the writer had told us the message which God gave David when He told David not to build Him a temple, it is quite clear that the writer is telling us that what David said here was David’s interpretation of why he was not to build a temple.  However, the writer does draw a line from David sinning by conducting a census to finding the location to build the temple to organizing the priests and Levites to manage the temple worship.  David’s sin led to him buying Aruanah’s threshing floor and building an altar there, where the temple was later built.  And building the altar there in Jerusalem led David to organizing the priests and Levites to manage the worship at that site and later at the temple.  David took the negative consequences of his mistake and used it to bring glory to God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.