Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 27-29.

The first thing I noticed in today’s passage was that Asahel, Joab’s brother, was the commander of the army division on duty during the fourth month.  Now Asahel was killed in battle by Abner while David was king of only the tribe of Judah.  Which tells us that David set this system up before he became king over all of Israel.  Asahel was also the only one of these leaders for whom a successor was named.  I do not know that I see anything of deep importance in this fact, but each time I read through the Bible I get a little better understanding about the people and events it describes.

The point I want to focus on is what David says to Solomon as he turns control of the kingdom over to him.  He tells Solomon to acknowledge God and serve Him with wholehearted devotion and a willing mind.  When I started I was going to focus on a later part, but that just struck me.  There are three parts of our relationship with God.  First, we need to acknowledge Him.  We need to recognize that He is God, Creator of the Universe and Ultimate Authority.  Then we need to serve Him with all of the devotion which our being can summon.  It is worth noting that devotion is primarily an emotional response.  When we truly devote ourselves to God with our whole being, all of our emotions become subservient to that devotion, our love becomes subject to serving God, our joy becomes subject to serving God, our sadness becomes subject to serving God, our anger becomes subject to serving God, etc..  When any of these emotions detracts from serving God, we put them aside.  The final piece of this is that we serve God with a willing mind.  This refers to using our ability to think and reason to serve God.  We apply our minds to understanding and serving God.  It is not enough to be emotionally committed to serving God.  We must apply our minds to it as well.  We apply the ability to reason and to think logically in our service to God.  God did not give us the ability to reason in order to ask us to put it aside.  No, He expects us to apply our minds to understanding what He has done in this world.

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 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.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 17-19.

When David finished building his palace in Jerusalem, he thought that he should build a temple for God in Jerusalem.  Initially, Nathan the prophet told him to go ahead and do so.  However, that night God gave Nathan a prophecy for David telling him not to do so.  God told David that He had never asked for a temple.  God had another plan for His temple.  He told David that his son would build a house for God and that God would set that son over His house and His kingdom forever.  We normally read this as being a prophecy that Solomon, David’s son, would build the temple.  Which Solomon did indeed do, but Solomon did not rein forever.  In his time, Solomon died and the kingdom of Israel was divided.  I believe that this prophecy was about Solomon, but it was not only about Solomon.  It was also about Jesus, who does, and will,  rein forever.  This prophecy contains a hint that the house God desired was not a building.  The house which Jesus has built is the Church, which is composed of those people who have accepted His sacrifice and serve God, those people within whom God’s Spirit lives.

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 13-16.

I find it interesting that the Philistines attacked David after he brought the Ark of the Covenant as far as Obed-Edom’s house.  The passage suggests the me that David moving the Ark was what provoked the Philistines to attack.  And perhaps it was when he inquired of God about how he should respond to the Philistine aggression that led David to seek God’s guidance on how they should move the Ark.  I want to take a look at what David said to Abiathar and Zadok and the leaders of the Levitical families.  He seems at first to blame them for what happened when they first tried bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, “It was because you, the Levites, did not bring it up the first time that the Lord our God broke out in anger against us.”  He seems to be suggesting that they should have known better and done it the right way.  But then he turns it around and takes responsibility for it going wrong by saying, “We did not inquire of him about how to do it in the prescribed way.”  That reads to me as David saying that even though the priests and Levites should have known better, it was his own responsibility to inquire of God about the proper way to move the Ark.  David pointed out to the Levites that they should have known the right thing to do, but he did not blame them any more than he blamed himself.

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 10-12.

Today’s passage begins with a short summary of how King Saul died and how the people of Israel came to David while he was in Hebron to make him king over all of Israel.  Then it mentions how he conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital.  After this it goes on to list some of the men who chose to follow David before he became king, or came to him to call him to be king over Israel.  I want to point out that these men came from not only all of Israel, but some of them even came from the surrounding peoples.  Among David’s followers was at least one Ammonite, at least one Hittite, and at least one Moabite.  It is worth noting that several of the other designations only appears in reference to one or more of David’s mighty men, which means we do not know what they designate (so, they may indicate another Israelite ethnic group not mentioned elsewhere).  What makes this significant is that it indicates that David accepted those who wished to aid him in his mission to serve God, no matter what their background.  He accepted men from every tribe of Israel.  He accepted men from other nations.  He even accepted men from King Saul’s tribe, clan, and family at a time when King Saul was trying to kill him.  Likewise, we should accept all who come to serve the Lord, no matter what their background.

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 7-9.

And today we have more of the genealogies.  Today’s passage makes it abundantly clear that the books of Chronicles were written after the Exile by listing those who were among the first to resettle in the territory which had been Israel.  Here we are told that the genealogies listed come from the books of the kings of Israel and Judah, that those books contained the genealogies of all of Israel.  There is supporting evidence for this is in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah which reference people whose genealogy was inadequately documented (which suggests that the copies of the books of the kings of Israel and Judah had parts which could no longer be read).  I want to say that even though I am not getting much out of these this year there is value to these passages and the genealogies they contain.  In part because they do establish a continuity between the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Exile and the Ancient Israelites.  And, history since then provides continuity with the Jews of modern Israel with those post-Exilic Jews.

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 5-6.

From time to time I have mentioned that some people believe that all of the books of the Old Testament were compiled, and maybe even written, after the Jews returned from Babylonian Exile.  And I have also from time to time highlighted reasons I think that is incorrect.  However, today’s passage suggests to me that the books of Chronicles were composed after the Exile.  In verse twenty-two of chapter five, after describing the conquest of Gilead, it says that those tribes occupied that land until the exile.  Then in verse twenty-six it mentions that those tribes were taken into exile by the Assyrians to certain specific lands “where they are to this day.”  Finally, earlier in verse seventeen the passage says that all of these people were entered into the genealogical records during the reign of Jotham king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel.  The reason I mentioned this last is because it suggests to me a reason why some of the listings are confusing: the records they were drawn from were old and hard to read in some places.  In addition, the records they used to compile this list had likely been recorded by different people at different times with different ideas about how the information should be written down.

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 2-4.

Once again we have a passage which is a genealogy.  One of the things which I find interesting is that there are several names which appear which do not clearly indicate who their immediate ancestor was.  For example in verse seven of chapter two it says that Achar (which is a variant on Achan) was the son of Karmi.  We only know Karmi’s descent because in Judges 7 when it speaks of Achan’s sin it tells us that Achan was the son of Karmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah.  Then later on while discussing descendants of Judah who were not from the same clan as David, it mentions Jabez.  It says that Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, but does not tell us who either they or his father were.  After mentioning Jabez, and his prayer, the passage starts up the genealogy again by introducing Kelub, Shuhah’s brother and his sons, but it does not tell us who Kelub’s father was, or who Shuhah was.  As I was going through to see if I wanted to list other examples of men listed here whose ancestry was ambiguous, I came across something interesting.  It mentions Mered, who had at least two wives.  One of his wives was of the tribe of Judah, another one was Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh.  Clearly Mered was a man of some significance, since he married a daughter of Pharaoh, but we know no more about him than the reference to him here.  I will note that the Midrash (a compilation of traditions and commentaries about the Jewish Scriptures) contains some things about Mered and his wife Bithiah, but those references seem to be conjecture and not based in any actual knowledge.

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