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

Today provides another example of why writing this blog helps me study the Bible.  As I was reading today’s passage with its list of priests and Levites who were assigned different roles and who was the son of who looking for something to write about I came across the mention of Asaph.  First, I thought I was reading a genealogy of Levites and how they were assigned roles in temple administration, Asaph is brought up without any mention of how he descended from Levi.  This lead me to realize that I had misunderstood the previous list of Levi’s descendants.  Once I was thinking about Asaph and the appointment of some men for the ministry of prophesying, I found it interesting that the commanders of David’s army played a role in choosing those men.  Another thing which I saw was the connection between the ministry of prophesying and music which was made here.  It strikes me that perhaps we today put too little thought into what sort of connection there is between prophesying and music.  Finally, I realized that the Asaph mentioned here is the same as the Asaph credited with the psalms of Asaph we have in the Book of Psalms.

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.

So, as I have previously mentioned, passages such as today’s tend to make my eyes glaze over as I read them.  They are the perfect example of why I need to write this blog.  Since I need to write something about such passages, from time to time I notice things I might not otherwise notice.  Today, I took notice that the descendants of Obed-Edom were listed among the Levites.  I find that noteworthy because when Obed-Edom was mentioned as the person into whose care David put the ark of the covenant, it called him a Gittite.  Based on the other places where Gittite is used in the Old Testament, I had always assumed that a Gittite was a Philistine from Gath.  My first thought was that perhaps the Obed-Edom mentioned in 2 Samuel was a different person than this one.  However, this passage makes a point that God had blessed Obed-Edom, which is very similar to the wording of that David was told about the Obed-Edom in 2 Samuel.  So, I am confident that the Obed-Edom mentioned here is Obed-Edom the Gittite.  This leads me to conclude that Gittites were not necessarily Philistines.  Perhaps Ittai the Gittite who led the 600 warriors from Gath who joined King David at the beginning of Absalom’s rebellion was not a Philistine, or perhaps he was.  I will add that in King Saul’s first major victory over the Philistines, Hebrews who were in the Philistine army switched sides to ensure his victory.

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.

As I have repeatedly written, I find passages such as today’s, which are lists of names and appointments difficult to read and get something to write.  However, today as I read the passage I was struck by the comment about some of the Levites being set aside for the ministry of prophesying accompanied by musical instruments.  This cements the idea which has been growing in my head that prophesy as used in the Old Testament, and perhaps even into the New Testament, has a completely different meaning than what we commonly mean when we use the term today.  Today, when we say or write the word “prophesy” we generally mean proclaim the future.  However, here it seems to be used to mean leading people in worship of God.  There are enough places in the Old Testament where prophesy contains elements of predicting the future for me to believe our modern definition is not completely wrong, but there are also enough like today’s passage to make me think we need to give serious thought to what God wants us to understand about prophesy.

There is one other item I want to note.  Among the list of Levites who were Temple gatekeepers it mentions descendants of Obed-Edom.  We were told earlier in this book, and in Kings, that Obed-Edom was a Githite (a Philistine from Gath). Even here it tells us that Obed-Edom’s descendants were on this list because he was blest by God.  I want to point out that all the evidence suggests that Chronicles were compiled by people from the same group as those who composed Ezra and Nehemiah, two Old Testament books which seem to insist on racial purity for Jews.  Yet, here they are acknowledging that the descendants of a Philistine had duties among the most holy in Israel.  I am really glad I finally noticed this, because it sheds a new light on passages which have long troubled me.

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.

This is another one of those passages which I generally find hard to read and even harder to comment on.  However, skipping over this passage would be a mistake.  The passage discusses how King David assigned duties to the priests and Levites.  The passage tells us that he did so with complete impartiality by having his leadership team cast lots in the presence of representatives of all of the families.  This teaches us an important lesson: it is not enough to make decisions in an impartial way, people must also perceive that those decisions were made in an impartial way.  Again, King David and his advisers recognized that both halves of this formula must be met.  When leadership makes decisions they must equally be sure that there the decision is made fairly and without partiality and that people perceive such to be the case.

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

I am using 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.

I have written previously that I find passages containing genealogies difficult to read and make a blog entry about.  Today’s passage is one such passage as it is a combination of genealogies and who was assigned what task in rituals we no longer follow.  However, there is one element of this passage that is worth taking careful note of.  When priests and Levites were assigned tasks in the Temple, great care was taken to make sure that not only was no preference shown, but that everyone could see that no preference was shown.  We should make an effort to follow this example when selecting leaders today.  There are tasks where it is appropriate to select people based on their relationship with the decision-makers.  There are others where it is important that those chosen not be selected on that basis.  In those latter circumstances, we need to make sure that everyone can see that no one received preferential treatment.  In those circumstances avoiding the appearance of impropriety is almost as important as avoiding impropriety.