1 Chronicles 19

1 Chronicles 19:13

Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the LORD do what is good in His sight."

Joab here shows that his motives were right at the time.  He's urging his brother to be courageous not for the acclaim, or the honor of their victory.  Instead, he's saying to be courageous for the sake of the people, though I'm not sure if he means the troops under their command, or the rest of the nation that is looking to them for victory.  The fact that he mentions the cities may mean the latter, but again that may just be the fact that they need to win to protect the rest of the nation.

Also, he shows that he is in submission to God through all this.  He says God will do what He wants to, and they must submit.  This is similar to "Thy will be done" that Jesus would pray at Gethsemane.  He wants to win, but if God would have them lose, so be it.  Also, if God would have them win in a manner different from how they plan, that's OK too.  The outcome is in God's hand, and He will do what is right.

1 Chronicles 18

1 Chronicles 18:8

Also from Tibhath and from Cun, cities of Hadadezer, David took a very large amount of bronze, with which Solomon made the bronze sea and the pillars and the bronze utensils.

David's been on the warpath, and thanks to God's blessings, he's been very successful.  He has defeated several enemies, and greatly enlarged Israel's territory in the process. As he has conquered, he's gained the riches of the vanquished.

However, he isn't keeping that spoil for himself.  He is making use of it, not just making trophies.  Here, he has taken the bronze that has been captured, and is reserving it for use in the future Temple.  For the rest of his life, it will simply sit in storage somewhere, waiting for the day when his son is ready to build.  That patience, just waiting for God's timing, is something I've wished I had.

1 Chronicles 17

1 Chronicles 17:13

I will be his father and he shall be My son; and I will not take My lovingkindness away from him, as I took it away from him who was before you.

God here makes a promise to David that He will note move the royal line to another, for his son will inherit the kingdom.  Also interesting is that God says He will be as a father to Solomon.  I don't recall that description being used anywhere else.  He says He will protect the lineage, to keep it on the throne, but never that He would be a father.  It's unfortunate that Solomon wandered away from his Father, and followed the ways of his many wives.  Had he kept close, the future generations might have behaved differently.

Also, I'm surprised that God does not refer to Saul by name.  He's only mentioned as the one who came before.  Why the indirectness?  There's no doubt who He's referring to, since David is only the second king.  Was this God's way of subtly blotting Saul from the history, because of his evil deeds?  Or is it for some other reason?

1 Chronicles 16

1 Chronicles 16:23

Sing to the LORD, all the earth;
Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day.

I always find it interesting when the Jews from the Old Testament talk about salvation.  Are they using the term differently than Christians do today?  When I think of the Jews referring to salvation, I think in temporal terms.  He chose them from all the peoples of the world.  He gave them a homeland which he took from others.  He protected them from mighty enemies.

Did the Jews of the time think just in these terms?  Or did they think of salvation in spiritual terms, like Christians do today?  Or maybe both?  God did give them a way to cover their sins, through sacrifice.  It was an imperfect method, since you had to atone for every sin, but it was a valid method.  So was it temporal, or spiritual, or both?

Also, what are the good tidings?  Today we would say good news, and we think of that phrase from the Christmas story.  But what was their good news of salvation?  Was it only for the Jews, to proclaim among their own?  Or was it something greater, for everyone?

1 Chronicles 15

1 Chronicles 15:13

Because you did not carry it at the first, the LORD our God made an outburst on us, for we did not seek Him according to the ordinance."

Interesting phrasing here.  First, what happened is termed an outburst.  They had the Ark on a cart instead of being carried.  When they hit a bump in the road, it almost knocked the Ark off.  One of the men on the cart reached back to steady it, and God struck him dead.  I suppose that could be called an outburst.

Also, it's interesting how David terms moving the Ark to Jerusalem as seeking God.  That's not a way of thinking that I've heard before.  They're moving the object that God indwells, for lack of a better word, to their capitol.  This way it is close to the seat of government, and easier for the people to see and remember.  This nearness being thought of as seeking God is a perspective that hadn't occurred to me before.  In modern Christianity, since God is omnipresent, we tend not to think much more about one place than another, except maybe church.  If we looked at going to church as seeking God, would it change our behavior any?

1 Chronicles 14

1 Chronicles 14:14

David inquired again of God, and God said to him, "You shall not go up after them; circle around behind them and come at them in front of the balsam trees.

David is showing his difference from Saul already, in his first campaign as king.  First, he is asking God if his battle plans are good.  Saul didn't normally check with God.  Samuel sometimes came to him, but he didn't go to God normally.  He was sometimes given God's spirit and went out into battle and won, but it was God upon him, not him humbly asking God.

The first time David went into battle, God said they were fine, he should go for it.  Here, the second time, God says no.  Instead, God offers up a different strategy, one which He has planned out to show that He is the one in control.  David's battle plan might have worked, as it had the first time.  We don't know what the numbers or terrain were, so we can't be sure, but it's possible.  However, the way God plans it, there will be no doubt of David's success.

1 Chronicles 13

1 Chronicles 13:3

and let us bring back the ark of our God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul."

First off, how are they bringing the ark back?  Where was it that they did not have it?  As I remember it, they had lost the ark to the Philistines in battle.  God had cursed them for it, so they sent it back.  It had been at one of their border towns for several months.  So I guess they were bringing it back into the heart of the nation, namely Jerusalem.

And what is this about not seeking God or the ark during Saul's reign?  I seem to recall that Saul was condemned by Samuel because he brought the offering before his arrival.  Plus, he took the ark into battle because he thought it would bring God's favor on them.  He may have been seeking it wrongly, but they did seek it.  They just were seeking it wrongly, and David didn't improve upon that much in this time.

1 Chronicles 12

1 Chronicles 12:32

Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command.

This is the only tribe where their numbers are not given.  Instead, it says the entire tribe was with them.  There's no indication of how many men that might be, though it was doubtless a large number.  Maybe they were unable to come personally, due to some threat near their territory, and instead sent their captains as representatives.

However, what really got my attention here was the description of these men.  It says they understood the times, and knew what should be done.  That's high praise, given the strife in recent history.  What I wonder about is whether their knowledge was from God giving them wisdom, or just a more human "knowing which way the wind was blowing."  It's not clear from this, but the result was correct either way, at least.

1 Chronicles 11

1 Chronicles 11:6

Now David had said, "Whoever striked down a jebusite first shall be chief and commander."  Joab the son of Zeruiah went up first, so he became chief.

Rarely do spur-of-the-moment decisions to reward someone lavishly based upon a short-term goal come out well.  I can think of many occasions in history where someone said, "do this, and I'll give you that."  In military affairs, those rarely end well.

In this case, Joab is given command of the army because he's the first to fight.  That doesn't end well for David in the end.  Joab is disobedient to David's commands multiple times, and is also complicit in the death of Uriah.  He has one of David's sons killed, and ultimately is killed by David for his transgressions.  How much of that could have been avoided if David had not made this hasty promise here?

1 Chronicles 10

1 Chronicles 10:13

So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD, because of the word of the LORD which he did no keep; and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it,

Finally, back into the history instead of genealogies!

Saul had messed up in several ways.  First, he did not follow God's instructions.  The final straw was when he made sacrifice, rather than wait for Samuel as he had been instructed to do.  At that point, Saumel told him that he would lose the kingdom.

After that, shortly before he died, he consulted a medium, and had him call up Samuel, of all people!  This just compounded his error, and while I don't recall if that mistake had been cited against him before when this story was told, we see here that he paid for that, as well.

1 Chronicles 9

1 Chronicles 9:25

Their relatives in their villages were to come in every seven days from time to time to be with them;

I always did wonder as a teenager how the Levites decided who worked in the Temple.  I knew from the Christmas story that there was some way that Levites not living in Jerusalem would have to come in, because that's what Zacharias was doing when he was spoken to by the angel.  But how did they determine who was to come in when, or how often they had to serve in the Temple?

From what's said here, it's not clear what the arrangement was, but there definitely was one.  If I'm reading this right, their service would consist of one week, presumably plus travel time.  How often they had to come in isn't clear, though.  I guess you could think of it as the Priestly Reserve, similar to how here in the US reservists have to serve for two weeks a year.

Of course, that makes me also wonder what they did the rest of the year, back home?

1 Chronicles 8

1 Chronicles 8:34

The son of Jonathan was Merib-baal, and Merib-baal became the father of Micah.

After David became king, he searched for any surviving descendants of Saul or Jonathan, so he could show them kindness.  He found only one, a crippled son of Jonathan.  Yet here we see another son of Jonathan, which in the following verses goes on to become an entire lineage.

Where was this man when David went searching?  Did he just find one who was handy, and stop looking after that?  Were they in hiding for fear of David's wrath?  Where did this "new" line come from?

1 Chronicles 7

1 Chronicles 7:15

Machir took a wife for Huppim and Shuppim, whose sister's name was Maacah.  And the name of the second was Zelophehad, and Zelophehad had daughters.

Why did they not give the name of the first wife?  Why only name the sister of that woman?  Was there some kind of disgrace or shame?  I can't recall anything in the previous books mentioning these people.  Was there a problem of some kind, where they didn't know the woman's name?  I find that hard to believe, given the meticulous records we have of these lineages.

Also, why mention that Zelophehad only had daughters?  That, at least, I have an answer for.  I had to look it up to make sure I was remembering correctly, and this woman's daughters were mentioned in Numbers.  Their father died, and he had no male heir.  So these daughters petitioned Moses to be given an inheritance, so that their family line would not be lost.  Moses inquired of God, and He instructed him to grant their request.

I realize I'm grasping at straws here in terms of significance, but there's only so much you can do in with lines of genealogy.

1 Chronicles 6

1 Chronicles 6:49

But Aaron and his sons offered on the altar of burnt offering and on the altar of incense, for all the work of the most holy place, and to make atonement for Israel, according to all that Moses the servant of God had commanded.

This again appears to be summarizing history.  I speculated in a previous chapter that this book was written at least after the Babylonian captivity, and perhaps after the return.  We also know from earlier in this chapter that the genealogies here were not exhaustive, because there's a jump from Levi's son straight to Moses and Aaron, some 400 years later.

From this verse, it appears that those reading this may not know their own people's history.  Any Israelite should know that Aaron was the high priest, and what those duties were.  So why mention it again here?  Either the writer was trying to make clear whose genealogy was about to be given, or else he was explaining/reminding the reader that this is what that lineage did.  Either way, it suggests the readers might not be familiar with Israelite history or customs.

1 Chronicles 5

1 Chronicles 5:25

But they acted treacherously against the God of their fathers and played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them.

In the previous verses, there was stories of times and people who had been great warriors and leaders, men who had trusted in God, and had won victories because of their faith in Him.  These were valiant men of Israel, who knew where their strength came from, and were faithful.

Somewhere along the line, all that changed.  They turned away from God, as did the rest of Israel.  They turned to the false gods of their neighbors, despite everything that had happened, all their victories.  They turned away, and paid the price with the rest of Israel.

1 Chronicles 4

1 Chronicles 4:9

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him Jabez saying, "Because I bore him with pain."

When I was in college, a small book called The Prayer of Jabez came out.  It was all the rage, a bestseller, etc.  I heard about this prayer everywhere I went, and got rather sick of it.  As I found more mature teachers to learn from, I also heard how dangerous this prayer was, in that it had been linked to the prosperity gospel school of thought.  I therefore came to greatly distrust this prayer.

This is the first time in years that I've read this passage, and I find myself focusing on this verse, which introduces Jabez, rather than the prayer in the next verse.  I look at this verse because it shows something very important about the person behind the prayer.  Right off the bat, it says that Jabez was honorable, more than any of his family.  There was something different about Jabez from the beginning, which made him more suited to the rewards God would later grant him.  I believe that this is the key to the prayer:  we must be suited to be honored by God before He might reward us, no matter what we ask for or how we ask for it.

1 Chronicles 3

1 Chronicles 3:21

The sons of Hananiah were Pelatiah and Jeshaiah, the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of Shecaniah.

The latter half of this chapter, and especially this verse, gives us a glimpse into when at least this part of 1 Chronicles was written.  This chapter covers the descendants of David, the first part of which we know from Kings, for it traces the royal line.

However, the second part of the chapter lists the descendants after the fall of Judah, so this part is new.  It covers each generation's children, then the children of one of that generation.  Then it gets to this verse.  I'm not sure if it's jumping multiple generations, or only covering two.  If it's multiple generations, then this verse alone appears to progress through over a century.  Either way, the chapter in total makes it appear that Chronicles was written centuries after the fall of Israel and Judah, and also well after the return of a remnant from the Diaspora.

1 Chronicles 2

1 Chronicles 2:7

The son of Carmi was Achar, the troubler of Israel, who violated the ban.

It appears this Achar is who we know in Joshua as Achan, the man who kept some of the spoil from the fall of Jericho, and caused Israel to lose their next battle.  I don't know why he's called Achar here, but the Achan of Joshua was a son of Carmi, so I'm assuming it's the same person.  Also, that is the only "ban" that I can recall.

But where does this come from?  They're going through the genealogies, when all of the sudden this is dropped in.  There's no other reference to Carmi or Achar/Achan in the genealogy to this point, so what connection are we supposed to make?  I can understand mentioning the one who broke the ban, since it was a key moment of disobedience in Israel's history, and had consequences for the entire nation, but why here?  Was he and Carmi a descendent of the last person mentioned, or at least of that family?  It doesn't say, they're just dropped in out of nowhere.

1 Chronicles 1

1 Chronicles 1:43

Now these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king of the sons of Israel reigned.  Bela was the son of Beor, and the name of his city was Dinhabah.

The chapter starts with going through the lineage of the Israelites.  From Adam, it lists everyone, including many branches, up through Abraham and his children.  Then, all of the sudden, in this verse it drops the Israelites, and starts talking about the Edomites.  Why the sudden shift?

Without reading ahead, and I don't recall anything from reading it in the past, my only guess is that this is to show how long a history the Edomites had in the region.  They were here long before the Israelites came back, yet God would not deal well with them.  They were about to go away, and God was placing Israel in their position as the greatest nation of the area.  Their history meant exactly nothing once God became directly involved.

2 Kings 25

2 Kings 25:27

Now it came about in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, that Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he became king, released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison;

Judah has fallen.  Jehoiachin the king has seen his family slaughtered, then he is blinded, and taken away to a Babylonian jail.  He spends almost forty years there, and then is released.  The new king of Babylon takes pity on him, and gives him some dignity back.

In this I see that even when God has condemned you, He may still choose to show some mercy.  He could have had Nebuchadnezzar kill Jehoiachin when he was first captured. He could have let him rot in jail until his death.  But God allowed him to be given a reprieve.  He didn't restore the kingdom to him, but he was allowed to live out what remained of his life in relative comfort.

2 Kings 24

2 Kings 24:4

and also for the innocent blood which he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; and the LORD would not forgive.

Manasseh, a previous king of Judah, had flagrantly ignored God's commands, and had practiced all the abominable customs of the false gods.  God had had enough, and had finally condemned Judah for that previous king's misdeeds.  Apparenly, Manasseh had also killed a lot of people.  I don't recall if this was some kind of purge or punishment, or if they were killed for sacrifices to the false gods.

God had finally had enough, and was destroying Judah.  I find it interesting that it says here that God would not forgive.  He had before, if not forgiven, at least not acted upon Judah's transgressions.  From what had been said before, I didn't think God had forgiven them, but he didn't immediately condemn them either.  Had God previously forgiven them for at least some of their sins?

2 Kings 23

2 Kings 23:22

Surely such a Passover had not been celebrated from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this verse.  From what I read, there are two possible meanings for it.  The first is that this Passover, after Josiah has cleaned up the nation, was of some special significance that had never been seen before.  I'm not sure how you make a ceremony with such specific requirements of what must be served and how it must be prepared special, but maybe they made it like the inverse of Fat Tuesday, where they had the Passover, and then a big part or something.

The other reading is much bleaker.  It may mean that since the days of the judges, the people had not observed the Passover.  If I'm remembering properly, in a couple chapters we learn that they had not taken the Sabbath year since coming to the land; did the same happen with the Passover?  After winning the land, did they just forget about what God had done for them and go back to their normal lives?  If so, how often do we do the same?  How much do we simply forget about what God has done for us, and go on as if He never happened?