I have four items for my blog post on I Chronicles 28.
1. David summoned the princes, captains, valiant men, and officers
of Israel, as well as his stewards and the stewards of his son. In I
Chronicles 28:2, he calls these men brothers. More than one commentary
that I read made a big deal about this. Matthew Henry says that David
is doing so to humble himself. The more critical Peake’s commentary
states that “an oriental king does not place himself on a level with
his subjects in this way”, so David must be doing so out of stress.
David wants for his son and coming successor, Solomon, to build the
Temple, and for the important people of Israel to provide support for
Solomon in this endeavor. That could be what is stressing David out.
Peake’s commentary also cites Deuteronomy 17:15, which commands the
Israelites, if they want a king, to appoint the king from among their
brethren. The king is to be a fellow Israelite, part of the family.
David may be addressing these men as brothers because he is humbly
seeking their help, or because he actually does regard them as
brothers—-they are fellow Israelites, after all. Maybe David is saying
that, as Israelites, they should be privy to God’s plans for Israel: to
dwell with Israel in a Temple. This involves them, too, and David in
calling them brothers is recognizing and highlighting that. I think of
what Jesus says in John 15:15: “Henceforth I call you not servants; for
the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you
friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known
unto you” (KJV).
2. David in I Chronicles 28:9 exhorts Solomon to know and to serve
God. What does it mean to know God? Evangelicals like to make a big
deal about this: “Do you know the Lord?”, some of them may ask people,
or they may say that there is a difference between knowing about
God and knowing God. Is knowing God having an awareness of God’s
identity and attributes, being in a relationship with God, or something
else?
Roddy Braun in the Word Biblical Commentary on I Chronicles interprets knowing God in light of a covenant context:
“Studies in Hittite and Accadian treaties assure us of the usage of
‘to know’ to denote the mutual legal recognition of suzerain and vassal
and the binding nature of treaty stipulations (cf. H. Huffmon, ‘The
Treaty Background of Hebrew [Yada], BASOR 181 [1996] 31-37).
Biblical passages cited by Huffmon such as Amos 3:2; 2 Sam 7:20 (=I
Chron 17:18); Hos 8:2; 13:4-5; Deut 9:24; and Psalm 14:4 wholly support
the view that we are dealing here with conventional terminology which
exhorts Solomon to recognize Yahweh as his covenant lord and to conduct
himself in accord with his stipulations.”
So knowing God is recognizing that God is lord within the covenant
relationship and treating God accordingly. That could be. Still, I
think that there may be a broader conception of knowing God, within both
the Hebrew Bible and also the New Testament. In Jeremiah 22:15, we
read: “He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with
him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD” (KJV). That could mean
that King Josiah recognized God as covenant lord and thus obeyed God’s
commands regarding social justice, but could there also be a sense here
that knowing God is seeing that God is just and acting according to
God’s character? We see something similar in I John 4:8: “He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (KJV). Here, knowing God
is being aware (perhaps intimately aware) that God is love and thereby
walking in love.
I also think of verses about people not hurting and destroying in the
future paradise, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the
LORD as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14). In
Isaiah 11:9, that seems to apply to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles are
not part of God’s covenant with Israel. Does knowing God in this
context, then, relate to any covenant? Well, maybe the Gentiles were
part of some covenant with God, since God made a covenant with
humanity through Noah (Genesis 9). Moreover, Isaiah 24:5 accuses
humanity of breaking a covenant with God by violating God’s laws. Do
Gentiles know God by acknowledging that they, too, have a covenant with
God and are subject to God as their lord? Or is Isaiah 11:9 saying that
the Gentiles will know that hurting and destroying violate God’s
character, and they will thus turn from hurting and destroying? Is
knowing God honoring God as the boss in a covenant, or is it recognizing
God’s character? Could it be both?
3. More than one scholar has maintained that there is diversity
within the Hebrew Bible concerning whether God’s covenant with David and
David’s offspring was conditional or unconditional. In II Samuel 7,
God says that David’s seed will be established forever, and that God
will discipline it when it does wrong but will not remove his love from
it, as God did with Saul. The implication seems to be that, whereas God
rejected Saul from being king on account of Saul’s sins, God will not
do this to David’s line; rather, God will discipline David’s line, but
it will still rule. And, throughout I-II Kings, God refuses to destroy
Jerusalem for David’s sake, notwithstanding Jerusalem’s sins.
But there are also voices in the Hebrew Bible that treat God’s
faithfulness to the Davidic line as conditional on its obedience to
God’s commandments. This occurs in I Kings, and those passages may be
Deuteronomistic. Eventually, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Davidic
monarchy was overthrown. Some voices within the Hebrew Bible may have
looked at that as evidence that God’s covenant with David was
conditional on obedience, and that David’s line forfeited the covenant
through its sins. There are some, however, who hold out hope that God
is still faithful to the Davidic line: that God will restore it to its
position of rulership, and it will rule forever (see, for example,
Jeremiah 33:25-26).
Where does the Chronicler land on this issue? In I Chronicles 28,
the Chronicler seems to maintain that God’s covenant with David was
conditional on obedience: v 7 says that Solomon’s throne will be
established if Solomon obeys God, and v 9 threatens that God will cast
Solomon off forever if Solomon forsakes God. At the same time, I
Chronicles 17:12-14 affirms that Solomon’s throne will be established
forever, and that God will not take away God’s love from Solomon, as God
did from Saul. Maybe there is a contradiction between I Chronicles 28
and 17, due to different sources. Or perhaps the Chronicler, even in I
Chronicles 17, downplays the unconditionality of the covenant. The
Chronicler omits the part from II Samuel 7 about God disciplining the
line of Solomon. Could the reason be that the Chronicler does not think
that Solomon and his line will merely receive discipline for sin, but
will actually be forsaken by God? Could the Chronicler be implying that
God would not remove God’s mercy from Solomon and Solomon’s line, but
only so long as Solomon is faithful to God?
Overall, the Chronicler may have believed that the days of the
Davidic line were over, and that God in the Chronicler’s post-exilic
days was doing things differently. Perhaps the Chronicler thought that
the Davidic line broke the covenant and thus forfeited God’s
faithfulness.
4. I Chronicles 28:19 seems to imply that David’s plans for the
layout of the Temple were from God. But scholars have noted that the
Solomonic Temple resembles other Temples in the ancient Near East,
particularly those of Phoenicia, which was helping Solomon build the
Temple. Would God imitate a country’s style? Well, the Chronicler may
be going a step further than I Kings by saying that the plans for the
Temple’s layout were from God. But God may very well condescend to
speak within people’s culture—-to meet people where they are.