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1 Chronicles Chapter Twenty-five                            

 

1 Chronicles 25

Chapter Contents

The singers and musicians.

David put those in order who were appointed to be singers and musicians in the temple. To prophesy in this place means praising God with great earnestness and devout affections under the influences of the Holy Spirit. In raising these affections poetry and music were employed. If the Spirit of God do not put life and fervour into our devotions they will however ordered be a lifeless worthless form.

── Matthew HenryConcise Commentary on 1 Chronicles

 

1 Chronicles 25

Verse 1

[1] Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Jeduthun who should prophesy with harps with psalteries and with cymbals: and the number of the workmen according to their service was:

And captains — All the princes of Israel with the priests and the Levites whom David gathered together chap. 23:2 for this very end that with their approbation and consent all these things might be established; who are here fitly called the captains of the host; for the princes were under David the chief captains of the militia of the kingdom; and as the Levites are called an host and the Lord's host because of their number and order in holy ministrations; so these priests and Levites were the captains and governors of the rest.

Separated — Distributed them into their several ranks: which tho' chiefly done by David as a prophet and by Divine direction yet is imputed in part to the captains of the host because it was done with their concurrence and approbation.

The service — To the service of God under the conduct of these persons.

Prophecy — Praise God by singing the psalms of David and other sacred songs made by themselves who were prophets or by other prophets or holy men of God.

Workmen — Of the persons employed in this sacred work. This good work it seems Samuel revived but did not live to bring it to perfection. Let each in his day do what he can for God tho' he cannot carry it so far as he would. When we are gone God can raise up others to build on our foundation and bring forth the top-stone.

Verse 2

[2] Of the sons of Asaph; Zaccur and Joseph and Nethaniah and Asarelah the sons of Asaph under the hands of Asaph which prophesied according to the order of the king.

Of Asaph — Under his direction.

Of the king — In such manner and order as David appointed.

Verse 3

[3] Of Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah and Zeri and Jeshaiah Hashabiah and Mattithiah six under the hands of their father Jeduthun who prophesied with a harp to give thanks and to praise the LORD.

Six — Jeduthun their father being included in that number: or Shimei mentioned verse 17.

Verse 5

[5] All these were the sons of Heman the king's seer in the words of God to lift up the horn. And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters.

The king's seer — He is called the king's seer either because the king took special delight in him; or because he frequently attended the king in his palace executing his sacred office there while the rest were employed in the tabernacle.

In the words — To sing Divine songs as were inspired by God to the prophets or holy men of God.

The horn — To praise God with the sound of a trumpet or some other musical instrument made of horn which being a martial kind of music might be most grateful to David's martial spirit: tho' he was also skilled in other instruments of music which he used in the house of God.

Verse 7

[7] So the number of them with their brethren that were instructed in the songs of the LORD even all that were cunning was two hundred fourscore and eight.

Cunning — Who were so skilful that they were able to teach others; and together with their scholars made up the four thousand mentioned chap. 23:5.

Verse 8

[8] And they cast lots ward against ward as well the small as the great the teacher as the scholar.

Ward — A course of Levites answerable to one of the priests upon whom the Levites were to wait in their holy ministrations chap. 23:28.

The scholar — Without any respect to their different ages or abilities.

Verse 9

[9] Now the first lot came forth for Asaph to Joseph: the second to Gedaliah who with his brethren and sons were twelve:

To Joseph — For the family of Asaph of which Joseph was. Here that clause he his sons and his brethren were twelve is to be understood as it is expressed in all the following verses otherwise they do not make up that number of two hundred and eighty-eight mentioned verse 7.

── John WesleyExplanatory Notes on 1 Chronicles

 

25 Chapter 25

 

Verse 7

1 Chronicles 25:7

That were instructed in the songs of the Lord.

Music and worship

In the services of the Jewish temple all is devout exalted appropriate devotional impressive and soul-subduing because the musicians themselves are close to the heart of the great Jehovah; the worshipping congregation hears His voice with awe “as the sound of many waters ” and the priests of the temple lift their reverent thoughts to the great “I Am ” with every cloud of incense that floats above the altar.

I. The moral purpose of music. All other aspects of music in religious service that merely show off voices and entertain the jaded senses of the crowd without a devotional spirit and moral purpose behind them may be theatrical and imposing and to a certain extent moving but they do not rise higher than the altitude of a passing mood. Musical effect is one thing--musical sincerity another. Words may be eloquent; they are useless when they do not touch the soul. Church music may be charming; it is but an idle breath when no message of spiritual power goes from the singer to him who listens. The Puritans and Spartans were both agreed that luxury of sound was sometimes mischievous. The Puritan said “Sweet music at first delighteth the ears but afterward corrupteth and depraveth the mind.” Timotheus the Milesian added a twelfth string to his harp for which he was severely punished by the Spartans. They feared this luxury of sound would effeminate the people. Music is not only closely related to mind but to morals as well; and Church-wise this moral quality makes its swift appeal to the emotional sense; the exact relation of music to the emotions and the effect of melody upon the listener are truly and eloquently described by Mr. Haweis: “Like the sound of bells at night breaking the silence only to lead the spirit into deeper peace; like a leaden cloud at morn rising in grey twilight to hang as a golden mist before the furnace of the sun; like the dull deep pain of one who sits in an empty room watching the shadows of the firelight full of memories; like the plaint of souls that are wasted with sighing; like paeans of exalted praise; like sudden songs from the open gates of paradise--is music. Like one who stands in the midst of hot and terrible battle drunk with the fiery smoke and hearing the roar of cannon in a trance; like one who finds himself in a long cathedral aisle and hears the pealing organ and sees a kneeling crowd smitten with fringes of coloured light; like one who from a precipice leaps out upon the warm midsummer air toward the peaceful valleys below and feeling himself buoyed up with wings that suddenly fail him wakens in great despair from his wild dream--so is he who can listen and understand.” Such is the mission of music which George Eliot characterises as love in search of a word.

II. There can be no sort of question that the religious bodies which give the people most to do in the service and exact from the choir music of the most devotional type are gaining the largest number of worshippers. In the first particular the Roman Catholic Church is seriously defective; but in the second particular it must be conceded that Protestants have absolutely nothing approaching the grandeur of the Roman Catholic masses where we have a mind like that of Mozart or Beethoven steadily working out in strains of incomparable depth and pathos a great connected series of thoughts embodying all the varied phases of religious emotion.” What man capable of profoundest feeling has not been thrilled to his heart’s depth by the great cathedral music of the Romish Church? Presbyterian and Congregational churches have been absolutely forced into warmer more varied and more worshipful forms of service by the hunger of the people and by the pressure of competition from without. On this point allow me to quote the strong language of Professor Waldo S. Pratt of Hartford Theological Seminary one of the most rigid and orthodox of Congregational institutions. He writes: “American Dissenting churches have begun to see that in their protest against the Episcopacy of the eighteenth century they went to the extreme in many matters. They have not only fallen into bald and irregular habits of worship but in their exaltation of the teaching office of the pulpit they have almost forgotten the worshipping office of the pew. Accordingly throughout the land arises a cry for the enrichment of public worship. Hence the growing use of responsive reading of formulae of prayer and confession of singing in which all the people may join ” Barren worship is productive of no such blessed inspirations and emotions as follow what is truly congregational worship.

III. I am ready to grant the existence of certain dangers.

1. One is that the music may be simply an entertainment. When Archbishop Stephens of New York was dying he took the hand of a friend and whispered almost with his last breath “Come to the funeral. The music will be splendid.”

2. Another danger is that the service largely ritualistic may be emptied of all feeling of true devotion. Dr. Lyman Abbott notes a great absence of seriousness in the cathedral services of Antwerp Cologne and Paris. And upon this phase of the subject I will only remark that three principles must be duly observed in the construction of a satisfactory ritual--

──The Biblical Illustrator