Today’s passage: 1 Chronicles 27:1-34
Helpful thoughts:
- Today’s chapter moves away from the Temple duties and onto military and government.
- In these roles, we see men who served as regional governors over the tribes, and men who served in ways similar to a president’s cabinet today. Except instead of a Secretary of Education or Defense, David had a Secretary of Donkeys, and Olive Oil (Maybe they had fancier names for it than those).
- The regular military force consisted of 288,000 men who served for one month per year (24,000 at a time) on active duty. In war-time, the number of troops could increase.
- The data that was accumulated through David’s sinful census was not kept. Part of David’s repentance was to make things right by discarding the information. God had made a promise, they didn’t need the information gathered.
Questions to consider:
- How do these chapters in 1 Chronicles help us to see the bigger picture of what it took to lead the nation of Israel? Was King David just one guy running a country? What does good leadership over other people require?
- What can we learn as well concerning the intelligence of man? We may have more technology these days, but were people any less intelligent back then? Whose intelligent inventions and work, whose models of government continue to be built upon by every successive generation?
- How is the absence of the census information a sign of David’s repentance? What happens when a person truly repents? What is the fruit? (2 Corinthians 7:10-11)