1 Chronicleschapter 20
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Speaks with:2 Samuel 21×32 Samuel 12×22 Samuel 11×1Deuteronomy 3×11 Chronicles 18×12 Samuel 8×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The siege of Rabbah is finished. And here the Chronicler makes his most conspicuous omission, passing over Bathsheba and Uriah entirely to keep his focus on the throne and the temple. David takes the crown of their king from off his head, a talent of gold with a precious stone in it. Then three brief giant-slayings at Gezer and Gath: Sippai of the sons of the giant, Lahmi the brother of Goliath whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam, and a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. 'They fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.'
Context
History · Ezra — 1 Chronicles overview
- A. 1–3 The crown of Rabbah set on David's head
- B. 4–8 The giants of Gath fall one after another
The outline
A.The crown of Rabbah set on David's headvv. 1 to 3
Read vv. 1 to 3 →B.The giants of Gath fall one after anothervv. 4 to 8
Read vv. 4 to 8 →
The world behind this chapter
1 Chronicles 20The history
The chapter opens 'at the time when kings go out to battle' — spring, after the winter rains stopped and before the harvest, when roads were passable and armies could live off the standing grain. Campaign seasons were set by weather and crops, not by ambition.
Rabbah, on the site of modern Amman, sat on a height with its water supply in the valley below. Taking such a city meant either a long blockade or seizing the water first. The crown taken from it weighed a talent of gold — far too heavy to wear, so it was almost certainly the crown of the Ammonite god, and the Hebrew can be read either as 'their king' or as the god's name, Milcom.
Putting the captured population to work with saws, iron picks, and axes is forced labor on state building projects, the standard fate of a defeated city and the same institution that would later split Israel in two.
The giant-killing notices are compressed field reports from Gezer and Gath — a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, and a champion whose spear shaft was 'like a weaver's beam,' the thick roller of a loom. One of these notices also clears up a famous difficulty: where Samuel's text says Elhanan killed Goliath, Chronicles says he killed Goliath's brother Lahmi.
What it meant to them
The silence in this chapter is deafening to anyone who knows the other account. Between the siege of Rabbah and its fall lies the whole story of Bathsheba and Uriah, and the writer says nothing about it.
That is not a cover-up — his readers had Samuel and Kings and had heard Psalm 51 sung. He is writing a different book, about the man who founded the temple's worship, for a people who needed the institution more than they needed the scandal.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Chronicles
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Chronicles 20. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.