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1 Chronicles

1 Chronicleschapter 25

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Summary

Chapter summary

The choir gets the same treatment as the priesthood. The sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun are separated for service, 'who should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals': music is here classed as prophecy, under the hand of the king and under the hand of their fathers. Heman is called the king's seer 'in the words of God, to lift up the horn'; his fourteen sons and three daughters all sang in the house. Twenty-four courses of twelve are drawn by lot, and the Chronicler adds the detail that levels everyone in the room: they cast lots 'as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar.'

Context

History · Ezra — 1 Chronicles overview

  • A. 1–8 Prophesying with harps, psalteries, and cymbals
  • B. 9–31 The twenty-four lots of the temple singers

The outline

  1. A.Prophesying with harps, psalteries, and cymbalsvv. 1 to 8

    Read vv. 1 to 8 →

  2. B.The twenty-four lots of the temple singersvv. 9 to 31

    Read vv. 9 to 31 →

The world behind this chapter

1 Chronicles 25
When
The ordering of the temple musicians · c. 970 BC
Where
The sanctuary courts in Jerusalem, where the singers' shifts were assigned
Who first heard it
The trained choirs and instrumentalists of the second temple

The history

The musicians are organized exactly like the priests: twenty-four courses, twelve trained singers in each, two hundred and eighty-eight in all, plus the wider body of Levites in training. Lots were cast for the order 'as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar' — the master took his turn in the rotation with his own apprentices.

The verb used for their work is the surprise. They were set apart to 'prophesy with harps, with lyres, and with cymbals.' Heman is called the king's seer. Music in this house was not background for the sacrifice; it was a form of speaking for God, and the men who did it were understood to stand in the prophetic line.

The instruments are the three that recur through the Psalms: the lyre, the larger harp, and cymbals to mark the beat, with priests' trumpets sounding at the moment the offering went up.

One curiosity is worth naming rather than smoothing over. The last nine names in Heman's son list read, when strung together in Hebrew, almost like a sentence of prayer — 'be gracious to me, LORD, be gracious to me; you are my God; I have magnified and exalted help.' Many scholars think a fragment of a psalm has been preserved as a list of names; others take them simply as names that happen to be built from the vocabulary of prayer, which Hebrew names usually were.

What it meant to them

The community's hymnbook carried the names of Asaph, Heman, and Ethan in its headings. This chapter told them those men were not composers with a byline but the heads of a rostered ministry that was still running.

It also raised the standing of the choir. In a temple where the priesthood held the highest honors, the singers were set apart by the same lot, in the same public assembly, for work described as prophecy.

Sources cited

  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
  • Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Chronicles

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on 1 Chronicles 25. 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.

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