NOW we can consider 1st Chronicles 28-29.
Solomon has already been privately anointed and proclaimed king to put a stop to Adonijah’s attempt to make himself king.
Now that everyone is straight on who will be the next king, there needs to be a formal coronation for Solomon.
I don’t know if you watched the coronation of King Charles but it was quite the event. It’s not every day that a king is crowned. The attendees at the coronation were there by invitation only. Tourists couldn’t just cue up outside Westminster Abbey and get a ticket.
The coronation of Solomon is also not open to everyone. It’s a gathering of all the family heads and top brass of Israel. After 2 coup attempts by 2 of his sons, David wants to make it very clear that GOD has chosen Solomon and David expects them to be loyal to him.
David also publicly charges Solomon to remain loyal to Yahweh and to continually pursue His heart.
Much of the chapter describes the plans of the Temple and the vasts treasure it will require to build.
We all know that Solomon was wildly wealthy, but y’all, David had his own private Fort Knox. I did some online searches and found out that David (personally – not the nation’s treasuries), personally possessed and GAVE to the building of the Temple the equivalent of 8960 standard bars of gold!!! (And you thought Donald Trump was over the top for gilding the Oval Office.)
He had nearly double the amount of silver.
I can’t get my head quite around this.
Y’all… we better start learning which fork 🍴 to use and how to hold our pinkies at high tea ☕️ 🫖 because we are part of the Royal Family. Our King is wildly RICH. 💰And we are going to live with Him in such wealth and grandeur we can’t even fathom…
When I was kid there was a cartoon on TV called Richy Rich based on a comic book character. He had robots and a very proper English butler named Cadbury to tend to his every whim. Everything Richy had was over-the-top. Most of his stuff was gold. Solomon was the first Richy Rich.
But the main thing in chapter 28 we need to notice is:
“Every part of this plan,” David told Solomon, “was given to me in writing from the hand of the Lord.”
1 Chronicles 28:19 NLT
Down to the last silver dish and iron nail, the whole schematic of Solomon’s Temple was divinely designed, just like the Tabernacle of Moses. And the Lord communicated all of these details to David.
Just as we saw that the Tabernacle design had redemptive meaning, so will Solomon’s Temple. We will soon get to the detailed descriptions of every pillar and carved door. They will all give us tiny glimpses into the throne room of Heaven.
Speaking of that… the cherubim are called God’s “chariot” in verse 18. They don’t pull a chariot. They ARE the chariot. Remember how we’ve read about Yahweh “riding on a cherub” in Psalm 18:10? Wait til we get to Ezekiel. We get a closeup view of them. 👀
And it wasn’t just the plans for the structure that God gave to David, the organization of all the priests and Levites was divinely inspired too. 📋 This really was a Theocracy and God is enthroned as the acting King of Israel. He’s not just a figurehead or a mascot. He has made their laws and He actively governs through His representatives – the king and priesthood.
That’s what the Church is supposed to be – only without geographical borders. Christ is not supposed to be a figurehead or a mascot. He doesn’t hold some honorary titled role that doesn’t actually get involved in the day-to-day running of things. Sadly, there are many congregations where that is the case. People make the decisions and Jesus is really not asked for His input unless there’s a crisis. My prayer for the churches is that Jesus would be the active Head of His Body.
Let’s wrap up the final chapter of 1st Chronicles.
They take up a collection reminiscent of Moses’ collection for the building of the Tabernacle. Only, this one is WAY bigger. You know those 8960 gold bars I told you that David donated from his own treasures? The nation’s leaders gave about 60 tons MORE than what David had.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
“For the construction of the Temple of God, they gave about 188 tons of gold, 10,000 gold coins, 375 tons of silver, 675 tons of bronze, and 3,750 tons of iron. They also contributed numerous precious stones, which were deposited in the treasury of the house of the Lord under the care of Jehiel, a descendant of Gershon.”
1 Chronicles 29:7-8 NLT
When you’re measuring it in tons, I’m done. I can’t keep up. Mind sufficiently blown.
Josephus wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 7, Chapter 15 that when David died, he left behind more wealth than ANY other king of Israel or any king of ANY other nation! He also said that some of that treasure was buried in his tomb- which had many chambers. There was so much money in there that 1300 years after David’s death, Hyrcanus the High Priest, when Jerusalem was besieged by the Greek conqueror Antiochus “the Pious,” went into one chamber within the tomb of David and withdrew “3000 talents” to pay off the aggressor. Josephus goes on to say that many decades later, Herod the King opened another room in David’s tomb and…
“took away a great deal of money, and yet neither of them [Herod of Hyrcanus] came at the coffins of the kings themselves, for their bodies were buried under the earth so artfully, that they did not appear even to those that entered into their monuments…”
😲 Whoah! That’s like Indiana Jones and National Treasure kind of stuff!!! Secret compartments where David and the kings were buried with treasure!! And nobody found them?! Where’s my fedora?
I know! Wouldn’t it be amazing if the actually tombs were found? I suppose it’s possible they were found and looted after Josephus wrote during the early Roman Empire. But I’ve never read any such thing. There’s a tourist spot in Jerusalem called “the Tomb of David.” It’s not. It’s more like a memorial with a huge stone sarcophagus that has no body in it. CAN. YOU. IMAGINE… if the tombs of David and Solomon and other kings of Israel were found?!?
I might just buy my own fedora!
🤓 Post-Publishing Editor Lacy popping in here- apparently I forgot that I not only read but also saved the link to this article about what may possibly be the remains of the tombs of David and the early kings. I wouldn’t say the evidence is a slam-dunk but it’s compelling enough to hold off on buying a whip and a fedora.
As we embark on a new chapter of Israel’s history with Solomon and his temple-project, this is a good spot to connect dots back to the past and into what is yet ahead in scripture. This short VIDEO by The Bible Project summarizes the concepts around the Temple in a very helpful way. The Temple isn’t just about a big shiny building. It’s about God-space (or “Sacred Space”) existing in the physical world.
And just like that, another book of the Bible is completed.
✅ 1st Chronicles.
🏅Congratulations.
To The Reader 