Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Chronicles · About this commentary
A House, a Family, and Two Victories
1 Chronicles 14:1-17
1 Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees, masons, and carpenters, to build him a house. · WEB
Between the two attempts on the ark stands a chapter in which David asks before acting and is answered differently each time.
The chapter interrupts the ark narrative, and its placement is the argument. Between a disaster and its correction the writer sets a sequence in which David inquires first and succeeds.
It opens with a foreign king's gift: cedar, masons and carpenters sent from Tyre to build a palace 1 Chronicles 14:1. David's response is not pride but inference. He perceived that Yahweh had established him king — and the reason given is not his own standing but his people Israel's sake 1 Chronicles 14:2. A house of cedar is read as evidence about a nation, not about a man.
Then the sons born in Jerusalem, thirteen of them named 1 Chronicles 14:4–7. The list is quiet, and the reader who noticed the register in chapter 3 will notice that these names are being entered twice.
The Philistines come up as soon as they hear of the anointing, and here the chapter makes its point. David inquired of God, and asks two questions rather than one: shall I go, and will you deliver them 1 Chronicles 14:10. Permission and outcome are both requested. The answer grants both, the battle is won, and David names the place for a figure of water bursting a bank — God has broken my enemies by my hand 1 Chronicles 14:11. The instrument is named as an instrument.
The abandoned Philistine gods are burned 1 Chronicles 14:12. The victors take no trophies, which is precisely what the victors did on Gilboa four chapters earlier.
The Philistines raid again, and this is the verse the chapter exists for. David inquired again 1 Chronicles 14:14 — the same enemy, the same valley, and he does not assume the same answer. This time he is told not to go up but to circle, and to wait for a sound in the tops of the trees, because God has gone out before you 1 Chronicles 14:15.
A man who had repeated last time's method with the ark does not repeat last time's method here. He asks twice and gets two different instructions, and obeys the second as readily as the first.
The result closes the chapter in the same register as the palace: his fame spread, and Yahweh brought the fear of him on all nations 1 Chronicles 14:17. Reputation, like the cedar, is reported as something done to him.
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