Biblion Bible Commentary
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Gatekeepers, Treasuries, Officers and Judges
1 Chronicles 26:1-32
1 For the divisions of the doorkeepers: of the Korahites, Meshelemiah the son of Kore, of the sons of Asaph. · WEB
Doors, money and the courts are all committed to Levites, and the temple treasury keeps the gifts of the rejected king.
The gatekeepers are assigned the same way the priests were. They cast lots, the small as well as the great, according to their fathers' houses, for every gate 1 Chronicles 26:13, and the results are recorded compass point by compass point, with the numbers on each side and the phrase watchman opposite watchman 1 Chronicles 26:16.
One name in that roster has a history. The south gate falls to Obed-Edom, and the storehouse to his sons 1 Chronicles 26:15. The ark had been left in the house of a man of that name for three months when nobody knew what else to do with it, and his household was blessed 1 Chronicles 13:14. The family that sheltered the ark in the emergency now keeps a door in the permanent arrangement.
The treasuries follow, and they carry the memory of the wars. Plunder was dedicated to repair Yahweh's house 1 Chronicles 26:27 — spoil converted into maintenance, which is what the book did with the bronze from the northern campaign.
Then a list of donors that is quietly remarkable. The dedicated things include all that Samuel the seer, Saul the son of Kish, Abner the son of Ner, and Joab the son of Zeruiah had dedicated 1 Chronicles 26:28.
Saul's gifts are in the temple treasury, kept and catalogued. So are Abner's, the general who fought to keep David off the throne. The book that opened by pronouncing a verdict on Saul does not confiscate what he gave. A gift made to God is not withdrawn when the giver is judged, and the register lists him among the benefactors under his own name and his father's.
The last four verses move outside the sanctuary altogether. Levites are appointed to the outward business over Israel, for officers and judges 1 Chronicles 26:29; seventeen hundred oversee the territory west of the Jordan and twenty-seven hundred the tribes east of it.
Their remit is stated as a single phrase covering two things: for all the business of Yahweh and for the service of the king 1 Chronicles 26:30. Temple affairs and crown affairs are handled by the same officers and named in one breath. The tribe with no land administers the land, and the arrangement is recorded without any sense that two spheres are being confused.
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