Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Chronicles · About this commentary
Who Then Offers Willingly?
1 Chronicles 29:1-19
1 David the king said to all the assembly, “Solomon my son, whom alone God has chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great; for the palace is not for man, but for Yahweh God. · WEB
The largest gift in the book is presented with a denial that anything was given: what was offered had come from God already.
David states the scale of the task and its reason in one line: the palace is not for man, but for Yahweh God 1 Chronicles 29:1.
He then distinguishes two kinds of provision, and the distinction is the point of the scene. There is what he has prepared as king — gold, silver, bronze, iron, timber, stones of every kind. And there is something else, given because I have set my affection on the house of my God, out of a treasure of my own, over and above the rest 1 Chronicles 29:3.
A public works budget is one thing; a man's own money is another. Having listed the first, he adds the second, and only then puts the question to the room: who then offers willingly to consecrate himself today to Yahweh? 1 Chronicles 29:5.
He asks nobody for anything he has not already done, and he asks for consecration rather than for funds. The gifts follow, and the writer's summary of them dwells not on the totals but on the manner: the people rejoiced, because they offered willingly, because with a perfect heart they offered willingly 1 Chronicles 29:9. The word is repeated three times in a verse, and the king's own joy is added at the end of it.
The prayer that follows is the theological summit of the book. Yours, Yahweh, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty!... Yours is the kingdom 1 Chronicles 29:11. Everything the reign has been credited with is handed back in a sentence, and the kingdom with it.
Then the argument turns on the offering itself. Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from you, and we have given you of your own 1 Chronicles 29:14.
The generosity is not denied and it is not praised. It is reclassified. Nothing left the possession of its owner, because it had never been anywhere else, and even the capacity to give it willingly is named as something received. That is as close as the book comes to a doctrine of gift, and it is spoken over the largest donation it records.
The self-description in the next verse is the more remarkable for who says it. We are strangers before you and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow 1 Chronicles 29:15. A king at the summit of a forty-year reign, standing over the treasure for a temple, calls himself a resident alien with no lease.
The two closing requests are for hearts rather than for materials: that God would keep this desire forever in the thoughts of the heart of your people, and give Solomon a perfect heart to keep the commandments and do the work 1 Chronicles 29:18–19. Everything else has been provided already.
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