Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Chronicles · About this commentary
Solomon Enthroned, and David's Death
1 Chronicles 29:20-30
20 Then David said to all the assembly, “Now bless Yahweh your God!” All the assembly blessed Yahweh, the God of their fathers, and bowed down their heads and prostrated themselves before Yahweh and the king. · WEB
The book closes as its narrative opened, with a kingdom handed on at a king's death and named as God's throne.
The assembly blesses God and bows, and the sacrifices are counted in thousands, and the people eat and drink with great gladness 1 Chronicles 29:21–22. The book that began with a battlefield ends at a table, as the muster at Hebron did.
Solomon is made king the second time, and anointed as prince, with Zadok anointed priest in the same act 1 Chronicles 29:22. Crown and altar are established together, which is what the last nine chapters have been arranging.
Then the sentence the whole work has been moving toward. Solomon sat on the throne of Yahweh as king instead of David his father, and prospered 1 Chronicles 29:23.
It is not David's throne he inherits. The book has said this from the promise onward — my house and my kingdom 1 Chronicles 17:14, the throne of Yahweh's kingdom 1 Chronicles 28:5, yours is the kingdom 1 Chronicles 29:11 — and here the claim is made at the one moment when a dynasty is most tempted to think otherwise.
The submission is unanimous: the princes, the mighty men, and also all of the sons of King David 1 Chronicles 29:24. No rival is mentioned, though the sources would have supplied one. The succession is presented as the transfer of something that was never in the family's gift.
The reign is then summarized in the plainest terms available — forty years, seven at Hebron and thirty-three at Jerusalem — and the death recorded without a lament: he died at a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor 1 Chronicles 29:28.
That closes a frame opened twenty chapters earlier. The narrative began with a king dying under a verdict and the kingdom turned over to another 1 Chronicles 10:14; it ends with a king dying in honor and the throne passing again. Both transfers are God's act, and neither king is said to own what he handed on.
The last two verses do something no ending needs to do. The acts of David, first and last, are said to be written in the records of three named men, with all his reign and his might, and the events that involved him 1 Chronicles 29:29–30.
The writer points away from his own book. He has selected, and he says where the rest is kept. What he chose to record was a man who could not build the house and prepared everything for it, and a throne that belonged to God before it belonged to anyone who sat on it.
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