Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 13-16.

I want to start by looking at what we can learn about the religious practices and beliefs of Ancient Israel from King David’s two attempts to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.   The first time, they commissioned a new cart to move the Ark, but when the oxen stumbled, Uzzah touched the Ark to steady it and was killed.  As a result David ordered the Ark to be given into the care of the closest landholder.  A few months later, after receiving an offer from Hiram of Tyre for supplies to build his palace and two battles against the Philistines, David decided to move the Ark again.   This time, David gave careful instructions about how the Ark should be moved, and explains what they did wrong the first time.  He says that they failed by not inquiring of God about how to do it, and by not following the prescribed way of moving it.  This tells us two things.  First, it tells us that a document existed at the time which those who followed the religion of Israel (which is, at the least, a precursor to what we call Judaism, and may be what we call Judaism) considered authoritative regarding their religious practices.  Second, those who practiced that religion considered consulting that document to be one of the ways in which one could inquire of God.  Or, to combine those two things into one thing, there existed at that time a document which they looked at in essentially the same way in which we look at the Bible today.  So, while we today believe that God has since added to Scriptures since then, those who worshiped God at the time of King David had a similar view of Scripture to that which we hold today.  One other point, we can take from this: the people of that day were just as lacking in thorough knowledge of the Scripture as most of us are today.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.