Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 17-19.

When David first spoke to Nathan the prophet about building a temple for God, Nathan’s gut response was to tell David to go ahead.  Nathan did not feel a need to ask God about it because his experience was that David made choices of which God approved (Note: this was before David encountered Bathsheba).  However, when Nathan meditated on God/prayed that night*, God revealed to him that He did not want David to build Him a temple.  This teaches us something important: we should take time to consult God before committing ourselves to a course of action.

The significance of the next section I am going to comment on depends on how you view the Bible and the way it was written.  If you believe that those who wrote down this book paraphrased their sources so as to put their own beliefs in the mouths of their ancestors, this next section is not very significant.  On the other hand, if you believe, as I do, that those who wrote down the various books of the Bible (particularly this one) based what they wrote on sources that dated to the time about which they are writing, perhaps selecting which sources they relied upon based on their biases and intentions, then this is very significant.  So, many biblical scholars have suggested that before the Babylonian Exile, particularly going back to the time of David and before, the Israelites believed that God was one of many gods, but was the only one worth worshiping.  While I believe that was true for many of the Israelites, it was not what was taught by the teachers of the Law, or what was believed by those, such as David, who strove to do God’s will in their lives.  Instead, I see in David’s prayer of praise to God recorded here a belief that God was the only real god.  So, if you believe, as I do, that this prayer of David recorded here actually reflects what David prayed, then this is evidence that the belief that YHWH is the only God was not a post-Exile “innovation”, but instead goes back to the very beginning of Israel as a people.

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