I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 10-12.
The writer takes up his historical account with the death of King Saul. The writer clearly expects that his reader is familiar with King Saul and his rule. The description of King Saul’s final battle and death is basically a setup for the writer to begin telling the story of David. However, he makes sure to make the point that God turned the Kingdom over to David because Saul had failed to faithfully obey God and seek His guidance. While this is an oversimplification of Saul’s career, it is not inaccurate.
As I have already noted, this book was compiled after the Exile. It seems to me that it was based on documents which the Exiles brought back with them and documents which they found as they rebuilt Jerusalem. I reach the conclusion that the writer was compiling information from other documents from the disjointed timeline in today’s passage. The writer tells us that all of Israel came to David at Hebron to ask him to be their king after Saul’s death. Then he goes on to write about David’s Mighty Men, The Three and The Thirty. From there he goes on to write about the men who came to support David while Saul was still king. However, he does not put them in any particular order. The first group he talks about are men from the same clan as Saul (or perhaps just from Saul’s tribe of Benjamin, the wording is not clear to me). This group joined David while he was in Ziklag under the protection of the Philistine king of Gath. The next group the writer talks about joined David before this when he was in the wilderness of Judah. In addition to a warband from Gad who joined David at this time, there were men from Benjamin and Judah who joined David while he was hiding in the wilderness of Judah. Then the writer skips ahead and writes about a group of warriors who defected from Sail’s army to join David when David and his men were marching with the Philistine army to fight against Saul. The writer points out that these men did not end up fighting against Saul because the Philistines were afraid to have them in their battle lines. Finally, the author lists some warriors who joined David after the death of King Saul. We see from all of this that the writer based what he wrote in this book on documents he had from other sources. It seems likely that he had access to 1 & 2 Kings as well as other historical records. Or perhaps, this was compiled at about the same time as 1 & 2 Kings and was based on some of the same records.
