For Teaching

1 Chronicles 14: What the Passage Says

54 claims across 17 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Chronicles 14 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Hiram, the king of Tyre, sends David materials and workers to build him a palace, and David sees that God has firmly made him king over Israel. David takes more wives in Jerusalem and has more children, whose names are listed. When the Philistines come after him, David asks God what to do, and twice God answers with instructions; David wins both battles and burns the gods the Philistines leave behind. David's fame spreads to every land.

Claim by Claim

14:1
- Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David.
- Hiram sent cedar timber to David.
- Hiram sent stonemasons to David.
- Hiram sent carpenters to David.
- The purpose of what Hiram sent was to build a house for David.
14:2
- David perceived that the LORD had established him as king over Israel.
- David's kingdom had been exalted on high.
- The exaltation of David's kingdom was for the sake of the LORD's people Israel.
14:3
- David took more wives in Jerusalem.
- David fathered more sons and daughters.
14:4
- These are the names of the children born to David in Jerusalem.
- One of David's children born in Jerusalem was Shammua.
- One was Shobab.
- One was Nathan.
- One was Solomon.
14:5
- One was Ibhar.
- One was Elishua.
- One was Elpalet.
14:6
- One was Nogah.
- One was Nepheg.
- One was Japhia.
14:7
- One was Elishama.
- One was Beeliada.
- One was Eliphalet.
14:8
- The Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over all Israel.
- All the Philistines went up to seek David.
- David heard of it.
- David went out to face them.
14:9
- The Philistines came.
- The Philistines spread themselves out in the valley of Rephaim.
14:10
- David inquired of God.
- David asked whether he should go up against the Philistines.
- David asked whether God would deliver the Philistines into his hand.
- The LORD told David to go up.
- The LORD said he would deliver the Philistines into David's hand.
14:11
- They went up to Baal-perazim.
- David struck the Philistines there.
- David said that God had burst through his enemies by his hand.
- David said the bursting was like a bursting forth of waters.
- Because of this they called the name of that place Baal-perazim.
14:12
- The Philistines left their gods there.
- David gave a command.
- The gods were burned with fire.
14:13
- The Philistines again spread themselves out in the valley.
14:14
- David inquired of God again.
- God told David not to go up after them.
- God told David to turn away from them.
- God told David to come at them opposite the balsam trees.
14:15
- God said that when David heard a sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then he should go out to battle.
- God said the reason is that God had gone out before David to strike the camp of the Philistines.
14:16
- David did as God commanded him.
- They struck the camp of the Philistines from Gibeon to Gezer.
14:17
- David's fame went out into all lands.
- The LORD put the dread of David upon all the nations.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

14:1: Tyre was a wealthy Phoenician port on the Mediterranean coast, north of Israel in what is now Lebanon. Its cedar timber was the prestige building material of the ancient Near East (tall, straight, fragrant and rot-resistant) and Israel had no comparable trees of its own. Sending craftsmen and materials was also a diplomatic act: a neighboring king was recognizing David as an equal worth trading with.
14:2: "Raised his kingdom to a high place" is a figure of speech for public standing and power, not a physical location. The point of the second half is that David reads his own success as being for Israel's benefit rather than his own.
14:3: Kings in this period took many wives, and marriages were often treaties: a wife could seal an alliance with a neighboring ruler or a powerful family inside the kingdom. A large royal household was itself a display of standing. The text reports the practice without comment.
14:4: A version of this same list appears in 2 Samuel 5:14-16. The two lists differ slightly in the number and spelling of names, which is normal for records copied and recopied by hand over centuries.
14:7: "Beeliada" contains the divine name Baal, which at this early period could still be used simply as a title meaning "lord." The same son is called Eliada, "God knows", in 2 Samuel 5:16, apparently after the name Baal became firmly attached to the Canaanite god and was avoided.
14:8: Anointing meant pouring oil over a man's head; it was the ceremony that made someone king, so "anointed" here effectively means "crowned." The Philistines were a people occupying five cities on the coastal plain to Israel's southwest, with superior weaponry and long-standing military dominance over the region. While David ruled only the southern tribe of Judah he was tolerable to them, even useful; a David ruling all Israel was a threat worth destroying at once.
14:9: The Valley of Rephaim is a broad fertile valley running southwest from Jerusalem, both a grain-growing area worth raiding and the natural invasion route up from Philistine territory toward the city.
14:10: "Asked God" describes a formal procedure, not private prayer. A priest carried a vestment called an ephod containing the Urim and Thummim, objects used to obtain yes-or-no answers to questions put by the king before battle.
14:11: Baal-perazim means roughly "the lord of breakings-through" or "the master of breaches." David's saying and the place name are the same word: the ground was named for what happened there.
14:12: Armies carried images of their gods into battle as standards and as a claim of divine backing; abandoning them in flight was a total defeat. Burning captured idols rather than keeping them as trophies follows the instruction in Deuteronomy 7:5, 25. The parallel account in 2 Samuel 5:21 says only that David and his men carried them off.
14:14: The Hebrew tree is uncertain; "mulberry" in the King James is a guess, and modern translations usually say balsam or poplar. The maneuver described is a flanking move: instead of pursuing the Philistines head-on, David is to swing around and strike from a different direction.
14:15: The sound in the treetops is described in the same words used for an army on the march. The signal is that the attack has already begun ahead of David rather than that he is starting it.
14:16: Gibeon lay a few miles northwest of Jerusalem and Gezer about twenty miles west, on the edge of the coastal plain. Naming both marks a running pursuit that drove the Philistines all the way back out of the hill country. 2 Samuel 5:25 has Geba rather than Gibeon.
14:17: Fame means lots of people knew his name. Travelers carried stories from town to town.

Read 1 Chronicles 14