For Teaching

1 Chronicles 29: What the Passage Says

119 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Chronicles 29 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

David tells the whole assembly that Solomon, the son God has chosen, is young and the work of building is great, then lists the materials he has gathered for the temple and adds gold and silver from his own treasure. The leaders and officers give willingly, and the people rejoice. David blesses the LORD in front of everyone, saying all the gifts came from God's hand in the first place, and prays that God will keep this willingness in the people's hearts and give Solomon a whole heart. The next day they offer sacrifices, make Solomon king a second time and Zadok priest, and the chapter closes with the length of David's reign, his death, and the writings that record his acts.

Claim by Claim

29:1
- David the king spoke to all the assembly.
- David said that Solomon his son is the one God has chosen.
- David said Solomon is young and inexperienced.
- David said the work is great.
- David said the temple-palace is not for man but for the LORD God.
29:2
- David said he had prepared for the house of his God with all his strength.
- He prepared gold for the things of gold.
- He prepared silver for the things of silver.
- He prepared bronze for the things of bronze.
- He prepared iron for the things of iron.
- He prepared wood for the things of wood.
- He prepared onyx stones and stones for setting.
- He prepared dark antimony stones and stones of varied colors.
- He prepared every kind of precious stone.
- He prepared marble stones in abundance.
29:3
- David said he delights in the house of his God.
- David said he has a personal treasure of gold and silver.
- David said he gives that treasure to the house of his God.
- David said this gift is over and above all he had prepared for the holy house.
29:4
- The gift was three thousand talents of gold.
- The gold was gold of Ophir.
- The gift was seven thousand talents of refined silver.
- The silver was for overlaying the walls of the buildings.
29:5
- The gold was for the gold work and the silver for the silver work.
- The metal was for all the work done by the hands of craftsmen.
- David asked who is willing to consecrate himself to the LORD that day.
29:6
- The heads of the fathers' houses offered willingly.
- The officers of the tribes of Israel offered willingly.
- The commanders of thousands and of hundreds offered willingly.
- The officials over the king's work offered willingly.
29:7
- They gave for the service of the house of God.
- They gave five thousand talents of gold.
- They gave ten thousand darics of gold.
- They gave ten thousand talents of silver.
- They gave eighteen thousand talents of bronze.
- They gave one hundred thousand talents of iron.
29:8
- Those who had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the house of the LORD.
- The treasury was under the hand of Jehiel the Gershonite.
29:9
- The people rejoiced because of the willing offering.
- They had offered willingly to the LORD with a whole heart.
- David the king also rejoiced with great joy.
29:10
- David blessed the LORD in the sight of all the assembly.
- David said: Blessed are you, LORD, God of Israel our father.
- David said this blessing is from everlasting to everlasting.
29:11
- David said the greatness belongs to the LORD.
- David said the power belongs to the LORD.
- David said the glory belongs to the LORD.
- David said the enduring victory belongs to the LORD.
- David said the majesty belongs to the LORD.
- David said everything in heaven and on earth belongs to the LORD.
- David said the kingdom belongs to the LORD.
- David said the LORD is exalted as head above all.
29:12
- David said riches and honor come from before the LORD.
- David said the LORD rules over all.
- David said power and might are in the LORD's hand.
- David said it is in the LORD's hand to make great and to give strength to all.
29:13
- David said: now, our God, we give you thanks.
- David said: we praise your glorious name.
29:14
- David asked who he is and who his people are, that they should be able to offer willingly like this.
- David said all things come from the LORD.
- David said that what they gave came from the LORD's own hand.
29:15
- David said they are strangers before the LORD.
- David said they are sojourners, as all their fathers were.
- David said their days on the earth are like a shadow.
- David said there is no hope of abiding.
29:16
- David said all this abundance was prepared to build the LORD a house for his holy name.
- David said this abundance comes from the LORD's hand.
- David said it all belongs to the LORD.
29:17
- David said he knows that God tests the heart.
- David said God takes pleasure in uprightness.
- David said he offered all these things willingly in the uprightness of his heart.
- David said he had now seen with joy the people present there offering willingly to God.
29:18
- David addressed the LORD as God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, their fathers.
- David asked the LORD to keep this forever in the intention of the thoughts of the heart of his people.
- David asked the LORD to direct their heart toward himself.
29:19
- David asked God to give Solomon his son a whole heart.
- The whole heart was to keep God's commandments, testimonies, and statutes.
- The whole heart was to do all of it.
- The whole heart was to build the temple-palace for which David had made provision.
29:20
- David told all the assembly to bless the LORD their God.
- All the assembly blessed the LORD, the God of their fathers.
- They bowed their heads low.
- They prostrated themselves to the LORD and to the king.
29:21
- They sacrificed sacrifices to the LORD.
- They offered burnt offerings to the LORD.
- This was on the day after that day.
- They offered a thousand bulls.
- They offered a thousand rams.
- They offered a thousand lambs.
- They offered the drink offerings that went with them.
- They offered sacrifices in abundance for all Israel.
29:22
- They ate and drank before the LORD on that day.
- They did so with great gladness.
- They made Solomon son of David king a second time.
- They anointed him to the LORD as ruler.
- They anointed Zadok as priest.
29:23
- Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king in place of David his father.
- Solomon prospered.
- All Israel obeyed him.
29:24
- All the officials and the mighty men submitted to Solomon the king.
- All the sons of king David also submitted to Solomon the king.
29:25
- The LORD magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel.
- The LORD bestowed on him royal majesty.
- Such royal majesty had not been on any king before him over Israel.
29:26
- David son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.
29:27
- The time David reigned over Israel was forty years.
- He reigned seven years in Hebron.
- He reigned thirty-three years in Jerusalem.
29:28
- David died at a good old age.
- He was full of days, riches, and honor.
- Solomon his son reigned in his place.
29:29
- The acts of David the king, first and last, are written down.
- They are written in the records of Samuel the seer.
- They are written in the records of Nathan the prophet.
- They are written in the records of Gad the seer.
29:30
- The records include all his reign and his might.
- The records include the times that passed over him.
- The records include the times that passed over Israel.
- The records include the times that passed over all the kingdoms of the lands.

Words Worth Explaining

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

29:1: The word translated "palace" or "great building" is not the ordinary Hebrew word for temple. It means a citadel or royal residence, and it is used here of the temple because it is being built for the LORD understood as a king. "Young and tender" in the King James does not mean physically delicate; it means inexperienced. Solomon was likely a grown man by this point.
29:2: The Hebrew names for several of these stones are uncertain, and translations differ widely. The word behind "glistering" or "sparkling" stones may mean antimony (a dark mineral used as a setting compound or as eye paint) or a turquoise-like stone; "marble" may be alabaster or any polished white stone. "Stones to be set" are stones cut to be mounted in settings, as in jewelry.
29:3: "Mine own proper good" means David's personal property, as opposed to the state treasury he has already drawn on. The distinction is the whole point of the verse: this is his own money, not the nation's.
29:4: A talent was a unit of weight, not a coin, roughly 75 pounds (about 34 kilograms), though the exact standard varied. Three thousand talents of gold is therefore an enormous quantity, and the figures throughout this chapter are meant to convey overwhelming abundance. Ophir was a distant land famous as a source of the finest gold; its location is unknown, with the Arabian peninsula, East Africa and India all proposed.
29:5: "Consecrate his service" translates a Hebrew idiom meaning literally "fill his hand." It is the standard phrase for ordaining a priest to office, and it is used here of ordinary people filling their hands with gifts for the LORD, a deliberate play on the expression.
29:6: "Commanders of thousands and of hundreds" were officers over the standard divisions of the army. The words for thousand and hundred may name units of a set kind rather than give exact head counts.
29:7: A daric was a Persian gold coin, named for King Darius and not minted until centuries after David's lifetime. The writer of Chronicles, living under Persian rule, is converting an old sum into money his own readers used. Coined money did not exist in David's day; before coinage, metal was weighed out.
29:8: Gershon was one of the three sons of Levi, so a Gershonite belonged to one of the priestly tribe's family divisions. Levites, not priests, were the ones assigned to guard and administer the temple treasuries.
29:9: "Perfect heart" does not mean a flawless character. The Hebrew means whole or undivided, a heart not pulled in two directions, so the sense is that they gave without holding part of themselves back.
29:10: To "bless" God does not mean to confer something on him; when the direction is from a person to God it means to praise or speak well of. "Israel our father" here is not the nation but the man Jacob, who was renamed Israel and from whose sons the tribes descended.
29:11: The word rendered "victory" is disputed. The Hebrew term can mean lasting endurance, preeminence, or victory, and translators have chosen among these differently; "splendor" in some modern versions reflects the same uncertainty.
29:15: "Strangers and sojourners" is legal language for resident foreigners: people living in a country where they hold no ancestral land and depend on the goodwill of the owner. The point is that Israel holds the land as a guest of its true owner. The last phrase is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew and can mean either "there is no hope" or "there is no staying, no remaining."
29:17: In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thinking, choosing and intention, closer to what modern English calls the mind or the will than to the emotions.
29:18: "The imagination of the thoughts of the heart" is not about fantasy. The Hebrew word behind "imagination" means something formed or shaped, so it refers to the settled inclination a person's mind keeps returning to. In ancient Hebrew usage the heart is the seat of thinking and deciding, closer to what we would call the mind, not the emotions alone.
29:19: "Commands, testimonies and statutes" are three overlapping Hebrew terms for divine instruction, piled up for completeness rather than to name three distinct categories of law.
29:20: The same Hebrew verb, meaning to bow low in homage, is used for what the assembly does toward the LORD and toward the king. The gesture given to a king was the ordinary courtesy owed to a superior, and the text does not distinguish it in wording from the gesture given to God.
29:21: In a burnt offering the whole animal was burned on the altar and none of it eaten. A drink offering was wine poured out alongside a sacrifice. Other sacrifices, like those eaten in verse 22, were shared as a meal by the worshipers.
29:22: "A second time" acknowledges that Solomon had already been proclaimed king once, in an earlier and more contested episode. Pouring olive oil on the head was the standard public ceremony for installing someone in office, whether king or priest; the Hebrew word for "anointed one" is the source of the word Messiah.
29:23: "The throne of the LORD" is a way of speaking distinctive to Chronicles: the king's throne in Jerusalem is described as belonging to God, with the king seated on it as God's representative rather than in his own right.
29:24: The Hebrew reads literally "gave the hand under Solomon." Placing one's hand beneath a ruler's was a formal gesture of pledging loyalty and submission.
29:26: Jesse was David's father. David was his youngest son.
29:27: Hebron was a town in the southern territory of Judah and David's first capital, where he ruled over Judah alone before capturing Jerusalem and being accepted by all the tribes.
29:28: "Full of days" is a set Hebrew expression for having lived a complete life rather than being cut short. Dying old and wealthy was read as a life brought to its proper end.
29:29: A "seer" is an older Hebrew word for a prophet, someone who sees what is otherwise hidden. The records named here are not the biblical books of Samuel; they are separate court and prophetic chronicles that no longer survive, cited the way a historian cites sources.
29:30: "The times that went over him" is an idiom for the events and circumstances that passed across a person's life, roughly what we would call everything he went through.

Read 1 Chronicles 29