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1
Chronicles Chapter Twenty-five
1 Chronicles 25
Chapter Contents
The singers and musicians.
David put those in order who were appointed to be singers
and musicians in the temple. To prophesy, in this place, means praising God
with great earnestness and devout affections, under the influences of the Holy
Spirit. In raising these affections, poetry and music were employed. If the
Spirit of God do not put life and fervour into our devotions, they will,
however ordered, be a lifeless, worthless form.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 1 Chronicles》
1 Chronicles 25
Verse 1
[1]
Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the
sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps,
with psalteries, and with cymbals: and the number of the workmen according to
their service was:
And captains —
All the princes of Israel, with the priests and the Levites, whom David
gathered together, chap. 23:2, for this very end, that with their
approbation and consent, all these things might be established; who are here fitly
called the captains of the host; for the princes were, under David, the chief
captains of the militia of the kingdom; and as the Levites are called an host,
and the Lord's host, because of their number and order in holy ministrations;
so these priests and Levites were the captains and governors of the rest.
Separated —
Distributed them into their several ranks: which, tho' chiefly done by David as
a prophet, and by Divine direction, yet is imputed in part to the captains of
the host, because it was done with their concurrence and approbation.
The service — To
the service of God under the conduct of these persons.
Prophecy —
Praise God by singing the psalms of David, and other sacred songs made by
themselves, who were prophets, or by other prophets or holy men of God.
Workmen — Of
the persons employed in this sacred work. This good work it seems Samuel
revived, but did not live to bring it to perfection. Let each in his day do
what he can for God, tho' he cannot carry it so far as he would. When we are
gone, God can raise up others to build on our foundation, and bring forth the
top-stone.
Verse 2
[2] Of the sons of Asaph; Zaccur, and Joseph, and Nethaniah, and Asarelah, the
sons of Asaph under the hands of Asaph, which prophesied according to the order
of the king.
Of Asaph —
Under his direction.
Of the king — In
such manner and order as David appointed.
Verse 3
[3] Of
Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and Jeshaiah, Hashabiah,
and Mattithiah, six, under the hands of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied
with a harp, to give thanks and to praise the LORD.
Six —
Jeduthun their father being included in that number: or Shimei, mentioned verse
17.
Verse 5
[5] All
these were the sons of Heman the king's seer in the words of God, to lift up
the horn. And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters.
The king's seer — He
is called the king's seer, either because the king took special delight in him;
or because he frequently attended the king in his palace, executing his sacred
office there, while the rest were employed in the tabernacle.
In the words — To
sing Divine songs as were inspired by God to the prophets or holy men of God.
The horn — To
praise God with the sound of a trumpet or some other musical instrument made of
horn, which being a martial kind of music, might be most grateful to David's
martial spirit: tho' he was also skilled in other instruments of music which he
used in the house of God.
Verse 7
[7] So the number of them, with their brethren that were instructed in the
songs of the LORD, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and
eight.
Cunning —
Who were so skilful that they were able to teach others; and together with
their scholars, made up the four thousand mentioned chap. 23:5.
Verse 8
[8] And
they cast lots, ward against ward, as well the small as the great, the teacher
as the scholar.
Ward — A
course of Levites answerable to one of the priests, upon whom the Levites were
to wait in their holy ministrations, chap. 23:28.
The scholar —
Without any respect to their different ages or abilities.
Verse 9
[9] Now
the first lot came forth for Asaph to Joseph: the second to Gedaliah, who with
his brethren and sons were twelve:
To Joseph —
For the family of Asaph, of which Joseph was. Here that clause, he, his sons,
and his brethren were twelve, is to be understood, as it is expressed in all
the following verses, otherwise they do not make up that number of two hundred
and eighty-eight mentioned verse 7.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 1 Chronicles》
25 Chapter 25
Verse 7
That were instructed in the songs of the Lord.
Music and worship
In the services of the Jewish temple all is devout, exalted,
appropriate, devotional, impressive, and soul-subduing, because the musicians
themselves are close to the heart of the great Jehovah; the worshipping
congregation hears His voice with awe, “as the sound of many waters,” and the
priests of the temple lift their reverent thoughts to the great “I Am,” with
every cloud of incense that floats above the altar.
I. The moral
purpose of music. All other aspects of music in religious service, that merely
show off voices, and entertain the jaded senses of the crowd, without a
devotional spirit and moral purpose behind them, may be theatrical and
imposing, and to a certain extent moving, but they do not rise higher than the
altitude of a passing mood. Musical effect is one thing--musical sincerity another.
Words may be eloquent; they are useless when they do not touch the soul. Church
music may be charming; it is but an idle breath when no message of spiritual
power goes from the singer to him who listens. The Puritans and Spartans were
both agreed that luxury of sound was sometimes mischievous. The Puritan said,
“Sweet music at first delighteth the ears, but afterward corrupteth and
depraveth the mind.” Timotheus, the Milesian, added a twelfth string to his
harp, for which he was severely punished by the Spartans. They feared this
luxury of sound would effeminate the people. Music is not only closely related
to mind, but to morals as well; and, Church-wise, this moral quality makes its
swift appeal to the emotional sense; the exact relation of music to the
emotions and the effect of melody upon the listener are truly and eloquently
described by Mr. Haweis: “Like the sound of bells at night breaking the
silence, only to lead the spirit into deeper peace; like a leaden cloud at
morn, rising in grey twilight, to hang as a golden mist before the furnace of
the sun; like the dull, deep pain of one who sits in an empty room watching the
shadows of the firelight full of memories; like the plaint of souls that are
wasted with sighing; like paeans of exalted praise; like sudden songs from the
open gates of paradise--is music. Like one who stands in the midst of hot and
terrible battle, drunk with the fiery smoke and hearing the roar of cannon in a
trance; like one who finds himself in a long cathedral aisle, and hears the
pealing organ, and sees a kneeling crowd smitten with fringes of coloured
light; like one who, from a precipice, leaps out upon the warm midsummer air,
toward the peaceful valleys below, and feeling himself buoyed up with wings
that suddenly fail him, wakens in great despair from his wild dream--so is he
who can listen and understand.” Such is the mission of music, which George
Eliot characterises as love in search of a word.
II. There can be no
sort of question that the religious bodies which give the people most to do in
the service, and exact from the choir music of the most devotional type, are
gaining the largest number of worshippers. In the first particular the Roman
Catholic Church is seriously defective; but in the second particular it must be
conceded that Protestants have absolutely nothing approaching the grandeur of
the Roman Catholic masses, where we have a mind like that of Mozart or
Beethoven steadily working out, in strains of incomparable depth and pathos, a
great connected series of thoughts, embodying all the varied phases of
religious emotion.” What man, capable of profoundest feeling, has not been
thrilled to his heart’s depth by the great cathedral music of the Romish
Church? Presbyterian and Congregational churches have been absolutely forced
into warmer, more varied, and more worshipful forms of service by the hunger of
the people and by the pressure of competition from without. On this point allow
me to quote the strong language of Professor Waldo S. Pratt, of Hartford Theological
Seminary, one of the most rigid and orthodox of Congregational institutions. He
writes: “American Dissenting churches have begun to see that in their protest
against the Episcopacy of the eighteenth century they went to the extreme in
many matters. They have not only fallen into bald and irregular habits of
worship, but in their exaltation of the teaching office of the pulpit they have
almost forgotten the worshipping office of the pew. Accordingly, throughout the
land arises a cry for the enrichment of public worship. Hence the growing use
of responsive reading, of formulae of prayer and confession, of singing in
which all the people may join,” Barren worship is productive of no such blessed
inspirations and emotions as follow what is truly congregational worship.
III. I am ready to
grant the existence of certain dangers.
1. One is, that the music may be simply an entertainment. When
Archbishop Stephens, of New York, was dying, he took the hand of a friend and
whispered, almost with his last breath, “Come to the funeral. The music will be
splendid.”
2. Another danger is that the service, largely ritualistic, may be
emptied of all feeling of true devotion. Dr. Lyman Abbott notes a great absence
of seriousness in the cathedral services of Antwerp, Cologne, and Paris. And
upon this phase of the subject I will only remark that three principles must be
duly observed in the construction of a satisfactory ritual--
──《The Biblical Illustrator》