Week 19 1 Chronicles 25
Right away I see data & lists in chapter 23 so I page forward – hoping for the best but seeing I’ve got five more chapters of names & numbers. About 160-verses of material in the Hurry-Up Bible-Reading Category so I shift into a higher gear.
I guess I would have breezed through all of it – including chapter 25 – except a couple of days ago I read: by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
And Zion would have had a bunch of songs to sing because 1 Chronicles 25 says there were 288 full-time musicians (I checked the arithmetic – 24 groups with 12 individuals in each = 288 musicians). (It also finally registers with me that chapters 23 & 24 & 25 is one long list of many different temple workers – Levites priests Gershonites Kohathites Merarites. Plus those 288 temple musicians.)
Buried in the musicians’ names are a couple of comments about what the group was set up to accomplish: the ministry of prophesying, accompanied by harps, lyres and cymbals
They: prophesied using the harp in thanking and praising the Lord
They were: trained and skilled in music for the Lord.
So if prophecy praise & thanks were the real objectives of Israel’s dedicated temple musicians it’s easier to understand their reaction in psalm 137 – entertaining their Babylonian overlords wasn’t part of the mandate.
Note: quotes from Psalm 137:1-3, 1 Chronicles 25:1 3 7 (NLT)