1 Chronicles 27
In this chapter we have the civil list, including the military,
I. The twelve captains for every separate month of the year, #1Ch 27:1-15.
II. The princes of the several tribes, #1Ch 27:16-24.
III. The officers of the court, #1Ch 27:25-34. (MH)I. The twelve captains for every separate month of the year, #1Ch 27:1-15.
* the chief fathers. The patriarchs, chief generals, or generals of brigade. This enumeration is widely different from that of the preceding. In that, we have the order and course of the priests and Levites, in their ecclesiastical ministrations: in this, we have the account of the order of the civil service, what related simply to the political state of the king and kingdom. Twenty-four persons, chosen out of David's worthies, each of whom had a second, were placed over 24,000 men, who all served a month at a time, in turn; and this was the whole of their service during the year, after which they attended to their own affairs. Thus the king had always on foot a regular force of 24,000, who served without expense to him or the state, and were not oppressed by the service, which took up only a twelfth part of their time; and by this plan he could, at any time, bring into the field 12 times 24,000 or 288,000 fighting men, independently of the 12,000 officers, which made in the whole an effective force of 300,000 soldiers; and all these men were prepared, disciplined, and ready at a call, without the smallest expense to the state or the king. These were, properly speaking, the militia of the Israelitish kingdom. (TSK, OLB.)
II. The princes of the several tribes, #1Ch 27:16-24.
1 Chronicles 27:16-22. Gad and Asher are omitted from this list of the tribes. Similarly, Dan and Zebulon are omitted from the genealogical survey of the tribes (1 Chronicles 4—8). We can only suppose that the lists, as they came down to the writer of Chronicles, were incomplete. The 491 "rulers" or "princes" of the tribes appear to have been the oldest lineal descendants of the patriarchs according to the law of primogeniture. (Barnes' Notes)
I. Of the princes of the tribes. Something of the ancient order instituted by Moses in the wilderness was still kept up, that every tribe should have its prince or chief. It is probable that it was kept up all along, either by election or by succession, in the same family; and those are here named who were found in that office when this account was taken. Elihu, or Eliab, who was prince of Judah, was the eldest son of Jesse, and descended in a right line from Nahshon and Salmon, the princes of this tribe in Moses's time. Whether these princes were of the nature of lord-lieutenants that guided them in their military affairs, or chief-justices that presided in their courts of judgment, does not appear. Their power, we may suppose, was much less now that all the tribes were united under one king than it had been when, for the most part, they acted separately. Our religion obliges us to be subject, not only to the king as supreme, but unto governors under him (#1Pe 2:13-14), the princes that decree justice. Of Benjamin was Jaaziel the son of Abner, #1Ch 27:21. Though Abner was David's enemy, and opposed his coming to the throne, yet David would not oppose the preferment of his son, but perhaps nominated him to this post of honour, which teaches us to render good for evil. (MH)
* Furthermore. These persons, called "princes of the tribes," in ver. 22, and ch. 28:1, appear to have been civil rulers over their several tribes, and honorary men, without pay, not unlike the lords lieutenants of our counties. In this enumeration there is no mention of the tribes of Gad and Asher, probably because they were joined to the neighbouring tribes; or perhaps, the account of these has been lost from the register.
III. The officers of the court, #1Ch 27:25-34.
[V. 26] * David took not. It seems probable, from this passage, that Joab began, by David's order, to number the children, as well as adults, but was prevented from finishing the account, probably because the plague had begun. The numbering of the effective men might have been deemed a political expedient; but pride and ostentation alone could dictate the numbering of minors and infants, especially as God had pronounced the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, innumerable.
[V. 28] * the sycamore trees. The Hebrew shikmin, Syriac shekmo, and Arabic jummeez, is the [sykomoros,] or sycomore, of the Greeks, so called from [sykos,] a fig-tree, and [moros] a mulberry- tree, because it resembles the latter in its leaves, and the former in its fruits. "The sycamore," says Mr. Norden, "is of the height of a beech, and bears its fruit in a manner quite different from other trees: it has them on the trunk itself, which shoots out little sprigs, in form of grape stalks, at the end of which grow the fruit close to one another, almost like a cluster of grapes. The tree is always green, and bears fruit several times in the year, without observing any certain seasons; for I have seen some sycamores that have given fruit two months after others. The fruit has the figure and smell of real figs, but is inferior to them in the taste, having a disgusting sweetness. Its colour is a yellow, inclining to an ochre, shadowed by a flesh colour. In the inside it resembles the common figs, excepting that it has a blackish colouring with yellow spots. This sort of tree is pretty common in Egypt; the people, for the greater part, live on its fruit, and think themselves well regaled when they have a piece of bread, a couple of sycamore figs, and a pitcher of water."
V. 31, Matthew Henry points out that the king did not live off the state; rather, he supported himself from his personal wealth:
...Those magistrates that would have their subjects industrious must themselves be examples of industry and application to business. We find, however, that afterwards the poor of the land were thought good enough to be vine-dressers and husbandmen, #2Ki 25:12. Now David put his great men to preside in these employments.
31. rulers of the substance that was king David's—How and when the king acquired these demesnes and this variety of property—whether it was partly by conquests, or partly by confiscation, or by his own active cultivation of waste lands—is not said. It was probably in all these ways. The management of the king's private possessions was divided into twelve parts, like his public affairs and the revenue derived from all these sources mentioned must have been very large. (JFB)
Observe:
David, evidently at the end of his life, but regardless of the time this took place, tried to establish a strong kingdom for his son.