Bible-Reading.comI Chronicles 20
1Now in the spring, at the time when kings go out to war, Joab went out at the head of the armed forces and made waste all the land of the Ammonites and put his men in position before Rabbah, shutting it in. But David was still at Jerusalem. And Joab took Rabbah and made it waste.
2And David took the crown of Milcom from off his head; its weight was a talent of gold and it had stones of great price in it; and it was put on David's head, and he took a great store of goods from the town.
3And he took the people out of the town and put them to work with wood-cutting instruments, and iron grain-crushers, and axes. And this he did to all the towns of the children of Ammon. Then David and all the people went back to Jerusalem.
4Now after this there was war with the Philistines at Gezer; then Sibbecai the Hushathite put to death Sippai, one of the offspring of the Rephaim; and they were overcome.
5And again there was war with the Philistines; and Elhanan, the son of Jair, put to death Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the stem of whose spear was like a cloth-worker's rod.
6And again there was war at Gath, where there was a very tall man, who had twenty-four fingers and toes, six fingers on his hands and six toes on his feet; he was one of the offspring of the Rephaim.
7And when he put shame on Israel, Jonathan, the son of Shimea, David's brother, put him to death.
8These were of the offspring of the Rephaim in Gath; they came to their death by the hands of David and his servants.
I Chronicles 21
1Now Satan, designing evil against Israel, put into David's mind the impulse to take the number of Israel.
2And David said to Joab and the captains of the people, Now let all Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, be numbered; and give me word so that I may be certain of their number.
3And Joab said, May the Lord make his people a hundred times more in number than they are; but, my lord king, are they not all my lord's servants? why would my lord have this done? why will he become a cause of sin to Israel?
4But the king's word was stronger than Joab's. So Joab went out and went through all Israel and came to Jerusalem.
5And Joab gave David the number of all the people; all the men of Israel, able to take up arms, were one million, one hundred thousand men; and those of Judah were four hundred and seventy thousand men, able to take up arms.
6But Levi and Benjamin were not numbered among them, for Joab was disgusted with the king's order.
7And God was not pleased with this thing; so he sent punishment on Israel.
8Then David said to God, Great has been my sin in doing this; but now, be pleased to take away the sin of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.
9Then the word of the Lord came to Gad, David's seer, saying,
10Go and say to David, The Lord says, Three things are offered to you: say which of them you will have, so that I may do it to you.
11So Gad came to David and said to him, The Lord says, Take whichever you will:
12Three years when there will not be enough food; or three months of war, when you will go in flight before your haters, being in great danger of the sword; or three days of the sword of the Lord, disease in the land, and the angel of the Lord taking destruction through all the land of Israel. Now give thought to the answer I am to take back to him who sent me.
13And David said to Gad, This is a hard decision for me to make: let me come into the hands of the Lord, for great are his mercies: let me not come into the hands of men.
14So the Lord sent disease on Israel, causing the death of seventy thousand men.
15And God sent an angel to Jerusalem for its destruction: and when he was about to do so, the Lord saw, and had regret for the evil, and said to the angel of destruction, It is enough; do no more. Now the angel of the Lord was by the grain-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
16And David, lifting up his eyes, saw the angel of the Lord there between earth and heaven, with an uncovered sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the responsible men, clothed in haircloth, went down on their faces.
17And David said to God, Was it not I who gave the order for the people to be numbered? It is I who have done the sin and the great wrong; but these are only sheep; what have they done? let your hand, O Lord God, be lifted up against me and against my family, but not against your people to send disease on them.
18Then the angel of the Lord gave orders to Gad to say to David that he was to go and put up an altar to the Lord on the grain-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
19And David went up, as Gad had said in the name of the Lord.
20And Ornan, turning back, saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him went to a secret place. Now Ornan was crushing his grain.
21And when David came, Ornan, looking, saw him, and came out from the grain-floor and went down on his face to the earth before him.
22Then David said to Ornan, Give me the place where this grain-floor is, so that I may put up an altar here to the Lord: let me have it for its full price; so that this disease may be stopped among the people.
23And Ornan said to David, Take it, and let my lord the king do what seems right to him. See, I give you the oxen for burned offerings and the grain-cleaning instruments for fire-wood, and the grain for the meal offering; I give it all.
24And King David said to Ornan, No; I will certainly give you the full price for it, because I will not take for the Lord what is yours, or give a burned offering without payment.
25So David gave Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the place.
26And David put up an altar there to the Lord, offering burned offerings and peace-offerings with prayers to the Lord; and he gave him an answer from heaven, sending fire on the altar of burned offering.
27Then the Lord gave orders to the angel, and he put back his sword into its cover.
28At that time, when David saw that the Lord had given him an answer on the grain-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, he made an offering there.
29For the House of the Lord, which Moses had made in the waste land, and the altar of burned offerings, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon.
30But David was not able to go before it to get directions from the Lord, so great was his fear of the sword of the angel of the Lord.
I Chronicles 22
1Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar for Israel's burned offerings.
2And David gave orders to get together all the men from strange lands who were in the land of Israel; and he put stone-cutters to work, cutting stones for building the house of God.
3And he got together a great store of iron, for the nails for the doors and for the joins; and brass, more in weight than might be measured;
4And cedar-trees without number, for the Zidonians and the men of Tyre came with a great amount of cedar-trees for David.
5And David said, Solomon my son is young and untested, and the house which is to be put up for the Lord is to be very great, a thing of wonder and glory through all countries; so I will make ready what is needed for it. So David got ready a great store of material before his death.
6Then he sent for his son Solomon, and gave him orders for the building of a house for the Lord, the God of Israel.
7And David said to Solomon, My son, it was my desire to put up a house for the name of the Lord my God.
8But the word of the Lord came to me saying, You have taken lives without number and made great wars; I will not let you be the builder of a house for my name, because of the lives you have taken on the earth before my eyes.
9But you will have a son who will be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from wars on every side. His name will be Solomon, and in his time I will give Israel peace and quiet;
10He will be the builder of a house for my name; he will be to me a son, and I will be to him a father; and I will make the seat of his rule over Israel certain for ever.
11Now, my son, may the Lord be with you; and may you do well, and put up the house of the Lord your God, as he has said of you.
12Only may the Lord give you wisdom, and knowledge of his orders for Israel, so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God.
13And all will go well for you, if you take care to keep the laws and the rules which the Lord gave to Moses for Israel: be strong and take heart; have no fear and do not be troubled.
14Now see, poor though I am, I have got ready for the house of the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold and a million talents of silver; and a weight of brass and iron greater than may be measured; and wood and stone have I made ready, and you may put more to it.
15And you have a great number of workmen, cutters and workers of stone and wood, and experts in every sort of work,
16In gold and silver and brass and iron more than may be numbered. Up! then, and to work; and may the Lord be with you.
17Then David gave orders to all the chiefs of Israel to give their help to Solomon his son, saying,
18Is not the Lord your God with you? and has he not given you rest on every side? for the Lord has given the people of the land into my hands, and the land is overcome before the Lord and before his people.
19Now give your heart and soul to the worship of the Lord your God; and get to work on the building of the holy place of the Lord God, so that you may put the ark of the Lord's agreement and the holy vessels of God in the house which is to be made for the name of the Lord.
I Chronicles 23
1Now David was old and full of days; and he made his son Solomon king over Israel.
2And he got together all the chiefs of Israel, with the priests and the Levites.
3And the Levites, all those of thirty years old and over, were numbered; and the number of them, by heads, man by man, was thirty-eight thousand.
4Of these, twenty-four thousand were to be overseers of the work of the house of the Lord, and six thousand were judges and men of authority;
5Four thousand were door-keepers; and four thousand gave praise to the Lord with the instruments which I made, said David, for giving praise.
6And David put them into divisions under the names of the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
7Of the Gershonites: Ladan and Shimei.
8The sons of Ladan: Jehiel the chief, and Zetham and Joel, three.
9The sons of Shimei: Shelomoth and Haziel and Haran, three; these were the heads of the families of Ladan.
10And the sons of Shimei: Jahath, Zizah and Jeush and Beriah; these four were the sons of Shimei.
11Jahath was the chief and Zizah the second; but Jeush and Beriah had only a small number of sons, so they were grouped together as one family.
12The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, four.
13The sons of Amram: Aaron and Moses; and Aaron was made separate and holy, he and his sons for ever, for the care of the most holy things and the burning of offerings before the Lord, to do his work and give blessings in his name for ever.
14And the sons of Moses, the man of God, were put into the list of the tribe of Levi.
15The sons of Moses: Gershom and Eliezer.
16The sons of Gershom: Shebuel the first.
17And the sons of Eliezer: Rehabiah the first; and Eliezer had no other sons, but Rehabiah had a great number.
18The sons of Izhar: Shelomith the first.
19The sons of Hebron: Jeriah the first, Amariah the second, Jahaziel the third, and Jekameam the fourth.
20The sons of Uzziel: Micah the first, and Isshiah the second.
21The sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushi; the sons of Mahli: Eleazar and Kish.
22And at his death Eleazar had no sons, but only daughters, and their relations, the sons of Kish, took them as wives.
23The sons of Mushi: Mahli and Eder and Jeremoth, three.
24These were the sons of Levi, grouped by families, the heads of the families of those who were numbered by name, by heads, all those of twenty years old and over who did the work of the house of the Lord.
25For David said, The Lord, the God of Israel, has given his people rest, and he has made his resting-place in Jerusalem for ever;
26And from now, there will be no need for the House of the Lord, and the vessels used in it, to be moved about by the Levites.
27So among the last acts of David was the numbering of the sons of Levi, from twenty years old and over.
28Their place was by the side of the sons of Aaron in all the work of the house of the Lord, in the open spaces and in the rooms, in the making clean of all the holy things, in doing all the work of the house of the Lord,
29The holy bread was in their care, and the crushed grain for the meal offering, of unleavened cakes or meal cooked over the fire or in water; they had control of all sorts of weights and measures;
30They had to take their places every morning to give praise and make melody to the Lord, and in the same way at evening;
31At every offering of burned offerings to the Lord, on Sabbaths, and at the new moons, and on the regular feasts, in the number ordered by the law, at all times before the Lord;
32And they had the care of the Tent of meeting and the holy place, under the direction of the sons of Aaron their brothers, for the work of the house of the Lord.
I Chronicles 24
1Now the divisions into which the sons of Aaron were grouped were these: the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
2But Nadab and Abihu came to their end before their father, and had no children; so Eleazar and Ithamar did the work of priests.
3And David, with Zadok of the sons of Eleazar, and Ahimelech of the sons of Ithamar, made distribution of them into their positions for their work.
4And there were more chiefs among the sons of Eleazar than among the sons of Ithamar; and this is how they were grouped: of the sons of Eleazar there were sixteen, all heads of families; and of the sons of Ithamar, heads of families, there were eight.
5So they were put into groups, by the Lord's decision, one with another; for there were rulers of the holy place and rulers of the house of God among the sons of Eleazar and the sons of Ithamar.
6And Shemaiah, the son of Nethanel the scribe, who was a Levite, put down their names in writing, the king being present with the rulers, and Zadok the priest, and Ahimelech, the son of Abiathar, and the heads of families of the priests and the Levites; one family being taken for Eleazar and then one for Ithamar, and so on.
7Now the first name to come out was that of Jehoiarib; the second Jedaiah,
8The third Harim, the fourth Seorim,
9The fifth Malchijah, the sixth Mijamin,
10The seventh Hakkoz, the eighth Abijah,
11The ninth Jeshua, the tenth Shecaniah,
12The eleventh Eliashib, the twelfth Jakim,
13The thirteenth Huppah, the fourteenth Jeshebeab,
14The fifteenth Bilgah, the sixteenth Immer,
15The seventeenth Hezir, the eighteenth Happizzez,
16The nineteenth Pethahiah, the twentieth Jehezkel,
17The twenty-first Jachin, the twenty-second Gamul,
18The twenty-third Delaiah, the twenty-fourth Maaziah.
19So they were put into their different groups, to take their places in the house of the Lord, in agreement with the rules made by Aaron their father, as the Lord, the God of Israel, had given him orders.
20And of the rest of the sons of Levi: of the sons of Amram, Shubael; of the sons of Shubael, Jehdeiah.
21Of Rehabiah; of the sons of Rehabiah, Isshiah the chief.
22Of the Izharites, Shelomoth; of the sons of Shelomoth, Jahath.
23And the sons of Hebron: Jeriah the chief, Amariah the second, Jahaziel the third, Jekameam the fourth.
24The sons of Uzziel, Micah; of the sons of Micah, Shamir.
25The brother of Micah, Isshiah; of the sons of Isshiah, Zechariah.
26The sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushi; the sons of Jaaziah.
27The sons of Merari: of Jaaziah, Shoham and Zaccur and Ibri.
28Of Mahli: Eleazar, who had no sons.
29Of Kish: the sons of Kish, Jerahmeel.
30And the sons of Mushi: Mahli and Eder and Jerimoth. These were the sons of the Levites by their families.
31Selection was made of these in the same way as of their brothers the sons of Aaron, David the king being present, with Zadok, and Ahimelech, and the heads of families of the priests and of the Levites; the families of the chief in the same way as those of his younger brother.