GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 34:8-13
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8 Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, in order to purify the land and the House of the LORD, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the administrator of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the House of the LORD his God. 9 They came to Hilkiah the high priest and delivered the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the Levites, the keepers of the threshold, had collected from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all the remnant of Israel and from all Judah and Benjamin and from the people who lived in Jerusalem. 10 They delivered it to the workmen who had the oversight of the House of the LORD; and the workmen who were working in the House of the LORD gave it for repairing and restoring the House. 11 They gave it to the carpenters and the builders to buy quarried stone, and timber for joists and beams for the buildings which the kings of Judah had let go to ruin. 12 The men did the work faithfully. Over them were set Jahath and Obadiah, Levites who were descended from Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam, descendants of the Kohathites, to have oversight. These Levites were all skillful with musical instruments. 13 They were in charge of the men carrying material and over all who did the work in every kind of service. Some of the Levites also served as scribes, and officials, and gatekeepers.
Josiah’s eighteenth year on the throne was when he was twenty-six. The purge of idols throughout Judah and what was once Israel (Ephraim, Manasseh, and as far as Naphtali) had begun six years before, and now he turned his full attention to the Temple, the House of the Lord.
The Temple had been in disrepair for seventy-five years. That’s the fifty-five years of Manasseh’s reign (with very little repair work following his repentance before his death), the two years of Josiah’s father Amon’s reign, and then Josiah’s young years up until this time. Repairs take more than orders. Repairs cost money.
A committee of three men, Shaphan the royal secretary (2 Kings 22:3), Maaseiah the city administrator of Jerusalem, and Joah the recorder or records-keeper, were placed in charge of the repairs. They distributed gifts that came from Israel and from Judah to the High Priest. The High Priest made sure that the money (really, valuable gifts of silver and other precious things that could be exchanged for goods and services, since coins and our idea of money did not yet exist) was used the way the king intended. The idea of a committee of three is an excellent pattern. A two-person committee can easily be overwhelmed by too much work, and a committee of more than four or five can contain members without much to do, but when there are three, the work seems more balanced (something for modern churches to consider). To keep the flow of this money under control, the distribution pattern resembles the flow of an hourglass: wealth came in from the top, was accounted for by this oversight committee, and then passed through the hands of one very responsible man: the High Priest. From him, it flowed down to everyone who needed it, first to a group of overseeing officers and then to the workmen and buyers who were accomplishing the labor. This helped things from getting out of control.
The distribution, therefore, had oversight and a built-in system of checks and balances. The workmen used what they needed. The carpenters and stone cutters and other builders had what they needed. There were four supervisors or overseers, two Levites from the family of Kohath and two from Merari. We notice in passing that the other family of Levites, the Gershonites, had previously been in charge of the treasury in the days of Hezekiah, Josiah’s great-grandfather. But after Hezekiah’s reign, there is not one single mention of the Gershonite clan in Scripture (1 Chronicles 26:24; 29:8; 29:12). This doesn’t mean that there had been some scandal among the Gershonites. There are descendants of Merari in the list of returning exiles (Ezra 8:19), but not from the other families. The family distinctions of the priestly divisions seem to have softened somewhat before and certainly after the Babylonian exile. More we cannot say.
Verse 12 has an unusual comment, that the Levites who were supervisors were also good musicians. When David assigned the Levites to the temple, he gave them different roles, including administration, but music for worship was always foremost. In my own congregation, some of our strongest lay leaders are also worship musicians (I’m thinking of you, Bob). In his own church, my brother and his whole family fill that role. Music in worship helps us to understand the lessons– but when it does not, then the musical piece should be dropped and replaced, because, catchy tune or not, it does not help the people to understand the Word, which is the main thing. So when a song, hymn, or chant stays with the people and helps us to keep in mind the truths of Scripture, then they serve an excellent purpose; they become a work of art, a painting, a stained-glass window, a sculpture, that we have with us at all times.
The Holy Spirit preaches the Law to us in this passage when he displays the eagerness even of the remnant in the north to bring offerings and contributions to the House of the Lord, and we all know that in all churches, whether in our fellowship or not, that about twenty percent of the people give about eighty percent of the offerings, and that the teachers and ministers are often the more faithful and generous givers. Any passage like this one that challenges my own private giving to the Lord reminds me that the work needs to continue, and that my grandparents, who were such faithful givers, are in heaven. The service and the privilege has been handed down to us today. Let us give joyfully and faithfully.
The Holy Spirit preaches the Gospel to us by the message of the restoration of the house of the Lord God, which is at the same time an echo of Amos’ words, “In that day I will restore David’s fallen tent” (Amos 9:11), but also a reminder that those words were truly fulfilled in Christ and the gathering of all races into the true Israel of God, as James preached in the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:16-17). For Christ himself is the fallen tent of David, raised up and restoring the people of God into the holy nation, the family set into the Garden of Paradise, to live with the Lord our God forever in heaven through his merits and holiness. He has brought us into the true temple, the permanent tent, the wedding banquet of the Son of Man and his holy church forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 34:8-13 Restoration begins