New Israel

1 Chronicles 9:1 sounds like closure. Israel’s genealogies are enrolled, and the Chronicler cites the source of his information, the book of the Kings of Israel. Judah is off in Babylonian exile because of her unfaithfulness. Yet the text moves on, and the genealogy isn’t yet done. After the end, there is more; after exile, there is new life.

And the theological depth of this new life is highlighted by verse 2. Commentators debate whether or not the phrase “the first dwellers” refers to old Israel or to the Israel of the restoration, but the context suggests the latter. Judah has been sent out of the land, but then there are yet land-dwellers. That impression is reinforced by the use of ha’rishonim, from ri’shon, “first,” similar to the opening phrase of Genesis 1: bere’shit. After the apparent closure of verse 1, after exile, there’s another “in the beginning.”

That might seem a stretch until we recognize that the list of names of Israel, priests, Levites and temple servants in 1 Chronicles 9 ends with the Kohathites preparing the showbread. The very last word of verse 32, the last word before the summary statement of verses 33-34, is shabat. A text that moves from ha’rishonim to shabat is mimicking and retelling a story of origins.

Within that frame, several other things fall into place. The people listed are the furnishings of this new world. At the center of this world is the garden-environment of the temple, guarded by gatekeepers on four sides. Inside the temple are bread, wine, oil, and incense; the temple is a bakery for things made in pans, especially for the bread of the presence that represents Israel before the lampstand of Yahweh’s eyes. Outside the temple area are the villages of the Levites, who join their brothers “time to time” every seven days (v. 25). Thus a temple surrounded by Levitical gatekeepers who mediate between the garden and the surrounding land of villages, a configuration reminiscent of Adam’s original commission as gatekeeper of Eden.