1 Chronicles 25 in Hebrew & English

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Tenakh Study · Read 1 Chronicles in Hebrew and English, one chapter per page. Our Tenakh study meets every Wednesday at 7 pm (Central Time) on Zoom. Text us for the Zoom link. Our Messianic Jewish notes appear below each passage; tap Commentary above to hide them. The full commentary on this chapter is on our 1 Chronicles commentary page.

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Tenakh Study · 1 Chronicles 25:1–31

1 Chronicles, Chapter 25

דברי הימים א כה

David and the captains of the host set apart the sons of Asaf, Heman and Yedutun to prophesy with harps, psalteries and cymbals; their sons are named, and the two hundred eighty-eight trained singers are divided by lot into twenty-four courses of twelve.

25:1Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaf (Asaph), and of Heman, and of Yedutun (Jeduthun), who should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals: and the number of the workmen according to their service was:

אוַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל דָּוִיד֩ וְשָׂרֵ֨י הַצָּבָ֜א לַעֲבֹדָ֗ה לִבְנֵ֤י אָסָף֙ וְהֵימָ֣ן וִֽידוּת֔וּן הַֽנִּבְּאִ֛ים (כתיב הנביאים) בְּכִנֹּר֥וֹת בִּנְבָלִ֖ים וּבִמְצִלְתָּ֑יִם וַֽיְהִי֙ מִסְפָּרָ֔ם אַנְשֵׁ֥י מְלָאכָ֖ה לַעֲבֹדָתָֽם׃

The sons of Asaf, Yedutun and Heman

25:2Of the sons of Asaf; Zakur (Zaccur), and Yosef (Joseph), and Netanyah (Nethaniah), and Asar’elah (Asarelah), the sons of Asaf under the hands of Asaf, which prophesied according to the order of the king.

בלִבְנֵ֣י אָסָ֗ף זַכּ֧וּר וְיוֹסֵ֛ף וּנְתַנְיָ֥ה וַאֲשַׂרְאֵ֖לָה בְּנֵ֣י אָסָ֑ף עַ֚ל יַד־אָסָ֔ף הַנִּבָּ֖א עַל־יְדֵ֥י הַמֶּֽלֶךְ׃

25:3Of Yedutun: the sons of Yedutun; Gedalyahu (Gedaliah), and Tzeri (Zeri), and Yesha’yahu (Jeshaiah), Chashavyahu (Hashabiah), and Matityahu (Mattithiah), six, under the hands of their father Yedutun, who prophesied with a harp, to give thanks and to praise Hashem.

גלִידוּת֑וּן בְּנֵ֣י יְדוּת֡וּן גְּדַלְיָ֡הוּ וּצְרִ֡י וִֽ֠ישַׁעְיָהוּ חֲשַׁבְיָ֨הוּ וּמַתִּתְיָ֜הוּ שִׁשָּׁ֗ה עַל֩ יְדֵ֨י אֲבִיהֶ֤ם יְדוּתוּן֙ בַּכִּנּ֔וֹר הַנִּבָּ֕א עַל־הֹד֥וֹת וְהַלֵּ֖ל לַיהוָֽה׃

Commentary · 25:1–3

Those who prophesy with harps

David sets apart the sons of Asaf, Heman and Yedutun, and he does it together with “the captains of the host” (25:1): army officers help choose the singers, because the Chronicler does not separate worship from the life of the nation. Their names stand over the Psalms: twelve of Asaf, three to Yedutun, one of Heman.

Hebrew lesson: הַנִּבְּאִים (ha-nib’im), “those who prophesy.” The scroll’s spelling can be read as ha-nevi’im, “the prophets,” and it is read aloud as “the prophesying ones.” The classical commentators explain that the psalms were composed by the Holy Spirit and sung under that Spirit. When the minstrel played for Elisha, “the hand of Hashem came upon him” (2 Kings 3:15), and the Talmud draws the rule: the Shechinah rests on a man not through gloom or idle talk, “but through the joy of a mitzvah” (Shabbat 30b).

Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 4”, brings Rebbe Nachman’s teaching on the player’s hand that gathers the spirit. We leave his kabbalistic frame and keep the insight: a skilled hand on the strings can separate a good spirit from a bad one. David’s harp did that for Shaul (1 Samuel 16:23). Now he builds that harp into the House, a choir trained and scheduled, singing “according to the order of the king” (25:2). Order and Spirit are not enemies.

Heman the king’s seer, and the two hundred eighty-eight

Heman has fourteen sons, and the last nine names, read in order, sound like a Hebrew prayer: Be gracious to me, Hashem, be gracious to me; You are my God; I have magnified and exalted help; sitting in hardship I spoke; give many visions. We cannot prove the Chronicler meant it. A man who named his sons like that lived with his prayers in his mouth.

Heman was the son of Yo’el, the son of Shmuel (6:18), and Shmuel’s mother Chanah sang, “mine horn is exalted in Hashem… he shall… exalt the horn of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:1, 10). Now her great-grandson is “the king’s seer in the words of God, to lift up the horn” (25:5), and Zechariah the priest would one day sing the same line over the Son of David: “he hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:69). Rashi finds Heman’s sons in Korach’s rebellion. Korach foresaw Shmuel and “twenty-four watches standing from his sons’ sons, all of them prophesying by the Holy Spirit” (Rashi on Numbers 16:7). He was wrong about himself and right about the choir.

The 288 of 25:7 are the trained core of the four thousand who praised Hashem with instruments (23:5): twenty-four courses of twelve. Twelve is exactly the number the Mishnah later fixes as the smallest choir: “There are never fewer than twelve Levites standing on the platform” (Mishnah Arakhin 2:6).

The lot: small and great, teacher and scholar

“And they cast lots, ward against ward, as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar” (25:8). Twenty-four lots follow, all but the first ending “he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve.”

Hebrew lesson: מֵבִין עִם־תַּלְמִיד (mevin im talmid), “the one who understands with the student.” The word talmid, “disciple,” which fills the Brit Hadashah and every yeshiva, appears exactly once in the whole Tenakh: here, of a boy learning to sing in the House of Hashem. The first talmid in the Bible is a chorister, and he draws his lot from the same jar as his master.

Why lots? “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of Hashem” (Proverbs 16:33). The same method chose the priests’ courses and will choose the gates. Centuries later Zechariah the priest, of the course of Aviyah, burned incense because “his lot was” to do it (Luke 1:9). FFOZ sees these twenty-four in the twenty-four elders around the throne, “each one holding a harp” (End of Days, Lesson 46, “Scroll with Seven Seals”; Revelation 5:8).

Messianic reading. The Son of David also sang. On his last night, “when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives” (Matthew 26:30), the Hallel the Levi’im sang over the Pesach lambs. And Paul gave the rule David’s lots teach: “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40).

Sources & method

Hebrew text: The Masoretic text with vowels (nikkud) and cantillation marks (ta’amim), from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (public domain) as published by the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (CC BY 4.0). Where the written text (ketiv) differs from the reading (qere), the reading is shown and the written form follows in small type. A paragraph mark (ס or פ) inside a verse is shown in small type.
English translation: The King James Version (public domain), lightly modernized by Benei Avraham: “thee/thou/ye” become “you,” older verb forms are updated (“hath” to “has”), and archaic words are replaced only where the meaning would otherwise be unclear. People and places carry their Hebrew names, with the King James spelling in parentheses the first time on each page (e.g., Yehudah (Judah)). The Divine Name (יהוה, “the LORD” in the KJV) is written “Hashem”; “God” (Elohim) is unchanged, and “law” is “Torah” where the Hebrew is תּוֹרָה.
Verse numbers: Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Chronicles they differ from most English Bibles in chapters 5, 6 and 12; a note under the summary on those pages explains how.
Commentary: Written for our Wednesday Tenakh study from a Messianic Jewish perspective, in line with the Benei Avraham Statement of Faith. It reads the passage first in its Torah setting, then with the Sages, and then with the witness of the Brit Hadashah. Its sources include the Talmud and Midrash, Rashi, Radak, Rambam, the First Fruits of Zion End of Days lessons, and teachings of Rabbi Efraim Palvanov and Ariel Cohen Alloro. Numerical readings (gematria) are offered as hints, not proofs. The notes here are short versions of our full 1 Chronicles commentary, which is a draft for our teachers to review. They are shown by default; tap Commentary to hide them.
Quiz: Written by Benei Avraham for young readers (about 11 and up). Every answer is in the chapter on this page. Answers and scores are kept only in this browser (local storage) and can be cleared with Start over.
Hebrew font: SBL Hebrew, by the Society of Biblical Literature.

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1 Chronicles 25 (Divrei HaYamim Alef) in Hebrew and English

1 Chronicles, Chapter 25

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Sources & method