gether all the princes of Israel, with the priests and the Levites. 3And the Levites were numbered from thirty years old and upward: and their number by their polls, man by man, was thirty and eight thousand. 4Of these, twenty and four thousand were to oversee the work of the house of the LORD; and six thousand were officers and judges: 5and four thousand were doorkeepers; and four thousand praised
singers, xxv.; and the doorkeepers, xxvi.); then the civil and military orders. Ch. xxviii., xxix. are occupied with the concluding exhortations of King David. Cp. xxix. 22—24; 1 Kin. i. 5—53.
2—23. Organisation of the Levites (first account).
3. the Levites were numbered from thirty years] Two accounts are here given of the organisation of the Levites. According to the first the Levites were admitted to service at thirty years of age; ver. 3; cp. Num. iv. 3, 23, 30, where the period from thirty to fifty is fixed as the period for service. According to the second account (vv. 24—27) the Levites were taken from twenty years old and upwards; this was apparently the later custom; cp. 2 Chr. xxxi. 17; Ezra iii. 8. The discrepancy probably arises from an actual variation in practice. The original age of admission for Levites was probably thirty, but owing to the scarcity of their numbers it seems to have been necessary to reduce the limit of age to twenty. But see also the note on pp. 51 f.
by their polls] Lit. by their skulls "Poll" is an almost obsolete word for "head," retained in the compound word, "poll-tax."
thirty and eight thousand] Num. iii. 39 gives 22,000, and Num. xxvi. 62, 23,000, as the number of male Levites from a month old and upwards in the time of Moses.
4. twenty and four thousand] These were divided into courses (ver. 6), serving by turn, apparently twenty-four in number, consisting each of a thousand men. See, however, the note on vv. 6—23 below.
to oversee the work] It is true that there were some Temple servants subordinate to the Levites—see note on the Nethinim, ix. 2. But the duty of the Levites was to perform the work of the Temple (as is said e.g. in vv. 24, 28), not to act as overseers of the work of others. It is therefore to be inferred that the "work" spoken of here and in ver. 5 is not the routine duties of the Temple but the work of its construction. Adding the Levites of ver. 4 to the officers, doorkeepers, and musicians of ver. 5, we have a total of 38,000 overseers: that the number is incredibly large is no objection in Chron.
officers and judges] Cp. 2 Chr. xix. 8, 11. According to Deut. xvii. 9 (cp. ib. xvi. 18) the harder causes were reserved for "the priests the Levites," ordinary causes being decided by judges who were not Levites.
5. doorkeepers] The courses and duties of these are given in xxvi. 1—19.
