Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Chronicles 16:8
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
This hymn forms a connected and uniform whole. Beginning with a summons to praise the Lord, and to seek His face ( Ch1 16:8-11), the singer exhorts his people to remember the wondrous works of the Lord ( Ch1 16:12-14), and the covenant which He made with the patriarchs to give them the land of Canaan ( Ch1 16:15-18), and confirms his exhortation by pointing out how the Lord, in fulfilment of His promise, had mightily and gloriously defended the patriarchs ( Ch1 16:19-22). But all the world also are to praise Him as the only true and almighty God ( Ch1 16:23-27), and all peoples do homage to Him with sacrificial gifts ( Ch1 16:28-30); and that His kingdom may be acknowledged among the heathen, even inanimate nature will rejoice at His coming to judgment ( Ch1 16:31-33). In conclusion, we have again the summons to thankfulness,combined with a prayer that God would further vouchsafe salvation; and a doxology rounds off the whole ( Ch1 16:34-36). When we consider the contents of the whole hymn, it is manifest that it contains nothing which would be at all inconsistent with the belief that it was composed by David for the above-mentioned religious service. There is nowhere any reference to the condition of the people in exile, nor yet to the circumstances after the exile. The subject of the praise to which Israel is summoned is the covenant which God made with Abraham, and the wonderful way in which the patriarchs were led. The summons to the heathen to acknowledge Jahve as alone God and King of the world, and to come before His presence with sacrificial offerings, together with the thought that Jahve will come to judge the earth, belong to the Messianic hopes. These had formed themselves upon the foundation of the promises given to the patriarchs, and the view they had of Jahve as Judge of the heathen, when He led His people out of Egypt,so early, that even in the song of Moses at the Red Sea (Ex. 15), and the song of the pious Hannah ( Sa1 2:1-10), we meet with the first germs of them; and what we find in David and the prophets after him are only further development of these. Yet all the later commentators, with the exception of Hitzig, die Psalmen, ii. S. ix.f., judge otherwise as to the origin of this festal hymn. Because the first half of it ( Ch1 16:8-22) recurs in Psa 105:1-15, the second ( Ch1 16:23-33) in Psa 96:1-13, and the conclusion ( Ch1 16:34-36) in Ps. Psa 106:1, Psa 106:47-48, it is concluded that the author of the Chronicle compounded the hymn from these three psalms, in order to reproduce the festive songs which were heard after the ark had been brought in, in the same free way in which the speeches in Thucydides and Livy reproduce what was spoken at various times. Besides the later commentators, Aug. Koehler (in the Luth. Ztschr. 1867, S. 289ff.) and C. Ehrt (Abfassungszeit und Abschluss des Psalters, Leipz. 1869, S. 41ff.) are of the same opinion. The possibility that our hymn may have arisen in this way cannot be denied; for such a supposition would be in so far consistent with the character of the Chronicle, as we find in it speeches which have not been reported verbatim by the hearers, but are given in substance or in freer outline by the author of our Chronicle, or, as is more probable, by the author of the original documents made use of by the chronicler. But this view can only be shown to be correct if it corresponds to the relation in which our hymn may be ascertained to stand to the three psalms just mentioned…
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