What Does 1 Chronicles 23:24 Mean?

(24) **These were the sons of Levi after the house of their fathers.**—Rather, *These were the sons of Levi, according to their father-houses* (clans), *heads of the houses* (fathers, *i.e.,* father-houses), *to those mustered of them, in an enumeration of names according to their polls.* This is the subscription to the foregoing list of names of the Levitical houses, as entered in the muster-rolls of David. **As they were counted.**—Numbers 1:21; Exodus 30:14. The word is that used in 1Chronicles 21:6 (*pāqad*)*.* **By number of names.**—Numbers 1:18; Numbers 3:43. **That did the work for the service of the house of the Lord.**—This description identifies these Levites with the 24,000 mentioned in 1Chronicles 23:4. **That did** **the work.**—Literally, *doing.* This participle has the form of the singular here and elsewhere in the Chronicles, though the sense demands a plural. It is probably meant as plural, being a variant spelling. (Comp. 2Chronicles 24:12; 2Chronicles 34:10; 2Chronicles 34:13; Ezra 3:9; Nehemiah 2:16.) **From the age of** **twenty years and upward.**—1Chronicles 23:3 states that the Levites were numbered “from the age of thirty and upward.” Some would banish discrepancy by the assumption that “thirty” is an ancient error of transcription; others imagine that the chronicler has simply incorporated two divergent statements, as he found them in his authorities. According to Numbers 4:3; Numbers 4:23; Numbers 4:30; Numbers 4:35; Numbers 4:43; Numbers 4:47, the Levites were bound to serve “from thirty years old and upward” to fifty years of age; whereas Numbers 8:24-25, fixes the age “from twenty and five years old and upward” to fifty; and this, according to Ewald, is the more exact account. It appears from 2Chronicles 31:17, that the later practice, at all events, was for the Levites to enter on their sacred functions at the age of twenty. Accordingly, the older commentators have supposed that David twice numbered the Levites: first, as the Law required, from the age of thirty (1Chronicles 23:3); and again, towards the close of his reign (1Chronicles 23:27), from the age of twenty, because he perceived that the duties had become less onerous, and might therefore be borne by younger men. (Comp. however, Numbers 1:3, from which it appears that the military age, *i.e.,* the age of full virile strength, was reckoned “from twenty years old and upward.’)