NOTES for Ch1 16:1-43

Before us is the chronicler’s testimony to the first time a psalm composed by David was heard during worship. This psalm was certainly not the first; David could not have failed to sing to the Lord before then. But until that day, his work had most likely been poetry “for himself,” known to the One for whom it was composed and perhaps to a small circle of David’s closest companions. Even now David does not yet venture to acknowledge publicly that he possesses a poetic gift; he humbly entrusts the psalm to Asaph, who by then was already widely known as a singer and composer of psalms. Nevertheless, from this moment on David’s poetic work becomes his ministry, and it will not cease when his earthly days end. No, it will continue as long as both the psalms he composed himself and the many hymns created through the centuries by those whom David’s psalms inspired continue to resound.