Levite Administration-part 3

Levite Administration-part 3

            I Chronicles 23:1-2 states, "When David was old and full of days, he made Solomon his son King over Israel.  And he gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the priests and the Levites."  In chapter twenty-five of 1 chronicles we see a complex organization of church music.  Verse one states, "Moreover David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals. . ."  Some writers believe that the term "captain of the hosts" means the chief of the Levites.  If this is so, perhaps Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun--all chief of Levites--helped King David set up the organization mentioned in verses eight through thirty-one.  It should be pointed out to avoid confusion that the Jeduthun mentioned above is generally believed to be synonymous with the name Ethan of I Chronicles 6:44, and 15:17 and 19, whose father was Kishi (Kushaiah).  Another Ethan mentioned in I Chronicles 6:42 was the son of Zimmah.  We do not have record of the father of Jeduthun, but the name Ethan was only used these two times in conjunction with Asaph and Heman.  All the rest of the times (which were many more) the trio is recorded as Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun.

            At any rate, as we discussed earlier, these three chief Levites in I Chronicles twenty-five were the scholars under whom a complex system of twenty-four divisions was organized, each division consisting of twelve vocalists and instrumentalists, separated by lot and totaling 288 musicians in all.  Furthermore, we can hypothesize that the six sons of Jeduthun, the fourteen sons of Heman (notice no daughters are mentioned in verses 8-31), and the four sons of Asaph made up the leaders of the twenty-four divisions and were leaders of a second degree--each having eleven students.  A study of Levite Music Administration shows that there were chief musicians, teachers (the sons of Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman) and a number of sons of each chief musicians, and that these students and teachers were divided into lots.