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1 Chronicles 27:25-31
The writer catalogs stewards over treasuries, farms, and livestock, moving from stored wealth to fields and herds to show organized resources.
Meaning in context
The writer catalogs stewards over treasuries, farms, and livestock, moving from stored wealth to fields and herds to show organized resources.
Section 5 of 6
Officials over David’s property and produce
The writer catalogs stewards over treasuries, farms, and livestock, moving from stored wealth to fields and herds to show organized resources.
Movement
Remembering David after exile
Artifact
Genealogies and temple preparation
Biblical Timeline
Exile & Return
1 Chronicles context: 586 BC - 400 BC
Biblical Timeline
Exile & Return
1 Chronicles context
Exile & Return / 586 BC - 400 BC
1 Chronicles context is set in the exile and return, where Babylonian exile, return, rebuilding, and renewed covenant life under Persian rule.
Scripture Text
Thesis
The writer catalogs stewards over treasuries, farms, and livestock, moving from stored wealth to fields and herds to show organized resources.
Verse by Verse
Treasuries and regional storehouses Azmaveth is placed over the king’s “treasures,” while Jonathan oversees treasures located outside the central treasury—those kept across the landscape in fields, towns, villages, and fortified places. The verse distinguishes between the royal treasury and distributed depots.
Fieldwork, vineyards, and wine storage Ezri supervises the workers who cultivate the ground. Shimei oversees the vineyards themselves, while Zabdi oversees what the vineyards produce as it moves into wine storage. The responsibilities are divided between managing the growing resource and managing its output.
Tree crops and oil reserves Baal-hanan oversees olive and sycamore trees in the lowland region, while Joash oversees the oil cellars. Again, the passage separates supervision of the producing trees from supervision of the stored, processed product.
Literary Context
This section sits within a larger set of administrative lists in 1 Chronicles 27, where David’s kingdom is shown as ordered through appointed leaders. Nearby units name military divisions, tribal leaders, and court counselors, then turn to those managing the king’s assets. The logic is cumulative: David’s reign is portrayed not only as having fighters and officials, but also as having a practical system for storing, producing, and distributing goods. The closing statement in v. 31 functions like a summary line that wraps this property-management list as a complete group.
Historical Context
The passage assumes a royal household with extensive landholdings, storehouses, and herds spread across different regions and environments (fields, cities, villages, strongholds; lowlands, Sharon, valleys). In an agrarian economy, wealth was often measured in produce, livestock, and stored goods as much as in precious metals. Oversight roles reflect the need for accountability and coordination: cultivation, harvesting, processing (wine and oil), and managing animals required specialized supervision. As part of Chronicles, these details also fit a post-exilic audience’s interest in ordered leadership and well-defined responsibilities tied to Israel’s remembered monarchy.
Theological Significance
Questions
Keep Studying
Herds, transport animals, and summary Shitrai oversees herds grazing in Sharon, while Shaphat oversees herds located in the valleys. Obil oversees camels, Jehdeiah oversees donkeys, and Jaziz oversees flocks. The section ends by identifying all these men together as rulers over King David’s property and resources.
This passage presents David’s kingdom as materially extensive and carefully administered. The text is a roster of named officials, each responsible for a specific category of royal assets: central treasure, distributed depots, crop labor, vineyards and their output, tree crops and processed oil, and multiple kinds of livestock. The repeated “over” language signals delegated oversight rather than informal help.
Explicitly, these resources are described as belonging to the king (v. 31). The officials are therefore portrayed as stewards of royal property within a structured system that spans regions (fields, towns, villages, strongholds; lowland, Sharon, valleys).
Some readers take “treasures” and “substance” to mean mainly precious metals and valuables. Others understand the terms more broadly to include stored agricultural goods and supplies alongside valuables, since the list immediately blends “treasures” with produce, oil, and animals.
A smaller question concerns how to distinguish Shimei’s oversight of vineyards from Zabdi’s oversight of the vineyards’ “increase” for wine cellars (v. 27). Some read this as two stages (cultivation vs. processing/storage). Others read it as two jurisdictions (vineyard management vs. collection/accounting of yield).
The vocabulary for “treasures” can cover different kinds of stored wealth, and the passage itself moves seamlessly between storehouses, produce, and animals. Also, the text gives titles (“over the vineyards,” “over the increase…for the wine-cellars”) without explaining the exact workflow, leaving room for different reconstructions.
1 Chronicles 27:25–31 contributes a picture of royal stewardship that is both centralized (a king’s treasury) and distributed (regional depots and managers). It also shows that “wealth” in this setting is not only coin or luxury goods but a whole production-and-storage system: land labor, perennial crops, processing (wine, oil), and herds. The final line (“All these were the rulers of the substance which was king David’s,” v. 31) summarizes the list as a complete administrative unit and underscores that these roles served the king’s estate as a whole.
supply (’ō·ṣə·rō·wṯ)