1 Chronicles 29

In ancient Hebrew weight, David donated 3,000 talents of gold and 7,000 talents of silver. A “talent” is 34 kilograms or 75 pounds. David’s staggering donation as a model for giving to the church’s next building fund is preachable but not reachable. Except in the rarest of times. In sheer weight, David donated the equivalent to 54 dump trucks. The average dump truck weighs about 7 tons. Yet David absolutely did lay the groundwork for a popular modern style of local church or synagogue fundraising: identify a project, report how much the minister or rabbi is donating, and then invite others to donate, too (see verse 5).

Location of Ophir is unknown. But it was famous for producing the finest gold. A broken piece of pottery found near Tel Aviv and dated to the 700s BC, a couple centuries after kings David and Solomon, confirms that Ophir was a location from which gold was exported. The fragment reads “30 shekels…gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon.” Scholars have speculated that the gold was somewhere in Arabia or Africa or India. That narrows the search from seven continents to three.

In Hebrew measurement and in metric: 5,000 talents/170 metric tons of gold; 10,000 talents/340 tons of silver; 18,000 talents/620 tons of bronze; 100,000 talents/3,400 tons of iron. In a parade of pure gold, silver, bronze and iron dump trucks at 7 tons per truck, this is what the parade would include: 27 golden trucks, 54 silver trucks, 94 bronze trucks, and 536 iron trucks. Bumper-to-bumper, the parade of 711 trucks, each about 17 feet long (5 meters) would stretch 2.2 miles (3,555 meters). That’s a fine donation to a building fund.

Burnt offerings involved sacrifices to atone for sinful behavior. The entire animal was burned on an altar. See Leviticus 1.

Any son of Solomon could make a case that he should be king. The oldest, Adonijah, seems to have been prepping to do just that when he asked for permission to marry one of the late King David’s most beautiful wives (1 Kings 2:17). Solomon answered the query by ordering his brother executed.

There were only three kings before Solomon: Saul, his son Ishbosheth (2 Samuel 2:9), and then David.

It’s unclear how the three prophets from David’s time preserved his story. They may have become sources for some of the stories in 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings. Stories about all three prophets appear in these books. And there may be other writings the prophets contributed to that have been lost to history.