1 Chronicles 8 Devotional

Mercy for a Fallen House

“The sons of Ulam were mighty men of valor, archers, and they had many sons and grandsons—150 in all. All these were the descendants of Benjamin.”1 Chronicles 8:40 (BSB)

Chapter 8 returns to Benjamin, and much of it traces one family: Ner, Kish, Saul, and Saul's sons (8:33). Chapter 10 will soon tell plainly how Saul's reign ends. But the list does not stop at Saul. It follows Jonathan's son Merib-baal, and then generation after generation of his descendants, down to the sons of Ulam, archers and mighty men with a hundred and fifty sons and grandsons (8:34-40).

The house of a fallen king was not wiped from the record. Saul lost the kingdom, yet his family went on, and the chapter lingers over it with care. God's judgment on Saul was real, but it was not the end of his mercy toward Saul's tribe. In the New Testament, Paul asks whether God has rejected his people and answers that he has not, pointing to himself as an Israelite from the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1). If you come from a family marked by failure, that history does not set the limits of what God can do with you.

To think about: What failure in your family's past do you need to stop treating as the final word on what God can do?