The Unbroken Chain: God's Covenant Through Priests and Exile Text: 1 Chronicles 6:1-15
Introduction: A Gospel Written in Begats
Our modern sensibilities, when they encounter a passage like the one before us, are frequently tempted to skim. We live in an age that despises history, that has contempt for ancestry, and that believes a man can invent himself from scratch every Tuesday morning. So when we come to a long list of names, a litany of "begats," our eyes glaze over. We think it is a dry and dusty record, an ancient phone book, something to be endured before we get to the "real" story.
But this is a profound theological error, a failure to read the Scriptures as God wrote them. These genealogies are not filler. They are not the inspired equivalent of packing peanuts. They are the skeletal structure upon which the entire story of redemption hangs. They are God's covenantal backbone. The Chronicler, writing to a demoralized people recently returned from exile, does not begin with a pep talk. He begins with a family tree. Why? Because he is reminding them who they are. He is reminding them that they did not just appear out of nowhere, and they do not belong to the Babylonians. They belong to God, and their history is His story. God is a God who works in time, through generations, through covenant succession. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of abstract philosophical propositions.
This particular genealogy is of the utmost importance because it traces the line of the priesthood. After establishing the line of the kings through Judah, the Chronicler immediately turns to the line of the priests through Levi. This is not accidental. For Israel to be God's people, they needed two things: a righteous king on the throne and a faithful priest at the altar. They needed a scepter and a censer. This chapter is the story of the censer. It is the unbroken chain of mediation, the line of men set apart to stand between a holy God and a sinful people, to offer sacrifices and make atonement. And as we shall see, this chain, though it runs through faithful men and faithless, through glory and through judgment, ultimately leads us to the one who is both the perfect King and the final High Priest.
The Text
The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. And the sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. The children of Amram were Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. And the sons of Aaron were Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. Eleazar became the father of Phinehas, and Phinehas became the father of Abishua, and Abishua became the father of Bukki, and Bukki became the father of Uzzi, and Uzzi became the father of Zerahiah, and Zerahiah became the father of Meraioth, Meraioth became the father of Amariah, and Amariah became the father of Ahitub, and Ahitub became the father of Zadok, and Zadok became the father of Ahimaaz, and Ahimaaz became the father of Azariah, and Azariah became the father of Johanan, and Johanan became the father of Azariah (it was he who ministered as the priest in the house which Solomon built in Jerusalem), and Azariah became the father of Amariah, and Amariah became the father of Ahitub, and Ahitub became the father of Zadok, and Zadok became the father of Shallum, and Shallum became the father of Hilkiah, and Hilkiah became the father of Azariah, and Azariah became the father of Seraiah, and Seraiah became the father of Jehozadak; and Jehozadak went along when Yahweh took Judah and Jerusalem away into exile by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
(1 Chronicles 6:1-15 LSB)
The Covenantal Root (vv. 1-3)
The list begins with the patriarch of the priestly tribe.
"The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. And the sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. The children of Amram were Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. And the sons of Aaron were Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar." (1 Chronicles 6:1-3)
The Chronicler starts at the source, Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob. Remember that Levi was not initially a blessed son. His father Jacob, on his deathbed, cursed the fierce anger of Simeon and Levi for their massacre of the Shechemites, saying "I will disperse them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel" (Gen. 49:7). What began as a curse, God in His glorious alchemy, turned into a unique blessing. The Levites were indeed scattered, given no single land inheritance, but this was because the Lord Himself was to be their inheritance (Num. 18:20). They were scattered among the tribes to teach the law and lead in worship. God took their violent zeal and consecrated it at the incident of the golden calf, where the sons of Levi rallied to Moses and purged the evil from the camp (Ex. 32:26-29). God is in the business of redeeming curses and sanctifying broken histories.
From Levi, the line narrows to Kohath, then to Amram, and then to his three famous children: Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. But notice the immediate focus. Moses, the great lawgiver, is mentioned, but the genealogy immediately follows the line of Aaron. Why? Because this is the priestly line. Aaron was God's chosen High Priest. His sons were consecrated to serve at the altar. The text even includes Nadab and Abihu, a stark and terrible reminder that nearness to God is a dangerous privilege. They offered unauthorized fire and were consumed by the fire of God (Lev. 10:1-2). This is not a game. The priesthood is a matter of life and death, and it must be conducted on God's terms, not ours. Yet even this catastrophic failure did not break the line. God's covenant promise flowed on through the surviving sons, Eleazar and Ithamar.
The Golden Chain (vv. 4-10a)
From Eleazar, the Chronicler lays down link after link in the chain of the high priesthood.
"Eleazar became the father of Phinehas... Ahitub became the father of Zadok... and Johanan became the father of Azariah (it was he who ministered as the priest in the house which Solomon built in Jerusalem)..." (1 Chronicles 6:4-10a)
This is not just a list of names; it is a roll call of God's faithfulness. Each "became the father of" is a testament to God's promise to continue a people for Himself. We see names that should leap out at us. Phinehas, who in his zeal for the Lord's holiness, turned back a plague from Israel (Num. 25). His righteous act secured the promise of a perpetual priesthood for his descendants. God honors covenantal zeal.
The list marches steadily onward, father to son, generation after generation, until we come to a pivotal figure: Zadok. Zadok was the faithful priest who stood with David during the rebellion of Absalom and later anointed Solomon as king (1 Kings 1). He represents a crucial moment of faithfulness when the line of Eli had been rejected for its corruption. The line of Zadok would become the dominant priestly line, so much so that Ezekiel, in his vision of the new temple, specifies that only the "sons of Zadok" who remained faithful could approach the Lord to minister (Ezek. 44:15). Faithfulness matters, and it has generational consequences.
The Chronicler then makes a special note about a later Azariah: "it was he who ministered as the priest in the house which Solomon built in Jerusalem." This is a high point. This is the priesthood functioning in its full glory, in the magnificent temple, at the heart of the kingdom during its golden age. This is what it was all for. The purpose of the priesthood was to lead the people in the worship of God at the place where God had chosen to put His name. This is the center of Israel's life, the center of their world. All the genealogies, all the history, all the battles, all the kingship, find their purpose here, at the altar, in the worship of the living God.
The Chain in Crisis (vv. 10b-15)
But the glory of Solomon's temple was not the end of the story. The list continues, and it ends on a somber, jarring note.
"...and Zadok became the father of Shallum, and Shallum became the father of Hilkiah... and Seraiah became the father of Jehozadak; and Jehozadak went along when Yahweh took Judah and Jerusalem away into exile by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar." (1 Chronicles 6:10b-15)
The names continue, and we see another great man of God in the line: Hilkiah. This was the high priest during the reign of the righteous king Josiah, the one who discovered the Book of the Law in the temple, sparking the last great revival in Judah (2 Kings 22). Here we see the partnership of the faithful priest and the faithful king working together to restore true worship. It is a glorious picture of reformation.
But it was too little, too late. The sins of the nation had piled too high. The line continues down to Seraiah, the last high priest to serve in Solomon's temple. He was executed by Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah when Jerusalem fell (2 Kings 25:18-21). His son, Jehozadak, the heir to the high priesthood, did not minister at the glorious altar of the temple. He "went along" into exile. The chain appears to be broken. The temple is destroyed, the king is deposed, and the high priest is a captive in a foreign land. The music has stopped. The sacrifices have ceased. It looks like the end. It looks like God's promise has failed.
The Chronicler ends the list here deliberately. He wants his readers, the returned exiles, to feel the weight of this. He wants them to remember the catastrophe of the exile. But he does not end the story here. The very act of writing this genealogy is an act of profound hope. By tracing the line all the way to Jehozadak, he is saying, "The line is not broken." God preserved the priestly line, even in the midst of judgment, even in Babylon. Jehozadak's name itself is a sermon: it means "Yahweh is righteous." God was righteous in sending them into exile for their sins. But because He is righteous, He will also be faithful to His covenant promises. And it is Jehozadak's son, Jeshua, who will return with Zerubbabel to rebuild the altar and lay the foundation of the second temple (Ezra 3:2). The chain holds.
Our High Priest on the Exiled Earth
This entire chapter, this long list of names, is a powerful testimony to the faithfulness of God. But it is also a testimony to the inadequacy of the Levitical priesthood. It was a priesthood of sinful men. It included the disobedient (Nadab and Abihu), the corrupt (Eli's sons), and the faithful (Phinehas, Zadok, Hilkiah). It was a priesthood that could be interrupted by death and catastrophe. It was a shadow, a placeholder, a type, pointing forward to something greater.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that if perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, there would have been no need for another priest to arise, one after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7:11). That priest is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the final High Priest. His genealogy is not of Levi, but of Judah. He is both King and Priest. His priesthood is not passed from father to son, because He lives forever. He does not offer the blood of bulls and goats, but offered Himself, once for all, as the perfect sacrifice for sin (Heb. 9:12).
The story of this chapter is our story in miniature. We too are born into a line, the line of Adam, a line of sin and death that ends in exile from the presence of God. We are all Jehozadaks, carried away from the place of true worship by our rebellion. But God, in His righteousness, did not abandon the line. He sent His Son, our great High Priest, Jesus. He entered into our exile. He went "along with us" into the far country of sin and death. On the cross, He endured the full force of God's righteous judgment against our sin. And through His resurrection, He leads us out of exile and brings us back into the presence of God.
Because of Him, the chain is not only preserved, it is perfected. And more than that, He has made us, all who are in Him, a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9). The purpose of our lives now is the same as the purpose of Azariah in Solomon's temple: to minister in the house of God. But our temple is not made with hands. It is the Church, the body of Christ. And our ministry is to offer up "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5), the sacrifices of praise, of good works, of our very lives laid down in service to our King. The genealogy continues in us, and will continue in our children, an unbroken chain of grace until that day when our High Priest returns to bring us into the final temple, the New Jerusalem, where we will worship Him forever.