In First Chronicles, chapter nine, verse one, is concerned with the community of God’s people after their return from exile in Babylon, emphasizing their continuity with Israel before the exile. This verse gives the reason for their captivity. The rest of the chapter deals with the priests, Levites, and the Nethinims, who were temple servants, as in the following verse, whom God appointed to restore the order of worship lost during the captivity.
The reckoning of Israel is by the genealogies. From the beginning of the Hebrew nation, the keeping of public records contained a registration of the name of every individual of the tribe and family to which he belonged. “The book of the kings of Israel and Judah” does not refer to the two canonical books that are known in Scripture by that name but to authenticated copies of those registers, placed under the official care of the sovereigns, a number of the Israelites as in verse three took refuge in Judah during the invasion of Shalmaneser, they carried the public records along with them. The genealogies given in the preceding chapters are from the public records in the archives of Israel and Judah, and those in this chapter relate to the period after the restoration. Whence it appears (compare First Chronicles three, seventeen through twenty-four), the keeping of genealogical registers during the captivity in Babylon. These genealogical tables, then, are of the highest authority for truth and correctness, the earlier portion extracted from the authenticated records of the nation. And as to those which belong to the time of the captivity, they were drawn up by a contemporary writer, who, besides enjoying the best sources of information and being of the strictest integrity, was guided and preserved from all error by divine inspiration.