Daily verse · 1 Chronicles 16:24
Count Out His Wonders
24Declare His kavod among the Goyim; His nifle'ot among kol haAmim.
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Key word
“Declare” is סַפְּרוּ (sapperu), from a verb whose first meaning is to count. In this form it means to recount: to go through something point by point, like counting coins onto a table.
The same word gives Hebrew its “scribe”, סוֹפֵר (sofer), the one who counted and kept the record. So the verse asks us to be record-keepers of what God has done. Declaring God's glory isn't vague praise. It's naming what he has done, one thing at a time.
Insight
Literary observationThis verse appears twice in the Bible, as Psalm 96:3 and here. In the Psalms it has no date. Chronicles gives it one: the day David brought the ark of God home to Jerusalem1.
So a song about all the nations is sung on Israel's most local, homecoming day. When God comes to live among his people, it's meant to become news for everyone.
1 reference
Reflect ✎
Could you “count out” three specific things God has done for you, and tell one of them to someone this week?
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Historical contextThe day the ark came home1 min read
David had tried to bring the ark of God to Jerusalem once before, and it ended in grief: a man named Uzzah reached out to steady it and died1. This time it arrives safely, and David sets it in the tent he had pitched for it2. On that day of relief and joy, “David first committed to Asaph and his associates this song of thanksgiving to the LORD”3.
The song4 is stitched together from Psalms 105, 96 and 106; our verse follows “Sing to the LORD, all the earth”5. Old songs were reused for a new moment, and the new setting gave them fresh meaning.
Chronicles was probably written after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, for a small community surrounded by bigger nations. For that tiny, overlooked people, singing “Declare His glory among the nations” was an act of faith that their God was bigger than their situation.
Linguistic observationGlory has weight1 min read
Look at the two things we're told to declare.
כָּבוֹד (kavod), “glory”, is linked by many scholars to כָּבֵד (kaved), “heavy”. Glory is weight: what makes someone matter, what you can't brush aside. The same word can mean honour and even riches.
נִפְלְאֹתָיו (nifle'otav), “His wonders”, comes from a verb for something extraordinary, beyond what we could do. It's the same verb, פָּלָא (pala), behind God's question to Abraham when Sarah laughed: “Is anything too difficult for the LORD?”1. English says “wonders” in one place and “too difficult” in the other, but it's one word. A wonder is something too hard for anyone but God.
This one song uses it three times2. Its praise keeps coming back to things only God could have done.
The verse says everything twice: glory and wonders, the nations and all peoples. Hebrew poetry repeats a thing so you feel it land.
2 references
Jewish interpretationMorning and afternoon before the ark1 min read
An early rabbinic history, Seder Olam Rabbah, remembers how this song was used. In the morning the singers went from “Give thanks to the LORD”1 to “Do not touch My anointed ones”2; in the afternoon, from “Sing to the LORD, all the earth”3 to the closing “Amen”4:
“And so they would say for all forty-three years before the ark, until Solomon brought it into the Temple.”
Our verse was in the afternoon half, which turns from Israel's own story to “all the earth”.
Rashi, the medieval commentator, hears in “His wonders” the time the Philistines captured the ark and God brought it back (1 Sam 5–6). Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak) reads “His glory” as the honour God gave Israel, once despised, in front of the nations. For both, what God did for Israel is news for the nations.
Jewish morning prayer still includes this song (Hodu, “Give thanks”), so our verse is said every morning.
- ↗ Seder Olam Rabbah 14
- ↗ Rashi on I Chronicles 16:24
- ↗ Radak on Psalms 96:3
- ↗ Siddur Ashkenaz, Weekday Shacharit, Hodu
Christian interpretationNo nation left out1 min read
Augustine, the North African bishop, preached on Psalm 96 and noticed why the verse says it twice: “that you may not think any nations excepted, he adds, and His wonders unto all people.” He was answering a group, the Donatists, who in his view had shrunk the church down to their own corner of the world.
Christians have long heard this as a mission song. Jesus sends his disciples to “make disciples of all nations”1, and Paul gathers verses like this one to show that the good news was always meant for everyone: “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and extol Him, all you peoples”2. Like our verse, those old songs already had the nations in view.
But the verse doesn't start with a strategy. It starts with counting. People who keep noticing what God has done find they can't keep it to themselves.
2 references
Questions to take back to the text
- Read 16:8–36. Which lines speak to Israel, and which to the nations? Where does the song turn?
- If you “recounted” God's work in your life to a friend who doesn't believe, what would you start with?
- Why would the ark coming home, a very local event, call for a song about the whole world?
✎ Journal notes
Connections
- Psalms 96:3 · The same verse in the Psalms, without the day of the ark. Side by side, they show that Chronicles is the book that tells us when this song was sung.
- Psalms 105:1 · “Make known His deeds among the nations”: where the Chronicles song begins (16:8). The song opens and, in our verse, comes back to the same call: tell the nations what God has done.
- Genesis 18:14 · “Is anything too difficult for the LORD?” In Hebrew, “too difficult” is the same verb as “wonders”: something only God can do.
- Matthew 28:19 · Jesus sends his followers to do what this verse sings: tell the nations. “Make disciples of all nations.”
Ask a follow-up question
Coming soon: you’ll be able to ask about this passage and get answers held to the same sourcing rules.
Written 2026-11-02 · HaDevarim editorial (AI-assisted). Labels show what kind of claim each note makes.