1 Chronicles 16:14-22 meaning
1 Chronicles 16:14-22 moves from the call to worship to the reason for it, the covenant with the fathers: He is the LORD our God; His judgments are in all the earth (v 14). The verse joins two truths that the psalm will hold together to the end. He is our God, bound to Israel by covenant, and His judgments, His rulings and acts of justice, reach all the earth. Israel's God is the world's Judge.
A covenant is set at the center of the passage: Remember His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations (v 15). Psalm 105:8 says that "He has remembered His covenant forever"; the chronicler turns the statement into a command: Remember! The people must ponder on God's promise in order to ensure they are remaining obedient.
The covenant is identified next: The covenant which He made with Abraham, And His oath to Isaac. He also confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, To Israel as an everlasting covenant (vv 16-17). The same promise passed through three generations—made to Abraham (Genesis 15:18; 17:7-8), sworn to Isaac (Genesis 26:3-4), confirmed to Jacob (Genesis 28:13-15; 35:12)—and it is called everlasting. Its content is stated in God's own words: Saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan, As the portion of your inheritance" (v 18). On the day Israel's king installed God's ark in Israel's capital, the choir sang that the land under their feet had been promised before any of them were born. Possession was the fruit of the promise.
The psalm then remembers how slender Israel's beginnings were: When they were only a few in number, Very few, and strangers in it (v 19). In the Hebrew text of Chronicles the line addresses the hearers directly—"when you were only a few"—where Psalm 105:12 speaks of "them," so that the assembly on Zion is told to see itself in the patriarchs' tents. Many times, God reminds His people of how much He is able to do with so few (Deuteronomy 7:7-8, Judges 7:2, 7, 1 Samuel 14:6). To remember their own humble roots gives Israel a right perspective of their state before God.
The recollection to the patriarchs' early days continues in verse 20: And they wandered about from nation to nation, And from one kingdom to another people (v 20). Abraham went to Egypt and Gerar, Isaac to Gerar, Jacob to Paddan-aram and finally to Egypt; the fathers owned a burial cave and little else in the land they were promised (Genesis 23:17-20; Hebrews 11:9). Jacob counted the whole clan at seventy when it went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:27). The nation singing this psalm had just mustered a procession of thousands; the song reminds them where they came from.
God's care for the few is then described: He permitted no man to oppress them, And He reproved kings for their sakes, saying, "Do not touch My anointed ones, And do My prophets no harm" (vv 21-22). The kings reproved were Pharaoh, plagued for taking Sarah (Genesis 12:17), and Abimelech of Gerar, warned by God in a dream (Genesis 20:3-7). Even though Abraham and Isaac were deceptive in those instances, God still protected them and their families.
"My anointed ones" is the plural of "mashiach," the word that gives us "Messiah." The patriarchs received no anointing with oil of the kind priests and kings later received; the psalm calls them anointed because God had set them apart as His own and placed them under His protection. "My prophets" fits the same men—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each received and spoke God's word, and Abimelech learned what happens to kings who touch God's prophet.
The ultimate Anointed One is the Son of David, and God's protection of His chosen ones runs forward to the promise Jesus gave His flock: "no one will snatch them out of My hand" (John 10:28). The verse that sings of a few strangers kept safe among the kingdoms is the verse that tells the chronicler's small post-exilic community, surrounded by empires, that God's covenant care rested on His promise, whatever their size.