📖WEB · 1 Chronicles 29:15
What does 1 Chronicles 29:15 mean?
"For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining."
— 1 Chronicles 29:15 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all! In your hand is power and might! It is in your hand to make great, and to give strength to all!
Now therefore, our God, we thank you, and praise your glorious name.
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.
For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining.
Yahweh our God, all this store that we have prepared to build you a house for your holy name comes from your hand, and is all your own.
I know also, my God, that you try the heart, and have pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of my heart I have willingly offered all these things. Now I have seen with joy your people, who are present here, offer willingly to you.
Yahweh, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this desire forever in the thoughts of the heart of your people, and prepare their heart for you;
Explanation
1 Chronicles 29:15 comes from King David's prayer of praise and dedication, spoken publicly before the assembly of Israel near the end of his life, at the moment when he had gathered enormous wealth and materials for the building of the Temple that his son Solomon would construct. Just before this verse, David has been marveling that all the gold, silver, and precious stones the people gave so generously actually came from God's own hand in the first place — "all things come from you, and of your own have we given you" (29:14). Verse 15 continues that thought: David acknowledges that he and his people are merely temporary residents on the earth, guests passing through, just as their ancestors were. He describes human life as a shadow — something that appears briefly, has no substance of its own, and then vanishes with nothing left behind.
The historical context matters here. David is an aging king at the peak of his political and material success, having united the kingdom, secured its borders, and amassed vast resources for the Temple project. Yet instead of taking pride in his achievements, he uses this public moment to confess the smallness and brevity of human life before God. This is not a private meditation but a communal prayer, meant to shape how all Israel understood their identity: not as permanent owners of the land or its wealth, but as temporary sojourners under God's ownership, echoing similar language found in Psalm 39:12 and Psalm 90:4-6, and reaching back to the patriarchal experience of Abraham, who himself lived as "a stranger and a sojourner" in the land God promised him (Genesis 23:4).
Theologically, the
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