1 Chronicles 23:2

He gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the priests and the Levites. As on an occasion of supreme importance, David, in view of his own death and of his son's succession at the present time, calls together the full council, and the highest possible representative council of the nation. So 1 Chronicles 22:17 ; 1 Chronicles 24:6 ; 1 Chronicles 25:1 ; in which last passage the word "captains" should have have been rendered "princes" ( שׂרִי ). The arrangement of the Levites, and the distribution of their functions in the presence of the princes, as here described, and as it is even more strongly put ( 1 Chronicles 25:1 ), "by" them, simply points to the fact that the ultimate outer authority, as between Church and state, lay with the state. The Church was made for it, not it for the Church. And it was the duty of the state to defend the Church.