1 Chronicles22chapter 22

1 Chronicles 22:1

David names the site at Ornan's threshingfloor as the house of the Lord God, the ground marked by the angel's sword and the fire that answered him in the chapter before. Chronicles alone records this naming; Kings opens its temple account with Solomon's alliance with Hiram and never explains why this hill was chosen. 2 Chr 3:1 will call the same ground mount Moriah, and many read it beside Gen 22:2's land of Moriah as the same place, though this chapter fixes the site only by the fire David saw, not by Abraham's altar.

1 Chronicles 22:2-4

David gathers the foreigners in the land to hew stone and sets iron, brass and cedar in abundance before he ever hands Solomon a charge. Kings has no equivalent scene; there the temple's materials appear only after Solomon writes to Hiram in 1 Ki 5. The strangers here are the Canaanite remnant and captives Chronicles elsewhere calls bond servants, the same labor force 2 Chr 2:17-18 will number under Solomon.

1 Chronicles 22:5

David gives his reason in one sentence: Solomon is young and tender, and the house must be exceeding magnifical, so the father will do the preparing. So David prepared abundantly before his death closes the verse and states the chapter's whole program in advance. Barnes reckons Solomon's age at the accession as low as fourteen or fifteen and no higher than twenty-four or twenty-five, a range the text itself leaves open.

1 Chronicles 22:6-8

David tells Solomon plainly that it was in his own mind to build a house unto the name of the Lord his God, and then gives the reason he was refused. Verse 8 states the ground in words Kings never puts this directly: thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars, thou shalt not build an house unto my name. Kings gives only the general fact of David's wars pressing on every side; Chronicles alone has David repeat the word of the Lord to his own face as a settled verdict, not an excuse. Wesley reads the refusal as typical, since the temple, an illustrious type of the church, was to be built not by might or by blood but by the Spirit, and Henry draws the same line toward the one who builds the gospel temple by saving lives rather than taking them.

1 Chronicles 22:9-10

a man of rest: The son not yet born is named before he is named: a man of rest, for I will give him rest from all his enemies round about, for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. The wordplay sits on the surface of the Hebrew, Solomon and shalom sharing one root, so the promise and the name are the same word twice. Verse 10 then retells the covenant of 2 Sam 7:13-14 in the son's own hearing, he shall be my son and I will be his father, the sonship language Heb 1:5 quotes of Christ.

1 Chronicles 22:11-13

David charges Solomon in Joshua's own commissioning vocabulary: be strong, and of good courage, dread not, nor be dismayed, the words the Lord gave Joshua at Josh 1:6-9 for taking a land, now given for building a house in it. The condition is named plainly at verse 13, prosper if thou takest heed to fulfil the statutes and judgments the Lord charged Moses with. This charge stands beside David's actual deathbed words at 1 Ki 2:2-3, which use the same be thou strong language but then turn to settling Joab and Shimei; Chronicles keeps only the temple charge and leaves that political business out entirely, the same selection the whole book practices.

1 Chronicles 22:14-16

David sets the sums down, an hundred thousand talents of gold and a thousand thousand talents of silver, brass and iron past counting, and calls it what it cost him: in my trouble I have prepared. Workmen in abundance stand ready alongside the materials, so nothing is left for Solomon to gather before he can build. The charge closes where it opened, arise therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with thee, presence and labor named together rather than presence offered as a substitute for labor.

1 Chronicles 22:17-19

David turns from his son to the nation's princes and commands them to help Solomon, grounding the command in what the Lord has already done: hath he not given you rest on every side, the land subdued before the Lord and before his people. Verse 19 states the seeking refrain the whole book measures every reign by, set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God, before repeating the charge to arise and build the sanctuary. The chapter that opened with David naming a house ends with a nation told to seek the one it is named for.