2 Chronicleschapter 3
17 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. This was the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Introduction
Ezra, by tradition, History, 2 Chronicles Overview.
This chapter was written for a people who worshipped on the same hill in a smaller building. Tradition gives the book to Ezra, and here the writer sets down the temple as a builder's record. There is almost no action in it, only places, measures, metals and names. Listen for the three names given to the site in the opening lines, because each one carries a history. Watch how the inner room repeats the pattern of the tabernacle. The chapter ends at the door, with two pillars that each carry a name.
Context
- Who
- People worshipping on that same rock in a plainer building
- What
- A builder's record of the temple's site, its measurements, its gold, the cherubim of the inner room, the veil and the two bronze pillars.
- Where
- Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, on the threshing floor David bought from Ornan the Jebusite.
- When
- Begun in the second month of Solomon's fourth year, about 966 BC.
- Why
- To tie the temple to the hill where God had long before provided a substitute, and to show the new house keeping the old pattern.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to Solomon as the builder, in the fourth year of his reign, about 966 BC. The dossier's timeline anchors the start of the work at 2 Chronicles 3:1.
Show the rest of the historical context, 7 more paragraphs
The place is named three ways in one verse, Mount Moriah, the place where the LORD appeared to David, and the threshing floor of Ornan. This is the only passage in Scripture that puts the name Moriah on the temple hill. The name ties the altar to the mountain where Abraham was sent to offer Isaac and a ram was provided instead.
The occasion is the construction itself, told as measurement rather than as action.
A first hearer knew how to read the measurements. The verse flags the cubit as the former measure, because cubits varied. The older long cubit ran about twenty and a half inches and the later short one about seventeen and a half, so the writer states which standard he means.
The gold of the greater house is called gold of Parvaim, a source name whose location is no longer known. In the innermost room two carved cherubim stand with their wings touching in the middle and reaching the walls on either side, spanning the full width of the room.
The curtain of blue, purple, crimson and fine linen with cherubim worked into it repeats the tabernacle's veil at Exodus 26:31, which is the point of it. The new house keeps the old pattern.
The porch height given in the Hebrew is unusually large, and most read it as a copying slip in the numeral, since the figure does not fit the rest of the building.
The two bronze pillars at the entrance carried names, Jachin and Boaz. Keil and Delitzsch read the two names as sentences, Jachin as he will establish and Boaz as in him is strength. Free standing pillars at temple doors are known from Phoenician sites, and these were given sentences to say.
Significance
The readers stood on that hill. Naming it Moriah told them the ground under the altar had been chosen long before David bought it, a place already marked by a father, a son and a substitute.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The two named pillars greeted every worshipper with the message the returned community most needed at its door. He will establish, and the strength is his.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
2 Chronicles is not read in the synagogue. Chronicles stands among the Writings in the Hebrew canon rather than among the Prophets the Haftarah is drawn from. The division into two books came in through the Greek. The book therefore carries neither a weekly Torah portion nor a Haftarah, and this site's own reading table records the same for all thirty-six chapters. The building of the house on Mount Moriah is met in the commentary and the midrash instead, and the rest of this card is drawn from them.
How it is read
This is the chapter the classical commentary works hardest on in the whole range. The corpus carries twenty-one kept notes of Rashi for it, more than for any other chapter of 1 to 18. He opens by identifying the mountain from the previous book rather than from Genesis. Moriah is where God appeared to David at the threshing floor of Ornan when the plague stopped. Rashi ends the note, "and that is Mount Moriah, David's place" (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:1:1, the Judaica Press Tanach with Rashi, CC-BY).
The date in the second verse he reads through the Jerusalem Talmud and then through the weather. The second month is the second of Iyar. The building began then for two reasons he gives in one line. Solomon could not build through the winter "because of the cold, and in Nissan he could not [build] because of Passover" (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:2:1). The calendar of the festivals is inside the building account on this reading, setting the month the work could start.
Much of the chapter is measurement, and Rashi treats the numbers as a surveyor would. He fixes the sixty cubits as the length of the house including the Debir and the Heichal (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:3:1). He explains why the vestibule's twenty is called length where the same span in the house is called breadth, since the larger dimension takes the name (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:4:1). The hardest number he meets head on. The height here is one hundred and twenty where the Kings parallel says thirty. He resolves it by storeys, thirty cubits from the floor to the ceiling of the first upper storey and ninety above that (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:4:2).
The decoration draws his most exact reading. The gold was fixed with nails into a wooden wall, because nails could not hold in stone, which is why the house was lined with juniper first (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:5:1). The chains he explains as a craftsman would. The decorations filled the surface. Where a gap remained between one and another, a chain shape was painted across it, "in order that there should be no blank space in between" (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:5:2). A second reading stands beside it, that the chains were real gold. The gold of Parvaim he takes as a place name, and reports that the Sages explained the name from its colour, that it resembles the blood of bulls (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:6:2). The cherubim he reads through Aramaic, where the word for their appearance means children, so Solomon made the forms of boys and girls in wood (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:10:1). Their wings he measures wing by wing to fill the twenty cubits of the western wall. He reports that the Sages in Yoma said the bodies stood miraculously, then gives his own reading beside theirs, that the bodies protruded like a bird spreading its wings (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:11:1).
Two notes are about the Chronicler's own method, and they are the ones a reader of this book should carry furthest. At the eighth verse Rashi asks why no wood is mentioned in the Holy of Holies when wood was certainly there. The omission is deliberate and is honour paid to the house, and he proves the motive from the precious stone this book names where Kings does not. "In the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah he lets you know that Solomon's intention was for the honor of the House" (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:8:2). The same reading governs his note on the cherubim, that what was of wood within is passed over here for the honour of the book's subject (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:10:1).
The pillars at the close carry a dispute Rashi records and refuses. The thirty-five cubits here stand against eighteen in Kings. He reports the explanation given by Rashi on Kings and by Rabbi Joseph Kara, that the two pillars were cast as one and divided. Then he says of it plainly, "but it is not acceptable to me" (Rashi on II Chronicles 3:15:1). His own account keeps the casting and divides differently, seventeen and a half cubits each with a capital of half a cubit on top. This is the one place in these eighteen chapters where the corpus shows a Jewish reading argued against another by name.
Radak and Metzudat David comment on the opening verses as well. The corpus carries their refs with the reason that Sefaria holds no English version of them, so they stand here cited and unquoted. Metzudat David on II Chronicles 3:1:1, and Radak on II Chronicles 3:2:1 and 3:3:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators for this chapter and the text of none. Each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. The site of the house draws the first run. The first verse carries seven. Three are from the Jerusalem Talmud, at Berakhot 4:5:8, Sanhedrin 1:3:4 and Shevuot 2:2:2. Four are midrashic: Midrash Lekach Tov, Deuteronomy 12:5:1, Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 12:5:1, and Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair 1:29 and 1:37.
The date in the second verse draws the tractate of the new year, at Rosh Hashanah 3a:8 and 3a:13 with Jerusalem Talmud Rosh Hashanah 1:1:2. Beside them stand Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Zevachim 14:3, Ein Yaakov, Zevakhim 14:8 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 41:54:1.
The measurements draw their own. The third verse, the length and breadth in the first measure, carries Bereshit Rabbah 31:10, Jerusalem Talmud Eruvin 1:1:2, Midrash Lekach Tov, Genesis 6:15:1, Midrash Tehillim 134:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 53:1. The fourth, the vestibule, carries Jerusalem Talmud Yoma 4:4:5 and 4:4:7. The eighth, the Holy of Holies and its six hundred talents of fine gold, carries Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 4:5:7, Jerusalem Talmud Kilayim 8:4:5 and Jerusalem Talmud Yoma 5:1:9.
The ornament and the furniture draw the rest. The sixth verse, the house overlaid with precious stone and the gold of Parvaim, carries six. They are Bamidbar Rabbah 11:3, Midrash Tanchuma, Nasso 9:1, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Nasso 16:1, Otzar Midrashim, Chuppah of Eliyahu, Seven Chupot or Eliyahu's Chuppah 4, and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 710:1 and 824:3. The tenth and thirteenth verses, the cherubim and their standing, carry Bava Batra 99a:7 and 99a:6 with Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair 1:4. Bava Batra is the tractate Rashi himself points to in his note on their bodies. The fourteenth, the dividing curtain of blue and purple and crimson, carries Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Pekudei 8:1 and Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:10:3. The fifteenth and seventeenth carry the two pillars before the house. They draw Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 6:1:10, Jerusalem Talmud Sotah 8:3:7, Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 651:11, and Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim on King Solomon, Throne and Hippodrome of King Solomon 7. One further locator stands in the file, Otzar Midrashim, Mechilta 1, filed under a verse number beyond the seventeen this chapter holds. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Chronicles 3:1:1 to 3:17:1, twenty-one kept notes, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, CC-BY; Radak, Radak on II Chronicles 3:2:1 and 3:3:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Chronicles 3:1:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Rabbi Joseph Kara, the reading of the pillars reported and rejected inside Rashi on II Chronicles 3:15:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-chronicles/3.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; This site's reading table, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed in this lane: 2-chronicles parashot total 0, haftarah uses total 0, hasSynagogueReading true for 0 of 36 chapters, festivalReadingForBook null.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Building on Moriah, where the LORD appeared to David
on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David: Chronicles alone names the ground, “Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David”. It is the only Old Testament verse that joins the temple site to the land of Moriah of Genesis 22:2, where Abraham offered Isaac. Kings gives the temple no place name at all.
2 Chronicles 3:1
“Where the Lord appeared unto David - The marginal rendering, or “which was shown to David,” is preferred by some; and the expression is understood to point out to David the proper site for the temple by the appearance of the Angels and the command to build an altar 2Sa 24:17-25; 1Ch 21:16-26. In the place that David had prepared - This seems to be the true meaning of the passage, though the order of the words in the original has been accidentally deranged.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Chronicles 3:1
"That the temple was situated somewhere within the oblong enclosure on Mount Moriah, all topographers are agreed, although there is not the slightest vestige of the sacred fane now remaining; and the greatest diversity of sentiment prevails as to its exact position within that large area, whether in the center of the haram, or in its southwest corner" [BARCLAY].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
ConnectionsGenesis 22:2
2 Chronicles 3:2-7
on the second day of the second month: Where 1 Kings 6:1 names only the month, verse 2 adds the exact day. Gold from Parvaim and “precious stones for beauty” at verse 6 have no parallel in Kings. The “main room” is the chamber Kings calls the house, and Chronicles gives the plan its own vocabulary.
according to the old standard: Barnes reads the foundation as Solomon's ground plan for the temple. The old standard is the cubit of Moses. Barnes holds that the Jews took up Babylonian measures in the exile, so the Chronicler names the old cubit for his readers.
2 Chronicles 3:3
“The marginal “founded” gives a clue to another meaning of this passage, which may be translated: “Now this is the ground-plan of Solomon for the building, etc.” Cubits after the first measure - i. e., cubits according to the ancient standard. The Jews, it is probable, adopted the Babylonian measures during the captivity, and carried them back into their own country. The writer notes that the cubit of which he here speaks is the old (Mosaic) cubit.”
twenty cubits high: The portico stood twenty cubits high, where the Hebrew text reads a hundred and twenty. Clarke finds twenty in the Syriac and the Arabic. He sets the Hebrew figure beside the thirty cubits of the whole building in 1 Kings 6:2 and judges it a copying mistake.
2 Chronicles 3:4
“The height was a hundred and twenty - Some think this should be twenty only; but if the same building is spoken of as in 1Ki 6:2, the height was only thirty cubits. Twenty is the reading of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the Septuagint in the Codex Alexandrinus. The MSS. give us no help. There is probably a mistake here, which, from the similarity of the letters, might easily occur. The words, as they now stand in the Hebrew text, are מאה ואשרים meah veesrim, one hundred and twenty.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
paneled the main room: The main room is the Holy Place, the chamber between the portico and the Most Holy Place. Barnes explains that the cypress lined its stone walls and floor, and the gold went over the wood. The ceiling was wood throughout.
2 Chronicles 3:5
“The greater house - i. e., the holy place, or main chamber of the temple, intervening between the porch and the holy of holies (so in 2Ch 3:7). He cieled with fir tree - Rather, “he covered,” or “lined.” The reference is not to the ceiling, which was entirely of wood, but to the walls and floor, which were of stone, with a covering of planks (marginal reference).”
gold was from Parvaim: Solomon adorned the temple with precious stones, and its gold came from Parvaim, a place now unknown. Clarke reports three views of Parvaim, among them Sepharvaim and Ceylon. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take the precious stones as veined stones of many colors set in the walls of the temple.
2 Chronicles 3:6
“Gold of Parvaim - We know not what this place was; some think it is the same as Sepharvaim, a place in Armenia or Media, conquered by the king of Assyria, 2Ki 17:24, etc. Others, that it is Taprobane, now the island of Ceylon, which Bochart derives from taph, signifying the border, and Parvan, i.e., the coast of Parvan. The rabbins say that it was gold of a blood-red color, and had its name from פרים parim, heifers, being like to bullocks’ blood.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 3:6
“It may be, after all, that these were stones with veins of different colors for decorating the walls. This was an ancient and thoroughly Oriental kind of embellishment. There was an under pavement of marble, which was covered with planks of fir.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
carved cherubim on the walls: Gold covered the beams, thresholds, walls and doors. Barnes describes the stone walls beneath as lined first with cypress planks, so the gold lay over wood. The cherubim carved on these walls anticipate the two great figures of verse 10.
The most holy place, its cherubim, and the veil
2 Chronicles 3:8-9
Then he made the Most Holy Place: Chronicles measures the Most Holy Place twice, in cubits matching the room of twenty cubits that 1 Kings 6:20 describes. It then measures in weight, “six hundred talents of fine gold” for the room and fifty shekels of gold for the nails. These weights are the Chronicler's own addition.
2 Chronicles 3:8
“It was set with precious stones, because it was a type of the new Jerusalem, which has no temple in it because it is all temple, and the walls, gates, and foundations of which are said to be of precious stones and pearls, Rev. xxi.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
overlaid the upper area: Barnes lists three placements for the gilded upper rooms. Some set them above the Most Holy Place, which stood ten cubits lower than the main building. Others take them as a tall structure over the entrance, or as the top tier of the side chambers of 1 Kings 6:5-10.
2 Chronicles 3:9
“The weight of the nails was fifty shekels - Bolts must be here intended, as it should be preposterous to suppose nails of nearly two pounds’ weight. The supper chambers - Probably the ceiling is meant.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 3:10-13
two cherubim of sculptured work: The Hebrew phrase behind “sculptured work” in verse 10 occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Its sense is worked out from an Arabic cognate. These cherubim “stood on their feet, facing the main room,” where the cherubim of Exodus 37:9 faced each other over the mercy seat.
2 Chronicles 3:10
The word translated “image work,” or, in the margin, “moveable work,” occurs only in this passage, and has not even a Hebrew derivation. Modern Hebraists find an Arabic derivation, and explain the word to mean “carved work.”
total wingspan of the cherubim: Each cherub spread two wings of five cubits, so the pair together spanned twenty cubits. Verse 8 gives the room the same width. The outer wingtips touched both side walls of the Most Holy Place, and Barnes places the ark between the two figures.
2 Chronicles 3:11
“The wings of the cherubims - Compare 1Ki 6:24-27.”
wing of the second cherub: The second cherub mirrors the first, one wing touching the wall of the temple and the other touching the wing of the first cherub. The two wings met at the middle of the room. Barnes pictures the two cherubim standing on either side of the ark.
stood on their feet: Barnes sets these cherubim beside the cherubim of Moses in Exodus 37:9, which faced each other over the mercy seat. Solomon's cherubim stood upright and faced out toward the main room. Barnes likens them to two sentinels.
2 Chronicles 3:13
“Their faces were inward - literally, as in the margin. Instead of looking toward one another, with heads bent downward over the mercy Seat, like the cherubim of Moses Exo 37:9, these of Solomon looked out from the sanctuary into the great chamber (“the house”). The cherubim thus stood upright on either side of the ark, like two sentinels guarding it.”
He made the veil of blue, purple, and crimson yarn: The veil appears only here, since the temple account in Kings mentions none. Its four materials, blue, purple, crimson and fine linen, are those of the tabernacle veil in Exodus 26:31, which bore cherubim. Matthew 27:51 records the veil of the temple torn in two at the death of Jesus.
2 Chronicles 3:14
“This denoted the darkness of that dispensation, and the distance which the worshippers were kept at; but, at the death of Christ, this veil was rent; for through him we are made nigh, and have boldness not only to look, but to enter, into the holiest. On this he was wrought cherubim.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 3:14
“This is an important addition to the description in Kings, where the veil is not mentioned. It was made of exactly the same colors as the veil of the tabernacle Exo 26:31.”
Jachin and Boaz set up before the house
2 Chronicles 3:15-17
In front of the temple he made two pillars: Chronicles tells of the pillars in three verses against the eight of 1 Kings 7:15-22. Here “a hundred pomegranates” hang in the chainwork, where 1 Kings 7:20 sets two hundred around each capital. Barnes judges the Hebrew probably corrupt at the word the older English rendered as in the oracle.
2 Chronicles 3:15
“Of thirty and five cubits - See 1Ki 7:15 note. Some suppose that there has been a corruption of the number in the present passage.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 3:15
“That was typical of Christ's sacrifice of himself; therefore fitly was the temple, which was likewise a type of him, built there. It must be where the Lord appeared to David, and answered him by fire, 1 Chron. xxi. There atonement was made once; and therefore, in remembrance of that, there atonement must still be made.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
made interwoven chains: The chains here stand on top of the pillars. Barnes judges the Hebrew probably corrupt, and earlier English translators supplied a word, assuming a letter had dropped from the word for the inner room. He finds no reason to place chains inside the Most Holy Place.
2 Chronicles 3:16
“As in the oracle - This passage is probably corrupt. Our translators supposing that a single letter had fallen out at the beginning of the word translated “in the oracle,” supplied “as.” But we have no reason to suppose there were any “chains” or “festoons” in the “oracle” or most holy place.”
he named Jachin: The pillar on the south was named Jachin, He shall establish, and on the north Boaz, In it is strength, as Wesley gives them. The Targum, quoted by Clarke, names Jachin for the kingdom of David, now established. It names Boaz for the ancestor of the kings of Judah.
2 Chronicles 3:17
“He reared up the pillars - “The name of that on the right hand was Jachin, because the kingdom of the house of David was established; and the name of the left was Boaz, from the name of Boaz the patriarch of the family of Judah, from whom all the kings of the house of Judah have descended.” - Targum. See on 1Ki 7:21 (note); and see the parallel places for other matters contained in this chapter.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 3:17
“Jachin - That is, He shall establish. Boaz - That is, In it is strength.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: A building account, measured room by room and weighed as well as measured, as Barnes classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The house given in cubits and in talents | The chapter measures twice over. Verse 3 gives the foundation, verse 4 the porch and verses 5 to 7 the greater house. Verses 8 and 9 give the most holy place in cubits and then in weight, six hundred talents of gold for the room and fifty shekels for the nails. Keil and Delitzsch and Albert Barnes both read the weights as this book's own contribution, since the parallel account measures the same rooms without costing them.Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles, on 2 Chronicles 3:8. | 2 Chronicles 3:3, 2 Chronicles 3:4, 2 Chronicles 3:5, 2 Chronicles 3:8, 2 Chronicles 3:9 |
| The tabernacle's veil, woven again | Verse 14 hangs a veil of blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked on it. Those are the four materials of the tabernacle veil at Exodus 26:31. The temple account in 1 Kings mentions no veil at all, so this verse carries the tabernacle's own furnishing into its heir. Albert Barnes and Matthew Henry read the verse as closing a gap the earlier account left open.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Chronicles 3:14. | 2 Chronicles 3:14 |
| Two pillars, two names | Verses 15 to 17 give the two pillars in three verses where 1 Kings 7 gives them in eight. The names Jachin and Boaz are kept, and the network, the lily work and the garden imagery of the parallel are left out. The pomegranate count differs as well, a hundred here against two hundred on each capital in Kings. Keil and Delitzsch and Albert Barnes treat the difference as a textual matter inside one account.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Chronicles 3:15. | 2 Chronicles 3:15, 2 Chronicles 3:16, 2 Chronicles 3:17 |
Where the chapter stands in the book
10 more paragraphs on the patterns
The temple rises from 2:1 to 5:1 inside the wide Solomon panel of 1:1 to 9:31. In the proposed ring the dossier carries, the house built and finished at 3:1 to 5:1 is one limb. Its answer is the night appearance of 7:11 to 22, where the same house is accepted and a warning is attached to it. The ring is Raymond B. Dillard's, its status is proposed, and it is drawn in full on the study page for chapter 7.
The historical value
The site is the one fact this chapter adds that the parallel account never gives. Mount Moriah ties the house to the ground of Genesis 22 and to David's altar at the threshing floor of Ornan in 1 Chronicles 21. The cubit measures place a building roughly twice the length and breadth of the tabernacle of Exodus 26, and the inner room is a cube of twenty cubits.
The dossier's archaeology for this book bears on later reigns, so nothing here is confirmed from the ground. What stands instead is the record's own exactness, the day of the month, the weights of gold, and the two rows of pomegranates.
The debated concept
Three numbers in this chapter are read as textual questions rather than as claims about the building. The porch's height of a hundred and twenty cubits at verse 4 stands far above the figure the parallel gives for the same building. The site's exposition note records the bench reading a copied number gone wrong. The hundred pomegranates of verse 16 stand against two hundred on each capital in 1 Kings 7:20. The phrase rendered as in the oracle at verse 16 is itself uncertain in the Hebrew, and the note reads it as a probable copying slip.
Two details are read as open questions of another kind. The upper chambers of verse 9 are named and left unlocated, and the commentators differ over whether they stood above the inner room or over the porch. The phrase for how the cherubim were made at verse 10, image work, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, and its sense is worked out from an Arabic cognate.
The New Testament and the later record
The veil of verse 14 is where the church's reading of this chapter has settled. Matthew Henry reads the torn veil of Matthew 27:51 back onto this cloth, the distance it kept now opened by the death of Christ. The site's exposition note states plainly that this is a link the church has drawn and that the verse itself makes no such claim.
The cherubim of verses 10 to 13 face inward, looking out from the inner room into the great chamber. The site's note sets that posture against the cherubim of Exodus 37:9, who bow toward each other over the mercy seat, so this pair stand as sentinels over what is behind them.
Keep studying
Studies9
Places1
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Chronicles 3:1; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles, on 2 Chronicles 3:8; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 2 Chronicles 3:1 and Victor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 1992.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Chronicles and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.