2 Chronicleschapter 3
17 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Key verse
Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.
It stands in Building on Moriah, where the LORD appeared to David, verses 1 to 7.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The building begins in the second month of the fourth year, and the Chronicler locates it with two names that carry the whole story: 'in mount Moriah, where Jehovah appeared unto David his father… in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite': the mountain of Abraham's test and the floor of David's mercy. The measurements follow: the porch, the greater house overlaid with fine gold and set with precious stones, palm trees and chains. The most holy place is twenty cubits square, its two carved cherubim standing with wings spread twenty cubits across, facing inward. The veil is of blue and purple and crimson and fine linen with cherubim wrought upon it. Before the house stand two pillars, named Jachin and Boaz.
Context
History · Ezra · 2 Chronicles overview
The world behind this chapter
2 Chronicles 3The history
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.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles
Where the chapter sits
2 Chronicles 3 falls in Solomon's reign (chapters 1–9). Wisdom at Gibeon; temple construction and dedication; the Queen of Sheba; Solomon's riches and death. Parallels 1 Kgs 1–11 with temple emphasis.
After it: Kings of Judah: Rehoboam to Ahaz, chapters 10–28.
The whole shape of 2 Chronicles→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Building on Moriah, where the LORD appeared to David
1. (v. 1)
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
in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared: Chronicles alone names the ground: mount Moriah, the only Old Testament verse joining the temple site to the mountain of Genesis 22, to David's altar at Ornan's threshingfloor in 1 Chronicles 21, and to the place where the Lord appeared to him. Kings never gives the temple a place name at all, so this verse is this book's own contribution to the geography of worship. The bench reads Abraham's mountain and David's altar as one range prepared across centuries for one house.
2. (vv. 2-7)
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.”
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
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).”
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
in the second day of the second month: Chronicles gives the plan its own vocabulary. Where Kings names only the month, verse two adds the exact day, and the porch's height of a hundred and twenty cubits towers well above Kings' figure for the same building, a difference the bench reads as a copied number gone wrong rather than two towers. Gold of Parvaim and precious stones for beauty at verse six have no parallel in Kings, and the greater house of verses five and seven is this book's own name for the main chamber Kings simply calls the house.
B. The most holy place, its cherubim, and the veil
1. (vv. 8-9)
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
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
he made the most holy house: Chronicles measures the holy of holies twice, in cubits matching the cube-shaped oracle Kings already describes, and then in weight, six hundred talents of gold for the room and fifty shekels for the nails alone. The book that will soon record the freewill offerings of 1 Chr 29 treats cost as testimony rather than excess, and these weights are Chronicles' own addition to the record. The upper chambers of verse nine are named and left unlocated, and the bench differs over whether they sat above the oracle or over the porch.
2. (vv. 10-13)
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.”
2 Chronicles 3:11
“The wings of the cherubims - Compare 1Ki 6:24-27.”
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.”
two cherubims of image work: Verse ten's phrase for how the cherubim were made, image work, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, and its sense is worked out from an Arabic cognate rather than known usage. Their wings match the twenty cubit span Kings already gives, filling the width of the house wall to wall. Their faces were inward, looking out from the sanctuary into the great chamber rather than bowed toward each other over the mercy seat as Moses' cherubim do in Exodus, so this pair stand less like the ark's own cover and more like two sentinels guarding what is behind them.
3. (v. 14)
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.”
the vail of blue, and purple: The veil hangs only here; Kings' temple account never mentions one, and its four materials, blue, purple, crimson and fine linen, are the tabernacle veil's own materials from Exodus 26:31, carried into Solomon's house with cherubim newly woven on it. Chronicles closes a gap Kings left open rather than adding an invention: the tabernacle had a veil, and the temple, its heir, keeps one too. Henry reads the torn veil of Matthew 27:51 back onto this cloth, the distance it once kept now opened by Christ's death, a link the church has drawn rather than a claim this verse makes on its own.
C. Jachin and Boaz set up before the housevv. 15-17
two pillars of thirty and five cubits: Chronicles tells the same two pillars in three verses against Kings' eight, keeping the names Jachin and Boaz but leaving out the network, the lily work and the garden imagery Kings already carries at the temple door. The pomegranate count differs from Kings as well, a hundred here against Kings' two hundred on each chapiter, a variant the bench treats as textual rather than as two separate accounts. Verse sixteen's phrase as in the oracle is itself uncertain in the Hebrew, read as a probable copying slip rather than evidence of festoons inside the most holy place.
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
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.”
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
This page carries no textual note on 2 Chronicles 3. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
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 exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Chronicles and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
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