2 Chronicleschapter 4
22 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Key verse
Moreover he made an altar of brass, twenty cubits the length thereof, and twenty cubits the breadth thereof, and ten cubits the height thereof.
It stands in The brazen altar, the molten sea, and the ten lavers, verses 1 to 10.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The furnishings inventory. A brazen altar twenty cubits square; the molten sea, ten cubits from brim to brim, standing on twelve oxen facing outward three by three, for the priests to wash in; ten lavers on their bases for washing the offerings, five on each side. Ten golden candlesticks and ten tables are set in the temple, five right and five left, with a hundred golden basins. The court of the priests and the great court are made, and the doors overlaid with brass. Huram casts the pillars, the capitals, the pomegranates, the pots and shovels and flesh-hooks in the clay ground of the Jordan plain, the weight of the brass beyond finding out.
Context
History · Ezra · 2 Chronicles overview
The world behind this chapter
2 Chronicles 4The history
The chapter belongs to Huram the craftsman and to the king who commissioned him, across the seven years the house took.
The places are two, the temple courts where the vessels stood and the Jordan valley where the bronze was cast.
The occasion is the furnishing of a finished building, and everything in the chapter serves washing, light or bread.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
A first hearer knew the working measures. The bronze altar was a platform some thirty feet square and fifteen high, so steps or a ramp were needed to serve it. The great basin called the Sea stood on twelve bronze oxen facing outward in four groups of three, held thousands of gallons, and was for the priests to wash in. Ten smaller basins on stands were for rinsing the pieces of the burnt offerings.
The Sea's figures, ten cubits across and thirty around, raise the old question about the ratio of a circle. These are working round numbers of the kind builders always use, and the rim is described separately as flared like a lily, so the two figures need not describe one circle.
Ten golden lampstands were set five on each side and ten tables likewise, along with a hundred golden bowls. The temple held ten of what the tabernacle held one of.
The casting note is one of the most practical lines in Scripture. The king cast the bronze in the plain of the Jordan, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredah. Large bronze casting needs deep fine clay for the moulds and a wide flat working area, and the Jordan valley had both. The metal was cast in the valley and hauled up to the hills.
What it meant to them
The second temple had a lampstand, a table and an altar, the same furniture in single copies. The list of tens told the hearers what full service had looked like without shaming them for the difference.
The purpose of every item was the same in both houses. Get clean, keep the light burning, keep the bread set out. The scale had changed and the work had not.
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
Where the chapter sits
2 Chronicles 4 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
People1
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. The brazen altar, the molten sea, and the ten lavers
1. (v. 1)
2 Chronicles 4:1
“The making of this was not mentioned in the Kings. On this all the sacrifices were offered, and it sanctified the gift. This altar was much larger than that which Moses made in the tabernacle; that was five cubits square, this was twenty cubits square.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Chronicles 4:1
“The supplementary character of Chronicles is here once more apparent. The author of Kings had omitted to record the dimensions of the brass altar. It stood in the great court 2Ch 6:12-13.”
2 Chronicles 4:1
“It measured thirty-five feet by thirty-five, and in height seventeen and a half feet. The thickness of the metal used for this altar is nowhere given; but supposing it to have been three inches, the whole weight of the metal would not be under two hundred tons [NAPIER].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
twenty cubits the length thereof: Chronicles supplies the altar's dimensions that Kings never gives, twenty cubits square and ten cubits high, four times the length and breadth of the five-cubit altar Moses built for the tabernacle. The larger house takes a larger altar for the same office: every sacrifice still crosses brass before anything reaches gold. Barnes reads the addition as the book's habit of filling in what Kings left blank, and Henry sets the altar first in a procession of vessels he reads as pointing toward Christ.
2. (vv. 2-5)
2 Chronicles 4:3
“For “oxen” we find in 1Ki 7:24, “knops” or “gourds.” An early copyist, not comprehending the comparatively rare word here used for “gourd,” and expecting to hear of oxen, as soon as the molten sea was mentioned, changed the reading.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 4:3
“There is a difference in the accounts given of the capacity of this basin, for while in 1Ki 7:26 it is said that two thousand baths of water could be contained in it, in this passage no less than three thousand are stated.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Chronicles 4:5
“Three thousand baths - See 1Ki 7:23 note. It is quite possible that either here or in Kings the text may have been accidentally corrupted.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 4:5
“The Holy Ghost by this signified, (1.) Our great gospel privilege, that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, 1 John i. To us there is a fountain opened for all believers (who are spiritual priests, Rev. i. 5, 6 ), nay, for all the inhabitants of Jerusalem to wash in, from sin, which is uncleanness.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
a molten sea of ten cubits: The molten sea repeats 1 Kings 7 with two small differences the commentators note rather than resolve. Its capacity is given as three thousand baths against Kings' two thousand, and the oxen encircling it under the brim stand where Kings reads knops, likely gourds, a reading Barnes traces to an early copyist expecting oxen once the sea was named. Ten cubits across and five high, it stood for the priests' washing alone, apart from the ten lavers that follow it.
3. (vv. 6-9)
2 Chronicles 4:6
“He made also ten lavers - The lavers served to wash the different parts of the victims in; and the molten sea was for the use of the priests. In this they bathed, or drew water from it for their personal purification.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 4:6
“As the priests must be washed, so must the sacrifices. We must not only purify ourselves in preparation for our religious performances, but carefully put away all those vain thoughts and corrupt aims which cleave to our performances themselves and pollute them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 4:7
“According to their form - Rather, “after their manner” (compare 2Ch 4:20). There is no allusion to the shape of the candlesticks, which were made, no doubt, after the pattern of the original candlestick of Moses.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 4:7
“The candlesticks are the churches, Rev. i. Moses set up but one, the church of the Jews; but, in the gospel temple, not only believers, but churches, are multiplied.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 4:8
“A hundred basons of gold - These were doubtless a sort of paterae or sacrificial spoons, with which they made libations.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 4:9
“He made the court of the priests - This was the inner court. And the great court - This was the outer court, or place for the assembling of the people.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
He made also ten lavers: Where the tabernacle held one candlestick and one table of shewbread, the temple holds ten of each, five on the right hand and five on the left, and ten lavers beside the one great sea. The division of labor is exact: the sea washed the priests, the lavers washed what was offered, one vessel for persons and ten for sacrifices multiplying with the larger house. Henry reads the ten candlesticks against the New Testament's seven, the one lampstand of Moses' day becoming the churches of Revelation, a use he draws rather than the text states.
4. (v. 10)
2 Chronicles 4:10-18
he set the sea on the right side: Huram, sent by the king of Tyre, finishes the whole of Solomon's bronze work: the sea set toward the southeast, the lavers, and the pillars with their pomegranates already named in chapter three, all cast in the clay ground of the Jordan plain between Succoth and Zeredathah. Verse sixteen calls him Huram his father, an honorific for a master craftsman rather than a claim of kinship, the same title the king of Tyre used of him. The metal inventory closes at verse eighteen with brass beyond any count, an abundance the book keeps stating rather than assuming.
B. Huram finishes the bronze; gold fills the house within
1. (vv. 11-18)
2 Chronicles 4:16
“Probably it was a sort of nickname by which he was commonly known, Father Huram; for the king of Tyre called him Huram Abi, my father, in compliance with whom Solomon called him his, he being a great artist and father of the artificers in brass and iron. He acquitted himself well both for ingenuity and industry. Solomon was very generous.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 4:16
“Huram his father - אב ab, father, is often used in Hebrew to signify a master, inventor, chief operator, and is very probably used here in the former sense by the Chaldee: All these Chiram his master made for King Solomon; or Chiram Abi, or rather Hiram, made for the king.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 4:17
“Zeredathah - Or, Zarthan (marginal reference). The writer of Chronicles probably uses the name which the place bore in his own day.”
2. (vv. 19-22)
2 Chronicles 4:19
“The tables - A single table only is mentioned in 1Ki 7:48; 2Ch 29:18. It is supposed that Solomon made ten similar tables, any one of which might be used for the showbread; but that the bread was never placed on more than one table at a time.”
2 Chronicles 4:21
“And the flowers, and the lamps - Probably each branch of the chandelier was made like a plant in flower, and the opening of the flower was either the lamp, or served to support it.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 4:22
“The doors - were of gold - That is, were overlaid with golden plates, the thickness of which we do not know. That every thing in the tabernacle and temple was typical or representative of some excellence of the Gospel dispensation may be readily credited, without going into all the detail produced by the pious author of Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
the golden altar also, and the tables: The record narrows from brass to gold for the house itself: the golden altar, the tables for the shewbread again multiplied beyond the tabernacle's one, the candlesticks and their lamps, and down to the tongs, snuffers, basons, spoons and censers, all of pure gold. Even the doors of the most holy place and of the temple are overlaid in gold, so that nothing between the brass altar in the court and the innermost door is left unadorned. Barnes notes that Kings names only a single table while Chronicles' plural implies as many as ten, matching the ten candlesticks of verse seven.
This page carries no textual note on 2 Chronicles 4. 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; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.