2 Chronicleschapter 5
14 verses · Ezra, by tradition · 450 to 400 BC · History
Now all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves regardless of their divisions. And when the priests came out of the Holy Place,
Introduction
Ezra, by tradition, History, 2 Chronicles Overview.
This chapter was written for people who had heard trumpets at the founding of a smaller temple and seen no cloud. Tradition gives the book to Ezra. The writer brings the house from construction to its first worship, and the scene moves from the city of David into the innermost room. Listen for the timing, set on the week the crowds were already in Jerusalem. Watch the order of who carries what and who goes where. Hear the singers and the trumpeters described together, and read the last lines slowly, since the whole book looks back to them.
Context
- Who
- People who had heard those same trumpets at the founding of a smaller house
- What
- The bringing of the ark from the city of David into the inner room of the finished temple, with sacrifice, music and the cloud of glory.
- Where
- The temple court and the inner room in Jerusalem, with the ark brought up from Zion, the city of David.
- When
- The feast of the seventh month, the autumn festival of Tabernacles, about 959 BC.
- Why
- To show God taking up His dwelling in the house built for His name.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to Solomon and to the elders, tribal heads and family leaders he summoned, about 959 BC.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The timing is deliberate. The ark is brought up in the seventh month at the feast, which is the autumn festival of Tabernacles, when the harvest was in and the whole nation was already travelling to Jerusalem. A dedication was set for the week the crowds would be there anyway.
The place is the temple court and the inner room, and the ark comes up from the city of David, which the chapter calls Zion.
A first hearer knew what the details meant. The Levites carry the ark and the priests bring it into the innermost room under the wings of the great cherubim. The poles are left in place, and their ends could be seen from just outside the veil and not from the outer court. The detail is recorded because a worshipper standing in the holy place could see them.
The note that the ark held the two stone tablets Moses put there is a statement about what the whole house was built around.
Then the music. A hundred and twenty priests with trumpets stand with the singers of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun in fine linen, with cymbals, harps and lyres, at the east end of the altar. The phrase used of them is that the trumpeters and the singers were as one, to make one sound. At that moment the cloud filled the house so that the priests could not stand to minister.
Significance
Ezra 3:10 to 13 describes the founding of the second temple with the priests in their vestments and trumpets. The Levites of Asaph stood there with cymbals, singing the same refrain, while old men wept and young men shouted.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
That is the ache under this chapter for its first hearers. The trumpets were the same and the cloud did not come. The writer sets down what happened once, and leaves the longing where it belongs.
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. This chapter does carry a festival inside it. Rashi identifies the feast of the seventh month, at which the ark was brought up, as the festival of Succoth (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:3:1, the Judaica Press Tanach with Rashi, CC-BY).
How it is read
The classical reading opens on a question the verse does not ask. Why did Solomon put his father's dedicated silver and gold into the treasuries instead of building with it? Rashi gives the plain sense first, that these were what remained of what David had dedicated. Then he brings the Midrash Aggadah in Pesikta Rabbati, where two answers stand. Some sages say Solomon knew the house was destined to be destroyed, and would not have the nations say their deity was strong for taking revenge on a house built from their plundered temples. Others say the famine in David's days should have been met by giving those things to sustain the poor of Israel. Rashi then argues from the text itself. Scripture names what Solomon made from David's copper and names nothing made from the silver and gold. He closes with his own plain reading, that copper is cheap and "it is not proper or fitting to bring it into the treasuries of the House of God" (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:1:1).
At the second verse he measures Solomon against David and finds the son wiser in one particular. Solomon assembled the elders rather than the youths, which "was better than David [had done,] who gathered even the youths" (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:2:1). The occasion he names as the festival of Succoth (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:3:1).
What happened to the older sanctuary is answered here rather than left open. The Tent of Meeting that Moses made was carried up with the ark. Solomon hid it in the treasuries of the house with the remaining vessels, because he no longer needed them. Rashi reports that the Sages in the Tosefta of Sotah said they were hidden away (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:5:1). The Mosaic tabernacle is stored rather than retired on this reading, which is the Jewish account of its end and is worth a Christian reader noticing in its own terms.
The staves of the ark carry the chapter's hardest problem and Rashi's longest note. The text says the staves were so long that their ends were seen. He works through what that requires of a room twenty cubits wide, when the Holy of Holies of the Tent was only ten. He reports the explanation of Rabbi Nathan first. Then he gives the reading of his own teacher, that the priests could not bring the ark in with its staves because the cloud filled the house, so the staves protruded into the dividing curtain. Against that he raises his own objection from the Kings parallel, where the priests come out before the glory fills the house. Then he reports the explanation given by Rabbi Joseph, which turns on the form of the verb. The staves did not lengthen by themselves but were lengthened by the craftsmen to twenty cubits. A difficulty stands against that too, "how they could spread out their wings and cover the Ark, which was ten cubits from them" (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:8:2). Three named readings and no verdict is how the chapter is taught here.
The two closing notes are about the writing and the singing. The cloud filling the house should have followed the priests leaving the Holy immediately, and Rashi marks the interruption between them as the writer's own (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:11:1). All the priests present had sanctified themselves for this thing (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:11:2). Of the trumpeters and the singers being as one he asks what the unity was for. It was "to make one sound together to praise and to thank the Lord" (Rashi on II Chronicles 5:13:1).
Radak, Metzudat David and Malbim comment across this chapter as well, and one note of Rashi himself is carried without text. The corpus gives the reason in each case, that Sefaria holds no English version of the ref, so they stand here cited and unquoted. Metzudat David on II Chronicles 5:4:1, 5:6:1, 5:7:2, 5:10:1, 5:12:1, 5:13:1 and 5:14:1. Radak on II Chronicles 5:1:1, 5:4:1 and 5:9:1. Malbim on II Chronicles 5:2:1, 5:6:1 and 5:12:1. Rashi on II Chronicles 5:9:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries fourteen rabbinic locators for this chapter and the text of none. Each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. The singing at the end of the chapter draws the largest run. The thirteenth verse, where the trumpeters and singers make one sound and the cloud fills the house, carries seven. They are Arakhin 11b:1, Bamidbar Rabbah 6:10, Chullin 24b:1, Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:14:6, Sukkah 51a:13, Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 719:16, and Introductions to Tanaitic Literature, Introduction to Halakhic Midrashim, Sifrei Numbers 287. The Levites and their instruments at the twelfth verse carry Arakhin 13b:4, and Arakhin is the tractate that handles the service of song.
The staves Rashi labours over draw their own locators at the ninth verse. They are Bereshit Rabbah 15:5, Midrash Tanchuma, Nasso 9:1 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Nasso 16:1. The dedicated things of the first verse carry Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 19:1. The assembly of the elders at the second carries Bereshit Rabbah 84:21. One further locator stands in the file, Sifrei Devarim 29:5, filed under a verse number beyond the fourteen 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 5:1:1 to 5:13:1, ten kept notes, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, CC-BY; Pesikta Rabbati, Pesikta Rabbati 6:7, reported inside Rashi on II Chronicles 5:1:1 as Midrash Aggadah; Tosefta Sotah, Tosefta of Sotah 13:1, reported inside Rashi on II Chronicles 5:5:1; Rabbi Nathan, the reading of the staves reported inside Rashi on II Chronicles 5:8:2; Rabbi Joseph, the reading of the staves reported inside Rashi on II Chronicles 5:8:2; Radak, Radak on II Chronicles 5:1:1, 5:4:1 and 5:9:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Chronicles 5:4:1, 5:6:1, 5:7:2, 5:10:1, 5:12:1, 5:13:1 and 5:14:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Malbim, Malbim on II Chronicles 5:2:1, 5:6:1 and 5:12:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/2-chronicles/5.json, the 14 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.
The ark carried in, with nothing in it but the two tables
So all the work that Solomon had performed: The finished work closes the building record begun at 3:1. The verse matches 1 Kings 7:51 almost word for word, the same building told twice. What crosses into the treasuries is “the silver, the gold, and all the furnishings” David had dedicated, the gifts laid up in 1 Chronicles 18:11.
2 Chronicles 5:1
“BRINGING UP OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. Then Solomon assembled . . . in the feast which was in the seventh month--The feast of the dedication of the temple was on the eighth day of that month. This is related, word for word, the same as in 1Ki 8:1-10.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Chronicles 5:1
“This chapter contains one important addition only to the narrative of Kings (see the marginal references); namely, the account of the circumstances under which the manifestation of the Divine Presence took place 2Ch 5:11-13.”
2 Chronicles 5:2-3
Solomon summons the elders, tribal heads and family chiefs for the feast of the seventh month, Tabernacles, the same assembly 1 Kings 8:1-2 records. The whole leadership of the nation is gathered before a single vessel is moved. The nation, not the king alone, brings the ark up.
the feast in the seventh month: The whole nation came up behind the elders of verse 2. The feast of the seventh month was the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the three great yearly festivals Barnes lists at 2:4. Henry records that the ark and its vessels were brought up with great joy.
2 Chronicles 5:3
“The feast - “That is, the feast of tabernacles, which was held in the seventh month.” - Targum. See 1Ki 8:2.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Chronicles 5:4-5
the Levites took up the ark: Where 1 Kings 8:3 says “the priests took up the ark,” Chronicles has “the Levites took up the ark”. That is the rule David laid down, that no one but the Levites may carry the ark. The wording matches 15:2 and 15:13 and answers the disorder of 1 Chronicles 13.
2 Chronicles 5:4
“The Levites took up the ark - i. e., such of the Levites as were also priests (compare 2Ch 5:7; 1Ki 8:3).”
all its sacred furnishings: The Tent of Meeting came up from Gibeon, where 1:3 placed it, with its old furnishings. Henry holds that these dedicated things were kept whole for the new house, and that the usable vessels probably stayed in service. The rest were stored as monuments.
2 Chronicles 5:5
“Those were not alienated, because they had been dedicated to God, were not altered or melted down for the new work, though there was no need of them; but they were carefully laid up as monuments of antiquity, and probably as many of the vessels as were fit for use were still used. This was done with great joy.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
they could not be counted or numbered: The sacrifice is left unnumbered on purpose, sheep and oxen beyond counting before the ark even reaches its place. The same excess marks 1 Kings 8:5, and Chronicles changes nothing in it. Worship this lavish previews the chapter's own argument, that what happens after matters more than what is spent.
2 Chronicles 5:7-10
the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place: The priests carry the ark beneath the wings of the cherubim. The account matches 1 Kings 8:6-8 down to the poles seen from in front of the inner sanctuary. Verse 10 narrows the contents to “the two tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb,” the covenant document alone.
spread their wings over: These are the two great cherubim of 3:10-13, whose wings spanned twenty cubits. Their wings overshadowed the ark and its poles from above. Barnes contrasts them at 3:13 with the cherubim of Moses, which bent over the cover of the ark.
there to this day: Wesley dates this day to the first writing of the history. Ezra reviewed that record after the return from Babylon, when neither poles nor ark were seen any longer. Barnes notes a reading, found also at 1 Kings 8:8, in which the pole ends showed from the Holy Place.
2 Chronicles 5:9
“From the ark - Or, according to a different reading here and according to 1Ki 8:8, some read, “the ends of the staves were seen from the Holy place.” There it is unto this day - This should be corrected as in the margin.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 5:9
“To this day - When this history was first written; not when it was reviewed by Ezra: for after the return from Babylon, neither staves nor ark were any more seen.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
except the two tablets: Nothing was in the ark except the two tablets. Moses placed them there at Horeb, and the Chaldee paraphrase, quoted by Clarke, names them the second pair. The first pair was broken over the calf the people made, and the second bore the Ten Words.
2 Chronicles 5:10
There was nothing in the ark save - The Chaldee paraphrases thus: “There was nothing put in the ark but the two tables which Moses placed there, after the first had been broken on account of the calf which they made in Horeb, and the two other tables had been confirmed which were written with writing expressed in the Ten Words.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
One voice of praise, and a cloud the priests cannot stand in
all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves: The parenthesis breaks to explain something 1 Kings 8:10-11 does not. The priests present had sanctified themselves and did not wait by course, the rotation David set up in 1 Chr 24. On a day this size every division serves together rather than the one course whose turn it was.
2 Chronicles 5:11
“By course - According to David's appointment, 1 Chron. xxiv, 1-31, xxv, 1-22, which was only for the ordinary service, but in extraordinary solemnities, such as this, they all came together.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 5:11
“When the singers and musicians praised God, then the house was filled with a cloud. This is very observable; it was not when they offered sacrifices, but when they sang the praises of God, that God gave them this token of his favour; for the sacrifice of praise pleaseth the Lord better than that of an ox or bullock, Ps. lxix.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The singers are named, “Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and relatives,” the founders of the choirs David set apart in 1 Chronicles 25. They stand with 120 priests sounding trumpets. The temple's music enters the dedication record here, a scene Kings never mentions.
2 Chronicles 5:12
“The station where the priests were sounding with trumpets was apart from that of the other musicians; for while the Levite singers occupied an orchestra east of the altar, the priests stood at the marble table on the southwest of the altar.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 5:12
“As there is one saying oftener repeated in scripture than this, his mercy endureth for ever (twenty-six times in one psalm, Ps. cxxxvi. , and often elsewhere), so there is none more signally owned from heaven; for it was not the expression of some rapturous flights that the priests were singing when the glory of God appeared, but this plain song, He is good, and his mercy endureth for ever.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Chronicles 5:13-14
The trumpeters and singers joined together: Verse 13 adds to 1 Kings 8:10-11: the trumpeters and singers praised “with one voice,” and the house “was filled with a cloud”. Verse 14 uses the language of Exodus 40:34-35: the glory of the LORD fills the house, and the priests cannot stand to minister.
2 Chronicles 5:13
Even the house of the Lord - Or, according to another reading (Septuagint), which removes the superfluousness of these words - “The house was filled with a cloud of the glory of the Lord.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 5:13
“Christ revealed things unto his disciples as they were able to bear them, and in parables, which wrapped up divine things as in a cloud. Thus he would affect all that worshipped in his courts with holy reverence and fear. Christ's disciples were afraid when they entered into a cloud, Luke ix.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the glory of the LORD: The cloud stopped the service of the priests. The glory of the LORD came to rest once the ark, holding the tablets of the covenant, stood in its place beneath the cherubim. Clarke's Chaldee names those tablets the Ten Words.
2 Chronicles 5:14
“The priests could not stand - What a proof of the being of God, and of the Divine presence! What must those holy men have felt at this time!”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Chronicles 5:14
“Glory of the Lord - And this beautified it more than all the gold with which it was overlaid, or the precious stones with which it was garnished. Yet even that was no glory, in comparison of the glory of the gospel-dispensation.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Narrative, a national procession that closes in a theophany, as Henry classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| For He is good, the one line the singers sing | The line stands at verse 13 and twice again in chapter 7, at 7:3 and 7:6, counted in the Berean text in the store. It is David's own line from 1 Chronicles 16:34, set going at the ark's first procession and sung again at the ark's last. Matthew Henry reads the timing as the chapter's whole doctrine, that the glory came when the praise became one voice.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 2 Chronicles 5:13. | 2 Chronicles 5:13, 2 Chronicles 7:3, 2 Chronicles 7:6 |
| The singers named by house | Verse 12 names the three choirs by their founders, Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, with their sons and relatives. They stand at the east side of the altar in fine linen with cymbals, harps and lyres, and a hundred and twenty priests sound trumpets beside them. Adam Clarke sets the scene against the singers David organized in 1 Chronicles 25. The site's exposition note records that the temple's music enters the dedication account here for the first time.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 2 Chronicles 5:12. | 2 Chronicles 5:11, 2 Chronicles 5:12, 2 Chronicles 5:13 |
| The cloud of the tabernacle, filling the house | Verses 13 and 14 report the cloud filling the house and the priests unable to stand to minister. The wording follows Exodus 40:34 and 35, where the same cloud settled on the tent Moses raised. Albert Barnes and Matthew Henry both read the pairing as the point of the scene, one glory moving from the tent to the house that replaced it.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Chronicles 5:13. | 2 Chronicles 5:13, 2 Chronicles 5:14 |
Where the chapter stands in the book
10 more paragraphs on the patterns
The ark brought in and the glory filling the house is the centre of the wide Solomon panel, 1:1 to 9:31. In the proposed ring the dossier carries, the centre runs from 5:2 to 7:10, the ark brought up, the glory, the prayer and the answer. The ring is Raymond B. Dillard's, its status is proposed, and it is drawn in full on the study page for chapter 7. This chapter opens that centre.
The historical value
The date is the feast of the seventh month, which is Tabernacles, and the assembly is the whole leadership of the nation. The ark comes from the city of David, named Zion here, the older stronghold whose title is carried forward into the new house.
Verse 9 records the poles of the ark visible from in front of the inner room, and adds that they are there to this day. That aside comes from the day the history was written. Verse 10 narrows the ark's contents to the two tablets Moses placed there at Horeb.
The dossier's ancient Near Eastern parallels put this scene at the end of the fixed temple-building sequence, where the deity takes up residence in the finished house. Victor Hurowitz set that sequence out in I Have Built You an Exalted House, 1992. The dossier's verdict names what has no counterpart in the genre, a house filled by the glory of a God who says heaven cannot contain him at 6:18.
The debated concept
Who carried the ark is the chapter's open question. 1 Kings 8:3 has the priests take it up and verse 4 here has the Levites take it up. Priests are themselves of the tribe of Levi, so the commentators divide over how sharp a distinction is meant. The site's exposition note records that the Chronicler's wording matches the doctrine he stated at 1 Chronicles 15:2 and 15:13, and that the bench does not settle the question.
A second question is what became of the tent. Verse 5 brings the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings up with the ark, and the note reads them as retired and kept rather than discarded.
The New Testament and the later record
The glory that fills this house is where the church's reading of the temple begins. The site's study guide sets the glory scene of 5:13 and 14 beside John 1:14, the Word who dwelt among us. It takes the guard against localizing that glory in a building from Solomon's own question at 6:18. The reading is offered as the church's, and the verses here state the event rather than the doctrine.
Keep studying
Words12
Subjects1
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 5:1; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of the Chronicles, on 2 Chronicles 5:4; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 2 Chronicles 5:13 and Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles, Word Biblical Commentary, 1987.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil, The Books of the Chronicles; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and W. H. Bennett, The Books of Chronicles (Expositor's Bible).