2 Chronicleschapter 6
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Speaks with:1 Kings 8×61 Chronicles 28×4Psalms 132×32 Chronicles 7×32 Chronicles 2×2Nehemiah 8×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Solomon's dedication prayer. He begins with the paradox ('Jehovah hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness; but I have built thee a house of habitation') blesses the assembly, and rehearses the promise to David now kept. Then he kneels on a brazen scaffold and spreads his hands toward heaven: 'But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have builded!' Seven petitions follow (for the wronged, the defeated, the drought-stricken, the famished, the captive) and one for the foreigner who comes from a far country for the sake of God's name.
Context
History · Ezra — 2 Chronicles overview
- A. 1–11 The LORD said He would dwell in thick darkness
- B. 12–21 Solomon kneels on the scaffold: hear from heaven, Thy dwelling place
- C. 22–31 When they sin, when they are beaten, when the heavens are shut
- D. 32–42 The stranger, the captive, and arise into Thy resting place
The outline
A.The LORD said He would dwell in thick darknessvv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.Solomon kneels on the scaffold: hear from heaven, Thy dwelling placevv. 12 to 21
Read vv. 12 to 21 →C.When they sin, when they are beaten, when the heavens are shutvv. 22 to 31
Read vv. 22 to 31 →D.The stranger, the captive, and arise into Thy resting placevv. 32 to 42
Read vv. 32 to 42 →
The world behind this chapter
2 Chronicles 6The history
Solomon does not pray from a throne. A bronze platform about eight feet square and four and a half high was set in the middle of the court, and he stood on it, then knelt on his knees before all Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven. A king kneeling in public was the whole nation's posture in one body.
The prayer is built as a list of cases, and each one names a real disaster with its remedy: a man swearing an oath at the altar, defeat in battle before an enemy, drought when the sky shuts up, famine, blight, locusts, plague, siege, the foreigner who comes from a far country, an army sent out to war, and finally captivity in a distant land.
The recurring instruction is to pray 'toward this place.' That is why Daniel opened his windows toward Jerusalem in Babylon, and why the direction of prayer mattered so much afterward. The house was a fixed point you could face from anywhere.
The petition about the foreigner is the outlier and clearly intentional: when a stranger who is not of Israel comes from a far country because of God's great name, hear him, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as your own people do.
What it meant to them
The last case in the list — 'if they sin against thee, and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to enemies who carry them away captive to a land far off or near; yet if they repent in the land of their captivity' — was the first hearers' own biography.
They were the answer to a prayer prayed four hundred years before they were born. Everything they had, including the room they were standing in, came through that clause.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Chronicles
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 2 Chronicles 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.