2 Chronicles6chapter 6

he stood before the altar of the Lord: Verse 13 supplies a detail 1 Kings 8:22 does not have at all: a bronze platform five cubits square and three cubits high, set in the midst of the court, on which Solomon knelt and spread his hands toward heaven. Kings has him simply standing before the altar; Chronicles alone gives the furniture, the Chronicler's habit of exact measurement showing itself even inside a prayer scene rather than only in the temple's own building specifications. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call it a pulpit with no seat, since the king either stood or knelt through the whole prayer. The platform is Chronicles' own witness and has no parallel to be read against.

there is no God like thee in the heaven: The prayer opens with there is no God like thee in the heaven, nor in the earth, which keepest covenant and shewest mercy, the same address 1 Kings 8:23 gives almost word for word. Solomon's first request, that the Lord keep the promise of an heir on David's throne, repeats 1 Kings 8:25-26 with the same condition attached, that thy children take heed to their way. Chronicles changes nothing in the sense here; the petition already stands fully argued in the Kings exposition, including the tension the condition sets up against 11:12-13's partial keeping of it for David's sake.

will God in very deed dwell with men: Solomon's own question, will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth, undercuts the house he has just finished, since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him; the same guard against a wrong reading of the temple already stands argued at 1 Kings 8:27. From here the prayer's hinge turns, thine eyes may be open upon this house day and night becoming the refrain hear thou in heaven that will answer every petition still to come, matching 1 Kings 8:28-30 without change. Chronicles keeps the warning and the refrain exactly where Kings placed them, guarding the whole prayer from claiming that the house holds the God who hears it.

sin against his neighbour, and an oath be laid: The first two petitions, a judicial oath sworn at the altar and defeat before an enemy because of sin, repeat 1 Kings 8:31-34 with almost no change in wording. Adam Clarke's own note on verse 22 points the reader back to the seven cases already argued at 1 Kings 8:31-46, treating the parallel exposition as the fuller commentary rather than repeating it. Chronicles asks the same two things Kings asked, a right verdict between two parties and a return from defeat once the nation confesses and turns.

the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain: The third petition, heaven shut up and no rain because of sin, matches 1 Kings 8:35-36 word for word and carries the same forward reach the Kings exposition already names: Elijah will close heaven by his own word for three years at 1 Kings 17:1, the very judgment rehearsed here before any king has yet brought it on. The prayer asks not only for rain but that the Lord teach them the good way, reading the drought as instruction rather than only punishment. Chronicles adds nothing to this petition beyond what Kings already carries.

If there be dearth in the land: The fourth petition gathers dearth, pestilence, blasting, mildew, locusts and siege into one list, the same catalogue Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 had already attached to covenant unfaithfulness, and it widens from the nation to any man who knows his own sore and his own grief. Charles Spurgeon preached this very text at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, naming the temple the center of prayer for all the children of Israel and the mercy seat beneath the cherubim the place a scattered people still turned their faces toward. The petition closes on the Lord's own knowledge of every heart, for thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men, a claim Chronicles keeps from 1 Kings 8:37-40 unchanged.

concerning the stranger, which is not of thy people Israel: The fifth petition turns to the stranger, which is not of thy people Israel, a Gentile drawn by report of the Lord's great name, and Chronicles repeats 1 Kings 8:41-43 without change, including the request's stated purpose, that all people of the earth may know thy name. The Kings exposition already points to the Ethiopian eunuch's later visit to Jerusalem as the pattern this petition anticipates by centuries. Solomon asks for the foreigner what he has just asked for Israel, and the wording between the two books does not differ.

go out to war against their enemies: The sixth petition covers an army sent out by the Lord's own direction, praying toward the city and the house even while encamped at a distance, and it repeats 1 Kings 8:44-45 with no change in sense. Chronicles keeps the qualifier by the way that thou shalt send them, the same limit the Kings exposition reads as ruling out any war not undertaken at the Lord's command. The petition is one of the shortest in the prayer, asking only that the Lord maintain their cause.

(for there is no man which sinneth not,): The seventh petition, the longest of the seven, assumes what the others do not, for there is no man which sinneth not, and it covers captivity in a land far off or near. Adam Clarke's note here again sends the reader to the fuller treatment at 1 Kings 8:22-53, and the wording through verse 39 matches Kings closely, the captives asked only to bethink themselves, confess we have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt wickedly, and turn with all their heart and with all their soul. This is the petition a post-exilic congregation would have heard as its own history rather than as a hypothetical case, since the exile Solomon prays about here is the exile the book is written after.

let, I beseech thee, thine eyes be open: Chronicles closes the body of the prayer with let thine eyes be open, and let thine ears be attent unto the prayer that is made in this place, shorter than the close Kings gives at 1 Kings 8:52-53, which continues into an appeal to the exodus and to Israel's separation from all the peoples of the earth. Albert Barnes notes the difference directly: in Kings a different conclusion takes the place of these verses, and both writers drew on a fuller document of the dedication prayer that each abbreviated differently. Chronicles trims the exodus appeal here because it is about to supply an ending Kings does not have at all.

arise, O Lord God, into thy resting place: Where Kings ends the prayer on the exodus, Chronicles ends it instead on words drawn nearly whole from Ps 132:8-10: arise, O Lord God, into thy resting place, thou, and the ark of thy strength, let thy priests be clothed with salvation, and let thy saints rejoice in goodness, remember the mercies of David thy servant. Adam Clarke notes plainly that these two verses are not in the parallel place in 1 Kings 8, and Albert Barnes reads both the Chronicler and the Psalm as drawing on one shared liturgy of dedication rather than one copying the other, a sharing this note states without deciding which came first. Thine anointed names Solomon himself standing at the platform, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the mercies of David as the promise of 2 Samuel 7 now called in by name, the same sure mercies Isa 55:3 will later widen to all who come. The chapter that opened by retelling David's commission closes by praying his own psalm back to the God who gave it.