1 Kings 8:27

But will God indeed dwell on the earth?.... Is it true? Can any credit be given to it? Who could ever have thought it, that so great and glorious a Being, who inhabits eternity, dwells in the highest heavens, should ever condescend to dwell on earth?

heaven of heavens - Compare Deu 10:14; Psa 148:4. It seems to mean the heaven in its most extended compass. Solomon combines with his belief in Yahweh’s special presence in the temple, the strongest conviction that He is no local or finite deity, but is ever present everywhere. Compare Psa 139:7-10.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? - This expression is full of astonishment, veneration, and delight. He is struck with the immensity, dignity, and grandeur of the Divine Being, but especially at his condescension to dwell with men: and though he sees, by his filling the place, that he has come now to make his abode with them, yet he cannot help asking the question, How can such a God dwell in such a place, and with such creatures? Behold, the heaven - The words are all in the plural number in the Hebrew: השמים ושמי השמים hashshamayim, ushemey hashshamayim; “the heavens, and the heavens of heavens.” What do these words imply? That there are systems, and systems of systems, each possessing its sun, its primary and secondary planets, all extending beyond each other in unlimited space, in the same regular and graduated order which we find to prevail in what we call our solar system; which probably, in its thousands of millions of miles in diameter, is, to some others, no more than the area of the lunar orbit to that of the Georgium Sidus. When God, his manifold wisdom, his creative energy, and that space which is unlimited, are considered, it is no hyperbole to say that, although the earth has been created nearly six thousand years ago, suns, the centres of systems, may have been created at so immense a distance that their light has not yet reached our earth, though travelling at the rate of one hundred and ninety thousand miles every second, or upwards of a million times swifter than the motion of a cannon ball! This may be said to be inconceivable; but what is even all this to the vast immensity of space! Had God created a system like ours in every six days since the foundation of the world, and kept every seventh as a Sabbath; and though there might have been by this time [A.M. 5823 ineunte, a.d. […]