Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 3:1-7

Prayer and Reading of 2 Chronicles 3

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this time we get to spend together in prayer and studying your word. I pray that you would bless this evening. In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, we are in 2 Chronicles 3.

Let's go ahead and do a quick reading of 2 Chronicles 3. 2 Chronicles, all right, yeah, on page 360 of the Bible. All right, then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to David his father at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

He began to build it in the second month of the fourth year of his reign. These are Solomon's measurements for building the house of God. The length in cubits of the old standard was 60 cubits and the breadth 20 cubits.

The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was 20 cubits long equal to the width of the house and its height was 120 cubits. He overlaid it on the inside with pure gold. The nave he lined with cypress and covered it with fine gold and made palms and chains on it.

He adorned the house with settings of precious stones. The gold was gold of parvaium and so he lined the house with gold and its beams, its thresholds, its walls and its doors and he carved cherubim on the walls.

He made the most holy place. Its length corresponding to the breadth of the house was 20 cubits and its breadth was 20 cubits. He overlaid it with 600 talents of fine gold. The weight of the gold for the nails was 50 shekels and he overlaid the upper chambers with gold.

The most holy place he made two cherubim of wood and overlaid them with gold. The wings of the cherubim together extended 20 cubits. One wing of the same of five cubits touched the wall of the house and its other wing of five cubits touched the wing of the other cherub.

And of this cherub, one wing of five cubits touched the wall of the house and the other wing also of five cubits was joined to the wing of the first cherub. The wings of these cherubim extended 20 cubits.

The cherubim stood on their feet facing the nave and he made the veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics and fine linen and he worked cherubim on it. In front of the house he made two pillars, 35 cubits high and with the capital of five cubits on the top of each.

He made chains like a necklace and he put them on the tops of the pillars and made a hundred pomegranates and put them on the chains. He set up the pillars in front of the temple, one on the south and the other on the north.

That on the south he called Jachin and on the north Boaz. He made an altar of bronze 20 cubits long and 20 cubits wide and 10 cubits high. Amen. All right, let's go ahead and dig into this. So, a few points for just understanding an explanation.

In verse 3, it talked about of the old standard. What did you all make of that? What was the old standard that it's talking about? Do you all understand what was going on there when it talked about the old standard?

Right, yeah, there's two different measurements of cubits. You see this come out in Ezekiel as well, which is referenced there. There are different kinds of cubits. There are cubits that are fairly long and cubits that are, you know, just like this, right?

A hand of breadth being this. All right, so yeah, he's interested in, you know, accurate measurements, explaining what exactly, how exactly long it is. Another thing worth mentioning here in verse 3 also, it talked about the 60 cubits and of the breadth 20 cubits.

Now, in some translations, like you'll see the ASV, yeah, some have this as a longer length. Let's see. Maybe this was a note for a different passage. Anyway, one of these comes out as 20 in some translations and 120 in other translations.

There's a text critical issue where some people think that it's, yeah, it's a different length because 120, verse 4. Oh, okay, thanks. Yeah, so in, okay. Yeah, so with one of these, it seems kind of shocking that it would be 120 cubits high, right?

And so given a couple of details about how 120 comes out in the text, some people think it should instead be 20, but the way this appears in traditional translations is just 120 because that's what the Hebrew text says.

And it looks like the ESV is consistent with that height, 120 cubits. Okay, yes. So do you have a question there? Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of manuscripts behind all these texts, and so, yeah, scholars put them together.

And so depending on which Bible you're reading, they're going to occasionally make different choices. Sometimes those choices are, yeah, motivated by a desire for consistency. Sometimes they're going to be trying to go with the oldest manuscript.

So, yeah, if you ever come across that where you see different translations say different things, you would have to look into that more. Of course, for the height of the temple, you know, that's not going to really change anyone's theology of the temple, even if it might have some implications for how you understand the passage.

All right, and then in verse 5, it talks about the greater house. What is the greater house? How did that come out in the ESV? That said, the nave, the nave, spoke of it as the nave. Yes, what was the greater house?

And why do you say that? Because it's greater than the other places. So greater, yeah, so greater means larger. So the most holy place is kind of the small place on the inside, right? So the greater house means the house outside the house, right?

House and temple are the same word. If I remember correctly, the word that's used for different passages about the temple, we'll use different words to describe the temple. If I remember correctly, and I might be thinking of Ezekiel, actually, I am thinking of Ezekiel, and Ezekiel, it's the word palace that's used frequently.

I forget which word is used frequently here for house, but it might be by, you know, it might be just the word house. So anyway, when it's talking about the greater house here, it's talking about the place outside the main temple.

It's a larger place, yeah. Are you talking about 1 Kings 6? Okay, 1 Kings 6, 19. The inner sanctuary he prepared in the innermost part of the house to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Yeah, okay.

So, and what's your, right, yeah, yeah. The house that is the nave in front of the inner sanctuary is 40 cubits long. So the greater house, what the ESV is calling the nave, is the larger place surrounding that.

And by surrounding, not surrounding on all four sides, it's really just surrounding on one side, right. Yeah, right. So it's sharing, like, the holy places at the end, right, and then you've got the inner sanctuary, and then you've got the nave.

Yeah, all right. The, okay, so that's what the greater house is. Nave, a lot of times, a lot of times that will be used in churches, too. Like, if you go to a fancier church, they will call, you know, different churches will use different language for this.

The word I usually heard used for our little stage right here is dais, right, or dais. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. And then some churches will talk about it like it's a theater, right, like the stage versus the house, okay.

Like, if you're involved in theater, this area is the house, this area is the stage, right. And then if you go to a fancier church, they'll usually call this the nave and this is the chapel, the chancel, okay.

So this is kind of, I think that's where the language nave is coming from when describing churches, is describing this like the area outside of, outside of that area just at the end. Especially if you think about what those kinds of churches I'm describing look like, right, like the Anglican church, you know, that's, or the, or Roman Catholic, you know, stone cathedral kind of things, right, that's very long and then that end is kind of roped off and it's got all sorts of things going on.

You got the pipe organ back there and all that stuff, right. So it is kind of like this holier place, right. It's not really, but if you imagine that being like that, this area is the nave out here, then that's the chancel.

Okay. What's that? It's an architecture term? Yeah. Okay. That's, yeah, that's useful. Let's see. And then we also have all these different things about cypress and gold, all these things demonstrating it's magnificent, palm trees, chains.

Any observations about palm trees and chains in scripture? Yes, go ahead, Tasha. Egypt. Slavery in Egypt. So it's interesting, if you look up the words, words chains, you don't really see, don't really see slaves and chains that frequently.

You do see Joseph being given a gold chain around his neck. You see Daniel being given a gold chain around his neck, right? Like these are, it's like these are images of authority and power. So it's almost like the opposite of slavery.

Gold chain, you should think about like, you know, rappers wearing gold chains, like that kind of, that kind of gold chains. Yes. Yeah. So you do have, right, so you do have that image of authority with the palms in the New Testament.

I did not check the word that was used in the Septuagint for this to see if it's the same word used in the New Testament to describe the palms. That would be, that would be interesting. A lot of these words are unique though.

Like if you just do an English shirts for chain, it's going to be a different word than the word used here. If you search the Hebrew word for palm, it's not going to be the same word used for palms elsewhere.

So that all, that's all kind of a significant way of how you would decide, is it trying to allude to these other things? The question is, is it even using the same word? It might look like the same word in English, but then not be in Hebrew.

So some caution is warranted there. But regardless, it does show, you know, like a fruitfulness. It shows the life of God's, of God. You see, well, like where do you see palm trees, right? Palm trees happens where there's an oasis.

I plan on visiting Joshua Tree Park in a few weeks, and one of the, one of the features of that park as I was looking through things is this 49 palms oasis where there's just random part in the middle of this desert where there's just a bunch of palm trees, right?

Because that's where there's a lot of life and there's water there. There's a little oasis where everything else around is pretty dead. And you see that in Scripture too, right? And as the people go through Elim from the Exodus, it's a place of 12 springs and 20, 12 springs and 70 palm trees.

All right. A few things as you looked at the various readings that were given, what was the significance of this being at Mount Moriah? Like this is the first time that we learned that this is at Mount Moriah in Scripture, whereas before we've just heard of it described as other, by other names.

What's the significance of Mount Moriah? Yes, Ken? Okay, that phrase, yeah, the Lord will provide the land. John, were you going to say something else? Okay. What about narratively? What happened at Mount Moriah?

Tasha? Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, so that's a very significant event in Israel's history where Abraham is tested, and because of that, you know, God is pleased with him. And so this is going to be the place where the temple is, where God has provided a, yeah, where God has provided a land.

Yes? Abraham bought that plot of land. I don't know exactly, but those are both, like, in the land, right? Because if Mount Moriah is in Jerusalem and then, yeah, the cave that he buys is also, you know, in the land.

It's the only plot that he ends up buying it all and owning. I think it was supposed to be close to Bethlehem. Is that right? I'm not, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, so it's, anyway, I'm guessing on the order of ten miles, something like that.

That whole land is not very large, you know. It's not, yeah, a lot of this is stuff that you can walk through. There was also something else that was interesting that I did not, that was not added as a reading here, which is that the, he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.

In Ezra 3 .8, we learn that the people, when they're rebuilding the temple, and remember this is a book that's written to the people of the, that are returned from exile, they also began building in the second month.

So they would notice, as they're reading this, you know, they would notice, oh, Solomon started building at the same time we started building. That's an interesting, same time of year. That's an interesting observation.

All right, what other, you know, are there any questions about this? If not, we'll look at some of the differences between this and 1 Kings. Questions? Okay, yeah, what observations do you have between here and 1 Kings?

Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of words in Hebrew that are used for other words. I mean, we talk about that too, you know, the, I'm trying to think of a good, of a good term, but yeah, exactly.

You talk about the shoulder of the road, right? That's the, that's like the right side of the road is the shoulder of the road. You know, that would be a good example. There's also, and what's that? What's that?

Butterfly? What do you mean? Oh, oh, you're just talking like the, yeah, a butterfly is not a fly made of butter. There's also check your six, right? Like your six o 'clock. And yeah, in Hebrew, the word for anger and the word for nostrils are the same word.

You know, it's, that doesn't necessarily mean that the author's trying to do anything. That's just a feature of the language. That's just the word that the language uses, right? You would have to go through and see if that's unique.

Is he doing something special when he calls something the shoulder or is that just the standard word for right? You know? So, okay. Yeah. I would, I would go back and look and see, is that unique in the way that he's using it?

If it's not unique, then it doesn't, you shouldn't. Yeah. It would have to be unique. Like he'd have to be doing something. So if everyone calls this part of the building, the red, if everyone calls this part of the building, the shoulder, like, then it doesn't really, he's not trying to say anything special.

Right. Right. Like if he's right. Like if I call it the shoulder of the road, I'm not trying to make a body metaphor or anything. Right. I'm just, I'm just using normal language. Not, no, not, not unless it was unique.

Like, unless he was trying to do something different. Yeah. I'm not sure what you mean. Not if that's, there would have to be some kind of intention. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, it's, it's not making it a conditional promise.

It's something that's like secure. Right. So yeah, I don't think it has to be necessarily that we're, yeah, that it's trying to avoid that because it doesn't present Solomon as someone who's, who's failed in any way.

Right. So it's just that this is a, right. Yeah. This is a, this is secure promise. It's not a conditional promise. So to say that more, just to repeat that for folks, the phrase used in 1 Kings was something like, let's see.

Oh, what was it? Oh yeah. If you will walk in my statutes and obey my rules and keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will establish my word with you, which I spoke to your father, and I will dwell, et cetera.

And these are things that are just said directly as this is what God will do. Not, not only if he obeys. And yeah, in addition to that, you have just the first verse that we had here in 2 Chronicles. Right.

That's not something that, that the, the Kings had told us about. So he's adding details to let us know how Solomon is walking in the same pattern as Abraham and David. Right. He is, he is building this on Mount Moriah.

He is building this in the same place as Ornan. The Jebusite gave David the, or sold David that, the threshing floor. So he is, he's cutting out a lot of information. So the Chronicler in a lot of ways is going to abbreviate stuff because folks already know a lot of, like they already have 1 Kings.

They already know a lot of this information. And so a lot of what he's doing is just abbreviating, but he's trying to highlight and emphasize and add extra details that, that would be important. And especially showing them the legacy that's being, that's being passed down.

You notice also at the beginning of 1 Kings, it had talked about 400 years from the Exodus. Anybody notice that? And then, and then later in 2 Chronicles, it doesn't mention that. This is not going to be the only time.

There are several times mentions of the Exodus are omitted by the Chronicler. And if you think about why is that, especially given that the Chronicler highlights a lot of similarities to Moses, he's actually trying to emphasize Moses.

Why would he omit mentions of the Exodus? Well, if you remember, he describes the people as beginning with Adam, right? In 1 Chronicles, it starts with the genealogy all the way beginning at Adam and going forward.

And so this is the people that have been around since the beginning and have continued on, and God has, God has built them up all the way from Adam. Whereas the point often with, with pointing out the Exodus is that this is where God formed the people.

Before they weren't a people, He forms them at the Exodus and makes them a people for His own. Now, there's a sense in which that's true, but the Chronicler is trying to show God's purposes all the way from, from before even the Exodus, all the way from the beginning.

So He does not, anytime 1 Kings points to the Exodus as some kind of starting point, the Chronicler does not include that because He's thinking of Eden as the starting point, all the way from, all the way from Adam.

Yes. Right. No. Yeah. My, my understanding is it's primarily about where He wants to begin the story. Like 1 Kings does not begin all the way at Adam, right? 1 Chronicles does begin all the way at Adam.

This is, this is the whole story, right? Remember 1 Chronicle, or 1, 2 Chronicles are like the revelation of the Old Testament. It's retelling the whole Old Testament story. And so it's not, yeah, it's not beginning at the Exodus.

It's just beginning all the way at the beginning. Yeah. Perhaps. Yeah. I mean, there's a sense in which it's a national beginning, but you know, the Chronicler is pointing out God's purposes this whole time, right?

His, His purposes go all the way back to Adam, even before there was a nation called Israel, right? I guess you could call it that. Yeah. I mean, it's physical in as much as there are physical people, but all right.

Anything? Yeah, I know. That's, that's, that's why I'm like uncomfortable with just affirming that language, but yeah. Yeah. Like God has two peoples, right? A physical people and a spiritual people, right?

The spiritual people are the Christians and the physical people are the Israelites.

Oh, I mean, I didn't say that.

Yeah. It's funny because Emmanuel in the car told me that his dispensationalism is still, is still affecting him as he reads Scripture. So we'll, we'll cure that. Don't worry. Yeah. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't break it down with those categories.

I would just say that the Chronicler is trying to emphasize that God's purposes go back all the way to the beginning. All right. Let's see. Anything else anyone wants to point out? Okay. So as far as like what details are getting abbreviated and what details are getting the Chronicler wants to include, a lot of that are the dimensions.

First Kings has a lot of dimensions. The Chronicler doesn't need to repeat all of those. However, a lot of the details about the material weren't there in First Kings, so he adds a lot of details about the materials to show the glory and splendor of it.

So this isn't necessarily like a distinct emphasis, so much as it is, he's trying to add details that weren't there in First Kings and then not repeat every detail that was there in First Kings. Yeah.

And then in verse 4, sorry, verse 3, when he talks about the foundations, these are the foundations that Solomon laid for building the house of God. This is also interesting because Ezra had, you know, in Ezra, they end up using the same, you know, the same foundations are part of what they build on in Ezra 6 .3.

So he seems to be emphasizing things that are kind of important to those who are post-exile building the temple. Great. I think it just talks about the glory and authority of God. Gold chain work in Scripture for Joseph, for Daniel, representing, you know, someone of authority and status.

And then palms just representing, yeah, life and fruitfulness. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No worries. Yeah. No. Some translations go ahead and replace it with 20 because they're that skeptical about it. But yeah, the most literal way to read the Hebrew is just that it is 120.

Yeah. Okay. And yeah, he adds details about the material, right? So it's gold that is not just pure, but also fine and of parvayim, right? A place that some people think is the same as Havilah in Genesis 2 .11, but not necessarily a lot of evidence about that.

The point being, even if people don't know where that's from, you would only mention the name if it's something that makes the gold especially good, right? And so this is good gold. Ophir the same as what?

Right. Yeah. Almost all this stuff refers to southern Africa, and we don't necessarily know the exact location of all these things, but given everything it describes later about Solomon's trips to get more gold and things like that, and where Sheba came from, and she has gold with her, right?

She has a lot of gold. Ophir. All these things seem to describe the southern tip of Africa. That's where they'd be going down to get this stuff. And yeah, there does seem to be a connection to what you see in Genesis about the connection to the river with all the gold, right?

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold, and the gold that is in the land is good.

Bdellium and onyx stone are there, and the name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

So yeah, you have that. This is why some people think Parvaium and Havilah are the same thing, but I think you have some of these rivers mentioned, or specifically the land of Havilah or the Pishon mentioned later to suggest that that is where all this gold that's coming from the south is coming from, same sources for Eden.

Okay, more things about the meticulous beauty of the temple there at the end in verse 7. So a lot of the things that are added are just details talking about the glory of the temple, details that already existed in 1 Kings that had to do with the dimensions, didn't need to be repeated, but then a lot of things about the materials are included to make sure that we know about some of those things.

The Glory of the Temple and the Beauty of Worship

Okay, so in considering all this, what are the implications of these things for our worship of God? What implications do they have for the church and for your life? Any thoughts on that? What's that? Needs to be taller.

Yeah, that's right. That won't have any implications for our acoustics. Okay, he desires the results of a practiced craft of worship. All right, yes. Yeah. Okay, yeah, there we go. 1 Corinthians 3, right?

And that foundation is Christ. Yeah, so that's the foundation is Christ. We're building up all the stones. It is a beautiful temple that God is building, and He is building through us. And this different symbolism lets us know the quality that it should be, not just good, right, but also, oh, it has life, is attended with spiritual help.

You know, we do have the cherubim mentioned here and other things, right? There's a lot that demonstrates what kind of a temple God is building. All right, well, let's go ahead and, yes, right. Yes, on one hand, anything you build doesn't compare to Christ.

But remember, the temple is not just Christ, but He is the head and the whole body is a temple. So it's not just He's the temple, but in Him we are also the temple, and we have the privilege of not just being built, but also engaging in the building, right?

We are called to grow, to invite others into the kingdom, etc., right? And so, in other words, if it were not for Christ, we would have no opportunity to build truly great and beautiful things, but we do in Him because we are able to do that, engage in that building that He is building, right?

Does that make sense? The church. Yeah, it's the church, right? Not the church building, but the people, right? So when you are used as an instrument to make the stones more perfect, right, or to build up on the stones, just like you see in 1 Corinthians 3, no one can lay a foundation other than the foundation that is laid, but some will build up with gold, silver, jewels, precious stones.

Others build up with wood, hay, straw. So if people can do a bad job, right, they can build up with wood, hay, straw, and that will all get burnt, but if you build up things with gold, jewels, precious stones, that lasts, and there will be a reward for that.

Now that is talking, in 1 Corinthians 3, that's talking about teachers, but those are the, you know, quintessential or prototypical example of one who would be doing the building, but anyone who is invested in the life of the church and building up brothers and sisters and edifying, right?

What does the word edify mean? It means to build up, right? These are ways to do that as well and to have a reward for it at the end. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that You would encourage us in the work of building the temple that as we look at these passages to talk about Your greatness in these images of gold and figures, we pray that You would give us a sense of zeal and passion for what You would have us do here on this earth.

In Jesus' name, amen.