2 Chronicles 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Solomon decides to build a temple for the name of the LORD and a royal palace for himself, and he organizes a huge labor force for the work. He writes to Huram king of Tyre asking for cedar and other timber from Lebanon and for a master craftsman, and he offers wheat, barley, wine, and oil as payment. Huram writes back agreeing, sends a skilled worker whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre, and arranges to float the logs by sea to Joppa. The chapter closes with the census of foreign men in Israel and how Solomon assigned them to the work.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the LORD.
   • Solomon determined to build a house for his own royal rule.
2. 2:2
   • Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to carry loads.
   • Solomon counted out eighty thousand men to cut stone in the mountains.
   • Solomon appointed three thousand six hundred men to supervise them.
3. 2:3
   • Solomon sent word to Huram, king of Tyre.
   • Solomon called David his father.
   • Solomon said Huram had dealt with David his father in a certain way.
   • Solomon said Huram had sent David cedars.
   • Solomon said the cedars were for David to build himself a house to live in.
   • Solomon asked Huram to deal with him in the same way.
4. 2:4
   • Solomon said he was building a house for the name of the LORD his God.
   • Solomon said the house was to be dedicated to God.
   • Solomon said the house was for burning fragrant incense before God.
   • Solomon said the house was for the continual showbread.
   • Solomon said the house was for burnt offerings morning and evening.
   • Solomon said the house was for burnt offerings on the sabbaths.
   • Solomon said the house was for burnt offerings on the new moons.
   • Solomon said the house was for burnt offerings on the appointed feasts of the LORD their God.
   • Solomon said this is an ordinance upon Israel forever.
5. 2:5
   • Solomon said the house he was building is great.
   • Solomon said their God is great above all gods.
6. 2:6
   • Solomon asked who is able to build God a house.
   • Solomon said the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain God.
   • Solomon asked who he himself was that he should build God a house.
   • Solomon said he could build it only as a place to burn sacrifice before God.
7. 2:7
   • Solomon asked Huram to send him a man skilled to work in gold, silver, bronze, and iron.
   • Solomon asked for a man skilled to work in purple, crimson, and blue.
   • Solomon asked for a man skilled in engraving.
   • Solomon said the man would work with the skilled men who were with him in Judah and Jerusalem.
   • Solomon said David his father had provided those skilled men.
8. 2:8
   • Solomon asked Huram to send cedar, cypress, and algum timber from Lebanon.
   • Solomon said he knew Huram's servants were skilled at cutting timber in Lebanon.
   • Solomon said his own servants would work with Huram's servants.
9. 2:9
   • Solomon said the purpose was to prepare timber for him in abundance.
   • Solomon said the house he was about to build would be great and wonderful.
10. 2:10
    • Solomon said he would give Huram's servants, the woodcutters, twenty thousand measures of crushed wheat.
    • Solomon said he would give twenty thousand measures of barley.
    • Solomon said he would give twenty thousand baths of wine.
    • Solomon said he would give twenty thousand baths of oil.
11. 2:11
    • Huram king of Tyre answered Solomon in a written letter.
    • Huram said the LORD has loved his people.
    • Huram said that because of this the LORD made Solomon king over them.
12. 2:12
    • Huram further said, Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel.
    • Huram said the LORD made heaven and earth.
    • Huram said the LORD has given King David a wise son.
    • Huram said the son is endowed with prudence and understanding.
    • Huram said the son would build a house for the LORD and a house for his royal rule.
13. 2:13
    • Huram said he had sent a skillful man endowed with understanding.
    • The text is ambiguous whether the man is named Huram-abi or is described as belonging to Huram's father.
14. 2:14
    • The man's mother was a woman from the daughters of Dan.
    • The man's father was a man of Tyre.
    • The man is skilled to work in gold, silver, bronze, and iron.
    • The man is skilled to work in stone and wood.
    • The man is skilled to work in purple, blue, crimson, and fine linen.
    • The man is able to do every kind of engraving.
    • The man is able to devise any design assigned to him.
    • Huram said the man would work with Solomon's skilled men.
    • Huram said the man would work with the skilled men of David, Solomon's father, whom Huram called his lord.
15. 2:15
    • Huram asked Solomon to send the wheat, barley, oil, and wine that he had spoken of to Huram's servants.
16. 2:16
    • Huram said they would cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as Solomon needed.
    • Huram said they would bring the wood to Solomon as rafts by sea to Joppa.
    • Huram said Solomon would carry the wood up to Jerusalem.
17. 2:17
    • Solomon numbered all the foreigners in the land of Israel.
    • The numbering followed the census David his father had made.
    • They were found to be one hundred fifty-three thousand six hundred.
18. 2:18
    • Solomon set seventy thousand of them to carry loads.
    • Solomon set eighty thousand of them to cut stone in the mountains.
    • Solomon set three thousand six hundred of them as overseers to make the people work.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

"A house for the name of the LORD" means a temple. In Hebrew idiom a god's "name" placed on a building marks it as belonging to him and as the spot where he can be approached; it is not a claim that he lives inside. The second "house" is an ordinary royal residence, a palace, and the two building projects run together through the chapter.

2:2

The King James "told out" means "counted out" or "mustered," not "told" in the modern sense. The men were conscripted labor, drafted for state work rather than hired; verse 17 identifies who they were.

2:3

Tyre was a wealthy Phoenician seaport on the coast of what is now Lebanon, north of Israel, known across the ancient world for its shipping, its dyed cloth and its builders. Its king is called Huram here and Hiram in 1 Kings; both spell the same name. The cedar of the Lebanon mountains was the prestige building timber of the region (tall, straight, fragrant and resistant to rot) and had to be imported, since Israel had no comparable forests.

2:4

Four items of temple routine are listed. Incense is fragrant gum resin burned to produce sweet smoke. The "continual shewbread" ("bread of the Presence") was twelve loaves kept permanently on a table inside the sanctuary and replaced each Sabbath. A burnt offering is an animal burned whole on the altar rather than eaten. The new moon, the first day of each lunar month, was a festival day in Israel, as it was elsewhere in the ancient Near East, and the "solemn feasts" are the fixed annual festivals of the religious calendar, chiefly Passover, Weeks and Booths.

2:5

People in other lands worshiped many gods. They often made statues of them.

2:6

"The heaven and heaven of heavens" is a Hebrew way of saying "the sky and the very highest sky", a doubled phrase for the largest space imaginable. Solomon's point is about scale: the building cannot be a container for God, only a place to make offerings.

2:7

"Cunning" in 1611 English meant skilled or expert, with no suggestion of slyness; the same word is used of craftsmen throughout the chapter. Purple, crimson and blue refer to dyed yarn, not to paint or metal. These dyes were extremely costly (purple and blue extracted in tiny quantities from murex sea snails, crimson from a scale insect) and were the standard materials of royal and sacred furnishings. "Brass" in the King James means bronze, an alloy of copper and tin; true brass was not in use.

2:8

"Fir" here is more likely cypress or juniper. Algum (spelled almug in 1 Kings) is a timber that has never been securely identified; suggestions include a juniper and, on the strength of its later use for musical instruments and stair-work, sandalwood.

2:10

The "measures" are cors, each roughly 220 liters (about 6 bushels) of grain, though ancient measures varied. A bath is the liquid equivalent, about 22 liters or 6 gallons. So the payment amounts to something on the order of 120,000 gallons each of wine and olive oil, with grain to match, payment in food rather than coin, which had not yet been invented in this region.

2:13

The King James "of Huram my father's" reflects a difficulty in the Hebrew: the words can be read as a description ("Huram, my master craftsman") or, as most modern translations take them, as the man's actual name, Huram-abi, distinct from King Huram who is writing the letter. The element abi means "my father" and was used as an honorific for a senior expert or adviser.

2:14

A woman "of the daughters of Dan" means a woman of the Israelite tribe of Dan; the parallel account in 1 Kings 7:14 says her tribe was Naphtali, and the two traditions differ. Fine linen is high-grade woven flax, the fabric used for priestly garments and sanctuary hangings. "To find out every device which shall be put to him" means he can work out how to execute any design he is handed.

2:16

"In floats" means as rafts: the logs were lashed together and towed or floated down the coast rather than carried in ships. Joppa (modern Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv) was the nearest usable harbor to Jerusalem, about 35 miles away. "Carry it up" is literal, Jerusalem stands roughly 2,500 feet above the coastal plain, so the last stage was an overland haul uphill.

2:17

"Strangers" in the King James means resident foreigners (non-Israelites settled in the land, chiefly descendants of the peoples living there before Israel), not visitors or unknown persons. Chronicles is careful to say the conscripted labor force was drawn from this group. A census was a means of assessing manpower for taxation, military service and forced labor, which is why David's earlier numbering of the people is remembered as a grave matter elsewhere in Chronicles.

2:18

"To set the people a work" means to keep the workers at their tasks, an older phrasing of "set to work." These are the same figures as verse 2, repeated now that the source of the workforce has been named.