2 Chronicles 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Solomon starts building the temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, at the threshing floor David had prepared, in the fourth year of his reign. The chapter gives the measurements of the building and its porch, the wood paneling, the gold overlay, the carved and woven cherubim, the two gold-covered cherubim in the Most Holy Place, and the curtain. It ends with the two pillars set up in front of the temple and named Jachin and Boaz.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • Solomon began to build the house of the LORD.
   • The house was built in Jerusalem.
   • The house was built on Mount Moriah.
   • The LORD had appeared to David, Solomon's father, at that place.
   • The site was the place David had prepared.
   • The site was the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
2. 3:2
   • Solomon began to build on the second day of the second month.
   • He began to build in the fourth year of his reign.
3. 3:3
   • This was the foundation Solomon laid for building the house of God.
   • The length was sixty cubits, measured by the older standard of cubit.
   • The breadth was twenty cubits.
4. 3:4
   • There was a porch across the front of the house.
   • The porch ran along the width of the house.
   • The porch measured twenty cubits.
   • The height was a hundred and twenty.
   • He overlaid the porch on the inside with pure gold.
5. 3:5
   • He paneled the greater house with cypress wood.
   • He overlaid the greater house with fine gold.
   • He set palm trees on it.
   • He set chains on it.
6. 3:6
   • He overlaid the house with precious stone for beauty.
   • The gold used was gold of Parvaim.
7. 3:7
   • He overlaid the house with gold.
   • He overlaid the beams with gold.
   • He overlaid the thresholds with gold.
   • He overlaid its walls with gold.
   • He overlaid its doors with gold.
   • He carved cherubim on the walls.
8. 3:8
   • He made the most holy house.
   • Its length ran along the width of the house and was twenty cubits.
   • Its breadth was twenty cubits.
   • He overlaid it with fine gold.
   • The gold overlaying it amounted to six hundred talents.
9. 3:9
   • The weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold.
   • He overlaid the upper chambers with gold.
10. 3:10
    • In the most holy house he made two cherubim.
    • The cherubim were of sculptured work.
    • They overlaid the cherubim with gold.
11. 3:11
    • The wings of the cherubim measured twenty cubits in length together.
    • One wing of the one cherub was five cubits.
    • That wing reached to the wall of the house.
    • The other wing was five cubits.
    • That wing reached to the wing of the other cherub.
12. 3:12
    • One wing of the other cherub was five cubits.
    • That wing reached to the wall of the house.
    • Its other wing was five cubits.
    • That wing touched the wing of the first cherub.
13. 3:13
    • The wings of these cherubim were spread out twenty cubits.
    • The cherubim stood on their feet.
    • Their faces were turned toward the house.
14. 3:14
    • He made the veil.
    • The veil was of blue, purple, and crimson yarn and fine linen.
    • He put cherubim on the veil.
15. 3:15
    • He made two pillars in front of the house.
    • The pillars measured thirty-five cubits in length.
    • The capital on top was five cubits.
16. 3:16
    • He made chains in the inner sanctuary.
    • He put the chains on the tops of the pillars.
    • He made a hundred pomegranates.
    • He put the pomegranates on the chains.
17. 3:17
    • He set up the pillars in front of the temple.
    • One pillar was on the right side.
    • The other pillar was on the left side.
    • He named the pillar on the right Jachin.
    • He named the pillar on the left Boaz.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

"The house of the LORD" means the temple; in the ancient world a temple was routinely spoken of as the god's house, and "house" is used for the building all through this chapter. Mount Moriah is named nowhere else in the Bible except Genesis 22, where Abraham is sent to "the land of Moriah"; the Chronicler is identifying the temple hill with that place. The Jebusites were the people living in Jerusalem before David captured the city, so Ornan was one of the original inhabitants; the earlier account of David buying his threshing floor after a plague is in 1 Chronicles 21.

3:2

The Hebrew year began in spring, so the second month falls roughly in April–May. Dating events by the year of a king's reign was the standard way of fixing a date; there was no continuous era-numbering like AD.

3:3

A cubit was the distance from elbow to fingertips, about eighteen inches (45 cm), so the building was roughly ninety feet by thirty. "The older standard" points to the fact that more than one cubit was in use (a longer, older one of about twenty-one inches and a shorter later one) and the writer is telling us which he means.

3:4

The porch is a covered entrance portico across the front of the building. The height of "a hundred and twenty" cubits (about 180 feet) is out of all proportion to a building thirty feet wide, and some ancient copies and versions read twenty cubits instead; the Hebrew text as it stands says 120, and the discrepancy has never been resolved.

3:5

"The main room" is the large outer hall, between the porch and the innermost room. The wood named here is a conifer, the exact species behind the Hebrew word is uncertain, and translators render it fir, cypress or juniper. "Chains" means chainwork: linked metal ornament used as a decorative border.

3:6

Parvaim is otherwise unknown. It is presumably a place famous for the quality of its gold, as Ophir was, but no one has identified it.

3:7

Cherubim (singular cherub) are not the plump babies of later art. In the ancient Near East they were composite winged creatures, part animal and part human, carved or embroidered as guardians flanking thrones, doorways and sacred places, which is how they function here.

3:8

The Most Holy Place is the innermost room of the temple, a windowless cube shut off from the main hall, entered by no one but the high priest. A talent was a weight of about seventy-five pounds (34 kg), so six hundred talents is on the order of twenty tons of gold, a figure meant to convey overwhelming lavishness.

3:9

A shekel weighed about two-fifths of an ounce (11.5 g), so fifty shekels is roughly a pound and a quarter. In this period a shekel was a unit of weight, not a stamped coin.

3:13

The two figures faced outward toward the main room rather than toward each other, standing side by side like guards at the entrance to the inner chamber, their four wings together spanning the full width of the room.

3:14

This is the curtain that screened off the Most Holy Place. The three dyes named were the costly ones: blue and purple came from a secretion of murex sea snails, and crimson from the crushed bodies of an insect that lives on oak trees. Cloth of these colors signaled royalty and great expense.

3:15

These were free-standing ornamental pillars, not roof supports. The figure of thirty-five cubits (about fifty feet) conflicts with 1 Kings 7:15 and 2 Kings 25:17, which give each pillar as eighteen cubits; thirty-five may be the two pillars reckoned together, or a copying error. The "decorated top" is the capital, the carved block crowning a column.

3:16

"As in the oracle" is the King James rendering of an obscure Hebrew phrase; "oracle" is that version's word for the inner sanctuary, but the Hebrew here may instead mean chains worn as a necklace, and translators differ. Pomegranates were a standard decorative motif in Israelite and Phoenician craftwork, valued for the shape of the fruit.

3:17

Someone standing in front of the temple faced east, so the right-hand pillar stood to the south and the left-hand one to the north. The names are Hebrew words, not simply labels: Jachin means roughly "he establishes" or "he will set firm," and Boaz is usually taken to mean "in him is strength" or "by strength." The text does not explain them.