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2 Chronicles 6: What the Passage Says

138 claims across 42 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Chronicles 6 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

At the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem, Solomon blesses the assembled people of Israel and recounts how God chose Jerusalem and David, and how David's son was to build the house instead of David himself. Standing on a bronze platform before the altar, Solomon kneels and prays, saying that not even the highest heavens can contain God, and asking that God hear prayers made toward this house. He lists specific situations for which people will pray there: disputes settled by oath, defeat in battle, drought, famine and plague, the prayer of a foreigner, war, and exile after sin. He closes by asking God to come to his resting place with the ark, and to remember his loving faithfulness to David.

Claim by Claim

  1. 6:1
    • Solomon then spoke.
    • Solomon said that the LORD had said he would dwell in thick darkness.
  2. 6:2
    • Solomon said he had built a lofty house for the LORD.
    • Solomon said he had built a place for the LORD to dwell in forever.
  3. 6:3
    • The king turned his face around.
    • The king blessed the whole assembly of Israel.
    • The whole assembly of Israel was standing.
  4. 6:4
    • Solomon said the LORD, the God of Israel, is blessed.
    • Solomon said the LORD spoke with his mouth to David, Solomon's father.
    • Solomon said the LORD fulfilled with his hands what he had spoken.
  5. 6:5
    • The LORD said he brought his people out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD said that since that day he had chosen no city among all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house for his name to be there.
    • The LORD said he had not chosen any man to be ruler over his people Israel.
  6. 6:6
    • The LORD said he chose Jerusalem for his name to be there.
    • The LORD said he chose David to be over his people Israel.
  7. 6:7
    • It was in the heart of David, Solomon's father, to build a house for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.
  8. 6:8
    • The LORD spoke to David, Solomon's father.
    • The LORD said it was in David's heart to build a house for the LORD's name.
    • The LORD said David did well in having this in his heart.
  9. 6:9
    • The LORD said David would not build the house.
    • The LORD said David's son, who would come out of David's loins, would build the house for the LORD's name.
  10. 6:10
    • Solomon said the LORD had performed the word he spoke.
    • Solomon said he had risen up in the place of David his father.
    • Solomon said he sat on the throne of Israel, as the LORD had promised.
    • Solomon said he had built the house for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.
  11. 6:11
    • Solomon said he had put the ark there.
    • Solomon said the covenant of the LORD is in the ark.
    • Solomon said the LORD made that covenant with the children of Israel.
  12. 6:12
    • Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD.
    • Solomon stood in the presence of the whole assembly of Israel.
    • Solomon spread out his hands.
  13. 6:13
    • Solomon had made a bronze platform.
    • The platform was five cubits long.
    • The platform was five cubits wide.
    • The platform was three cubits high.
    • Solomon had set the platform in the middle of the court.
    • Solomon stood on the platform.
    • Solomon knelt down on his knees before the whole assembly of Israel.
    • Solomon spread out his hands toward heaven.
  14. 6:14
    • Solomon said there is no God like the LORD, the God of Israel, in heaven or on earth.
    • Solomon said the LORD keeps covenant and steadfast love with his servants.
    • Solomon said those servants walk before the LORD with all their heart.
  15. 6:15
    • Solomon said the LORD had kept with his servant David, Solomon's father, what he promised him.
    • Solomon said the LORD spoke with his mouth.
    • Solomon said the LORD fulfilled it with his hand, as on this day.
  16. 6:16
    • Solomon asked the LORD, the God of Israel, to keep with his servant David, Solomon's father, what he promised him.
    • Solomon said the LORD had promised David that a man of his line would never fail to sit before the LORD on the throne of Israel.
    • Solomon said that promise held only if David's sons take heed to their way to walk in the LORD's law as David had walked before the LORD.
  17. 6:17
    • Solomon asked the LORD, the God of Israel, to let his word be confirmed.
    • Solomon said that word was spoken to the LORD's servant David.
  18. 6:18
    • Solomon asked whether God would indeed dwell with men on the earth.
    • Solomon said heaven and the highest heavens cannot contain God.
    • Solomon said still less can the house he built contain God.
  19. 6:19
    • Solomon asked the LORD his God to turn toward the prayer of his servant and his plea.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to listen to the cry and the prayer that his servant prays before him.
  20. 6:20
    • Solomon asked that the LORD's eyes be open toward this house day and night.
    • Solomon said the LORD had said he would put his name in that place.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to listen to the prayer his servant prays toward this place.
  21. 6:21
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear the pleas of his servant and of his people Israel when they pray toward this place.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from his dwelling place, from heaven.
    • Solomon asked that when the LORD hears, he forgive.
  22. 6:22
    • Solomon set the case of a man sinning against his neighbor.
    • Solomon set the case of an oath being imposed on him to make him swear.
    • Solomon set the case of the oath coming before the LORD's altar in this house.
  23. 6:23
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven and act.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to judge his servants.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to repay the wicked man by bringing his way upon his own head.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to justify the righteous man by giving him according to his righteousness.
  24. 6:24
    • Solomon set the case of the LORD's people Israel being defeated before an enemy.
    • Solomon said that defeat would be because they had sinned against the LORD.
    • Solomon set the case of their returning and confessing the LORD's name.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying and pleading before the LORD in this house.
  25. 6:25
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to forgive the sin of his people Israel.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to bring them back to the land he gave to them and to their fathers.
  26. 6:26
    • Solomon set the case of the heavens being shut up so that there is no rain.
    • Solomon said that would be because they had sinned against the LORD.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying toward this place.
    • Solomon set the case of their confessing the LORD's name.
    • Solomon set the case of their turning from their sin when the LORD afflicts them.
  27. 6:27
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to forgive the sin of his servants and of his people Israel.
    • Solomon said the LORD teaches them the good way in which they should walk.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to send rain on his land.
    • Solomon said the LORD gave that land to his people as an inheritance.
  28. 6:28
    • Solomon set the case of famine in the land.
    • Solomon set the case of pestilence.
    • Solomon set the case of blight or mildew.
    • Solomon set the case of locusts or caterpillars.
    • Solomon set the case of enemies besieging them in the land of their cities.
    • Solomon set the case of any plague or any sickness.
  29. 6:29
    • Solomon set the case of any prayer or any plea made by any man or by all the LORD's people Israel.
    • Solomon said each one knows his own affliction and his own pain.
    • Solomon set the case of a man spreading out his hands toward this house.
  30. 6:30
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven, his dwelling place.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to forgive.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to render to each man according to all his ways.
    • Solomon said the LORD knows each man's heart.
    • Solomon said the LORD alone knows the hearts of the children of men.
  31. 6:31
    • Solomon said the purpose is that they may fear the LORD and walk in his ways.
    • Solomon said this should be for as long as they live in the land.
    • Solomon said the LORD gave that land to their fathers.
  32. 6:32
    • Solomon spoke also of the foreigner who is not of the LORD's people Israel.
    • Solomon said such a foreigner comes from a far country for the sake of the LORD's great name, his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm.
    • Solomon set the case of such foreigners coming and praying toward this house.
  33. 6:33
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven, from his dwelling place.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to do all that the foreigner calls to him for.
    • Solomon said the purpose is that all the peoples of the earth may know the LORD's name.
    • Solomon said the purpose is that they may fear the LORD as his people Israel do.
    • Solomon said the purpose is that they may know that this house Solomon built is called by the LORD's name.
  34. 6:34
    • Solomon set the case of the LORD's people going out to war against their enemies by the way the LORD sends them.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying to the LORD toward this city which the LORD has chosen.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying toward the house Solomon built for the LORD's name.
  35. 6:35
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear their prayer and their plea from heaven.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to maintain their cause.
  36. 6:36
    • Solomon set the case of their sinning against the LORD.
    • Solomon said there is no man who does not sin.
    • Solomon set the case of the LORD being angry with them.
    • Solomon set the case of the LORD delivering them over before an enemy.
    • Solomon set the case of their captors carrying them away to a land far off or near.
  37. 6:37
    • Solomon set the case of their taking it to heart in the land where they are held captive.
    • Solomon set the case of their turning and pleading with the LORD in the land of their captivity.
    • Solomon said they would say they have sinned, done wrong, and acted wickedly.
  38. 6:38
    • Solomon set the case of their returning to the LORD with all their heart and all their soul in the land of their captivity, where they were carried captive.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying toward their land, which the LORD gave to their fathers.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying toward the city the LORD has chosen.
    • Solomon set the case of their praying toward the house Solomon built for the LORD's name.
  39. 6:39
    • Solomon asked the LORD to hear from heaven, from his dwelling place, their prayer and their pleas.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to maintain their cause.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to forgive his people who have sinned against him.
  40. 6:40
    • Solomon asked his God to let his eyes be open.
    • Solomon asked that the LORD's ears be attentive to the prayer made in this place.
  41. 6:41
    • Solomon called on the LORD God to arise to his resting place.
    • Solomon called on the LORD to arise together with the ark of his strength.
    • Solomon asked that the LORD God's priests be clothed with salvation.
    • Solomon asked that the LORD's faithful ones rejoice in goodness.
  42. 6:42
    • Solomon asked the LORD God not to turn away the face of his anointed.
    • Solomon asked the LORD to remember the acts of steadfast love toward David his servant.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1
"The LORD" printed in small capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants roughly YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; where the King James has "Lord" in ordinary type it is translating an ordinary word for master. "Thick darkness" translates a Hebrew word for dense storm-cloud; it echoes the descriptions of God appearing at Mount Sinai wrapped in cloud and gloom, and matches the temple's innermost room, which had no windows.
6:2
"House" here and throughout the chapter means the temple. Hebrew uses the ordinary word for a dwelling, so the same term covers a family home and a god's house; the joke of the whole prayer turns on that double sense. The King James "house of habitation" translates a phrase whose sense is disputed: it may mean a lofty or princely house, or simply a house for you to live in.
6:3
"Congregation" in the King James does not mean a church membership; it is the standard word for the whole people of Israel gathered in one place, here as a national assembly. To "bless" people is to pronounce a formal declaration of favor over them, something a king or priest did on public occasions.
6:4
"Blessed be the LORD" uses the same word in the opposite direction: when God blesses people he gives them good; when people bless God they praise and acknowledge him. The contrast between what God "spake with his mouth" and what he "fulfilled with his hands" is a stock Hebrew pairing for a promise carried through into action.
6:5
For a name to be "there" is an idiom of ownership and presence: the place is publicly identified as belonging to that god, the way a name on a deed marks a property. It stops short of saying the god is confined to the building, which is the point Solomon presses in verse 18.
6:6
Jerusalem was the most important city in Israel. That is where the temple was built.
6:9
"Come forth out of thy loins" is a plain Hebrew idiom for a man's biological offspring; it carries no delicacy or euphemism in the original.
6:10
"Room" in 1611 English meant place or position, not a chamber of a building. "I am risen up in the room of David" means simply that Solomon has succeeded his father.
6:11
The ark was a gilded wooden chest, about four feet long, carried on poles; inside it were the stone tablets of the law. A "covenant" is a binding agreement between two parties, of the kind ancient kings made with peoples or with each other, with stated obligations on both sides; the tablets were the document of the agreement, and the chest housed it the way a treaty was deposited in a temple.
6:12
The altar was the large bronze structure standing in the open courtyard, where animals and grain were burned as offerings. Spreading out the hands, palms up and arms raised, was the ordinary posture for prayer in this period, as normal then as folded hands or bowed heads are now.
6:13
A cubit was roughly eighteen inches, about the length of a forearm from elbow to fingertip. The platform was therefore about seven and a half feet square and four and a half feet high. "Brasen" is the King James word for bronze; brass as we know it did not exist then. Kneeling was not the everyday posture for prayer here (standing was), so the detail marks the moment as unusual.
6:14
"Walk before thee" is an idiom for conducting one's whole life in someone's presence and service, the way a courtier lives before a king. The King James "mercy" translates Hebrew *hesed*, which means loyal commitment shown to someone you are bound to by agreement, closer to steadfast faithfulness than to pity.
6:16
"There shall not fail thee a man ... to sit upon the throne" is the standard way of promising an unbroken royal line: there will always be a descendant available to reign. The Hebrew grammar of the condition attached to it is genuinely open: it can be read as a guarantee with a proviso, or as a promise contingent on the descendants' obedience, and translators divide over which.
6:18
"The heaven of heavens" is a Hebrew superlative built by repeating the noun, like "king of kings"; it means the very highest heaven there is. Ancient temples were normally understood to house a god's presence, so the question Solomon asks is a pointed one about his own building.
6:19
The King James word "supplication" means asking for help with your whole heart.
6:20
Praying "toward this place" describes a real physical practice: people at a distance turned to face the temple when they prayed, and the chapter assumes this from here to verse 38. "Have respect" and "hearken" in the King James both mean simply to pay attention and listen.
6:22
This describes a specific legal procedure. When a dispute could not be settled by evidence (a lost deposit, a suspected theft with no witness) the accused was required to swear an oath at the sanctuary, calling down a penalty on himself if he was lying. God, not the court, was expected to enforce the verdict.
6:23
"Justifying" and "condemning" are courtroom words in Hebrew as in English: to justify is to declare formally that someone is in the right, not to make them good. "Recompensing his way upon his own head" is the standard phrase for a penalty falling back on the person who earned it.
6:24
The King James says "confess thy name." To confess God's name meant to say out loud, in front of others, that the LORD was their God.
6:26
"When the heaven is shut up" is the ordinary Hebrew image for drought, the sky pictured as closed doors that release no rain. In a land farmed entirely on seasonal rainfall rather than irrigation, this was the difference between a harvest and none.
6:27
"Inheritance" translates a word for a permanent allotted holding of land, the share assigned to a family or tribe that was not supposed to be sold off. It is a property term, not a reference to a will.
6:28
The King James list uses old agricultural vocabulary: "dearth" is famine, "pestilence" is epidemic disease, "blasting" is the scorching of crops by hot dry wind, "mildew" is a fungal blight that yellows grain, and "caterpillers" is the 1611 word for locusts at a particular stage of growth. Two related insect words appear, but their exact species are uncertain. "Sore" here means an affliction or wound of any kind, not specifically a skin sore.
6:29
A "sore" in this older English is any affliction or suffering, not specifically a wound on the skin.
6:30
"Children of men" is a Hebrew way of saying human beings in general; it carries no sense of youth.
6:31
"Fear thee" in this idiom means to hold in awe and take seriously enough to obey, closer to reverence than to being frightened.
6:32
"Stranger" in the King James means a foreigner, someone from outside Israel, not an unknown person. "Thy mighty hand and thy stretched out arm" is a fixed phrase drawn from the exodus story; it was originally the language of a king's military power reaching out to act.
6:34
Prayer was aimed physically at the temple, so an Israelite far from home would face Jerusalem while praying. The habit outlived the building itself.
6:35
The King James says "maintain their cause." That means to stand up for them and help them.
6:36
Deportation was standard imperial practice: a conquering power moved a defeated population to another part of its territory to break local resistance. The book of Chronicles was compiled after Judah had actually undergone this at the hands of Babylon, so the readers knew the scenario Solomon describes as history.
6:37
"Bethink themselves" is old English for coming to their senses or taking the matter to heart. The three verbs that follow (sinned, done amiss, dealt wickedly) are a formal confession formula, piling up near-synonyms the way legal language does.
6:41
This verse and the next closely follow the closing lines of Psalm 132, adapted. "Arise ... into thy resting place" uses the language of a march ending: the ark had traveled with Israel in a portable tent, and "resting place" means the permanent home where the journeying stops. "Saints" translates a word meaning the loyal or faithful ones, formed from the same root as the "mercy" of verse 14; it has nothing to do with canonised saints.
6:42
"Anointed" means smeared with olive oil, the ceremony by which a king was installed in office; the Hebrew word is *mashiach*, from which "messiah" comes, and here it refers to the reigning king himself. "Turn not away the face of" is court language for refusing a petitioner an audience, the opposite of granting a request.

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