2 Chronicles 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

At the end of the twenty years in which Solomon built the temple and his own palace, he rebuilds and fortifies cities across his territory, captures Hamath-zobah, and organizes forced labor from the non-Israelite peoples left in the land while keeping Israelites in military and command roles. He moves Pharaoh's daughter out of the City of David because the ark had been there, and he keeps up the daily, monthly, and yearly offerings and the priestly and Levitical divisions his father David had set. The chapter ends with a sea trading venture: Hiram's experienced sailors go with Solomon's men to Ophir and bring back 450 talents of gold.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • Twenty years came to an end.
   • During those twenty years Solomon built the house of the LORD.
   • During those twenty years Solomon built his own house.
2. 8:2
   • Huram gave certain cities to Solomon.
   • Solomon rebuilt those cities.
   • Solomon settled the children of Israel in those cities.
3. 8:3
   • Solomon went to Hamath-zobah.
   • Solomon prevailed against Hamath-zobah.
4. 8:4
   • Solomon built Tadmor in the wilderness.
   • Solomon built all the store cities in Hamath.
5. 8:5
   • Solomon built Upper Beth-horon.
   • Solomon built Lower Beth-horon.
   • These were fortified cities with walls, gates, and bars.
6. 8:6
   • Solomon built Baalath.
   • Solomon built all the store cities that belonged to him.
   • Solomon built all the chariot cities.
   • Solomon built the cities for his horsemen.
   • Solomon built everything he desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and throughout all the land of his dominion.
7. 8:7
   • Some people remained of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
   • Those people were not of Israel.
8. 8:8
   • Their children were left after them in the land.
   • The children of Israel did not destroy them.
   • Solomon conscripted these people into forced labor.
   • That forced labor continues to this day.
9. 8:9
   • Solomon made no slaves of the children of Israel for his work.
   • The children of Israel were his men of war.
   • The children of Israel were the chiefs of his officers.
   • The children of Israel were the commanders of his chariots and his horsemen.
10. 8:10
    • King Solomon had chief officers numbering two hundred and fifty.
    • These officers ruled over the people.
11. 8:11
    • Solomon brought the daughter of Pharaoh up out of the city of David.
    • Solomon brought her to the house he had built for her.
    • Solomon said that a wife of his must not dwell in the house of David king of Israel.
    • Solomon gave as his reason that the places the ark of the LORD had come to are holy.
12. 8:12
    • Solomon then offered burnt offerings to the LORD.
    • He offered them on the altar of the LORD.
    • Solomon had built that altar in front of the porch.
13. 8:13
    • He offered according to the daily requirement for each day.
    • He offered according to the commandment of Moses.
    • He offered on the sabbaths.
    • He offered on the new moons.
    • He offered on the appointed feasts three times in the year.
    • The three feasts were the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles.
14. 8:14
    • Solomon appointed the divisions of the priests to their service.
    • He did this according to the ordinance of David his father.
    • Solomon appointed the Levites to their charges.
    • The Levites were to praise and to minister before the priests as each day required.
    • Solomon appointed the gatekeepers by their divisions at each gate.
    • David the man of God had commanded this.
15. 8:15
    • They did not depart from the king's commandment concerning the priests and the Levites in any matter.
    • They did not depart from the king's commandment concerning the treasuries.
16. 8:16
    • All the work of Solomon was carried out from the day the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid until it was finished.
    • The house of the LORD was completed.
17. 8:17
    • Solomon then went to Ezion-geber.
    • Solomon went to Eloth.
    • Eloth is on the seashore in the land of Edom.
18. 8:18
    • Huram sent Solomon ships by the hands of his servants.
    • Huram sent servants who had knowledge of the sea.
    • They went with the servants of Solomon to Ophir.
    • They took four hundred and fifty talents of gold from Ophir.
    • They brought the gold to king Solomon.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

"The house of the LORD" is the temple in Jerusalem, the building described in chapters 3–7. "House" is used the same way for a king's palace, as in this same verse.

8:2

Huram (spelled Hiram in Kings) was the king of Tyre, a wealthy Phoenician port city on the coast north of Israel, who had supplied Solomon with timber and craftsmen. The parallel account in 1 Kings 9:11–13 says Solomon gave these towns to Hiram, who was displeased with them; here the towns move the other way. The Hebrew of Chronicles does not explain the difference.

8:3

Hamath-zobah combines two names from the Aramean region well north of Israel, in what is now Syria. Zobah was a kingdom David had fought; Hamath was a city-state on the Orontes river further north.

8:4

Tadmor is the desert oasis later known as Palmyra, on the caravan route between Syria and the Euphrates. "Store cities" were fortified depots where grain, oil, weapons and other supplies were stockpiled for the army and the crown.

8:5

Upper and Lower Beth-horon were twin towns guarding the steep pass that carried the main road from the coastal plain up to the hill country and Jerusalem, the route an invading army would use.

8:6

Chariots were the heavy weaponry of the age, expensive to build and requiring trained horses and crews, so a king kept them in dedicated garrison towns with stabling and workshops. "All the land of his dominion" means everywhere he ruled.

8:7

These five are among the peoples listed in Israel's older texts as the inhabitants of Canaan before Israel settled there. The Jebusites had held Jerusalem itself until David took it.

8:8

This is conscripted state labor: work gangs owed to the crown, not personal slavery. "To this day" means the day of the writer, centuries after Solomon, who is explaining to his own readers how a labor obligation still in force began.

8:9

"Horsemen" here means chariot crews and mounted troops, the elite and expensive arm of an ancient army, which is why serving in it was a privilege rather than a burden.

8:10

The equivalent verse in 1 Kings 9 gives the number as 550. The two books appear to be counting slightly different groups of supervisors, and the totals were never harmonized.

8:11

Marrying a Pharaoh's daughter signaled a treaty between Egypt and Israel; such marriages sealed alliances between royal houses. The City of David was the old fortified ridge of Jerusalem that David had captured, next to the temple mount. The ark was the gold-covered chest holding the tablets of the covenant, kept in the innermost room of the temple. "Holy" means set apart for God's use and hedged about with rules of purity, Solomon's stated concern is about the status of the ground, not about his wife's character.

8:12

A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar, with no portion kept back to be eaten by priests or worshipers. The "porch" was the roofed entrance hall at the front of the temple; the altar stood outside it in the open courtyard.

8:13

New moon: the first day of each lunar month, marked as a festival. Unleavened Bread: the spring week-long feast joined to Passover, when no yeast was used. Weeks: a harvest festival seven weeks later, later called Pentecost. Tabernacles (also called Booths): an autumn harvest festival at which people lived for a week in temporary shelters. These three were the occasions on which Israelites were expected to come to the sanctuary.

8:14

The priests were the descendants of Aaron who handled the sacrifices; the Levites were the wider tribe who did the temple's other work, music, maintenance, guarding. "Courses" or divisions were rotas: each family group served for a fixed spell and then went home, so the work was shared across the year. "Man of God" is a standard title for a prophet or someone who speaks with divine authority; here it is applied to David.

8:15

The treasuries were the temple's storerooms, holding not only silver and gold but grain, oil, incense and equipment, effectively a national treasury as well as a religious one.

8:16

The King James "perfected" here means completed or finished, not made flawless. The older sense of the word is about something being brought to its end, not about moral perfection.

8:17

Ezion-geber and Eloth (Elath) were ports at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Reaching them meant controlling Edom, the territory south-east of the Dead Sea, and they gave Israel access to sea trade with Arabia and Africa.

8:18

Ophir was a source of exceptionally fine gold, famous enough that "gold of Ophir" became a byword for quality; its location is unknown, with southern Arabia, the African coast and India all proposed. A talent was a weight of roughly seventy-five pounds (about thirty-four kilograms), so 450 talents is somewhere near fifteen tons of gold. Phoenicians like Huram's crews were the accomplished deep-water sailors of the age; Israelites were not.