Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Solomon son of David established himself firmly over his kingdom, for the Lord his God was with him and made him exceedingly great.
Then Solomon spoke to all Israel—to the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, to the judges and to all the leaders in Israel, the heads of families—and Solomon and the whole assembly went to the high place at Gibeon, for God’s tent of meeting was there, which Moses the Lord’s servant had made in the wilderness. Now David had brought up the ark of God from Kiriath Jearim to the place he had prepared for it, because he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem. But the bronze altar that Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made was in Gibeon in front of the tabernacle of the Lord; so Solomon and the assembly inquired of him there. Solomon went up to the bronze altar before the Lord in the tent of meeting and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it.
That night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
Solomon answered God, “You have shown great kindness to David my father and have made me king in his place. Now, Lord God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
God said to Solomon, “Since this is your heart’s desire and you have not asked for wealth, possessions or honor, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king, therefore wisdom and knowledge will be given you. And I will also give you wealth, possessions and honor, such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have.”
Then Solomon went to Jerusalem from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting. And he reigned over Israel.
Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. The king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.

• 2 Chronicles 1:1-17

Solomon gave orders to build a temple for the Name of the Lord and a royal palace for himself. He conscripted 70,000 men as carriers and 80,000 as stonecutters in the hills and 3,600 as foremen over them.
Solomon sent this message to Hiram king of Tyre:
“Send me cedar logs as you did for my father David when you sent him cedar to build a palace to live in. Now I am about to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God and to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for setting out the consecrated bread regularly, and for making burnt offerings every morning and evening and on the Sabbaths, at the New Moons and at the appointed festivals of the Lord our God. This is a lasting ordinance for Israel.
“The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him?
“Send me, therefore, a man skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, and in purple, crimson and blue yarn, and experienced in the art of engraving, to work in Judah and Jerusalem with my skilled workers, whom my father David provided.
“Send me also cedar, juniper and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your servants are skilled in cutting timber there. My servants will work with yours to provide me with plenty of lumber, because the temple I build must be large and magnificent. I will give your servants, the woodsmen who cut the timber, twenty thousand cors of ground wheat, twenty thousand cors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine and twenty thousand baths of olive oil.”
Hiram king of Tyre replied by letter to Solomon:
“Because the Lord loves his people, he has made you their king.”
And Hiram added:
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth! He has given King David a wise son, endowed with intelligence and discernment, who will build a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself.
“I am sending you Huram-Abi, a man of great skill, whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre. He is trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen. He is experienced in all kinds of engraving and can execute any design given to him. He will work with your skilled workers and with those of my lord, David your father.
“Now let my lord send his servants the wheat and barley and the olive oil and wine he promised, and we will cut all the logs from Lebanon that you need and will float them as rafts by sea down to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem.”
Solomon took a census of all the foreigners residing in Israel, after the census his father David had taken; and they were found to be 153,600. He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stonecutters in the hills, with 3,600 foremen over them to keep the people working.

• 2 Chronicles 2:1-18

Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David. He began building on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign.
The foundation Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide (using the cubit of the old standard). The portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits long across the width of the building and twenty cubits high.
He overlaid the inside with pure gold. He paneled the main hall with juniper and covered it with fine gold and decorated it with palm tree and chain designs. He adorned the temple with precious stones. And the gold he used was gold of Parvaim. He overlaid the ceiling beams, doorframes, walls and doors of the temple with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls.
He built the Most Holy Place, its length corresponding to the width of the temple—twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. He overlaid the inside with six hundred talents of fine gold. The gold nails weighed fifty shekels. He also overlaid the upper parts with gold.
For the Most Holy Place he made a pair of sculptured cherubim and overlaid them with gold. The total wingspan of the cherubim was twenty cubits. One wing of the first cherub was five cubits long and touched the temple wall, while its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the other cherub. Similarly one wing of the second cherub was five cubits long and touched the other temple wall, and its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the first cherub. The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits. They stood on their feet, facing the main hall.
He made the curtain of blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it.
For the front of the temple he made two pillars, which together were thirty-five cubits long, each with a capital five cubits high. He made interwoven chains and put them on top of the pillars. He also made a hundred pomegranates and attached them to the chains. He erected the pillars in the front of the temple, one to the south and one to the north. The one to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz.

• 2 Corinthians 3:1-17

 Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

2 Chronicles 1:3 ‘Gibeon’: “See … 1 Chronicles 16:39; 21:29. The tabernacle remained at Gibeon while the ark resided in Jerusalem, waiting for the temple to be built. tabernacle. Built in the days of Moses, this tent was where God met with the people (cf. Ex. 25:22; 29:42, 43; 40:34-38). The center of worship was there until the temple was built (cf. v. 6).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 1:10-12 ‘Solomon Granted Divine Blessings’: “The Lord appears to Solomon in a dream and asks the newly installed king what request he would have the Lord grant. Solomon requests sufficient wisdom and discernment with which to effectively judge his subjects (3:5-9). Solomon’s specific request so pleases the Lord (3:10) that He grants the king not only the wisdom for which he had asked, but also the wealth and renown that he had not requested (3:11-14; cf. 2 Chronicles 1:10-12). The newly bestowed wisdom of Solomon is famously on display in the immediately subsequent passage relaying the story of the two mothers (3:16-28), and both 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles lavishly attest to the king’s greatness (1 Kings 10:14-29; 2 Chronicles 9:13-28).”

• Tim LaHaye and Ed Hindson, Exploring Bible Prophecy

2 Chronicles 1:12 ‘the honest seeker’: “Thomas came with doubts. Did Christ turn him away?
“Moses had his reservations. Did God tell him to go home?
“Job had his struggles. Did God avoid him?
“Paul had his hard times. Did God abandon him?
“No. God never turns away the sincere heart. Tough questions don’t stump God. He invites our probing.
“Mark it down. God never turns away the honest seeker. Go to God with your questions. You may not find all the answers, but in finding God, you know the One who does.“

• Max Lucado, Walking with the Savior

2 Chronicles 1:17 ‘six hundred shekels’: “Assuming a shekel weighs four-tenths of one ounce, this represents fifteen pounds of silver for one chariot. one hundred and fifty. Assuming the weight is in shekels, this would be about three and three-fourth pounds of silver. Deuteronomy 17:16 warned against the king’s amassing horses. the Hittites. People, once expelled from Palestine, who lived north of Israel and northwest of Syria.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 1 ‘Challenge’: “A new rich mine would be opened in our consciousness if we could learn to recognize God in nature as well as in grace. For the God of nature is also the God of grace. … Because sin has injured us so deeply, and because the whole transaction of repentance and deliverance from the guilt and power of iniquity makes such a mighty impression upon us emotionally, we naturally tend to appreciate the work of God in redemption more than in nature. But everything God does is praiseworthy and deserves our deepest admiration. Whether He is making or redeeming a world, He is perfect in all His doings and glorious in all His goings forth. …
“If we miss seeing God in His works we deprive ourselves of the sight of a royal display of wisdom and power so elevating, so ennobling, so awe-inspiring as to make all attempts at description futile. Such a sight the angels behold day and night forever and ask nothing more to make them perpetually satisfied.”

• A. W. Tozer, Of God and Men

2 Chronicles 2:1 ‘temple for the name of the Lord’: “God’s covenant name, Yahweh or Jehovah (cf. Ex. 3:14), is in mind. David wanted to build the temple, but was not allowed to do any more than plan and prepare (1 Chr. 23-26; 28:11-13), purchase the land (2 Sam. 24:18-25; 1 Chr. 22), and gather the materials (1 Chr. 22:14-16). royal house. See 1 Kings 7:1—12 for details (cf. 7:11; 8:1).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 2:6 ‘the directional words of God’: “All the ‘direction’ words that we apply to ourselves—back, down, up and all such words—cannot apply to God. God can‘t go ‘back,’ because He’s already there, being omnipresent. He can’t go ‘forward,’ because He’s already there. God can’t go ‘right’ or ‘left,’ because God is already everywhere. ‘The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him.’ So we do not say, ‘God came from’ or ‘God goes to.’ We may use these words about God, but we don‘t mean them in the same way we mean them about ourselves. Direction words haven’t anything to do with God.
“A week from next Monday I’m going to get on an airplane and fly to Chicago, then get on another one and fly to Wichita. Then I‘ll get in an automobile and go to Newton, Kansas—wherever that is. I’ll preach a while there in a Bible conference. l will be going somewhere, l will be there and then l will be moving toward somewhere else. But God is not in one place moving toward another because God fills all places. And whether you’re in India, Australia, South America, California or anywhere around the world, or even in outer space, God’s already there ‘if l ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if l make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (Psalm 139:8—10).
“So these words—greater, lesser, back, forward, down, up—can’t apply to God. God the eternal God remains unchanged and unchanging—that is, He is immutable.”

• A. W. Tozer, The Attributes of God II

2 Chronicles 2:7 ‘send me … a man skillful … skillful men’: “The Israelites were familiar with agriculture, but not metal working. They needed experts for that.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 2:11 ‘young men of character’: “Hiram declares his belief that Solomon was of such a character that his reign was a special blessing from God to his people. Such was the character of Solomon in those early days before he began to decline from the splendor of his first estate that even this heathen monarch could see that he was bound to be a blessing to the people. I wish our lives might always have about it that which makes even the unbeliever say, ‘That young man is likely to be a blessing to his family. That woman is sure to be a blessing to her husband and to her children.’ I wish our character was so transparent—so true, pure, and good—that all who knew that may constrain him, but us might feel that we were a blessing to those among whom we dwell. But if this was true of Solomon, how much more is it true of Jesus. ‘Because the Lord loves his people, he has made Jesus to be King over them.’ We are living and truthful witnesses to the fact that we do not look on the rule of Christ over us as any hardship. On the contrary, we take delight in it. We trace it to the love of God, not to his anger—not even to his justice, or to any necessity to his infinite love and to his gracious thought that he could not do any better thing for us than to give us Jesus Christ to be our King; and we devoutly thank and bless the Lord, this day, that he has set him over us, to rule us and to have dominion over our spirit, soul, and body now and forever.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

2 Chronicles 2:12 ‘God … who made heaven and earth’: “This was the common identification of the true God when pagans spoke of or were told of Him (cf. 36:23; Ezra 1:2; 5:11, 12; 6:10; 7:12, 21, 23; Jer. 10:11, 12; Acts 4:24; 14:15; 17:24-26; Col. 1:16, 17; Rev. 11:1,6).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 3:2 ‘second month … fourth year’: “C. April—May of 966 B.C. (cf. 1 Kin. 6:1). The project took seven years and six months to complete, c. October—November 959 B.C. (cf. 1 Kin. 6:37, 38).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 3:14 ‘veil’: “Cf. Exodus 26:31-35 on the veil of the tabernacle. The veil separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (the Holy of Holies), which was entered once annually by the high priest on the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev. 16). This highly limited access to the presence of God was eliminated by the death of Christ, when the veil in Herod’s temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51). It signified that believers had immediate, full access to God’s presence through their Mediator and High Priest, Jesus Christ, who was the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice (cf. Heb. 3:14-16; 9:19-22).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

2 Chronicles 3:15 ‘thirty-five cubits’: “First Kings 7:15, 2 Kings 25:17, and Jeremiah 52:21 uniformly describe these cast bronze pillars as eighteen cubits high (about twenty-seven feet). Most likely this is accounted for because the chronicler gave the combined height of both as they were lying in their molds (cf. v. 17).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

My Thoughts

Solomon solidified his kingdom which the Lord gave Him.

He then went to Gideon.  The Ark was in a tent in Jerusalem, but Solomon went where the bronze altar was to make one thousand sacrifices to God.  He then prayed that he was given this by God, and God had already done so much for his family.  All he wanted was the wisdom to be a good ruler over the people.

God said that he could have asked for wealth, possessions and honor.  Because he asked for wisdom, he would also get wealth, possessions and honor.

The rest of 2 Chronicles 1 was a description of the possessions of Solomon.  Gold and silver was as common in Jerusalem as stones.  Cedar was like sycamore figs.  Thus, Jerusalem was exceedingly wealthy.

But what impressed me were the horses.  They came from Egypt and Kue.  With a little digging, Kue is only mentioned in this context, in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles.  Kue was in what is now modern Turkey.  In researching the origins of the thoroughbred race horses, they are classified as such starting in England in the third century AD, but the original stock was a blend of Arabian horses and Barb horses.  Barb is from northern Africa, Libya and Egypt (the Barbary Coast).  Thus, more than one thousand years before they became “thoroughbreds”, Solomon had so many horses, he gave his excess to other kings in the area.

Second Chronicles 2 begins and ends with three numbers.  He calls for the people to supply 70,000 men to be carriers, 80,000 men to be stonecutters, and 3,600 men to supervise.  He then writes to Hiram, king of Tyre.  Solomon asks for cedars from Lebanon, other supplies and a skilled craftsman who could make the things in metal.  Rev. MacArthur speaks of Huram-Abi and how the Israelites being in agriculture, there was no one with that type of skill.  Moses has Bezalel, and Solomon had Huram-Abi.

But then at the end of the chapter, Solomon calls for a census of the foreigners.  They numbered 153,600.  Solomon needed exactly that many people to build the temple of God: 70,000 carriers, 80,000 stonecutters, and 3,600 supervisors.

Second Chronicles 3 is a description of the temple and its grandeur.  Note: Solomon is using the description that God dictated to Solomon’s father David.  These instructions were God-breathed.  Most of the treasures were spoils of war and donations that were free-will offerings.  The temple had to be grand.  God is the God of the universe, Creator of all things.  And although it does not say it here, it said it in Exodus.  That the furnishings of the tabernacle were a duplicate of what was in Heaven.  Could it be the same as in the temple, so that as things were fashioned, the Holy Spirit gave the craftsman a view in his mind of how this or that had to be made, exactly as it is in Heaven?  Note: When John sees the Ark in his vision, it is the duplicate in Heaven that the lost earthly Ark had been patterned after.

Some Serendipitous Reflections

2 Chronicles 1: 1. Close your eyes and imagine that God appears to you tonight. What question is he asking you? How do you want to respond?
“2. Looking back over your life, do you feel on the whole that you have received more than you asked for or less than you expected from God? How does this chapter speak to your situation?
3. What gifts could you ask God to give to the leaders of your country?
2 Chronicles 2: 1. Considering the whole chapter, what grade (A, B, C, D, F) would you give Solomon in the following areas: Administration? Foreign diplomacy? Civil rights? Religion?
“2. If you had unlimited resources, what would you build in the next year for the name of the Lord? For yourself? Whom would you ask to help you?
“3. ls it ever permissible to use people to accomplish worthwhile goals as Solomon did? Has this ever happened to you?
2 Chronicles 3: 1. It you had been one of Solomon’s advisors, would you have counseled him to spend so much on the temple construction? Or would you have advised a more modest temple so that other things could be done?
“2. What, if anything, does this chapter say to you about construction of church buildings today? About their decorations?

• Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups

2 Chronicles 1-3 have one set of questions for each chapter.

While the first question under 2 Chronicles 3 is a legitimate question for most government buildings, Solomon is building this temple for God, and under the guidance of God, either directly or through the plans for the temple that David wrote down which were God-breathed.  Maybe an alternate question, or additional one, could be: If treasures were reserved for the poor, needy, etc., how much would actually help the poor, and could you eliminate poverty as a result?

Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.

If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.