The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 84

for the former numher, e.nd an ox a.piece for purports to speak of the fiUCLl completion of the IRt.ter (a computation itself necessarily tile temple and the king's hoUBe or pnlnoo, under the mRrk), and allow several days to with e.11 whatsoever that WRB necessary to be co1•ered by the ldlling e.nd sacrificing, them in the mn.tter of their furnishing. and one feels that the key e.nd explanation And, to Si\Y the lee.et, the impression of the present words of the Bible text in this nn.turo.l!y prod need on the reader is thnt very passage are soaroely in hand. The in- they arc spoken of as being thus oompleted tere8ting note in the 'Speaker's Commen- simultaneously, although, beyond doubt, tary' on 1 Kings viii. 63 scarcely assists us. there was a sense in which the temple WRB Its instanoea of the "profneion " of the (not utterly finished but) built long before •• sacrifices of antiquity" e.re altogether e.nd the palnce. Accordingly, when the nei:t immensely distanced by the narrative before verse tells us of God's answer vouoheafed to us, not only in the number of victims, but in tile dedication prayer of Solomon, we are respect of the time in which the victims not driven to the supposition that several had to be despatched and disposed of, and years llad elapsed since the final completion the place and space within which, if not the of the temple and the dedication of it on slaughtering, yet certainly the offering, he.d the one hand, nor, on the other hand, a to be done. similar interval lost between the dedication Ver. 6.-This verse is not found in the prayer and the Divine acknowledgment or parallel (oh. v. 12, 13; 1 Chron. xv. 16; it. It may be again stated that the main :n:iii. 5). structure of the temple (not including courts, Ver. 8.-Also at the same time . . . the pillars. furnishing, veBSels, etc.) was built feast; i.e. the Feast of Tabernacles, which after seven years' process, in the eleventh occupied the seven days from the fifteenth year of Solomon's reign, but the palace only to the twenty-second of the month Tisri after another complete twelve years (1 Kings (Lev. n.iii. 34). Thus fourteen days (1 vii. 1), in Solomon's twenty-fourth year. A Kings viii. 65) were occupied by the two liberal study of the parallel narrative of feasts, that of the temple oonsecre.tion aud Kings in its entirety strengthens conRider- that of Tabernacles, while on the fifteenth ably this view, inasmuch as there the day of fee.sting, viz. the twenty-third of the whole account of the pa.lace-building finds month Tisri. or Ethanim. (the seventh its place previous to the account of the de- month), the people went home. The enter- dicating of the temple. However, though ing in of Ramath 1lllto the river of Egypt ; there can be little practical doubt as to how i.e. from the extreme north to the extreme the facts of the case stood and sta.nd, yet south of the land. The town Hamath we.s this occasion must count one to be added to on the Orantes, through the valley of the the chronological memorabilia of Scripture, Lebanon (Josh. xiii. 3, 5; also Numb. xiii. in that, while both the accounts to wllich we 21; miv. 8; Judg. iii 3; 2 Kings xiv. 25; have access leave very vague the very 1 Chron. xiii 5; A.mos vi 2, 14). The things we should naturally expect to have ri-Der of Egypt; or, the river before Egypt been sta.ted concisely, they also both seem (Josll. xiii. 3), was the Shihor, or Sihor, entirely unconscious of it-a directest out- sepa1ating Egypt and Judma. come of the fact that both writers were Ver. 9.-Soleillll assembly. The word thus but picking their own way in the mid~t of translated in the Authorized Vel'Bion OOOW'B borrowed material, neither of them the (inclnding both its but very slightly dif- original historian. fering forms) eleven times. Five of these Ver. 12.-See I Kings iii. 5; ix. 2; Dent. times the margin offers, probably unneces- xii 2, 3, 5-7, 11, 14; and, by turning to sarily, the optional rendering of "restraint." the le.et of these sets of references, the It may be tllat the root involves this idea, emphasis laid here upon the house as the and certainly the word is especially 11B0d house of saorifice will be amply accounted for the seventh or closing day of Pass- for without supposing a rather premature over, and eighth or closing day of Taber- aside as regards synagogues. Meantime, nacles ; bui other occasions of its nse seem what a feature, manifestly, the sacrifice• to ne!!"&frre this as an essential element were I in th.::°signification or el!BCDtial condition of Vere. 13-15.-These three verses (the the 1lB0 of the word ; e.g. " Proclaim a solemn counterparts of eh. vi. 26, 28, 40) are not in assembly" (2 Kings x. 20); "Oall a solemn tile parallel. Although we can scarcely trace 0BSembly" (Joel i 14; ii. 15). the principle of tlleir selection from the Ver.11.-(See now fortbe parallel I Kings seven parts of the prayer, they would seem ix. 1-9.) The king's house . . . the house to have been selected from the original of the Lord . . . hill own house. The ex- work, as s:1mples of e. reply which pre- pressions that we have in this verse guide sumably embraced reference to all the seveu. us amid some ambigc.ities to the correct date When, in ver. 14, it is sai<l, I will heal their of the consecratioJ:1 of the temple. T4e ver!Je l1ndi the telling expression, e.ccor4ing to 1:111. vu. 1~22.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 8!]