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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Chronicles 3:1 - 3:1
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The building of the temple. - 2Ch 3:1-3. The statements as to the place where the temple was built (2Ch 3:1) are found here only. Mount Moriah is manifestly the mountain in the land of Moriah where Abraham was to have sacrificed his son Isaac (Gen 22:2), which had received the name הַמֹּורִיָּה, i.e., “the appearance of Jahve,” from that event. It is the mountain which lies to the north-east of Zion, now called Haram after the most sacred mosque of the Mohammedans, which is built there; cf. Rosen, das Haram von Jerusalem, Gotha 1866. לד נִרְאָה אֲשֶׁר is usually translated: “which was pointed out to David his father.” But רָאָה has not in Niphal the signification “to be pointed out,” which is peculiar to the Hophal (cf. Exo 25:40; Exo 26:30; Deu 4:35, etc.); it means only “to be seen,” “to let oneself be seen,” to appear, especially used of appearances of God. It cannot be shown to be anywhere used of a place which lets itself be seen, or appears to one. We must therefore translate: “on mount Moriah, where He had appeared to David his father.” The unexpressed subject יהוה is easily supplied from the context; and with אֲשֶׁר בָּהָר, “on the mountain where,” cf. אֲשֶׁר בַּמָּקֹום, Gen 35:13., and Ew. §331, c, 3. הֵכִין אֲשֶׁר is separated from what precedes, and connected with what follows, by the Athnach under אָבִיהוּ, and is translated, after the lxx, Vulg., and Syr., as a hyperbaton thus: “in the place where David had prepared,” scil. the building of the temple by the laying up of the materials there (1Ch 22:5; 1Ch 29:2). But there are no proper analogies to such a hyperbaton, since Jer 14:1 and Jer 46:1 are differently constituted. Berth. therefore is of opinion that our text can only signify, “which temple he prepared on the place of David,” and that this reading cannot be the original, because הֵכִין occurs elsewhere only of David's activity in preparing for the building of the temple, and “place of David” cannot, without further ceremony, mean the place which David had chosen. He would therefore transpose the words thus: דָוִיד הֵכִין אֲשֶׁר בִּמְקֹום. But this conjecture is by no means certain. In the first place, the mere transposition of the words is not sufficient; we must also alter בִּמְקֹום into בַּמָּקֹום, to get the required sense; and, further, Bertheau's reasons are not conclusive. הֵכִין means not merely to make ready for (zurüsten), to prepare, but also to make ready, make (bereiten), found e.g., 1Ki 6:19; Ezr 3:3; and the frequent use of this word in reference to David's action in preparing for the building of the temple does not prove that it has this signification here also. The clause may be quite well translated, with J. J. Rambach: “quam domum praeparavit (Salomo) in loco Davidis.” The expression “David's place,” for “place which David had fixed upon,” cannot in this connection be misunderstood, but yet it cannot be denied that the clause is stiff and constrained if we refer it to יהוה אֶת־בֵּית. We would therefore prefer to give up the Masoretic punctuation, and construe the words otherwise, connecting הֵכִין אֲשֶׁר with the preceding thus: where Jahve had appeared to his father David, who had prepared (the house, i.e., the building of it), and make בִּמְקֹום ד, with the following designation of the place, to depend upon לִבְנֹות as a further explanation of the הם בְּהַר, viz., in the place of David, i.e., on the place fixed by David on the threshing-floor of the Jebusite Ornan; cf. 1Ch 21:18. - In 2Ch 3:2 לִבְנֹות וַיָּחֶל is repeated in order to fix the time of the building. In 1Ki 6:1 the time is fixed by its relation to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. בַּשֵּׁנִי, which the older commentators always understood of the second day of the month, is strange. Elsewhere the day of the month is always designated by the cardinal number with the addition of לַחֹרֵשׁ or יֹום, the month having been previously given. Berth. therefore considers בַּשֵּׁנִי to be a gloss which has come into the text by a repetition of הַשֵּׁנִי, since the lxx and Vulg. have not expressed it.