2 Chronicles1:14–17

The Chronicler copying himself, and copying Kings verbal / quotation: confirmed

This entire pericope stands almost word for word at 1 Kings 10:26-29, and in abridged form again at 2 Chronicles 9:25-28, inside the same book. K&D states the relation precisely: vv. 14 and 15 correspond word for word to 1 Kings 10:26-27 apart from one divergence in form and one in matter. Ellicott adds that v. 14 is word for word as in Kings and that the chronicler is careless of repetition, and Barnes, Benson, Poole and Gill all handle the passage by simply referring the reader to 1 Kings 10. Pulpit thinks the material sits more naturally where Kings puts it, near the close of the Solomon account, and that here it has somewhat the appearance of a fragment interpolated. The Verifier's computed bases confirm the overlap lexically: 1 Kings 10:27 and 2 Chronicles 9:27 each share the rare shiqmâh with this unit along with ʼeben and keçeph, and 1 Kings 10:28 shares môwtsâʼ and çûwç.

1 Kings 10:27 · 1 Kings 10:28 · 2 Chronicles 9:25 · 2 Chronicles 9:27

basis: Verifier: 1 Kings 10:27 and 2 Chronicles 9:27 share H8256 shiqmâh (rare, in 7 vv) plus H68 ʼeben (239 vv) and H3701 keçeph (343 vv); 1 Kings 10:28 shares H4161 môwtsâʼ (26 vv), H5483 çûwç (130 vv), H8010 Shᵉlômôh (263 vv); 2 Chronicles 9:25 shares H7393 rekeb, H5117 nûwach, H6571 pârâsh. The rare lexeme plus near-verbatim agreement attested by K&D and Ellicott justifies the verbal tier: this is documented literary reuse within the Hebrew Bible, not an independent coincidence of vocabulary.

Sycamore and cedar: the seven verses of a poor man's tree structural / thematic: confirmed

shiqmâh (H8256) stands in only seven verses of the Hebrew Bible, and the company it keeps is instructive. At 1 Chronicles 27:28 David's stewards oversee the olives and sycamores in the Shephelah, the same pairing of tree and place as here. At Psalm 78:47 the sycamores are destroyed by frost among the plagues on Egypt. At Amos 7:14 the prophet names tending them as his trade, marking the tree as the working man's living. And at Isaiah 9:10 the boast of an unrepentant people is precisely the exchange this verse celebrates, run in reverse: the sycamores are cut down and cedars will be put in their place. The Verifier records the shared lexeme in each case; what it cannot record is the motif, which is that cedar for sycamore is the standing biblical shorthand for a step up in status. Chronicles reports the exchange as glut; Isaiah hears the same exchange as pride. We claim the lexical link as verified and the motif as our reading.

1 Chronicles 27:28 · Isaiah 9:10 · Amos 7:14 · Psalm 78:47

basis: Verifier: shared H8256 shiqmâh (rare, in only 7 vv) with all four refs, plus H8219 shᵉphêlâh (19 vv) with 1 Chronicles 27:28 and H730 ʼerez (69 vv) with Isaiah 9:10. The lexical basis is real and rare, but no verse quotes another, so the link is tiered structural rather than verbal: a shared motif of cedar-for-sycamore carried by a shared rare word.

The law the king is quietly breaking structural / thematic: confirmed

Deuteronomy 17:16 forbids Israel's king to multiply horses to himself or to cause the people to return to Egypt for that purpose, and 1 Samuel 8:11 names chariots and horsemen as the first thing the king the people demanded would take. Deuteronomy 20:1 assumes that Israel's enemies, not Israel, are the ones with horses and chariots. Our unit, without a word of comment, has the king multiplying horses, importing them from Egypt, and reselling them. JFB reads it exactly so, calling the establishment a prohibited indulgence, whether as an instrument of luxury or power; Pulpit cites Deuteronomy 17:16 and 1 Samuel 8:11 directly and observes that the pilgrim character of God's people accounts for the chariot never having ranked among their treasures.

Deuteronomy 17:16 · Deuteronomy 20:1 · 1 Samuel 8:11

basis: Honest limit first: the Verifier returned none of these three refs as candidates, so there is no computed shared-lexeme basis for this link. The recorded basis is instead the commentators' own citations, Pulpit citing Deuteronomy 17:16 and 1 Samuel 8:11 on this verse and JFB calling the practice prohibited, together with the plain subject matter shared by the passages (a king, multiplied horses, Egypt). Tiered structural, never verbal, because no shared lexeme has been verified.

miqveh: a gathering of waters, a hope of Israel, or a place in Cilicia flagged: verify source

The Verifier ties v. 16 to eight other verses through H4723 miqveh, a word appearing in only ten verses: the gathering of the waters at Genesis 1:10, a cistern at Leviticus 11:36, and, most strikingly, the divine title at Jeremiah 14:8 and Jeremiah 17:13, the hope of Israel, with the same consonants read as expectation. Jeremiah 50:7, Ezra 10:2 and 1 Chronicles 29:15 carry it too. The temptation is obvious and we are refusing it: a sermon that hears the king trading in Egypt for what he already had in the hope of Israel would be built on a word the commentators cannot even read here. Cambridge takes it as the place-name Kue or Cilicia, Ellicott as "company," the Authorised Version as "linen yarn," and Pulpit says the words are without doubt wrong and that some slight corruption of text still baulks us. The lexical tie is the Verifier's; the identification of the form in this verse is genuinely disputed, so the thread is flagged.

Genesis 1:10 · Leviticus 11:36 · Jeremiah 14:8 · Jeremiah 17:13 · 1 Chronicles 29:15

basis: Verifier: shared H4723 miqveh (rare, in 10 vv) with all five refs. Flagged rather than confirmed because the identification of the consonants in 2 Chronicles 1:16 with this lexeme is contested in the sources themselves: Cambridge reports a proper name (Ku'i / Kue, Cilicia) and also "drove," Ellicott reads "company," the AV reads "linen yarn," and Pulpit judges the text corrupt. If the word here is a place-name, the shared-lexeme basis dissolves entirely.

The sycamore in the Gospel: a lexical bridge, not a citation typological

Both Cambridge and Pulpit, commenting on shiqmâh here, step across into Greek to note that the Septuagint renders it συκάμινος throughout, while Luke alone in the New Testament uses both συκάμινος (Luke 17:6) and συκομορέα, the sycamore-fig Zacchaeus climbs at Luke 19:4. Pulpit is careful that the first is the mulberry and the second the fig-mulberry, and that the Old Testament tree is the latter. That is a translation-history link and nothing more: a Greek word in Luke cannot share a Strong's number with a Hebrew word in Chronicles, so no verbal claim is available or attempted. What the bridge does offer is a picture. The tree that measures cheapness in Solomon's inventory is the tree a rich tax collector climbs in order to see, and loses his riches from.

Isaiah 9:10 · Luke 17:6 · Luke 19:4

basis: Cross-Testament, so no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed; a Hebrew lexeme and a Greek lexeme cannot be matched by the Verifier. The recorded basis is the Septuagint and New Testament lexical history set out in the brief by Cambridge (LXX συκαμίνους, but Luke 19:4 συκομορέα) and by Pulpit (συκάμινος and συκομωρέα in Luke 17:6 and 19:4, with the Old Testament tree identified as the fig-mulberry). The figural reading that follows is our own and novel, not an ancient reading.

Greater than Solomon, and less well furnished ancient/widely-held

⚙ This paragraph is the canonical inventory of Solomon's glory: chariotry, silver at the price of gravel, cedar at the price of sycamore, an arms trade with two foreign crowns. It is also the inventory the Gospels reach for when they want a standard to exceed. The Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon's wisdom, and a greater than Solomon is here (Matthew 12:42, Luke 11:31); the lilies of the field are better clothed than Solomon in all his glory (Matthew 6:29). Both sayings assume a reader who knows a passage like this one. The comparison the sayings make is not that Christ out-collects Solomon but that he displaces the whole scale: the one who has nowhere to lay his head is the greater. Henry, reading this very chapter, draws the same moral without the Christology, warning that those who make this world their end come short of the other and are disappointed in this also. The identification of Christ as the greater Solomon is the New Testament's own, spoken in the first person by Jesus, and it is the reading the church has held from the beginning.

Matthew 6:29 · Matthew 12:42 · Luke 11:31

A king who does not multiply horses novel

⚙ The Chronicler counts fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand teams, then shows the king brokering both to the Hittites and to Aram. Zechariah 9:9-10 announces a king who comes to the same Jerusalem righteous and bringing salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, and in the next breath the chariot is cut off from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem. Matthew 21:5 applies that oracle to Jesus entering the city, and John 12:15 with it. The apostolic identification of Zechariah's donkey-king with Christ is ancient and explicit in the Gospels themselves. What we add, and mark as our own, is the specific contrast with 2 Chronicles 1:14-17: the messianic king reverses precisely the inventory the Chronicler here records, and he reverses it in the same city, which the Chronicler names twice in two verses. No source in this brief makes that connection. Also ours, and offered tentatively: that the exodus verb yâtsâʼ framing v. 17 runs backwards here, bringing goods up out of Egypt into a king's hand, and that the true Son of David will be called out of Egypt in the other direction (Matthew 2:15, citing Hosea 11:1). We claim the Hosea citation as Matthew's, and the resonance with Solomon's horse trade as inference only.

Zechariah 9:9 · Matthew 21:5 · Matthew 2:15 · Hosea 11:1