2 Chronicles3:5–9

The nails: fifty shekels apiece, and the god that must be fastened down verbal / quotation: confirmed

⚙ מִסְמְרוֹת (maçmêr, H4548) is one of the rarest nouns in this unit, occurring in only four verses. Two of the other three sit on either side of it theologically. At 1 Chronicles 22:3 David prepares iron in abundance for the nails of the doors, provision made in advance for a house he will not build. At Isaiah 41:7 the same word is the idol-maker's: the craftsman fastens his image with nails so that it will not totter. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme with 1 Chronicles 22:3 along with mishqâl (H4948, weight) and deleth (H1817, doors); the fourth occurrence of the rare noun is not identified in the Verifier output we hold, so we do not name it. Ellicott and Poole both read our verse's fifty shekels as the weight of each nail rather than of all, Ellicott because fifty shekels as a total would be a trifling sum to record beside six hundred talents. If they are right, the fastenings of this house cost more than most people's houses, and they are still only fastenings.

1 Chronicles 22:3 · Isaiah 41:7

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H4548 maçmêr (in 4 vv), a genuinely rare word, plus H4948 mishqâl (in 42 vv) and H1817 deleth (in 78 vv) with 1 Chronicles 22:3; H4548 alone with Isaiah 41:7. Rare shared vocabulary within one language, not a quotation: neither passage cites the other, and no literary dependence is claimed.

Chain-work: the priest's vestment on the wall verbal / quotation: confirmed

⚙ שַׁרְשְׁרוֹת (sharshᵉrâh, H8333) occurs in only five verses, and this unit holds one of them. Two more are Exodus 28:14 and Exodus 39:15, the small chains of wreathen gold wire on the high priest's breastpiece; a fourth is 1 Kings 7:17, the chain-work on the capitals of the temple pillars; the fifth is 2 Chronicles 3:16, a few verses later in this same chapter. K&D makes the identification for us: these are, in Exodus 28:14, small scroll-formed chains of gold wire, and here spiral chain-like decorations on the walls. The vocabulary of what a priest wears and the vocabulary of what this room wears is the same vocabulary, and the Verifier records the lexeme, not the theology.

Exodus 28:14 · Exodus 39:15 · 1 Kings 7:17 · 2 Chronicles 3:16

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H8333 sharshᵉrâh (in 5 vv, so four of the five occurrences are in these refs), with H2091 zâhâb (in 336 vv) alongside it in both Exodus pairs. Rare shared lexeme within Hebrew; no quotation and no dependence claimed. K&D independently names Exodus 28:14 as the comparison.

Covered: the verb that elsewhere covers a mourner's head structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ The governing verb of this whole unit, חִפָּה (châphâh, H2645), is uncommon (10 verses), and every other occurrence the Verifier surfaces for this unit is an act of grief or exposure rather than of ornament: David goes up Olivet weeping with his head covered (2 Samuel 15:30), Haman hurries home mourning with his head covered (Esther 6:12) and is then led away with his face covered (Esther 7:8), and in the drought of Jeremiah 14:3 and 14:4 the servants of the nobles and the farmers alike cover their heads. The Verifier records the shared lexeme and nothing more, and nothing more is what we claim: this is not a quotation, and Chronicles is not alluding to any of these scenes. It is a vocabulary observation with a real edge. One verb serves for the covering of a shamed face and the covering of a house in gold; only the material differs.

2 Samuel 15:30 · Esther 6:12 · Esther 7:8 · Jeremiah 14:3 · Jeremiah 14:4

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2645 châphâh (in 10 vv) with each ref. Deliberately downgraded from verbal despite the low frequency: the link is a shared root used in opposite registers, a motif contrast, with no citation, allusion or dependence on either side.

Beams: the rafter as shelter over people structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ הַקֹּרוֹת (qôwrâh, H6982) appears in only five verses. Ellicott and K&D take the ones here as the beams of the roof. Elsewhere the same rare noun names the cedar beams of the lovers' house in Song of Solomon 1:17, the timber the prophets' company goes to fell at the Jordan in 2 Kings 6:2, and the roof under whose shadow Lot's guests have come in Genesis 19:8. The shared element is an ordinary architectural noun, which is why we do not tier this as a verbal link despite the low count: what the occurrences have in common is a beam held up over people who are being sheltered, and in our passage that beam is plated with gold.

Song of Solomon 1:17 · 2 Kings 6:2 · Genesis 19:8

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6982 qôwrâh (in 5 vv) with each ref. Downgraded from verbal on purpose: the lexeme is rare but it is a common building term in a small corpus, so shared vocabulary here evidences a shared subject, not a quotation.

Precious stones for beauty, and a city whose foundations are stones typological

⚙ The stones of v. 6 are set לְתִפְאָרֶת, for glory, and they do no structural work. Pulpit, commenting on this verse, says that the obvious references for the phrase, Isaiah 54:11 and 54:12 and Revelation 21:18 to 21, cannot be forgotten, and lists Ezekiel 27:16 and Lamentations 4:7 alongside. Benson goes further on the same verse and calls the temple a type of the New Jerusalem, which has no temple in it because it is all temple, its walls and gates and foundations said to be precious stones and pearls. This is a figural reading, not a verbal one, and it cannot be otherwise: Isaiah and Chronicles share a language, Revelation does not, so no shared Strong's number can be claimed across the pair. We record the reading as the reading of named 19th century commentators and as a pattern the text supports, not as a demonstrated citation.

Isaiah 54:11 · Revelation 21:19

basis: No lexical basis is possible across Hebrew and Greek, so no shared Strong's lexeme is cited and the Verifier offers none. The figural basis is the recorded reading of Pulpit (which names Isaiah 54:11 to 12 and Revelation 21:18 to 21 on this verse) and Benson (temple as type of the New Jerusalem). Widely held rather than novel; the pattern is costly stone set for glory in a dwelling of God.

Gold of Parvaim: a provenance nobody can verify flagged: verify source

⚙ The Chronicler names the source of the gold, and the name occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: nothing certain is known about it. Barnes: probably the name of a place, but what is quite uncertain. K&D: it has not as yet been satisfactorily explained, and then reports Gesenius with Wilson comparing a Sanskrit word for first or foremost, hence an eastern region, against others who look for a city in southern or eastern Arabia. Ellicott suggests Farwa in South Arabia or, via the Sanskrit for eastern, somewhere in India. Benson asserts Ceylon on Bochart's authority. The Geneva marginal note records that some think it is Peru. Pulpit adds Hitzig's twin hills of Arabia and Knobel's Sepharvaim. The usual next move is to attach Parvaim to the Ophir gold of 1 Kings 10:11 and to David's dedicated store in 1 Chronicles 29:2, which is what K&D and Ellicott do, and which is inference. We flag the whole cluster: the refs below are the commentators' proposed anchors, not links the text makes.

1 Kings 10:11 · 1 Chronicles 29:2

basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme basis for either ref; H2091 zâhâb (in 336 vv) is far too common to count as a basis. The connection is a contested 19th century identification of a hapax place name, with at least six mutually exclusive proposals on record (Gesenius, Hitzig, Knobel, Bochart via Benson, the Geneva note's Peru, Ellicott's Farwa). Provenance disputed; unverified.

A house covered inside and out, and the true Temple ancient/widely-held

⚙ The redemptive-historical line here is not subtle, and it is not ours: Matthew Henry's note on this chapter ends by beholding God, in Christ, his true Temple, more glorious than that of Solomon's, and prays that we may become a spiritual house, a habitation of God through the Spirit. The apostolic warrant is explicit. Jesus says of his own body that if this temple is destroyed he will raise it in three days, and John adds that he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19 to 21). Peter takes the building language over to the church as living stones built up a spiritual house, which is the same pair of images this unit works with, stone and house. Paul in Ephesians 2:21 to 22 joins them: the whole structure grows into a holy temple, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Read from there, the five-fold covering of 2 Chronicles 3:5 to 9 is provisional by design. Gold on cypress is still gold on wood; the glory here is applied, and the glory in the New Testament reading is intrinsic. This is the ancient and widely held apostolic reading, not a construction of ours.

John 2:19-21 · 1 Peter 2:5 · Ephesians 2:21-22

Cherubim carved on the walls of the room no one may enter ancient/widely-held

⚙ The one creature in this decorative programme is the cherub, and Cambridge is right that its form in the Temple is not known. Its canonical function, though, is known: at Genesis 3:24 cherubim with a flaming sword are stationed to keep the way to the tree of life, and at Exodus 26:1 they are woven into the curtains of the tabernacle. So the guardians who bar the garden are the figures embroidered and then carved onto the boundary of the place God chooses to dwell. Hebrews 9:3 to 7 walks a reader through exactly this room, names the cherubim of glory over the mercy seat, and observes that the high priest entered the second veil only once a year. Hebrews 10:19 to 20 is the hinge: the way into the holy places is now open through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. The passage in front of us gilds thresholds and doors that almost nobody may cross; the New Testament claim is that the door was finally opened from the inside, at cost. Cambridge's other remark belongs here too, that the graving was not a breach of the Second Commandment because the figures were not put up to be bowed to or served: the images in this room point away from themselves.

Genesis 3:24 · Exodus 26:1 · Hebrews 9:3-7 · Hebrews 10:19-20

Six hundred talents, and a price gold could not pay novel

⚙ This reading is ours and we mark it novel. The Chronicler is the only writer who records the weight: six hundred talents of good gold on the walls of the inner room, and fifty shekels on each of the nails, a figure Cambridge says is found nowhere else and K&D notes is absent from 1 Kings 6. Benson's point, that this was spent on a room only ten yards square, is worth keeping even though his sterling conversion is not. Set that recorded weight beside 1 Peter 1:18 to 19, where the ransom is explicitly not perishable things such as silver or gold but precious blood, and beside Hebrews 9:11 to 12, where the better tabernacle is entered not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood. We do not claim any commentator in this brief makes the connection, and we do not claim the Chronicler intends it. What we observe is that the one Old Testament passage that prices the holiest room is answered by a New Testament insistence that the holiest place was never purchasable at that currency.

1 Peter 1:18-19 · Hebrews 9:11-12