2 Chronicles7:11–22

i. The finished house and the God who answers at night — 7:11-12

The unit opens with a verb of completion, וַיְכַ֧ל (kâlâh, H3615), and closes with a verb of ruin. Between them stands a night. Ellicott and K&D both observe that the chronicler is reworking the text behind 1 Kings 9:1-9: Ellicott says the substance and mostly the language agree but the chronicler paraphrases occasionally and has added a section not extant in Kings, namely vv. 13-16; K&D shows the paraphrase itself, setting "all the desire of Solomon, which he was pleased to do" beside "all that came into Solomon's heart, to make." Barnes agrees that the narrative now runs parallel with Kings but is fuller and less verbally agreed.

Pulpit uses the odd wording of v. 11, which speaks of temple and palace as finished together, to argue the chronology: the main structure of the temple was built in Solomon's eleventh year, the palace only in his twenty-fourth, so the verse must be looking back over both, and the divine answer of v. 12 need not be pushed years away from the dedication. He is candid that both accounts leave vague exactly what a reader most wants stated. Henry, whose entry is a blanket comment on the whole chapter, extracts the devotional point from the Hifil hiṣlîaḥ: those who begin with the service of God are likely to go on successfully in their own affairs.

Then God lets Himself be seen, the Nifal וַיֵּרָ֧א (râʼâh, H7200), and speaks. Benson notes that the fire from heaven had already shown the prayer was accepted, and adds the distinction that matters for everything after: a prayer may be accepted, and yet not answered in the letter of it. Cambridge and Benson both link this night to the earlier night vision at 2 Chronicles 1:7. What God names the house is לְבֵ֥ית זָֽבַח, a house of slaughter-sacrifice, and both Ellicott and Barnes record that the phrase occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. Barnes reads it against Deuteronomy 12:5-6; Pulpit says those verses account for the emphasis without needing to import synagogues into the text.

ii. The heavens shut and the heavens open — 7:13-16

Cambridge states the textual fact plainly: vv. 13-15 have no parallel in 1 Kings. Barnes and Ellicott say the same. Gill, whose note is otherwise a referral to his own comments on Kings, singles out this stretch as an answer to the particular requests Solomon made about famine and pestilence, and calls it a specimen given as encouragement to expect the same treatment in all the other cases of the prayer. Pulpit agrees that the three verses are counterparts of 2 Chronicles 6:26, 28 and 40, and admits he cannot trace the principle by which these three petitions out of seven were selected.

The vocabulary is Solomon's own handed back to him. אֶֽעֱצֹ֤ר (ʻâtsâr, H6113), to shut the heavens up under restraint, is the verb of 2 Chronicles 6:26. The insect is not a generic locust but חָגָ֖ב, which Ellicott identifies from Leviticus 11:22 as a winged and edible species, and which the Verifier finds in only five verses of the whole Hebrew Bible. Poole and Benson independently gloss the command given to it as a metaphor: the creature is not properly capable of a command or of obedience, so the idiom is an assertion of authority, as at 1 Kings 17:4 and Amos 9:3.

Then v. 14, the most quoted verse in Chronicles and the one most often detached from its address. The Hebrew is precise about who is spoken to: עַמִּ֜י אֲשֶׁ֧ר נִֽקְרָא־שְׁמִ֣י עֲלֵיהֶ֗ם, "My people, upon whom My name is called," a Nifal perfect describing something already done to them. Ellicott glosses the sense as "which are dedicated to me" and sends the reader to 2 Chronicles 6:33, where the identical idiom is used of the temple. The named commentators here do not agree on the reach of the promise, and the disagreement is worth stating rather than smoothing. Gill says the people of Israel. Benson says national repentance and reformation, required of a people who are called by God's name and have dishonoured it, and he widens the healing to redressing their grievances. Geneva's gloss (e) narrows it to the pestilence ceasing, the crop-destroying beasts destroyed, and rain in due season. Pulpit narrows it further still: the telling expression "I will heal their land" must be understood of the removing of drought by rain, because drought is what v. 13 named first. Not one of these commentators applies the verse to a nation that has not had this Name laid upon it.

Verses 15 and 16 answer the petitions of 2 Chronicles 6:40 and 6:18-21. The rare adjective קַשֻּׁב֑וֹת (qashshâb, H7183), found in five verses only, grants what Psalm 130:2 asks for. Barnes notes that the unusual construct "the prayer of this place" covers both praying in the sanctuary and praying toward it, and Pulpit is emphatic that the Authorized Version's "in" is misleading, since it was never absolutely essential that prayer be made in the place. Then the Hifil וְהִקְדַּ֙שְׁתִּי֙ (qâdash, H6942): God has made this house holy. Pulpit calls the last clause, God's own eyes and heart set there for all the days, a beautiful touching condescension. Four verses later the same Hifil perfect will be used of the same house in the same mouth, and the sentence will be about throwing it away.

iii. One road for the king, another for the nation — 7:17-18

Pulpit reads these two verses as the answer to Solomon's first petition at 2 Chronicles 6:15-17, the plea that the word to David be kept. The grammar tightens to one man: וְאַתָּ֞ה, an emphatic second person singular. Ellicott records that Kings adds "in perfectness of heart, and in uprightness" to the description of David's walk, and that the chronicler's "and to do" is a construction he sometimes uses in continuation of an imperfect where Kings has a plain infinitive. Benson states the condition without softening it: God promises to establish and perpetuate Solomon's kingdom on condition that he persevered in his duty, and if Solomon hoped for the benefit of the covenant with David he must imitate the example of David.

Verse 18 turns on one root used twice. God says כָּרַ֗תִּי, "I cut," with the noun "covenant" simply absent, a Hebrew ellipsis Ellicott also finds at 2 Chronicles 5:10; and the content of that cutting is לֹֽא־יִכָּרֵ֤ת, "there shall not be cut off," the same root kârath (H3772) in the Nifal. A covenant made by cutting guarantees that nothing will be cut. English idiom ("You will never fail to have a man") loses this entirely. Ellicott further notes that where Kings reads "from upon the throne of Israel," the chronicler has מוֹשֵׁ֖ל, "one ruling," and judges this a reminiscence of Micah 5:1 in the Hebrew numbering, probably repairing a text from which the word throne had fallen out. He offers that with a "probably," and it should be received as his reconstruction. The shared lexeme with Micah, however, is real and Verifier-confirmed.

iv. The house flung from the face that was sought — 7:19-22

At v. 19 the pronoun goes plural, אַתֶּ֔ם, and the addressee widens from king to nation. Ellicott argues from the Hebrew word order that "and your children" has dropped out, as Kings, Syriac and Arabic all read. Benson sees the structure for what it is: God sets before him death as well as life, the curse as well as the blessing, and supposed the apostasy possible because He knew how prone they were to backslide into that sin. Pulpit stresses the forbearance in the divine rule, that condemnation would not take effect until the revolt was thorough, and then adds that the revolt finally testified itself in the crucifixion of Christ. That last step is his own theological construction and not a statement of the Hebrew; a reader should keep it separate from the exegesis.

The threats are exact reversals of the promises. וּנְתַשְׁתִּ֗ים (nâthash, H5428) tears up by the roots what Jeremiah 24:6 pictures as planting, as Ellicott notes, and the ground is called אַדְמָתִי֙, "My soil," six words before it is called the soil "I gave to them." The house God consecrated in v. 16 with hiqdashtî is the house He flings from His face in v. 20 with the same hiqdashtî in the relative clause. Ellicott observes that the chronicler has softened Kings' "cut off Israel" and that the phrase "cast out of my sight" occurs nowhere else. Geneva's gloss (f) draws the inference that God cared more for their salvation than for the advancement of His own glory, and that where men abuse what was appointed to show forth His praise, He withdraws His graces.

Verse 21 contains the unit's genuine textual crux, and the commentators do not agree. The Hebrew says עֶלְי֔וֹן, "high." Ellicott judges the original reading to have been ʻîyîn, "ruinous heaps," argues it from the Syriac, Arabic and the Targum of Kings, compares Micah 3:12, and says the mistake is as old as the Septuagint. Modern English versions, including the BSB's "a heap of rubble," follow him. Cambridge keeps the received text and solves the problem by tense, telling the reader to render "which was high," the past used by anticipation as though the Speaker stood at a later date than Solomon. Pulpit keeps it too and says we need not find any particular difficulty in rendering "this house, which is most high, shall be an astonishment to every passer by." This unit does not settle the question and does not pretend to.

The answer the nations give in v. 22 uses the very verb of v. 19: they forsook (ʻâzab, H5800) the LORD. They "laid hold on" other gods, Geneva's rendering of the Hifil châzaq, to fasten upon. And what He brought on them is הָרָעָ֖ה, the same word raʻ (H7451) that named their "wicked ways" in v. 14. Ellicott notes the chronicler leaves the final subject as a bare "He" where Kings names Jehovah. Cambridge and Ellicott both correct the older passive: men shall say. Henry closes the chapter where the text leaves it: let us fear the Lord's displeasure, hope in his mercy, and walk in his commandments.