Matthew Henry on 2 Chronicles 3:1-9
Here is, I. The place where the temple was built. Solomon was neither at liberty to choose nor at a loss to fix the place. It was before determined (Ch1 22:1), which was an ease to his mind. 1. It must be at Jerusalem; for that was the place where God had chosen to put his name there. The royal city must be the holy city. There must be the testimony of Israel; for there are set the thrones of judgment, Psa 122:4, Psa 122:5. 2. It must be on Mount Moriah, which, some think, was that very place in the land of Moriah where Abraham offered Isaac, Gen 22:2. So the Targum says expressly, adding, But he was delivered by the word of the Lord, and a ram provided in his place. That was typical of Chri…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Chronicles 3:4
the porch--The breadth of the house, whose length ran from east to west, is here given as the measure of the length of the piazza. The portico would thus be from thirty to thirty-five feet long, and from fifteen to seventeen and a half feet broad.
the height was an hundred and twenty cubits--This, taking the cubit at eighteen inches, would be one hundred eighty feet; at twenty-one inches, two hundred ten feet; so that the porch would rise in the form of a tower, or two pyramidal towers, whose united height was one hundred twenty cubits, and each of them about ninety or one hundred five feet high [STIEGLITZ]. This porch would thus be like the propylÃ&brvbrum or gateway of the palace of Khor…
Read the whole note in the consoleAdam Clarke on 2 Chronicles 3:4
The height was a hundred and twenty - Some think this should be twenty only; but if the same building is spoken of as in Kg1 6:2, the height was only thirty cubits. Twenty is the reading of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the Septuagint in the Codex Alexandrinus. The MSS. give us no help. There is probably a mistake here, which, from the similarity of the letters, might easily occur. The words, as they now stand in the Hebrew text, are מאה ואשרים meah veesrim, one hundred and twenty. But probably the letters in מאה meah, a hundred, are transposed for אמה ammah, a cubit, if, therefore, the א aleph be placed after the מ mem, then the word will be מאה meah one hundred; if before it the word will be…
