Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Chronicles · About this commentary
Cities, Labor, and Ships
2 Chronicles 8:1-18
1 At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built Yahweh’s house and his own house, · WEB
Twenty years of building are summarized, and the reign's care about holiness sits beside a labor force of conquered peoples.
Twenty years of construction are compressed into a paragraph: storage cities, chariot cities, fortifications at the passes, an outpost in the desert, and all that Solomon desired to build for his pleasure 2 Chronicles 8:6. The last phrase is entered without comment.
The labor is then accounted for, and the account is uncomfortable. The descendants of the peoples Israel had not driven out were conscripted as forced labor to this day; of Israelites, Solomon made no servants for his work 2 Chronicles 8:8–9.
The distinction is stated plainly and defended nowhere. Israelites are soldiers and officers; the others carry. The writer records the arrangement as policy, with its permanence noted, and moves to the next item. A reader is left holding a kingdom that had just dedicated a house with a prayer for the foreigner who comes from far away, and that ran on the compulsory labor of the foreigners already there.
The next verse shows how carefully holiness was reasoned about in the same reign. Solomon moves his Egyptian wife out of David's old palace, and gives his reason: my wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places where Yahweh's ark has come are holy 2 Chronicles 8:11. Contact with the ark had made a building unsuitable, and he acts on that scruple at some expense.
So the same king is scrupulous about a room and untroubled about a workforce. The book sets the two facts three verses apart and lets them stand.
The worship arrangements that follow are the point of the chapter for this writer. Offerings are made according to the commandment of Moses on the Sabbaths, the new moons and the three annual feasts; the priestly divisions, the Levites and the doorkeepers are set according to the ordinance of David his father 2 Chronicles 8:13–14.
Two authorities are named and neither is Solomon. He built the house and he inherited the pattern for using it, and the summary verse says the staff didn't depart from the commandment in any matter 2 Chronicles 8:15.
The chapter ends at sea. Ships and experienced sailors come from the north, and a joint expedition returns from Ophir with four hundred fifty talents of gold 2 Chronicles 8:18. The wealth that will be described in the next chapter is shown arriving, and it arrives in somebody else's ships.
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