Skip to main content

2 Chronicles 5-8



These chapters focus largely on Solomon’s dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem after all the building was complete.
There is one glaring mistake in 2 Chronicles 5. Verse 9 mentions that the poles for carrying the Ark of the Covenant are there, in the Holy of Holies, “to this day”. However, that cannot be true from the perspective of the author of Chronicles, for at the end of the book it is clearly stated that all the precious contents of the Temple were carried off to Babylon and that the Temple itself was burned (2 Chronicles 36:18-19). 2 Chronicles 5:9 appears to be an instance of the Chronicler copying something from Kings, or from an earlier source, that is no longer true from his perspective. It is often the case, when reading the Bible, that we see “the seams showing through”. That is to say that we can see where the final editors of various books have not perfectly covered over, or disguised, the seams where they have sewn together the pieces from the various sources they have used. However, from my perspective, far from distracting from the beauty of the Bible, this feature makes the Bible all the more intriguing in its humanity.
The Chronicler clearly presents Solomon as a holy man in these chapters. Not only does Solomon pray, but he even offers sacrifice, something that only the priests and Levites were allowed to do (2 Chronicles 7:7). Perhaps certain rules were made to be broken, at least if you are King Solomon.
Chapter 6, in particular, focuses on Solomon as a holy man. This chapter conveys one long prayer of the King, supposedly given at the dedication of the Temple. However, the reader must wonder, would Solomon have assumed the possibility that his people would one day be taken captive by a foreign king? (See 2 Chronicles 6:36 ff.) This appears to be something inserted by a later author/editor of Chronicles who knows that all of Israel was in fact taken captive by foreign kings.
Be that as it may, the repeated entreaty of Solomon is that the Lord would hear the prayers of his people when they pray toward this Temple. This entreaty contains an idea common among ancient peoples. The idea is that the main problem with God or with the gods, is to gain an audience with him or with them. If only God, or the gods, would hear our petition, then all would be solved. It is almost a bureaucratic notion, like that of imagining the difficulty of gaining a meeting with the President of the United States, or even gaining an audience with a lower level bureaucrat who is the one person who can solve your particular problem.
The glory to the early Christians was that this ancient problem was solved in Jesus Christ. Jesus said,
I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. (John 14:13-14)
Through Christ as mediator one is guaranteed an audience with the Almighty. All one must do is simply pray in Jesus’ name. It is sort of like knowing the best friend of the President of the United States. If that person is your best friend as well, then you are guaranteed the opportunity of coming before the President.
The wonderful thing for Solomon, and through him for the people of Israel, was that the Lord apparently heard his prayer. After the dedication of the Temple, “the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: ‘I have heard your prayer…’” (2 Chronicles 7:12) Not only does the Lord tell Solomon that his prayer has been heard, but God promises that the prayers of his people will be heard in the future, upon certain conditions. The Lord says…
…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Of course, this promise had special application and meaning to the first readers of Chronicles, to the Jews who returned to Jerusalem after the exile. By the inclusion of this text in Chronicles, Ezra was most certainly urging the people to humble themselves, to pray, to seek the face of God, and to turn from their wicked ways. However, the promise is no less true for us who may claim it at any time by fulfilling its conditions.
Only in 2 Chronicles 8 do we get the slightest hint that Solomon might be something infinitesimally less than a holy man. Here we read that…
Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter from the city of David to the house that he had built for her, for he said, “My wife shall not live in the house of King David of Israel, for the places to which the ark of the Lord has come are holy.” (2 Chronicles 8:11)
This is curious because I do not remember reading anywhere about the Ark of the Covenant coming into David’s house, though David does bring the Ark up to Jerusalem. Nonetheless, this verse carries with it the notion that holy places, or anything touched by the holy, is sacrosanct. Such places are to be fenced around and demarcated so that anything unholy does not violate such a space.
Clearly, Solomon knew that there was something about his new wife, Pharaoh’s daughter, that was unholy. Perhaps it was the fact that she failed to surrender to her husband’s religion and rather continued worshipping the gods of the Egyptians. Whatever the reason, Solomon carries out a curious act—what modern psychologists would call an example of compartmentalization. He knows that his wife is unholy, and that certain places in Jerusalem are unholy. However, Solomon tries to figure out a way he can have both, the holy and the unholy. His solution is to compartmentalize, to have his unholy wife in one place, while continuing his own “holy” activities in another.
The Chronicler never reveals the problem with this approach to life as the book of Kings does. However, clearly there is a problem here, a problem that will eventually lead to the undoing of Israel.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality

Arthur Greeves In light of recent developments in the United States on the issue of gay marriage, I thought it would be interesting to revisit what C. S. Lewis thought about homosexuality. Lewis, who died in 1963, never wrote about same-sex marriage, but he did write, occasionally, about the topic of homosexuality in general. In the following I am quoting from my book, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis . For detailed references and footnotes, you may obtain a copy from Amazon, your local library, or by clicking on the book cover at the right.... In Surprised by Joy , Lewis claimed that homosexuality was a vice to which he was never tempted and that he found opaque to the imagination. For this reason he refused to say anything too strongly against the pederasty that he encountered at Malvern College, where he attended school from the age of fifteen to sixteen. Lewis did not rate pederasty as the greatest evil of the school because he felt the cruelty displa

Fact, Faith, Feeling

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where to get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith." Mere Christianity Many years ago, when I was a young Christian, I remember seeing the graphic illustration above of what C. S. Lewis has, here, so

C. S. Lewis Tour--London

The final two days of our C. S. Lewis Tour of Ireland & England were spent in London. Upon our arrival we enjoyed a panoramic tour of the city that included Westminster Abbey. A number of our tour participants chose to tour the inside of the Abbey where they were able to view the new C. S. Lewis plaque in Poets' Corner. Though London was not one of Lewis' favorite places to visit, there are a number of locations associated with him. One which I have noted in my new book,  In the Footsteps of C. S. Lewis , is Endsleigh Palace Hospital (25 Gordon Street, London) where Lewis recovered from his wounds received during the First World War.... Not too far away from this location is King's College, part of the University of London, located on the Strand, just off the River Thames. This is the location where Lewis gave the annual commemoration oration entitled The Inner Ring  on 14 December 1944.... C. S. Lewis occasionally attended theatrical events in London.

The Shepherds' Perspective on Christmas

On December 21, 2015, the following headline appeared in the International Business Times: “Bethlehem Christmas 2015 Cancelled”. To be fully accurate, religious celebrations of Jesus’ birth went forward last year in Bethlehem, but many of the secular celebrations of Christmas that usually surround it were toned down due to instability in the area. Looking back a decade, there was even one year when Christian Arabs canceled community celebrations of Christmas in support of the Palestinian uprising. However, the Jewish government would have no part of that, so the Israeli military sponsored its own holiday celebrations in the area. It is also interesting to note who celebrated the first Christmas and who didn’t. The first Christmas was not celebrated by the emperor Caesar Augustus, nor Quirinius, the governor of Syria, nor was it celebrated by the lowly innkeeper. But Christmas was celebrated by a few lonely shepherds along with Joseph and Mary and the angels of heaven. How

A Prayer at Ground Zero

Does the Bible mention treating animals with kindness?

When I solicited questions to be addressed in this series, a member of the congregation wrote this to me: “Animals are mentioned in the Bible as beasts of burden and sacrificial animals.  Is there any mention of treating animals with kindness?” The short answer to that question is: yes. However, it is important to note that what the Bible says about caring for animals comes in the midst of a great narrative. It is a narrative of  Creation, Fall, and Redemption.  Let’s look at these three great acts in the narrative play of world history one by one. First, let’s look at creation. Creation At the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 through 28, we read this: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the

Christmas Day Thought from Henri Nouwen

" I keep thinking about the Christmas scene that Anthony arranged under the altar. This probably is the most meaningful "crib" I have ever seen. Three small woodcarved figures made in India: a poor woman, a poor man, and a small child between them. The carving is simple, nearly primitive. No eyes, no ears, no mouths, just the contours of the faces. The figures are smaller than a human hand - nearly too small to attract attention at all. "But then - a beam of light shines on the three figures and projects large shadows on the wall of the sanctuary. That says it all. The light thrown on the smallness of Mary, Joseph, and the Child projects them as large, hopeful shadows against the walls of our life and our world. "While looking at the intimate scene we already see the first outlines of the majesty and glory they represent. While witnessing the most human of human events, I see the majesty of God appearing on the horizon of my existence. While

C. S. Lewis on Church Attendance

A friend's blog written yesterday ( http://wesroberts.typepad.com/ ) got me thinking about C. S. Lewis's experience of the church. I wrote this in a comment on Wes Robert's blog: It is interesting to note that C. S. Lewis attended the same small church for over thirty years. The experience was nothing spectacular on a weekly basis. For most of those years Lewis didn't care much for the sermons; he even sat behind a pillar so that the priest would not see the expression on his face. He attended the service without music because he so disliked hymns. And he left right after holy communion was served probably because he didn't like to engage in small talk with other parishioners after the service. But that life-long obedience in the same direction shaped Lewis in a way that nothing else could. Lewis was once asked, "Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?" His answer w

Sheldon Vanauken Remembered

A good crowd gathered at the White Hart Cafe in Lynchburg, Virginia on Saturday, February 7 for a powerpoint presentation I gave on the life and work of Sheldon Vanauken. Van, as he was known to family and friends, was best known as the author of A Severe Mercy , the autobiography of his love relationship with his wife Jean "Davy" Palmer Davis. While living in Oxford, England in the early 1950's, Van and Davy came to faith in Christ through the influence of C. S. Lewis. Van was a professor of history and English literature at Lynchburg College from 1948 until his retirement around 1980. A Severe Mercy tells the story of Davy's death from a mysterious liver ailment in 1955 and Van's subsequent dealing with grief. Van himself died from cancer in 1996. It was my privilege to know Van for a brief period of time during the last year of his life. However, present at the White Hart on February 7 were some who knew Van far better than I did--Floyd Newman, one of Van&

Glenmerle

Glenmerle in the 1950s In 2013 I published a biography on one of my favorite authors, Sheldon Vanauken. If you are interested, you can learn more and/or purchase a signed copy here:  Signed Copy  or an unsigned copy here:  Amazon . One of the things that got me writing the book was my search for the location of Glenmerle, Vanauken's childhood home, so lovingly described in his book, A Severe Mercy . A visit to Van's alma mater, Staunton Military Academy, alerted me to the fact that Van grew up in Carmel, Indiana. Then, with the help of a local historian, we identified the location of Glenmerle.  Because Van had suggested, in my first conversation with him, that Glenmerle was destroyed, I naturally assumed that the house no longer existed. However, another one of Van's fans recently contacted me to let me know that she believed she had found Glenmerle still in existence. I was able to look up the house on a real estate web site and compare current interior photos o