2 Chronicles 8

It took seven years to build the Temple (6:38) and thirteen to build the palace (7:1).

The Hebrew term to describe this is herem, “annihilate.” This is the same term used to describe what Joshua and the invading Israelites did to the Canaanites. Moses had told them, “When the LORD your God gives them to you, you’ll need to finish them off. After you defeat them in battle, wipe them out by killing them all. Don’t make any peace treaty with them. Don’t show them mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:2). Scholars describe this as a “curse of war” or a “ban.” The “ban” means that when soldiers conquer a city, for example, they are banned from keeping anything for themselves—everything in the city is under the curse of war and must die. This kind of vow in ancient times was considered irrevocable and irredeemable. You couldn’t take it back. And nothing of the enemy was allowed to live. Everything in the city was devoted to God, much like sacrificial animals that are slaughtered and burned. “It’s a vow of devotion. If something is devoted to the LORD—whether human, animal, or land—you can’t have it back. If you devote something in this unique way, it’s holy and it stays holy because it belongs to the LORD…You can’t reverse that. You can’t buy back that person’s life. That person is doomed to die” (Leviticus 27:28-29). People today might describe this kind of reaction to outsiders as “xenophobia,” which is prejudice against all others. And they might call the slaughter “genocide.” Those defending the Israelites might point readers to the source of the order, reportedly coming from God, and delivered by Moses. Many Bible scholars struggle over understanding how or why God would give such an apparently terrorizing order to Joshua and the others. Yet, it was a common approach to taking someone’s land and to making sure they never got a chance to take it back.

For more recent parallels, people from Africa—slaves and free—built the American president’s house, the White House. In the United Kingdom and France, slaves built many churches, including the Notre Dame Cathedral, terribly damaged in a fire in 2019.

Better known as the Ark of the Covenant, a sacred chest that held the Ten Commandments. It was Israel’s most revered object, and it was kept in the most sacred room inside the worship center, a room sometimes known as the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy Place. For a description, see Exodus 23.

A burnt offering was the most common animal sacrifice. Worshipers burned the entire animal. See Leviticus 1.

The Hebrew word is pesach (PAY sock). It refers to the annual Passover meal today called a seder (SAY dur), which means “order.” That’s a reference to the fact that the Passover meal is eaten as a meticulously detailed ritual of reading, remembering, and prayer. The word “Passover” comes from the story of God or one of his angels killing the Egyptian firstborn, but “passing over” Hebrew homes with animal blood on the doorframes. Passover is one of the most revered holidays for Jewish people. They observe the festival around Eastertime, in March or April. Jesus went to Jerusalem to observe Passover, when he was arrested and crucified.

This harvest festival goes by several names. The Hebrew name here is literally, Festival of Weeks, using a Hebrew word based on the seven-week timeline. Many Jews today call the festival by its Hebrew name Shavuot, meaning “weeks.” In New Testament times it became known as the Festival of Pentecost, from the Greek word meaning “fiftieth.” Jews celebrated the festival 50 days (7 weeks, hence the name) after Passover. Passover is when the Romans crucified Jesus. For more background, see Exodus 34:22-27 and Leviticus 23:15-22.

It’s often called the Festival of Shelters or Festival of Booths. In Exodus, it was the last harvest festival of the year. That’s when farmers harvested late-season crops such as grapes, figs, and olives (Exodus 23:16). This was in the late summer and early autumn. The Hebrew word describing the festival here is sukka. It can mean tent, canopy, or temporary shelter. Moses said God wanted the Israelites to observe this festival by building temporary shelters and living in them for seven days “so you and your descendants will remember that the people of Israel I led out of Egyptian slavery once lived in shelters like this” (Leviticus 23:43).

Levites were people from the tribe of Levi. All Israel’s priests and auxiliary help in matters of worship came from the tribe of Levi. Levites were either priests or priestly associates such as musicians, artisans, or security guards at the Temple.

The location is the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern rabbit ear of the Red Sea. But the writer calls it the “Reed Sea” and not the Red Sea. The Hebrew words are yam suph, “sea reeds.” In the story of Moses and the Hebrew refugees, they escape through a path God makes in this body of water. Scholars usually track Moses and the Hebrews escaping Egypt by walking southeast, out of the Nile Delta fields and toward the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. They would have passed through lake regions along what is now the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These lakes and ponds reportedly had reeds growing along the banks, like the ones the Bible says grew along the Nile River and helped anchor Baby Moses in a basket (Exodus 2:3). But all of this is on or near the western rabbit ear of the Red Sea, across the Sinai Peninsula. Why the writer calls this eastern side by the same term is a mystery. Maybe there were lots of reeds. Or maybe he was connecting this to Israel’s early history with the same body of water. An escape route for refugees became a gold mine for descendants of those refugees.

Phoenicians of the Mediterranean coastal territory around Tyre and Sidon show up in history as some of the most experienced sailors and seafaring merchants of the time.

Location of Ophir is unknown. But it was famous for producing the finest gold. A broken piece of pottery found near Tel Aviv and dated to the 700s BC, a couple centuries after kings David and Solomon, confirms that Ophir was a location from which gold was exported. The fragment reads “30 shekels…gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon.” Scholars have speculated that the gold was somewhere in Arabia or Africa or India. That narrows the search from seven continents to three.

In ancient Hebrew measure of weight, sailors came home with 420 “talents” of gold. The weight of a talent varied in time and location. But at this time and location, some scholars are guessing one talent equals 75 pounds or 34 kilograms. Multiply it by 420, that’s 31,500 pounds (about 14,300 kg). It would take about 18 pickup trucks to haul that much weight. Or 210 little red wagons.