does not prove that it has this signification here also. The clause may be quite well translated, with J. J. Rambach: “quam domum praeparavit (Salomo) in loco Davidis.” The expression “David's place,” for “place which David had fixed upon,” cannot in this connection be misunderstood, but yet it cannot be denied that the clause is stiff and constrained if we refer it to יהוה את־בּית. We would therefore prefer to give up the Masoretic punctuation, and construe the words otherwise, connecting הכין אשׁר with the preceding thus: where Jahve had appeared to his father David, who had prepared (the house, i.e., the building of it), and make בּמקום ד, with the following designation of the place, to depend upon לבנות as a further explanation of the הם בּהר, viz., in the place of David, i.e., on the place fixed by David on the threshing-floor of the Jebusite Ornan; cf. 1Ch 21:18. - In 2Ch 3:2 לבנות ויּחל is repeated in order to fix the time of the building. In 1Ki 6:1 the time is fixed by its relation to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. בּשּׁני, which the older commentators always understood of the second day of the month, is strange. Elsewhere the day of the month is always designated by the cardinal number with the addition of לחרשׁ or יום, the month having been previously given. Berth. therefore considers בּשּׁני to be a gloss which has come into the text by a repetition of השּׁני, since the lxx and Vulg. have not expressed it.
Verse 3
2Ch 3:3 “And this is Solomon's founding, to build the house of God;” i.e., this is the foundation which Solomon laid for the building of the house of God. The infin. Hoph. הוּסד is used here and in Ezr 3:11 substantively. The measurements only of the length and breadth of the building are given; the height, which is stated in 1Ki 6:2, is omitted here. The former, i.e., the ancient measurement, is the Mosaic or sacred cubit, which, according to Eze 40:5 and Eze 43:13, was a handbreadth longer than the civil cubit of the earlier time; see on 1Ki 6:2.
Verses 4-7
2Ch 3:4-7The porch and the interior of the holy place. - 2Ch 3:4. The porch which was before (i.e., in front of) the length (of the house), was twenty cubits before the breadth of the house, i.e., was as broad as the house. So understood, the words give an intelligible sense. הארך with the article refers back to הארך in 2Ch 3:3 (the length of the house), and על־פּני in the two defining clauses means “in front;” but in the first clause it is “lying in front of the house,” i.e., built in front; in the second it is “measured
