1 Kings 9:8

And at this house, which is high [Heb; And this house shall be high, עֶלְיוֹן יִהְיֶה . Our translators were probably influenced by 2 Chronicles 7:21 , the text of which is אֲשֶׁר הָיהָ עֶלְיוֹן which would seem to be an emendation, designed to clear up the difficulty rather than an accidental variation of the text. But here the literal rendering is probably the truer, the meaning being "this house shall be conspicuous, as an example"—so the Vulg. domus haec erit in exemplum . The LXX . accords with the Hebrew text, ὁ οἷκος οὗτος ἔσται ὁ ὐψηλὸς , but the Syriac and Arabic read, "this house shall be destroyed." Keil sees in the words an allusion implicite to Deuteronomy 26:19 , and Deuteronomy 28:1 , where God promises to make Israel עֶלְיוֹן , and says "the blessing will be turned into a curse." The temple should indeed be "high," should be what Israel would have been, but it shall be as a warning, etc.; but this connexion is somewhat far fetched and artificial. Thenius would read for, עִיִּין עֶלְיוֹן . "ruins," after Micah 3:12 ; Jeremiah 26:18 ; Psalms 79:1 ; but it is hardly right to resort to conjectures, unsupported by a single version or MS ; so long as any sufficient meaning can be extracted from the words as they stand, and no one can deny that "high" may surely signify "conspicuous." Cf. Matthew 11:23 ], every one that passeth by it shall be astonished . [ שָׁמֵם primarily means to be dumb with astonishment, Gesen; Thessalonians 3. p. 1435] and shall hiss [ שָׁרַק , like "hiss," is an onomatopoetic word. It does not denote the hissing of terror (Bähr) but of derision; of. Jeremiah 19:8 ; Jeremiah 49:17 ; Job 27:23 ; Lamentations 2:15 , Lamentations 2:16 . Rawlinson aptly remarks, as bearing on the authorship of the Kings, that this is a familiar word in Jeremiah (see 1 Kings 18:16 ; 25:9; 29:18; 50:13; 51:37, in addition to the passages cited above), and that the other prophets rarely use it. The fact that much of this charge is in Jeremiah's style, confirms the view taken above (note on verse 4), that the ipsissima verba of the dream are not preserved to us. The author indeed could hardly do more than preserve its leading ideas, which he would naturally present in his own dress]; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land and to this house? [Similar words Deuteronomy 29:24 , Deuteronomy 29:25 ; Jeremiah 22:8 .]