2 Chronicles 3:5 - Exposition

The greater house ; i.e. the holy place. He ceiled . This rendering is wrong. The verb is (a) given above ( 2 Chronicles 3:4 ). It is repeated in the next clause of this very verse as "overlaid," as also in 2 Chronicles 3:7 , 2 Chronicles 3:8 , 2 Chronicles 3:9 . The generic word "covered" would serve all the occasions on which the word occurs here. From a comparison of the parallel it becomes plain that the meaning is that the crone structure of floor and walls was covered over with wood ( 1 Kings 6:7 , 1 Kings 6:15 , 1 Kings 6:18 ). That wood for the floor was fir ( 1 Kings 6:15 ), probably slim for the walls , which must depend partly on the translation of this 2 Chronicles 3:15 . It would seem to say that (beside the stone) there was an inner stratum, both to walls and floor, of cedar (reason for which would be easy of conjecture). But another translation obviates the necessity of this inner stratum supposition, rendering "from the floor to the top of the wall." According to this, while the overlaying gold was on cedar for walls and ceiling ( 1 Kings 6:9 ), it was on fir for the floor, which does not seem what our present verse purports, unless, according to the suggestion of some, "fir" be interpreted to include cedar. Set thereon palm trees and chains . These were, of course, carvings. The chains, not mentioned in the parallel ( 1 Kings 6:29 ; but see 1 Kings 7:17 ), were probably wreaths of chain design or pattern. Easier modern English would read "put thereon."