2 Chronicles 7:4-5 - Exposition

These two verses bring us again into company with the parallel in its verses 62, 63. Let it be noticed that in both these verses the compiler of Chronicles avoids the words, "all Israel," and "all the children of Israel;" in favour of all the people . The parallel tells us that the sacrifices in part were peace offerings, eatable, therefore, by priests and people. Large as the numbers of the oxen and sheep sacrificed, yet indications in the narrative round about do something to sustain them, as e.g. the number of people who had come together; the fact that all the people are said to offer sacrifices; the fact that Solomon, Because of the press for room ( 2 Chronicles 7:7 ), hallowed the middle of the court , i.e. probably the court itself, in order to find place for the "burnt offerings, meat offerings, and fat" ( 2 Chronicles 7:7 ); further, the number of mouths of people that certainly would need filling, not only on one day, but on days more than one, while on the third day (Le 2 Chronicles 19:6 ) any part of a peace offering still left was to be destroyed by fire. Nevertheless, the thought of the scene of butchery is, to our modern imagination, amazing to the last degree. An assemblage of people in Jerusalem, all making also for its temple, of a hundred and twenty thousand people, and a minimum of another twenty-two thousand people, is startling; but add to these a sheep apiece for the former number, and an ox apiece for the latter, and allow several days to be covered by the- killing and sacrificing, and one feels that the key and explanation of the present words of the Bible text in this very passage are scarcely in hand. The interesting note in the 'Speaker's Commentary' on 1 Kings 8:63 scarcely assists us. Its instances of the "profusion" of the "sacrifices of antiquity" are altogether and immensely distanced by the narrative before us, not only in the number of victims, but in respect of the time in which the victims had to be despatched and disposed of, and the place and space within which, if not the slaughtering, yet certainly the offering, had to be done.