1 Kings 6 Bible study: The LORD's house

The chapter's first words aren't about Solomon or Jerusalem. They are about Egypt: "In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the LORD’s house" (6:1). The long count runs from the day Israel came out; Solomon's fourth year comes second. The LORD had told David, "For I have not lived in a house since the day that I brought the children of Israel up out of Egypt" (2 Samuel 7:6), and when the house is dedicated Solomon comes back to that day again and again: "Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to build a house, that my name might be there" (8:16); the ark holds the covenant the LORD "made with our fathers when he brought them out of the land of Egypt" (8:21); and his prayer names Egypt twice more (8:51, 8:53). The month names are explained by the text itself: Ziv "is the second month" (6:1), and Bul "is the eighth month" (6:38). The Hebrew Bible uses the name Ziv only in 6:1 and 6:37, and Bul only in 6:38.

1 Kings 6:1→leads toJohn 2:16

Solomon "began to build the LORD’s house" (6:1), and the LORD said, "I will dwell among the children of Israel" (6:13). In the temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-14), Jesus "drove all out of the temple" (John 2:15), and to those who sold the doves he said, "Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!" (John 2:16). Jesus doesn't cite 1 Kings 6, and the temple he stood in wasn't the one Solomon built: Solomon's house was burned (2 Kings 25:9), a house was built again after the exile (Ezra 6:15), and of the temple in John 2 the Jews said, "It took forty-six years to build this temple!" (John 2:20), where Solomon's took seven (6:38). Setting his words beside this chapter is a reading, resting on a shared subject, the LORD's house, not on a shared word. Some read the two together: the kind of house this chapter sees begun for the LORD is the house Jesus calls his Father's, and he won't have it made a marketplace. Others keep his words to the temple of that day and to how it was being used (John 2:14-15), and read 1 Kings 6 as the account of Solomon's building, without looking from one to the other.

שָׁכַןshakansay sha-KHAN

Brown-Driver-Briggs gives "settle down, abide, dwell"; Strong's, "to reside or permanently stay". "I will dwell among the children of Israel" (6:13) is in Hebrew veshakhanti betokh benei yisrael, the same four words as Exodus 29:45, said of the Tent of Meeting, and the WEB gives both verses the same English. The LORD used the same verb near the start of the tabernacle instructions: "Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them" (Exodus 25:8). In 1 Kings it comes only twice, here and in Solomon's words at the dedication: "The LORD has said that he would dwell in the thick darkness" (8:12).