2 Chronicles 2 Bible study: Heaven can't contain him

"Now Solomon decided to build a house for the LORD’s name, and a house for his kingdom" (2:1) (tap house). Two houses, and the chapter keeps them together: Huram blesses the LORD for a son "who would build a house for the LORD and a house for his kingdom" (2:12). Solomon's message begins with a third house, his father's: "As you dealt with David my father, and sent him cedars to build him a house in which to dwell, so deal with me" (2:3). 1 Chronicles had told it, spelling the king's name Hiram: "Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees, masons, and carpenters, to build him a house" (1 Chronicles 14:1). David's house was one "in which to dwell" (2:3). The house for the LORD is "for the LORD’s name" (2:1), and in the same message Solomon says that "heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain him" (2:6). In Hebrew dwell in 2:3 is the verb of Solomon's question at the dedication, "But will God indeed dwell with men on the earth?" (6:18). The two houses of 2:1 are finished together: "Thus Solomon finished the LORD’s house and the king’s house" (7:11).

2 Chronicles 2:6→leads toColossians 2:9

Solomon says, "But who is able to build him a house, since heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain him? Who am I then, that I should build him a house, except just to burn incense before him?" (2:6). Colossians warns against being robbed by what is "not after Christ" (Colossians 2:8), and goes on, "For in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9). Colossians doesn't cite 2 Chronicles 2, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some see them meet: the God whom heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain, for whom Solomon's house could only be a place to burn incense before him, is the God whose fullness, Colossians says, dwells bodily in Christ. Others read each on its own terms: 2:6 as Solomon's word about God's greatness and what his house is for, and Colossians 2:9 as part of its warning against "philosophy and vain deceit" (Colossians 2:8), and don't draw a line between them.

כּוּלkulsay KOOL

Strong's: "properly, to keep in; hence, to measure". Brown-Driver-Briggs: "comprehend, contain". "But who is able to build him a house, since heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain him?" (2:6). 2 Chronicles uses the verb four times. Twice it is heaven that can't contain God: here, and at the dedication, "heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you; how much less this house which I have built!" (6:18). Twice it is what something Solomon made could hold: of "the molten sea" (4:2), "It received and held three thousand baths" (4:5), where the Hebrew has this verb beside another, and "the bronze altar which Solomon had made was not able to receive the burnt offering" (7:7), where receive is this verb. 1 Kings has Solomon's words about heaven only in his prayer at the dedication (1 Kings 8:27).