2 Chronicles 5 Bible study: One sound, and the cloud

Most of this chapter is in 1 Kings too, often in the same words: the work finished (5:1; 1 Kings 7:51), the elders and the ark brought up (5:2-5; 1 Kings 8:1-4), the ark set in the most holy place (5:7; 1 Kings 8:6), and nothing in it but the tablets (5:10; 1 Kings 8:9). Then both books begin the same sentence. 1 Kings goes straight on: "It came to pass, when the priests had come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the LORD’s house" (1 Kings 8:10). 2 Chronicles opens it the same way, "When the priests had come out of the holy place" (5:11), and then, in parentheses in the WEB, tells what 1 Kings doesn't. All the priests who were present "had sanctified themselves, and didn’t keep their divisions" (5:11). The Levite singers, "Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and their brothers, arrayed in fine linen" (5:12), stood at the east end of the altar, "and with them one hundred twenty priests sounding with trumpets" (5:12). Only then does the cloud come: "when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD" (5:13). Neither book says why it tells the day its own way, and these notes don't guess.

2 Chronicles 5:13→leads toJohn 17:22

When the trumpeters and singers were "as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD" (5:13), "the house was filled with a cloud, even the LORD’s house" (5:13), "for the LORD’s glory filled God’s house" (5:14). Lifting up his eyes to heaven (John 17:1), Jesus prayed for his disciples and for those who would believe in him through their word (John 17:20): "The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:22), "I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one" (John 17:23). Jesus doesn't cite 2 Chronicles 5, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear the same two things joined in both, God's people as one and God's glory with them: in 2 Chronicles the singers sound as one and the glory fills the house; in John, Jesus gives those who believe the glory the Father gave him, that they may be one. Others read the two apart: 2 Chronicles says the cloud came when the singers sounded as one (5:13), not that it came because they did, and there the glory fills a house (5:14), while in John Jesus says he has given it "to them" (John 17:22).

אֶחָדechadsay e-KHAD

Strong's: "properly, united, i.e. one". Brown-Driver-Briggs: "one". It comes twice in 5:13. The trumpeters and singers were "as one", in Hebrew ke'echad, "to make one sound to be heard", where one sound is qol echad (tap sound). Only then does the cloud come. It is the "one" of "The LORD is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Later in the book the same word is used when "the hand of God came on Judah to give them one heart" (30:12).