2 Chronicles 6 Bible study: Hands toward heaven

Solomon begins with the LORD's words, "The LORD has said that he would dwell in the thick darkness" (6:1) (tap thick darkness), and then his own: "But I have built you a house and home, a place for you to dwell in forever" (6:2). He turns to the people and blesses the LORD, "who spoke with his mouth to David my father, and has with his hands fulfilled it" (6:4). The saying he quotes names two choices here. In 1 Kings it ends with one: "I chose David to be over my people Israel" (1 Kings 8:16). 2 Chronicles has both: "but now I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there; and I have chosen David to be over my people Israel" (6:6). Then Solomon says the promise is kept: "The LORD has performed his word that he spoke; for I have risen up in the place of David my father, and sit on the throne of Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built the house for the name of the LORD, the God of Israel" (6:10). In Hebrew performed and risen up are the same verb, qum. The introduction to 2 Chronicles quotes 6:10 in its promise to watch, beside what the LORD had said of David's son: "He will build me a house, and I will establish his throne forever" (1 Chronicles 17:12).

2 Chronicles 6:32→leads toJohn 12:20-21

Solomon prays for "the foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, when he comes from a far country for your great name’s sake" (6:32), and asks the LORD to "do according to all that the foreigner calls to you for; that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you" (6:33). John tells of a feast when Jesus was coming to Jerusalem (John 12:12): "Now there were certain Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast" (John 12:20). They asked Philip, "Sir, we want to see Jesus" (John 12:21). When Jesus is told, he answers, "The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" (John 12:23), and later says, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). John doesn't cite 2 Chronicles 6, and the Greeks aren't said to have prayed toward the house, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some read them together: people from beyond Israel, of the kind Solomon asked the LORD to hear when they came to pray, come to worship at a feast in Jerusalem and ask to see Jesus, and Jesus speaks of drawing all people to himself. Others read John 12:20-21 in its own setting, where Jesus answers by speaking of a grain of wheat that "falls into the earth and dies" (John 12:24) and of being lifted up, "signifying by what kind of death he should die" (John 12:33), and draw no line from Solomon's prayer.

חֶסֶדchesedsay KHE-sed

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "goodness, kindness", and of God, "lovingkindness in condescending to the needs of his creatures". The first verse of the prayer and its last both have it. Solomon calls the LORD the one "who keep covenant and loving kindness with your servants who walk before you with all their heart" (6:14), and he ends, "Remember your loving kindnesses to David your servant" (6:42), where it is plural. At Gibeon he had said, "You have shown great loving kindness to David my father, and have made me king in his place" (1:8), and when the cloud filled the house the singers praised, "For he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever!" (5:13). In 6:42 the Hebrew words are chasdei David (the first with a one-letter prefix), and these two words stand side by side in one other verse of the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 55:3: "I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David" (Isaiah 55:3).