Bible Commentaries
2 Chronicles 2

Verses 1-18

The king's devotion to the highest work of his life was, however, unhindered, and the second chapter gives us the story of how he commenced his preparations for doing that work by new commercial treaties with his father's old friend Huram. This was an alliance of a totally different nature. Huram recognized the truth about Israel, that it was a God-governed people, and in responding to Solomon's message plainly declared this to be the case. In Solomon's friendship for his father's friend there was everything that was noble and helpful.

In the record of Solomon's appeal to Huram, king of Tyre, for a skilled worker and for timber, we find his question, "Who is able to build Him a house?" It affords evidence of the greatness and truth of Solomon's conception of God, as the words immediately following show: "seeing heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him." Yet he was about to build a house for God. He declared its value as he understood it, "only to burn incense before Him." Solomon was under no delusion about God, and therefore made no mistake about the Temple. He never conceived of it as a place to which God would be confined. He did expect, and he received, manifestations of the Presence of God in that house. Its chief value was that it afforded man a place in which he should offer incense, that is, the symbol of adoration, praise, worship, to God.