Bible Commentaries
2 Chronicles 8

Verses 1-18

2 Chronicles 8:1-18 . Solomon’ s Various Religious and Secular Undertakings (see notes on 1 Kings 9:10-28).— A striking difference occurs between 2 and 1 Kings 9:11; here Hiram gives Solomon an unspecified number of cities, whereas in the historical account Solomon gives Hiram twenty cities. The discrepancy is not difficult to account for; in the Chronicler’ s days when, with the lapse of time, the popular conception had greatly increased the wealth and power of Solomon, it was not thought credible that such a monarch could really have ceded Israelite cities to a heathen in lieu of payment. This is not to say that the Chronicler deliberately falsified history; the sources from which he compiled his record were various, and upon these the influence of tradition is not likely to have been without effect; moreover, the authority of the Book of Kings was not, in his day, what it became in later days, so that he naturally felt himself at liberty to correct this, or any other, source where he believed it to be erroneous. It must be remembered that what we understand by “ the authority of Scripture” did not arise until the idea of a Canon had come into being after the Maccabæ an period, and that prior to this it was only the Pentateuch which was regarded as of binding authority.

2 Chronicles 8:11 . my wife . . . hath come: these words would truly have been strange in the mouth of Solomon, but the Chronicler had, as far as he could, to mitigate the effects of the extraordinary proceeding, as it appeared to the Jews of his day, of an Israelite king marrying the daughter of a king of Egypt.

2 Chronicles 8:12-16. An expansion of 1 Kings 9:25.

2 Chronicles 8:14 . the courses of the priests . . .: cf. 1 Chronicles 24 f.

2 Chronicles 8:17 f. Cf. 1 Kings 9:26-28.