But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house. The chapter opens with a But set straight after 6:38, So was he seven years in building it. Seven years for the house of the LORD, thirteen for the king's. The narrator gives no verdict, and readers have taken the contrast in two ways: as a quiet question about the king's priorities, or simply as the measure of a much larger complex — the next verses describe several buildings, and much of the temple's material had been gathered in David's day (1 Chronicles 22:14). The study holds both readings open, as it did at the end of chapter 6.

The two spans add up to the sum given later: at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses (9:10), which suggests the palace work followed the temple. He finished all his house is the language used of the temple (6:9, 14). The king's buildings are described with care, but in far fewer verses than the LORD's. Haggai would one day rebuke a people who dwelt in cieled houses while the house of God lay waste (Haggai 1:4); some readers hear an echo here, and the study notes it without claiming that Solomon is its target.

He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon; the length thereof was an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits. In floor plan it was larger than the temple's sixty by twenty (6:2). Its name seems to come from its rows of cedar columns, like a forest brought from Lebanon. It later served, it seems, as an armoury: Solomon hung his golden shields there (10:17), and Isaiah speaks of the armour of the house of the forest (Isaiah 22:8). The text does not explain all its uses, and the study does not add to it.

The details are not easy. Verse 2 speaks of four rows of cedar pillars, but verse 3 counts forty five pillars, fifteen in a row, which makes three rows; some think the forty-five are beams or side chambers rather than the pillars of verse 2, and the Hebrew is hard. Verse 6 adds a porch of pillars, fifty cubits by thirty. The study notes the difficulty and does not force it. What the reader is meant to see is plain: a great hall of state, built of the same cedar as the house of God.

Then he made a porch for the throne where he might judge, even the porch of judgment: and it was covered with cedar from one side of the floor to the other (v. 7). Here the gift of 3:9 was to be exercised — an understanding heart to judge thy people. The two women of chapter 3 came before the king in person; now justice had a hall. The narrator gives the room a single verse, and readers may reflect that a throne built to judge is only as good as the judgment given from it (Psalm 72:2). His house where he dwelt had another court within the porch, which was of the like work.

Solomon made also an house for Pharaoh's daughter, whom he had taken to wife, like unto this porch. The thread of 3:1 continues: she had been lodged in the city of David until he had made an end of building; now she has a house of her own, and 9:24 will record her move into it. 2 Chronicles 8:11 gives Solomon's reason for moving her. All these buildings were of costly stones... sawed with saws (v. 9), with foundation stones of ten cubits and eight cubits (v. 10). The narrator records the honour paid her without comment; 11:1 will set her at the head of a longer list.

King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre (v. 13) — not the king of 5:1 but a craftsman of the same name; Chronicles calls him Huram (2 Chronicles 4:11). He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass. He is described like Bezaleel, the tabernacle's craftsman, whom God filled... in wisdom, and in understanding (Exodus 31:3): Hiram was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. The gifts that made Solomon a judge make Hiram a metalworker. Scripture gives skilled hands the language of wisdom.

The study names a known difference. In 2 Chronicles 2:14 the king of Tyre calls him the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre. Kings says Naphtali; Chronicles says Dan. Some suggest his mother was a Danite by birth who had married into Naphtali before she was widowed; others that Dan means the northern town of that name, near Naphtali's land. Neither can be proved. Some also notice that Bezaleel's helper Aholiab was of the tribe of Dan (Exodus 31:6). Both accounts agree that he was son of an Israelite mother and a Tyrian father.

The pillars were eighteen cubits high apiece, with a line of twelve cubits round each (v. 15), crowned with chapiters of five cubits (v. 16), dressed with networks, chains, lily work and rows of pomegranates (vv. 17-20) — four hundred pomegranates in all (v. 42). Jeremiah 52:21 adds that each was hollow, its metal four fingers thick. 2 Chronicles 3:15 gives them as thirty and five cubits high; some suggest that figure counts the two pillars together, or measures differently. The study notes the difference and does not decide it.

He set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz. The text does not explain the names. Jachin is usually taken to mean he shall establish, and Boaz in it (or in him) is strength; the study offers these as likely senses, not certainties. Read together, many hear a confession set at the door of the house — the LORD will establish, and in Him is strength — perhaps recalling the promise to establish David's throne (2 Samuel 7:12-13). Boaz was also the name of David's ancestor (Ruth 4:21-22); whether a link was meant, no one knows.

A great basin of cast brass, called a sea for its size. 2 Chronicles 4:6 gives its use: the sea was for the priests to wash in, as the laver of the tabernacle had been (Exodus 30:18-21). Under its brim ran two rows of cast knops (v. 24), and it stood upon twelve oxen, three facing each quarter of the compass (v. 25). Centuries later king Ahaz took down the sea from off the brasen oxen (2 Kings 16:17), and in the end the Chaldeans broke it up and carried its brass to Babylon (2 Kings 25:13).

Readers have long asked about the numbers: a circle ten cubits across measures a little over thirty-one round, not thirty. The study gives the honest range of answers. Verse 26 says the brim flared like the brim of a cup and the wall was an hand breadth thick, so some suggest the ten cubits were measured across the outer lip and the thirty round the body or the inside, which brings the figures close. Others say the narrator simply gave round numbers, as builders and storytellers commonly do. Neither a charge of error nor a claim of hidden precision is needed; the verse describes a vessel, not a lesson in geometry.

The bath was a liquid measure whose size is uncertain, so the study does not convert it; on any reckoning this was a very large vessel. The parallel says the sea received and held three thousand baths (2 Chronicles 4:5). The study names the difference. Some suggest that one figure gives its usual contents and the other its full capacity; others think a number was miscopied in transmission. The two accounts agree on its measures, its brim like a cup with flowers of lilies, and its twelve oxen.

The sea held water for cleansing before the priests drew near; the Law had said they must wash with water, that they die not (Exodus 30:20). Christian readers have heard here the need for cleansing before approaching God, and the New Testament speaks of our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22) and the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5). John saw before the heavenly throne a sea of glass like unto crystal (Revelation 4:6), and some have linked the two. The study offers these as readings. The twelve oxen have reminded some of the twelve tribes; the text does not say so.

The bases (vv. 27-37) were wheeled stands of brass, four cubits square and three high, their panels graved with lions, oxen, and cherubims (v. 29), their wheels like the work of a chariot wheel (v. 33) — movable stands for the court. 2 Chronicles 4:6 says that in the lavers such things as they offered for the burnt offering they washed. Five stood on each side of the house, and the sea toward the south-east, it seems (v. 39). Sacrifice was heavy, messy work, and the house was equipped for it.

All of them had one casting, one measure, and one size (v. 37). The narrator lingers over wheels and ledges because, as with the tabernacle, nothing in God's house was careless. Hiram's list ends: all these vessels... were of bright brass (v. 45). They were cast in the plain of Jordan... in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan (v. 46), and Solomon left all the vessels unweighed, because they were exceeding many (v. 47). Readers should hear the echo at the end of Kings, when the Chaldeans carried them off and the brass of all these vessels was without weight (2 Kings 25:16).

Inside the house the metal turns to gold: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, whereupon the shewbread was (v. 48), the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five on the left, before the oracle (v. 49), and bowls, snuffers, spoons, censers and even hinges of gold (v. 50). The tabernacle had one lampstand (Exodus 25:31-37); the temple has ten. Brass stood in the court where the people came; gold was within, where only priests went. The rising holiness, from court to holy place to oracle, follows the pattern of the tabernacle (Hebrews 9:1-7).

So was ended all the work that king Solomon made for the house of the LORD. And Solomon brought in the things which David his father had dedicated. David had dedicated to the LORD the silver and gold of his wars (2 Samuel 8:11) and gathered much for the house (1 Chronicles 29:2-5). The son finishes, and the father's gifts are laid up among the treasures of the house of the LORD. Readers should not miss the grace of it: the man who was not allowed to build still has his offerings in the house. Faithful giving outlives the giver.