2 Chronicles 8
The full text of 2 Chronicles 8 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
1 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon had built the temple of the LORD and his own palace,
2 Solomon rebuilt the villages that Hiram had given him, and settled Israelites there.
3 Solomon then went to Hamath Zobah and captured it.
4 He also built up Tadmor in the desert and all the store cities he had built in Hamath.
5 He rebuilt Upper Beth Horon and Lower Beth Horon as fortified cities, with walls and with bronze gates and bars,
6 as well as Baalath, and all his store cities, and all the cities for his chariots and for his horses — whatever he desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon and throughout all the territory he ruled.
7 All the people left from the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these peoples were not Israelites),
8 whose descendants remained in the land (whom the Israelites had not destroyed) — these Solomon conscripted for his slave labor force, as it is to this day.
9 But Solomon did not make slaves of the Israelites for his work; they were his fighting men, commanders of his captains, and commanders of his chariots and charioteers.
10 They were also King Solomon's chief officials — two hundred and fifty officials supervising the men.
11 Solomon brought Pharaoh's daughter up from the City of David to the palace he had built for her, for he said, 'My wife must not live in the palace of David king of Israel, because the places the ark of the LORD has entered are holy.'
12 On the altar of the LORD that he had built in front of the portico, Solomon sacrificed burnt offerings to the LORD,
13 according to the daily requirement for offerings commanded by Moses for the Sabbaths, the New Moons and the three annual festivals — the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles.
14 In keeping with the ordinance of his father David, he appointed the divisions of the priests for their duties, and the Levites to lead the praise and to assist the priests according to each day's requirement. He also appointed the gatekeepers by divisions for each gate, because this was what David the man of God had ordered.
15 They did not deviate from the king's commands to the priests or to the Levites in any matter, including that of the treasuries.
16 All Solomon's work was carried out, from the day the foundation of the temple of the LORD was laid until its completion. So the temple of the LORD was finished.
17 Then Solomon went to Ezion Geber and Elath on the coast of Edom.
18 And Hiram sent him ships commanded by his own men, sailors who knew the sea. These, with Solomon's men, sailed to Ophir and brought back four hundred and fifty talents of gold, which they delivered to King Solomon.
Translation notes (4)
- 2 Chronicles 8:2a In 1 Kings 9:11-13 it is Solomon who gives Hiram twenty cities in Galilee, which Hiram inspects and disparages as the land of Cabul. The Chronicler reverses the direction of the gift, and many interpreters since antiquity have harmonized the accounts by supposing that Hiram returned the rejected cities, which Solomon then rebuilt and repopulated.
- 2 Chronicles 8:4a Tadmor is commonly identified with Palmyra, the caravan city in the Syrian desert northeast of Damascus. In the parallel passage at 1 Kings 9:18 the Masoretic Text is written tamar (תמר), a site in southern Judah, though the marginal reading directs it to be read as tadmor; the Chronicler's text unambiguously names the northern city.
- 2 Chronicles 8:11a The rationale reflects the ancient conception that holiness attaches to physical space: the Hebrew qodesh, 'holy', marks the places the ark occupied as sanctified ground. The Chronicler alone supplies this explanation for the move, which the parallel account in 1 Kings 9:24 reports without comment; the concern is ritual status, since a foreign wife's residence was deemed incompatible with consecrated space.
- 2 Chronicles 8:18a The parallel account in 1 Kings 9:28 gives the figure as four hundred and twenty talents, while the Septuagint of that verse reads one hundred and twenty. Such divergences in large numbers are common in the transmission of the historical books and are generally attributed to scribal error in copying numerals rather than to independent traditions.
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