Context No. 33 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

2 Chronicles 3:8-17: in context

8He made the most holy place. Its length, according to the width of the house, was twenty cubits, and its width twenty cubits; and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to six hundred talents. 9The weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold. He overlaid the upper rooms with gold. 10In the most holy place he made two cherubim by carving, and they overlaid them with gold. 11The wings of the cherubim were twenty cubits long: the wing of the one was five cubits, reaching to the wall of the house; and the other wing was five cubits, reaching to the wing of the other cherub. 12The wing of the other cherub was five cubits, reaching to the wall of the house; and the other wing was five cubits, joining to the wing of the other cherub. 13The wings of these cherubim spread themselves out twenty cubits. They stood on their feet, and their faces were toward the house. 14He made the veil of blue, purple, crimson, and fine linen, and ornamented it with cherubim. 15Also he made before the house two pillars thirty-five cubits high, and the capital that was on the top of each of them was five cubits. 16He made chains in the inner sanctuary, and put them on the tops of the pillars; and he made one hundred pomegranates, and put them on the chains. 17He set up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand and the other on the left; and called the name of that on the right hand Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz.

Chronicles retells Israel's history for the community that came home from exile, and it lingers on the temple. This passage is the building of the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, a perfect cube of twenty cubits, lined with gold. Two carved cherubim stand inside with their wings spread the full width of the room, wing tip touching wing tip in the middle, and the outer wings reaching each wall.

The numbers are enormous, six hundred talents of gold for the overlay, and the account even records the weight of the nails. Nothing about the room was for looking at. Only the high priest entered, once a year. Chronicles was written for readers whose second temple was a plainer building than this, and it hands them a memory of the first in full detail.

The chapter ends with the two bronze pillars at the entrance, named Jachin and Boaz. Those are the same pillars Babylon's soldiers broke apart and carried off as scrap metal, weighed out by the piece, in the reading a few days back from Jeremiah 52. Here they are being cast. There they are being hauled away. The gold, the nails, the cherubim, all of it made carefully and none of it permanent. What am I building right now with care that I would still want to have built well, knowing it will not last?

Sources

1 Kings 6:19-28: the parallel account of the inner sanctuary and its cherubim
The Holy of Holies as a cube of twenty cubits, entered by the high priest once a year (Leviticus 16)
Jeremiah 52:17-23: the same pillars Jachin and Boaz broken up and carried to Babylon