Page:The Books of Chronicles (1916).djvu/241

Rh David had appointed, in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign. Now these are the foundations which Solomon laid for the building of the house of God. The length by cubits after the first measure was threescore cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits. And the porch that was before the house, the length of it, according to the breadth of the house, was twenty cubits, and the height an hundred and twenty: and he overlaid it within with pure gold. And the greater house

Ornan the Jebusite] See 1 Chr. xxi. 15 ff.

2. in the second day] The words are absent from 1 Kings and should probably be omitted here. The year according to 1 Kings was the four hundred and eightieth after the Exodus.

3. these are the foundations] i.e. the measurements which follow state the ground-plan of the Temple.

cubits after the first measure] The cubit was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger, about 17-1/2 inches. A difficult verse in Ezek. (xl. 5) seems to have given rise to the idea that in early times the cubit was a somewhat longer measure, and that may be what the Chronicler intended by the present phrase "cubits after the first (or former) measure." Exact measurements on the site of the Temple have now demonstrated that about 17-1/2 inches was at all times the standard length of the cubit (see P.E.F.S. Oct. 1915, pp. 186 f.).

4. And the porch that was before the house] The Hebrew text is corrupt, but the sense of the original reading has probably been correctly guessed by the R.V.

the height an hundred and twenty] So also LXX. As the Temple was only 30 cubits in height, this building was rather a tower than a porch. In 1 Kings nothing is said about height. Most probably the true reading was "twenty," not "an hundred and twenty"; the "hundred" being a marginal gloss added by someone who was thinking of Herod's Temple of which the porch was 100 cubits in height.

5—7 (cp. 1 Kin. vi. 15, 21, 29, 30).&emsp;

5. the greater house] i.e. the holy place. It was forty cubits long (1 Kin. vi. 17), whereas the shrine was twenty (1 Kin. vi. 16, 20).