2 Chronicles 2
David's wars are over. The rest God promised has come. And Solomon spends the first strength of his reign on one thing: a house for the name of the LORD. He drafts a hundred and fifty thousand laborers and writes to Huram of Tyre for cedar and a master craftsman. Then, mid-letter, he says the strangest thing a man launching such a project could say. Who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him?3
A house for the God no house can hold. Solomon does not solve that. He confesses it, and builds anyway. Watch, too, who builds with him. A foreign king blesses the Maker of heaven and earth. The cedar comes from Lebanon, the craftsman is a man of two peoples, the strangers in the land are counted into the work. From every side the gifts of the nations flow toward the One the highest heaven cannot contain.
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2 Chronicles 2:1-6A House for the God No House Can Hold
1And Solomon determined to build an house for the name of the LORD, and an house for his kingdom. 2And Solomon told out threescore and ten thousand men to bear burdens, and fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them. 3And Solomon sent to Huram the king of Tyre, saying, As thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him an house to dwell therein, even so deal with me. 4Behold, I build an house to the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him sweet incense, and for the continual shewbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance for ever to Israel. 5And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods. 6But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him?
A new king with peace on every side could build anything first. Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the LORD. This is not the restlessness of a ruler hunting a monument; it is settled resolve, and its object is stated with care. Two houses are named, and the order is not accidental. The temple comes first; the palace second. The house for God's name precedes the house for Solomon's reign, and that ordering is itself a confession of what the kingdom is finally for. David had longed to build it and had been told the work would fall to his son (1 Chron. 22). Now the son takes it up. And the phrase he keeps returning to - the name of the LORD - is the key to everything that follows. The house will not contain God; no house could. What it will bear is His name, the place He chooses to set His presence and to be called upon. That is what makes a structure of stone and cedar holy: not its scale, but the name it carries.
Then come the numbers, and they stagger. Seventy thousand to carry, eighty thousand to cut stone in the hills, thirty-six hundred to oversee them - the labor of a whole nation bent to one work. The Chronicler does not dwell on the cost or the strain; he simply lets the totals stand, and they say something the prose need not. A house worthy of the name of the LORD demands the mobilization of everything. The greatness of the undertaking is meant to answer, in some small earthly way, to the greatness of the One it is for - even as Solomon will immediately confess that no earthly greatness can ever be enough.
Why must the house be great? Solomon gives the reason in the settled idiom of Israel's praise - great is our God above all gods, the very language of the psalms (for the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods, Ps. 95:3). The line does not concede that other gods rival Him. It says He towers utterly beyond every power the nations name. The greatness is supremacy, not comparison among equals. And it sets up the very tension Solomon is about to name. If God were merely the local deity of one people, a fine house would suit Him well enough. But because He is great above all gods, infinitely beyond every created thing, the question becomes unavoidable: how could any house be built for Him at all? Solomon raises the scale of the work precisely because he has glimpsed the immeasurable scale of the One he serves - and in the same breath he will confess that the work can never measure up.1
It is one of the most astonishing sentences a temple-builder ever wrote. The heaven and heaven of heavens is the Hebrew way of naming the highest reach of all that is - the sky above the sky, the utmost expanse - and Solomon says even that cannot hold his God. The infinite One overflows infinity itself. And yet, at that very moment, he is drafting the plans for a building. The two facts sit side by side without contradiction: God cannot be contained, and God will be present in this house. He will choose to meet His people there - to set His name in a place, to be sought and called upon at a particular door, while remaining the God the heavens cannot bound. Sit with how staggering that is for you. The One the universe cannot fence in wants to be found at an address. The house is not a cage for the Infinite; it is a meeting-place He freely grants, and the seed of everything Scripture will later say about how God comes to dwell with man.
Before he names the materials he needs, Solomon names himself - and shrinks: who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him? This is the same note David struck before him (Who am I, O Lord GOD?, 2 Sam. 7:18), and it is the proper posture of anyone entrusted with a work too great for them. Solomon does not flatter himself that he is doing God a favor by building Him a house; he knows the One he serves needs nothing from his hands. So he reframes the whole enterprise. The house is not something he gives to God, as if God were enriched by it. It is a place to burn sacrifice before him - a place to worship, to draw near, to bring the offerings God Himself appointed. The greatness of the project and the smallness of the builder are held together in one breath, and that is exactly right. Great work for God does not begin in confidence about ourselves. It begins in awe at Him.
2 Chronicles 2:7-10Send Me a Man of Skill, and the Cedar of Lebanon
7Send me now therefore a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue, and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah and in Jerusalem, whom David my father did provide. 8Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees, out of Lebanon: for I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon; and, behold, my servants shall be with thy servants, 9Even to prepare me timber in abundance: for the house which I am about to build shall be wonderful great. 10And, behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.
Solomon is exacting about what he needs, and the list itself is a window onto the temple he envisions: a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue. The metals run from the precious to the structural; the dyes - purple, crimson, blue - are the costly colors of sacred textile work, the same hues that clothed the tabernacle. He wants someone who has mastered not one craft but all of them, that can skill to grave - who can engrave, design, and execute any device set before him. This is the language of artistry, not mere labor. A house for the name of the LORD is to be made by the most skilled hands available, in the richest materials the world affords. The reverence Solomon feels for God is to be made visible in the excellence of the work; nothing slipshod, nothing merely adequate, will do for this bayit.4
The cedar of Lebanon was the most prized timber of the ancient world - fragrant, durable, resistant to rot, the wood of palaces and temples across the region. Solomon has none of it. Israel's hill country grows no such forests, and he says so plainly. But Tyre has the trees and the woodcraft both: I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon. Here is a quiet admission and a quiet wisdom. The king of Israel does not pretend to a self-sufficiency he lacks. The house of the LORD will require what Israel cannot produce on its own - the timber of another land, the woodcraft of another people - and Solomon reaches for it without embarrassment. He pairs his servants with theirs (my servants shall be with thy servants), so that the work becomes a genuine partnership, Israel and Tyre laboring side by side in the forests of Lebanon.
Solomon does not ask for a gift; he offers a fair and generous exchange: twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil. Tyre was a coastal trading power with little farmland; Israel was rich in grain and oil and wine. So each kingdom supplies precisely what the other lacks - Tyre the timber and skill, Israel the food to sustain the laborers who cut it. There is a deep fittingness in this. The house of God is built not by one people hoarding its strength but by the meeting of complementary gifts, each giving out of its abundance to supply the other's need. The provision flows both directions, and the work goes forward because neither party pretends to need nothing from the other.
2 Chronicles 2:11-16A Gentile King Blesses the LORD
11Then Huram the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon, Because the LORD hath loved his people, he hath made thee king over them. 12Huram said moreover, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, that made heaven and earth, who hath given to David the king a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding, that might build an house for the LORD, and an house for his kingdom. 13And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father's, 14The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him, with thy cunning men, and with the cunning men of my lord David thy father. 15Now therefore the wheat, and the barley, the oil, and the wine, which my lord hath spoken of, let him send unto his servants: 16And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in flotes by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem.
Huram's reply is more than a merchant's acceptance of terms, and the opening line reveals it: Because the LORD hath loved his people, he hath made thee king over them. This is a Gentile king of Tyre - a Phoenician ruler whose own city worshiped other gods - and yet he reads Solomon's wisdom and Israel's prosperity not as luck or as the favor of Tyre's deities, but as the work of the LORD, the God of Israel, who hath loved his people. He sees Israel's good king as evidence of Israel's God's love. There is no grudging tribute here, no transactional coldness. Huram looks across the border at what God has done and names it rightly. The chapter that began with Israel's confession of God's greatness now hears that greatness acknowledged from outside Israel altogether - the first hint of a theme that will swell through the rest of Scripture: the nations recognizing the LORD.
Huram goes further still: Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, that made heaven and earth. The phrasing is striking on the lips of a Phoenician. He does not bless the LORD merely as Israel's tribal deity, the local god of a neighboring kingdom; he blesses Him as that made heaven and earth - the Maker of all things, the Creator over every nation including Huram's own. Whatever the full content of Huram's own belief, the words he sends are a confession of the universal scope of Israel's God. And it answers Solomon's paradox from the other side. Solomon had said the heavens cannot contain Him; Huram says He made those very heavens. The God for whom the house is being built is no rival among gods but the Maker of the whole creation - and even a foreign king, drawn into the work, blesses Him by that name.3
Then Huram names the man he is sending, and the detail is deliberate: a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father's - the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre. This is Huram-abi (his name carrying the sense Huram my father), and his parentage is a portrait in miniature of the whole chapter. His mother was an Israelite, of the tribe of Dan; his father was a man of Tyre. He is a man of two peoples, and his hands carry the gifts of both - skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson. The list of his skills is even fuller than the list Solomon requested; he can do everything, and more. He is the living embodiment of the partnership: not merely a craftsman Tyre lends to Israel, but a man in whom Israel and Tyre are already joined. God's house, the text quietly insists, will be built by the meeting of peoples, the skill of the nations gathered to a single holy work.
2 Chronicles 2:17-18The Strangers in the Land Numbered
17And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel, after the numbering wherewith David his father had numbered them; and they were found an hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred. 18And he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work.
The chapter ends on the workforce, and the detail quietly extends its theme. The strangers Solomon numbers are the gerim - the resident aliens, the foreigners who had come to dwell within Israel without being born to it. There were a hundred and fifty-three thousand and six hundred of them, and they are set to the labor: bearers of burdens, hewers in the mountain, overseers over the work. The Chronicler ties it back to a census David had taken, situating this within the long preparation for the temple that David began. The point that emerges is consistent with everything before it. The house for the name of the LORD is not built by the native-born alone. The outsider who has journeyed into the land has a place in the work too. The temple that will be wonderful great rises by the hands of Israel and Tyre, native and stranger, gathered into one vast labor - the very shape of what God's house, in its fullness, was always meant to be.
Set the two verses beside the chapter's opening numbers and a pattern completes itself. At the start, Solomon told out seventy thousand to bear burdens, eighty thousand to hew, thirty-six hundred to oversee (v. 2); now those same totals are filled from among the strangers in the land (v. 18). The vast labor named at the beginning is staffed, in part, by the outsiders named at the end - so that the bracketing of the chapter itself preaches the lesson. From the resolve in verse 1 to the last laborer in verse 18, the building of God's house is a work too great for any one group, gathering the strength of a whole people and the strangers among them, the skill of Tyre and the timber of Lebanon. The Chronicler will go on to describe the temple itself in the chapters that follow; but he has already told us what kind of house it is. It is a house built by many, for the One whom no house can hold.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of 2 Chronicles 2 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for bayit (the layered word for house, dynasty, and temple), for the force of great is our God above all gods in verse 5, and for the identity of Huram-abi, the craftsman of two peoples.
- 2 Chronicles 2 ↔ John 1 · 1 Corinthians 3 · Ephesians 2Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Solomon's house for the uncontainable God (vv. 5-6) forward to the Word who dwelt among us (John 1:14), the temple of Christ's body (John 2:19-21), and the people who become an habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2:22).
- 2 Chronicles 2 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's footnotes on 2 Chronicles 2 - the idiom behind great is our God above all gods, the precise sense of the heaven that cannot contain God in verse 6, the craft-list of metals and dyes Solomon requests, and the wording around Huram-abi's mixed parentage in verse 14.
- Phoenicia and the Cedar of Lebanon · Heilbrunn TimelineThe Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Met's survey of Phoenicia - the seafaring world of Tyre whose cedar, metalwork, and dyed cloth (purple, blue, crimson) were prized across the ancient Near East, the very goods and craftsmanship Solomon seeks from Huram for the house of the LORD.
Where this echoes in Scripture
A House for the God No House Can Hold
- 1 Kings 8:27But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?Solomon’s own words at the temple’s dedication - the same wonder, that the uncontainable God would meet His people in a house.
- Isaiah 66:1The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?God Himself names the paradox - no structure can house the One who fills heaven and earth.
- Acts 7:48Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.Stephen draws Solomon’s confession to its conclusion - the Most High is never contained by what human hands build.
- Psalm 95:3For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.The idiom behind <em>great is our God above all gods</em> - not rivalry among deities, but the LORD’s utter supremacy.
Send Me a Man of Skill, and the Cedar of Lebanon
- Exodus 31:3And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.The skill Solomon seeks is the same God gave Bezalel for the tabernacle - craftsmanship as a gift for the house of God.
- 1 Kings 5:6Command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants.The parallel account of the same partnership - Solomon and Hiram, Israel’s servants beside Tyre’s in the forests of Lebanon.
- John 1:14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.The answer to Solomon’s paradox - the uncontainable God taking up a true dwelling among His people.
- John 2:21But he spake of the temple of his body.The Lord Jesus points past the temple of stone to the true temple - God’s presence dwelling in His own body.
A Gentile King Blesses the LORD
- 1 Corinthians 3:16Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?The dwelling Solomon’s house pointed toward - God’s presence now resting in His own people by the Spirit.
- Ephesians 2:22In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.The living temple - those near and those far off, like Huram-abi and the strangers, built together into one house of God.
- Isaiah 56:7Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.The Gentile king’s blessing and the mixed craftsman foreshadow the day God’s house gathers every people.
- Psalm 86:9All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name.Huram blessing the Maker of heaven and earth is a first note of the nations turning to glorify the LORD’s name.
The Strangers in the Land Numbered
- Leviticus 19:34But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you.The law’s charge behind the strangers’ inclusion - the resident alien given a true place among God’s people.
- Isaiah 56:6Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him… even them will I bring to my holy mountain.The strangers in the work foreshadow the foreigners God Himself draws into His house.
- Ephesians 2:19Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.The stranger numbered into Solomon’s labor anticipates the outsider made a full member of God’s household.
- 1 Peter 2:5Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood.The many hands building one house - God’s people, near and far, framed together into His dwelling.