“The house which I am building will be great; for our God is greater than all gods.
Parallel Translations
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“The house which I am building will be great; for our God is greater than all gods.
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And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods.
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(2-4) And the house which I build is great; for great is our God above all gods.
Cross-references (10)
Passages linked to 2 Chronicles 2:5 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 Chronicles 16:25 For great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised. He also is to be feared above all gods.
- Exodus 15:11 Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
- Psalms 135:5 For I know that Yahweh is great, that our Lord is above all gods.
- 1 Chronicles 29:1 David the king said to all the assembly, “Solomon my son, whom alone God has chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great; for the palace is not for man, but for Yahweh God.
- 2 Chronicles 2:9 even to prepare me timber in abundance; for the house which I am about to build will be great and wonderful.
- Psalms 86:8-9 There is no one like you among the gods, Lord, nor any deeds like your deeds. All nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord. They shall glorify your name.
- Psalms 145:3 Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable.
- Jeremiah 10:6 There is no one like you, Yahweh. You are great, and your name is great in might.
- 1 Timothy 6:15 which in its own times he will show, who is the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.
- 1 Kings 9:8 Though this house is so high, yet everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss; and they will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land, and to this house?’
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (10 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 2Ch 2:5 And the house which I build [is]…
2Ch 2:5 And the house which I build [is] great: for great [is] our God above all gods.
Ver. 5. And the house which I build is great.] Excellently great, as he afterwards saith. {2Ch 2:9}
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For great is our God.] And must therefore be served like himself.
Above all gods.] Whether deputed, as princes, or reputed, as idols.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain The house which I build is great; for though…
The house which I build is great; for though the temple strictly so called, was but small, yet the buildings belonging to it, both above and under ground, were large and numerous.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain But who is able to build him an house,....…
But who is able to build him an house,.... Suitable to the greatness of his majesty, especially as he dwells not in temples made with hands:
seeing the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain him? see Kg1 8:27,
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who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him? since God was an immense and infinite Being, be would have Hiram to understand that he had no thought of building an house, in which he could be circumscribed and contained, only a place in which he might be worshipped, and sacrifices offered to him.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Great - For though the temple strictly so called,…
Great - For though the temple strictly so called, was but small, yet the buildings belonging to it, were large and numerous.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 2Ch 2:5. The house which I build is great…
2Ch 2:5. The house which I build is great — Though the temple, strictly so called, was small, yet the buildings belonging to it were large and numerous. For great is our God above all gods — Above all idols, above all princes. Idols are nothing, princes are little, and both are under the control of the God of Israel. Therefore the house must be great; not indeed in proportion to the greatness of that God to whom it is to be dedicated, for between finite and infinite there can be no proportion; but in some proportion to the exalted conceptions we have of him, and the great esteem we have for him.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain See 1Ki 6:2 note. In Jewish eyes, at the…
See 1Ki 6:2 note. In Jewish eyes, at the time that the temple was built, it may have been “great,” that is to say, it may have exceeded the dimensions of any single separate building existing in Palestine up to the time of its erection.
Great is our God ... - This may seem inappropriate as addressed to a pagan king. But it appears 2Ch 2:11-12 that Hiram acknowledged Yahweh as the supreme deity, probably identifying Him with his own Melkarth.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (5) And the house which I build is great.—1Ch_29:1.
(5) And the house which I build is great.—1Ch_29:1.
Great is our God above all gods.—Exodus 18
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11; Deu_10:17; Psa_77:13; Psa_95:3. According to modern notions of magnitude, the Temple of Solomon was a small building. (See on 1Ki_6:2-3.) Shelley’s
“There once proud Salem’s haughty fane
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,
is pure fancy.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 5, 6. The contents of these verses beg…
Vers. 5, 6. The contents of these verses beg some special observation, in the first place, as having been judged by the writer of Chronicles matter desirable to be retained and put in his work. To find a place for this subject amid his careful selection, and rejection in many cases, of the matter at his command, is certainly a decision in harmony with his general design in this work. Then, again, they may be remarked on as spoken to another king, who, whether it were to be expected or no, was, it is plain, a sympathizing hearer of the piety and religious resolution of Solomon (ver. 12). This is one of the touches of history that does not diminish our regret that we do not know more of Hiram. He was no "proselyte," but he had the sympathy of a convert to the religion of the Jew. Perhaps the simplest and most natural explanation may just be the truest, that Hiram for some long time had seen "the rising" kingdom, and alike in David and Solomon in turn, "the coming" men. He had been more calmly and deliberately impressed than the Queen of Sheba afterwards, but not less effectually and operatively impressed. And once more the passage is noteworthy for the utterances of Solomon in themselves. As parenthetically testifying to a powerful man, who could be a powerful helper of Solomon"s enterprise, his outburst of explanation, and of ardent religious purpose, and of humble godly awe, is natural. But that he should call the temple he purposed to build "so great," as we cannot put it down either to intentional exaggeration or to sober historic fact, must the rather be honestly set down to such considerations as these, viz. that in point of fact, neither David nor Solomon were "travelled men," as Joseph and Moses, for instance. Their measures of greatness were largely dependent upon the existing material and furnishing of their own little country. And further, Solomon speaks of the temple as great very probably from the point of view of its simple religious uses (note end of ver. 6) as the place of sacrifice in especial rather than as a place, for instance, of vast congregations and vast processions. Then, too, as compared with the tabernacle, it would loom "great," whether for size or for its enduring material. Meantime, though Solomon does indeed use the words (ver. 5)," The house.., is great," yet, throwing on the words the light of the remaining clause of the verse, and of David"s words in 1Ch_29:1, it is not very certain that the main thing present to his mind was not the size, but rather the character of the house, and the solemn character of the enterprise itself (1Ki_8:27; 2Ch_6:18) Who am I save only to burn sacrifice before him? The drift of Solomon"s thought is plain that nothing would justify mortal man, if he purported to build really a palace of residence for him whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, but that he is justified all the more in "not giving sleep to his eyes, nor slumber to his eyelids, until he had found out a place" (Psa_132:4, Psa_132:5) where man might acceptably, in God"s appointed way, draw near to him. If "earth draw near to heaven," it may be confidently depended on that heaven will not be slow to bend down its glory, majesty, grace, to earth.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And this house which I build is great: for…
2Ch_2:5-6
And this house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods.
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The house of God
1.The worship of God, the creator and governor of the world, commenced with the creation of man; but in the patriarchal ages it partook not of that formal and settled character which it afterwards, by Gods direction, assumed. Nor, as far as we can learn from ancient history, does it appear that there were ever any regular buildings erected as temples before the Jewish tabernacle was set up. Noah, and the other patriarchs, appear simply to have erected altars for their sacrifices, and these often only for immediate and temporary use; or to have planted groves, as Abraham did in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. But when God had chosen a people to be called by His name, and had given them His law, and taught them to offer Him regular stated services, He further commanded that there should be a particular building set apart for the same. Now, the objects of all such buildings are twofold. They are to be built to the honour of Him who is to be worshipped therein, and they are to be used by those who are to meet there for the purpose of joining in that worship.
2. And this feeling which led Solomon to build a great house because God was great above all gods has had its proper influence in all ages and countries, and is based upon true and proper principles of religion, as well under the dispensation of the gospel as under that of law. History, no doubt, tells us that in the days of persecution the faithful were wont to meet for Divine worship amidst the tombs and burial.places of the dead, or in the secret eaves of the earth. But, when persecutions cease, and days of prosperity come round, when, as David says, they themselves begin to dwell in houses of cedar, then surely it is no longer meet that the ark of the covenant of the Lord should remain under curtains. When mansions of costly price, and embellished within and without with all the skill of experienced artists, grow up on every side--when the halls of justice, the palatial buildings of the money-changers, the marketplaces, and public works which denote and advance the worldly greatness and prosperity of our citizens, are multiplying around us, then too, surely, it is meet that the house which we build for the service of God should be great and, as nearly as we can make it, the chief glory of all; reminding us, by its beauty and magnificence, of the greatness of our God, who is above all gods.
3. It has been too much the custom, in the age in which we live, to endeavour in every way to serve God at as cheap a rate as possible, at the same time that men serve themselves willingly at the costliest sacrifice. While in your private lives luxury has been increasing, any expenditure in connection with the building of a church or the service of God is too often denounced, very much in the spirit of Judas, as a waste of that which might have been turned to better account in some other way. Now, for myself, I wish loudly to protest against such a system.
4. What use are we going to make of the house of God, now that we have built it? If there is one thing more than another for which we have a perfect loathing, says an able lay member of the Church, it is that most disgusting of all unrealities which attempts to make things external and earthly the substitute for what is internal and heavenly--which considers fine churches and complex services a sufficient compensation for general laxity of morals--the formalism of lip-worship an atonement for deadness of hearts and unrestrained luxurious living. All the outward acts of s religious life may be performed, where there is an established character, and yet every one of them be an offence to God. They hear sermons, join in a litany, join in Divine worship, come to the communion once a month--all like a decent garment: things outside, nothing within. God forbid that such should be our case: that we should allow any self-complacency on account of this house which God has permitted us to build for Him, or any admiration of the services to be offered therein, to blind us to the depths of our sad spiritual necessities, or make us indifferent about these necessities being supplied. And when we draw nigh to offer our own sacrifices, let us ever bear fresh in our stricken hearts the recollection of that One Great Sacrifice once offered up as a peace-offering for us all, and which alone gives any of us sinners the right of access to the throne of grace. (Bp. Fulford.)
A great house
The house is great, for great is our God--that is the reason. That is the key of all Christian life. Our conception of God controls everything. A little God means a little life, a little morality, a little service, a little petty, miserable effort altogether; but a great conception of God is a great life--great loving, great service for others. I do not fear about God in the Church. God is great. We have dismissed Him from our thought. We are agnostics without the courage of our convictions. We say God; but do we mean it in all its light and music and beauty and moral necessity? Is not the Word of God a mere convenience in speech? We must put it in. Is it the ruling thought, the dominating idea, the sovereign force? Christ never ignored God. Christ lifted up the Father, the God, the Sovereign, When you get a real conception of God you will preach well. There will be no fear of man before you. Do not sit back and say, We cannot know Him. That is intellectually true; it is sympathetically false--we cannot know God intellectually. No mans eyes can accommodate the whole sky, but we know God lovingly, pityingly, healingly, forgivingly; we know Him intuitively. The sun rules all things. Haste thou, take heed of that, O man! It is the sun that tells them what coat to put on; the sun tells them what to eat; the sun cures and smites, and rebukes thy poor botanies and minor sciences, showing them that the Kew Gardens of one nation are the weeds of another. The sun tells you when to go out and when to hasten home again. And as that teaches you, so the great Teacher of the mind, the Spirit of God, will teach them, control them, guide them! We live and move and have our being in God. The house is great, for great is our conception of God. God is greater than our conception--we struggle towards Him, and our struggle is victory. A great God means a great morality: Shall I tell you of the knaves that are trying to carve morality for the people? They have schedules and stipulations and social arrangements and indications and manifold endeavour and effort after something that is to be millennial and glorious. If that is morality, we can make it, shape it, manufacture it, sell it, appreciate it, prize it, barter it, nail it to the wall like a wooden idol. Talk they of morals? Oh, Thou bleeding Lamb, true morality is love of Thee! If that were morality which I have just described in my own words, it would be worthy of its own little etymology--an attitude, a manner, a posture, a trick. Away! It is a soul, an inspiration, a flame, an incarnate holiness. Mr. So-and-so is a good man, though he is not a Christian. No! he is not a good man. My neighbour is an excellent man, though he does not believe anything about God. No! he is not an excellent man. There thou art in the little etymological morality, the manner, the attitude, the posture. All thou seest is silver, but the base metal is inside. To be silver-covered is not to be silver. He only is good who is the temple of God by consent, by honour, by daily worship, by continued trust in His name and service in His kingdom. A great God means a great service--not a little service written out on the paper as to what shall come first, and next, and last, but an enthusiasm that dares the sea, the wilderness, and the place of danger, the cannibal, the savage, the devil Why, missionary, dost thou so go forth? Remain at home. I cannot. Why not? God is great; my service for Him must be great also. Your house exists for one thing--you must find out what that one thing is. You shut the window for some one, you keep up the house for some one. It is always an impulse. We must find the motive and governing thought. Only let that be worthy, and all the rest will come. Oh, my Father, the message preached was poor and feeble, but Thy broken-down old servant could not do better. He says, That was the best discourse thou didst ever deliver; it shall be made mightier than the others on which thou hast lavished thy poor vanity. It was the best thou couldst do, and weakness may be strength, poverty may be wealth. Oh, to do the best you can! that is to do a great thing in the esteem of God. And that mumbling, stumbling prayer of thine at the family altar--only God knows what that prayer cost. Can you tell me the meaning of the word great? I will ask my young friends to tell me what great means, and to illustrate it in some general way. I hear the answer already--the mountains are great, the sky is great, the sun is great! There is the great mountain, and here at its base is a little child picking springs first daisy. Which is great? The child! And a man standing on the great mountain says, That is greatness. What am I, a poor little creature compared with that great rock? Why, that great rock is insignificant, and thou art majestic. Thou canst tunnel it, bore it, climb it--that is greatness, not magnitude. Get the right definition of greatness, and all your troubles will subside and all your love will fall into its right prospective, and you shall say the Lord reigneth. Now I will tell you where greatness is to be found. It is to be found in compassion. You said great mountain; I say great pity--And his father saw him whilst he was yet a great way off, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. All the consolidated planets never totalled up to that greatness. And thou canst be great in that way. I will tell you what is great--great patience, patience that sits up all night and says, He will be here in the morning; he has been mistaken as to distance, but he will be here in the morning--a patience that looks at the midnight clock as if by chance, as if it did not mean to look, but simply got its tearful eye on that significant dial. Patience says, The child will do well by and by. He is poor at his learning now, but he is going to be a good scholar in a year or two. Ay, that is greatness; not the rocky mountains of the Alpine heights--not these, but heights of patience, depths of love, rivers of tears. The house is great, for great is our God. This house will be famous for the deliverance of great messages. This house has no small message to deliver. The messages delivered here will deal with great subjects, with God, and blood, and sin, and pardon, and holiness, and destiny--themes that cannot be discussed anywhere else. They would be out of place in the Lyceum, in the political hall, in the House of Parliament. I speak of this house not in its locality, but in its typical relations. This house must be unique in its messages. Men must hasten to Gods house to hear Gods Word which they can hear nowhere else in the same sense, degree, and quality. My brother ministers, you are not hardly driven for subjects; the Cross still stands. You need not look up a paper to see what is the question of the day. The question of the day is, How can a man be forgiven, how can a broken heart be healed, how can the lost be brought home?--that is the question of the day. This house will be great in its welcomes. There will be as it were a genius, a spirit at all the doors, saying, Come and welcome; O every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. Great welcomes will make the house warm--people love welcomes. Speak Gods welcomes to human hearts, and men will bless thee and mothers say there never was such a man. And this house will be known as great for its great remedies--the house of God treats nothing superficially. There be those in the world who cry Peace, peace! where there is no peace. There be those who say, There, that will do, when they have not touched the heart-sore, the devil-spot. The remedy declared here will be the old, old remedy of blood. And this house, though great, is not final. Nature hates all buildings. Nature hates everything that does not grow. We know Mother Nature is very gentle to a nettle, and gives a nettle room and says, Let this nettle grow; but Nature has already begun to take off your roof. Long before you have paid half of your £9,000 you will have a bill sent in for repairs. Nature will not let the place alone--she will take it down. Build thou in God, build thou the temple-life. Every man is the living temple of God that cannot be taken down--that is a house not made with hands. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Sermons in stones
So far as we are able to discover from archaeological research and the details in Scripture, it seems beyond controversy that the temple of Solomon was the most splendid and magnificent building the world has ever seen. There have been larger buildings, but no building represented in itself so much splendour. The gold and silver and precious stones, besides the marble and timber and workmanship, amounted to about £100,000,000 sterling, equal to the annual revenue of this kingdom. And so far as we know, with all this luxurious outlay, there was no one in the congregation of Jerusalem who raised the Judas cry: To what purpose is this waste? Solomon said, The house which I build is great, and he gave as a reason, because great is our God above all gods. What did this temple mean to Solomon?
I. The temple was great to Solomon because it stood for the visible sign of Gods presence among the people. God had forbidden the children of Israel to make any image representing Himself. Yet there is an underlying spirit of worship that is inherent in all of us, a longing for some objective thing upon which we can cast our eye. Out of that desire, which seems to be a very part of our nature, and not a result of superstition, has grown, by the misdirection of it, all idolatry. God manifested Himself early in the garden of Eden with a flame of fire. When He spake with Moses He appeared in a burning bush. It was an objective sign of His presence. Consider how natural it is to build such signs as these in the land. We have on the Embankment a great Parliament House, a magnificent building, one of the finest in the world. That Parliament House is the visible sign of the sovereignty of the people. In the same way Buckingham Palace stands as the visible sign of royalty. The Courts of Justice in the Strand are a visible sign of the rights of man and the defence of man in his rights. So we might go all through the land and note that the great manor houses and castles are the embodiment of that subtle thing which we call nobility. Everything in this world has its concrete sign. We look upon the things that are seen, not as being the actual thing, but as the sign of the thing.
II. When Solomon said, The house I build is great, the inadequacy of his ability to express his idea was also present with him. How shall I build a house great enough for the great God? The only justification of the Infinite falling short of any house is that it shall be a place where we shall come into His presence and offer sacrifices to His great name. That purpose sanctifies the inadequate efforts we make to embody our ideal. God does not receive thanks from us because they are worthy of acceptance, but because they are responses to His grace. Little things become big, and sometimes great things become very small, just as their attitude is towards God. Bethlehem, for instance, was the least of all the cities, and yet it became great because it was sanctified and glorified by the birth of the Son of God. It was not the town, but what was associated with it. Nazareth was a despised, contemptible, mean little village; so contemptible that it came to be a byword, and yet Nazareth is one of the famous towns in the history of the world, and always will be. The things we offer to God are great, not because of the money they cost, not by the splendour of them that may meet the eye, but because they are given to God. God makes them great.
III. The temple was great because of what it symbolised. It was the great type of the Incarnation. There is instinctively in man a spirit which craves for an objective representation of God. But for us Christ is the real Incarnation. Our churches stand as an embodiment of our thankful recognition of promises fulfilled. We meet for instruction, for prayer, for praise, for fellowship and goodwill, and to give forth our witness to God. It would be an irreparable loss to us if Westminster Abbey were rased to the ground; and so with all the old cathedrals of England. They are an embodiment of doctrine in a sense. A true cathedral is laid out on the plan of the Cross, the nave and the transepts making a cross. The spire tells of the aspirations of worship, and if we come into the choir we have an expression of praise. The old mediaeval idea was to work out in stone and in building the foundations of our faith. I would fill the land with buildings that should be in the highest sense great buildings, expressing the great inheritance which has come to us from God by Jesus Christ. (G. F. Pentecost, D.D.)
Solomons conception of God
By the sentence, the heaven and heaven of heavens, that is the heaven in its most extended compass, cannot contain God, Solomon strikes down all rationalistic assertions that the Israelites imagined Jehovah to be only a finite national God. The infinitude and super-mundane exaltation of God cannot be more clearly and strongly expressed than it is in these words. That, however, Solomon was addicted to no abstract idealism is sufficiently apparent from this, that he unites this consciousness of the infinite exaltation of God with the firm belief of His real presence in the temple. The true God is not merely exalted above the world, has not only His throne in heaven (1Ki_8:34; 1Ki_8:36; 1Ki_8:39; Psa_2:4; Psa_11:4; Psa_103:19; Isa_66:1; Amo_9:6), He is also present on the earth (Deu_4:39), has chosen the temple for the dwelling-place of His name in Israel, from which He hears the prayers of His people. (C.F. Keil.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:5-6 a magnificent Temple: The greatness of the Temple…
2:5-6 a magnificent Temple: The greatness of the Temple and the greatness of God were not of the same order, since not even the highest heavens can contain God.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.