An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 75: Don’t get Huram and Son, Master Builders, to install your central heating (2 Chronicles 1-5)

2 Chronicles 1-5
Don’t get Huram and Son, Master Builders, to install your central heating.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

2 Chronicles 1

“And Solomon said unto God, Thou hast shewed great mercy unto David my father, and hast made me to reign in his stead.

Solomon gathers the people together to give thanks at the altar of God, and before the ark. That night, God comes to Solomon in a dream and offers him anything; Solomon asks for the wisdom to lead his people which pleases God, who grants him this and riches as well. The old “make sure your wishes are humble ones” moral.

2 Chronicles 2

“And Solomon determined to build an house for the name of the LORD, and an house for his kingdom.”

Solomon gathers the material to build his temple. He asks for help from Hiram of Tyre (here called Huram, and the king), who sends an un-named expert (possibly the other character who gets called Hiram) to help. This un-named craftsman is skilled in working a wide range of things; gold, silver, brass, iron, timber, “purple”, “blue” and cloth – that’s a very broad skillset. Timber will be sent by sea, floated to the port of Joppa to be carried to Jerusalem. Twenty thousand measures of wheat and barley, twenty thousand “baths” of wine and oil are given to Huram in payment.

To perform the work, Solomon uses the “strangers” who live amongst the Israelites, numbered 153,600. Of these he sets 70,000 as porters, 80,000 to quarry stone and 3,600 as overseers. Possibly slave labour, we aren’t told.

2 Chronicles 3

“Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the LORD appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.”

The threshing floor of Ornan makes a re-appearance, the place where God stopped His angel carrying plague, that only David could see. So according to this chapter, this is where the temple of Solomon was sited; I don’t think that was mentioned in Samuel. What we do get here, though, are more detailed instructions for building the temple, which pretty much match what we had before; lots of gold decoration, the two cherubim guarding the inner sanctum, the two pillars at the door called Jachin and Boaz.

2 Chronicles 4

“The pots also, and the shovels, and the fleshhooks, and all their instruments, did Huram his father make to king Solomon for the house of the LORD of bright brass.”

The construction of various ceremonial accessories, including candlesticks, censers and lamps. There’s a little more detail about the “sea” and the lavers; the “sea” being a huge basin set upon twelve oxen (brass? Gold? It doesn’t say), whilst there are ten lavers, five to each side of the doors (in Samuel these were on wheels and could be moved). Both are for ritual washing, but the sea is for the priests to wash themselves, the lavers are for washing offerings, I don’t think that particular detail was given before.

The identity of Huram/Hiram continues to be obscured. Huram is given here as building these things, which he wouldn’t actually be doing if he was king, but would if he was the craftsman. But we also get mention, in the quote above, of “Huram his father”, which possibly suggests the King Huram sends Huram and Huram Jr. Builders to help Solomon, and that Huram/Hiram is a popular name in Tyre.

2 Chronicles 5

“And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the LORD unto his place, to the oracle of the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubims”

The temple is finished, and the ark is bought from its current resting place to the temple. The current resting place is given here as the city of David, which is Zion. I think that’s the first mention of “Zion” given in the bible, presumably a variant name for Jerusalem since as I recall the ark was already there. I guess that makes sense when applied to the modern term of “Zionism”.

Anyway, the ark is put in place, there are offerings and lots of singing, trumpets and clashing of cymbals. I do wonder if this was actually euphonious or if the whole idea was just to make as much noise as possible – it could in theory be a horrible din. Rather amusingly at the end of this chapter the “glory of God” fills the temple in the form of a cloud that prevents the priests from ministering there. I have images of a gas leak, or a stagehand going overboard with the dry ice effects, so all these celebrants stagger coughing and choking out of their brand new consecrated temple. Interesting, though, that God is still doing this manifestation as a fiery cloud kind of thing, which I thought was last seen in the time of Moses.