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also with thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with thine hand, as it is this day, 25 Therefore now, Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, keep with thy servant David my father that thou promisedst [spakest to "] him, saying, There shall not fail thee a man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel; so that thy children [sons] take heed to their way, that they walk before me as thou hast walked before me. 26 And now, O" God of Israel, let thy word," I pray thee, be verified, which thou 27 spakest unto thy servant David my father. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how 28 much less this house that I have builded? Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord [Jehovah] my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee 29 to-day that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place. 30 And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant, and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: and hear thou in heaven thy dwell31 ing-place and when thou hearest, forgive. If any man trespass against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause him to swear, and the oath come 32 before thine altar in this house: then hear thou in 16 heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring " his way upon his head; and 33 justifying the righteous, to give" him according to his righteousness. When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, 34 and make supplication unto thee in this house: then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which 35 thou gavest unto their fathers. When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and con36 fess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them: then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them [when thou teachest them (by affliction)] the good way wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people 37 for an inheritance. If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew," locust, or if there be caterpillar [if there be consuming locust 19]; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, 38 whatsoever sickness there be; what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of 39 his own heart,20 and spread forth his hands toward this house: then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest 40 the hearts of all the children of men ;) that they may fear thee all the days that 41 they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. Moreover, concerning

a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for 42 thy name's sake;" (for they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched-out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward 43 this house; "hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for: that all people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel; and that they may know that this house, 44 which I have builded, is called by thy name. If thy people go out to battle against their enemy," whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the Lord [Jehovah] toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the 45 house that I have built for thy name: then hear thou in heaven their prayer 46 and their supplication, and maintain their cause." If they sin against thee, (for

there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, 47 far or near; yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, 48 we have committed wickedness; and so return unto thee with all their heart,

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and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, 49 the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling-place, 50 and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may 51 have compassion on them: for they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which 52 thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron: that thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for 53 unto thee. For thou didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord [Jehovah] God." 54 And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto the Lord [Jehovah], he arose from before the altar of the Lord [Jehovah], from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to 55 heaven. And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel with a loud 56 voice, saying, Blessed be the Lord [Jehovah], that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant. 57 The Lord [Jehovah] our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let him 58 not leave us, nor forsake us: that he may incline our hearts unto him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his judg 59 ments, which he commanded our fathers. And let these my words, wherewith I have made supplication before the Lord [Jehovah], be nigh unto the Lord [Jehovah] our God day and night, that he maintain the cause 27 of his servant, 60 and the cause of his people Israel at all times, as the matter shall require: 28 that all the people of the earth may know that the Lord [Jehovah] is God, and that 61 there is none else. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord [Jehovah]

our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day. 62 And the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before the Lord [Je 63 hovab]. And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered

unto the Lord [Jehovah], two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated 64 the house of the Lord [Jehovah]. The same day did the king hallow the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord [Jehovah]: for there he offered burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings: because the brazen altar that was before the Lord [Jehovah] was too little to receive the burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offer65 ings. And at that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt, before the Lord [Jehovah] our God, seven days and seven days, even fourteen days. 66 On the eighth day he sent the people away: and they blessed the king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord [Jehovah] had done for David his servant, and for Israel his people.

1 Ver. 1.-[On the apocopated future

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL.

Spin connection with I, see Ewald, Krit. Gramm., § 233 b., p. 593 in 7th

ed. The Vat. Sept. prefaces this chapter with the statement "and it came to pass when Solomon had made an end of building the house of the Lord and his own house, after twenty years, then," &c.; and omits the middle part of this verse and nearly all of ver. 2, etc. The Alex. Sept. follows the Heb.

2 Ver. 1.—[The renderings of the Heb. ' in the A. V. are various. Besides a few irrelevant translations, it is rendered by captain, chief, governor, prince, and ruler-prince being the most common. There is also some variation In the Sept. translation of the word, but it is usually rendered apxwv.

Ver. 7.-[For staves the Sept, substitute holy things.

Ver. S.-Luther, followed by our author, here translates "And the staves were so long that," etc., thus leaving out

the evidence of design in the arrangement; they adopt the intransitive sense of the verb ", as has also been done by the Vulg. and Syr. The sense of prolonging, extending, which is given by Keil, and adopted by the A. V., is at least as usual, and seems better suited to the connection. The staves, at the utmost, could have been but 10 cubits long, the depth of the holy of holies in the tabernacle. The author however assumes that the length of the ark, and consequently the direction of the staves, was north and south, in which case the staves could not in any way have been seen from outside

the vail.

Ver. 11.-[There is no occasion here for the pluperfect, nor is it expressed in any of those VV. which admit of the distinction.

Ver. 18.-[The Vat. Sept. omits vers. 12 and 13, the Alex. following the Heb.

7 Ver. 15.-[The Sept. here add onμepov, and instead of unto read concerning David.

8 Ver. 16.-The Vat. (not Alex.) Sept. here supplies from 2 Chron. vi. 6 the clause xai işeλe§áμnv év 'Iepovσadnμ eivai Tò ovoμá μov exei. Our author omits the name Israel at the end of the verse.

9 Ver. 18.-[Luther, followed by the author, uses here the present tense; the VV., following the Heb., have, like the A. V., the past.

10 Ver. 20.-[It seems better, if possible, to render the Heb. verb Dp in both these clauses by the same English word, though with differing shades of meaning. The Sept. has ȧvéornσe ávéory; the author has bin bestätigt. Luther, like the A. V., varies the word.

11 Ver. 23.-[The Sept, put this in the singular.

12 Vers. 24, 25.-[The Heb. 727, being the verb in all these clauses, there is no occasion to change the English word. 13 Ver. 26.—[Many MSS., followed by the Sept., Vulg., Syr., and Arab., prefix 717”.

14 Ver. 26.—Even allowing that the k'tib 7777 points to 2 Sam. vii. 28, yet nevertheless the k'ri 777 appears according to 2 Chron. vi. 17 and i. 9 to be the true reading.-Bähr. [It is also the reading of many MSS., followed by the Sept., Syr., and Arab. Dip the proposition is the same as in the previous clause, toward this place.

16 Ver. 30.

The expression is a pregnant one-hear thou the prayer which is offered toward heaven, &c.

16 Ver. 32. [On MS., followed by the Sept., Chald., Syr., and Arab., reads from heaven-", and so in vers. 84, 86, 39, 48, 45, 49, according to 2 Chron. vi. 22, 23, 25. But see last remark.

17 Ver. 82.-[The Heb. Пn is the same in both clauses, and is rendered alike by the Chald. and Sept., which the English idiom scarcely admits.

18 Ver. 37.-Withering of the grain through a hot wind.-Bähr. [Such is the sense of jip wherever it occurs, as here, in connection with i, viz., Deut. xxviii. 22; 2 Chron. vi. 29; Amos vi. 9; Hag. ii. 17.

19 Ver. 37.—[>

20 Ver. 38.

appears to be merely an epithet of 7. C. Deut. xxviii. 39.

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21 Ver. 41.-[The Vat. Sept. omits the latter half of ver. 41 and the parenthesis of ver. 42.

22 Ver. 43.-Many MSS. and editions, followed by the Sept., prefix the conjunction here as in vers. 86, 39, 45, &c. 23 Ver. 44.-[Some MSS. and the VV. read 18 in the plural.

24 Ver. 45.-[The phrase by always means the support of the righteous cause; with the suffix of the personal pronoun here and ver. 49 it assumes that the warfare to which they had been sent was righteous. 25 Ver. 52.-[The Sept. supplement this frequent expression by adding "and thine ears."

26 Ver. 53.—[The Chald., Vulg., and Syr. here follow the masoretic punctuation of 7 and, like the A. V., translate Lord God. The Sept. have, according to the Vat., Kúpiе κuple, which is followed by Luther, while the Alex. omits the expression altogether. Our author translates Lierr Jehovah. The Sept. make a considerable addition at the end of the

verse.

27 Ver. 59.-[See note on ver. 45.

8 Ver. 59.-The words as the matter shall require not being in the Heb. are better omitted.-F. G.]

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

later; upon this account he expressly says that Ethanim was the seventh. The feast of tabernaVers. 1-7. Then Solomon assembled, &c. The cles occurred on the 15th of this month (Levit. section 2 Chron. v. 2 to vi. 42, which is for the most xxiii. 34); it was the greatest and best observed part like it, may be compared with this whole chap- of all the three yearly festivals, and was especially ter. The little word time denotes, like ver. 12 called "the feast" by the Jews (Symb. des Mos. (comp. Josh. x. 12; Ex. xv. 1), the point of time emnized the dedication of the temple at the time Kult. ii. s. 656). Solomon therefore very fitly solwhich immediately follows what is above related, of this feast. Although the text gives here only and means, what indeed the context infers, namely, the month and the day, and not the year, it is of that as soon as all the vessels were finished (chap. course to be understood that it was the first feast vii. 51), Solomon proceeded to dedicate the temple. of tabernacles that occurred after the compleIn accordance with the great importance of the tion of the temple in the eighth month (chap. vi. temple-building to the whole theocracy, he called together the elders, i. e., the presiding officers of The opinion that the dedication took place in the 38); consequently it fell in the following year. communities, and also the heads of the tribes and seventh month of the same year, in the eighth the families, that the entire people might thereby month of which the temple was finished (Ewald), be represented. The solemnity took place at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh with which Keil also now agrees, appears more needs no refutation. The assertion of Thenius, month. The usual interpretation of probable. He thinks that the temple was not dediof the flowing rivers (rainy season), is more accept-cated until twenty years from the commencement able than that of Thenius, gift (fruit) month, or of the building, i. e., thirteen years after its comthat of Böttcher, suspension of the equinox., This pletion; because the divine answer to the dedicamonth was called Tisri in our writer's time and tion prayer, according to chap. ix. 1-10, did not

month

come till the temple of Jehovah and the king's house were both finished (chap. vi. 38, and vii. 1), and in the Sept. chap. ix. begins with these words: "And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of the Lord, and the king's house (after twenty years), he assembled, &c.; " but the passage, chap. ix. 1, certainly does not say that the dedication did not take place for twenty years, or that Jehovah immediately thereafter appeared to Solomon; it speaks not only of the completion of both those buildings, but of all the others besides, which Solomon had begun (chap. ix. 19), so that we must in that case place the dedication much later than twenty years (see below, on chap. ix. 1). As to the words of the Sept., they are unmistakably a gloss from chap. ix. 1 and 10, inserted here, and such as is found nowhere else, either in a MS. or in any other ancient translation, and therefore can never be regarded as the original text. When we consider how very desirous David was to build an house unto the Lord, that when he was not permitted to do so, he pressed the task as a solemn duty upon his son, that Solomon then, as soon as he had established his throne, began the building and continued it with great zeal; it seems utterly incredible that he should have left the finished building thirteen years unused, and delayed its dedication until the twenty-fourth year of his reign. The weightiest reasons alone could have induced him to do so, but we hear nothing of any such. Even if we suppose the vessels not to have been finished as soon as the building, but to have been commenced after its completion, still it could not have taken thirteen years to make them; and there was no reason why the dedication of the temple should have been put off until the palace was finished, the latter requiring no solemn dedication, while the speedy dedication of the central sanctuary was an urgent necessity if the restoration of the unity of worship, commanded by the law, was to be established.

To bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord. In the march through the wilderness, the ark was covered with some cloths, and carried by the levites (Numb. iv. 5, 15), but on special occasions, the priests themselves carried it, as here and in Josh. iii. 6; vi. 6. Not only the ark, but the tabernacle, which had hitherto stood at Gibeon (2 Chron. i. 3, 4), with all its vessels, was brought out from Zion into the temple. While the priests carried the ark, the levites (ver. 4) carried the other things pertaining to the tent, all of which were doubtless preserved in the rooms of the side-structure. When the procession reached the temple (ver. 5), the ark was laid down in the outer court before the entrance to the holy place, and a great and solemn sacrifice offered; then the priests bore the ark to its appointed place. For vers. 6 and 7 see above, on chap. vi. 23 sq.

Vers. 8-9. And they drew out the staves, that the ends, &c. Ver. 8, which has had the most various interpretations put upon it, is nothing but a parenthesis following the concluding words of the preceding verse, explaining how it happened that the great cherubim-statues, with their wings stretched across the entire width of the sanctuary (chap. vi. 27), not only overshadowed the ark itself, but even its staves. As it says in Ex. xxv. 15, the Staves were never to be removed, but were to belong inseparably to the ark. If the cherubimstatues then were to overshadow the ark, they

should also cover the staves inseparably united to it. Now as the ark lay lengthwise north and south in the holy of holies, and the wings of the cherubim-statues stretched from the southern to the northern wall of the holy of holies, the staves which they overshadowed with their wings must have been placed north and south, i. e., on the longer sides of the ark, as Josephus (Ant. iii. 6, 5) expressly states. Therefore, their heads or ends could be seen from the sanctuary (great space) only close before the holy of holies (Debir). The reason why the staves were so long ( is to be understood as intransitive, as Keil remarks; as in Ex. xx. 12; Deut. v. 16; xxv. 15, and not to be translated: they made the staves long, as Kimchi and Thenius make it, for thus should stand before Dan) was in consequence of the weight of the ark, which must have been considerable, because the stone tables of the law were inside of the ark; and it was carried by more than four, perhaps by eight priests, who did not touch it, as was commanded in Numb. iv. 15. And as the holy of holies was only intended for the ark of the covenant (chap. vi. 19), and the latter was only two and a half cùbits long, with its long staves inseparable from it, it took up nearly the whole space. The oldest interpretation of our verse was borrowed from the Rabbins; it says that the staves were drawn so far forward that their ends touched the veil of the most holy place, and caused visible protrusions on the outside; but this is disproved by the fact that the staves were placed on the longest side of the ark, and pointed south and north, not east and west, consequently could not have touched the curtain. Thenius, with whom Merz and Bertheau agree, explains the simple sentence in ver. 8 "by optical laws: when a person at the entrance of the holy place (he makes ip mean that) could have seen through the open door the ends of the staves of the ark which was in the middle of the holy of holies, these staves must have been, according to the laws of perspective, seven cubits long." This highly ingenious explanation rests, as Keil justly remarks, on ill-founded suppositions, comp. Böttcher Aehrenl. ii. s. 69. The words

cannot be translated: "from the

great space before the debir," but mean, from the sanctuary, "when a person stood close before the dark holy of holies" (Ewald), or "near the most holy" (Merz). It is certain that the writer of these books had not the remotest thought about the laws of optics and perspective. The addition, and there they are unto this day, means: though the ark now had its fixed resting-place, the staves were left, according to the command Ex. xxv. 15, in order to signify that it was the same ark, which dated from the time when Israel was chosen to be a covenant people. The expression "unto this day," also occurring, chap. ix. 21; xii. 19; 2 Kings viii. 22, shows that the writer drew from a manuscript written before the destruction of the temple, and did not deem it necessary to deviate from its words.

Ver. 9. There was nothing in the ark, &c. Ver. 9 returns to the ark itself, and emphasizes the fact that it was brought into the holy of ho lies (ver. 6) because it preserved the original document of the covenant which God made with Israel, which consisted of the "ten commandments that

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the Lord spake unto them " (Deut. x. 4). By virtue himself rightly says, "exactly the black darkof this document, the ark was the pledge of the ness; and he takes an unwarrantable liberty covenant relation; and at the same time was the when, as the Chaldee, he reads Dean for it. It fundamental condition of the religious and political life of Israel; it naturally formed the heart and is admitted that the "darkness must refer to the central point of the sanctuary or dwelling-place cloud" just also as, that which in Ex. xix. 9 is of Jehovah in the midst of His chosen people named is called y in Ex. xx. 21; and in (compare Symb. des Mos. Kult., i. s. 383 sq.); "there

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is the shekinah, for he says: "the glory of the
Lord, which is like a consuming fire, manifested
itself in the cloud." But this also is contradicted
by the words of Solomon, that the Lord dwells in
the (thick) darkness; the text has not a syllable
about a fiery appearance; and certainly a consum-
ing fire cannot be thought of here, where the sub-
ject is the gracious presence of the Lord. Abar-
banel indeed thinks that the fire of the cloud burst
forth from it, after Solomon's prayer, and consumed
the burnt-offering, 2 Chron. vii. 1; but it expressly
says in this passage, that fire came "from heaven"
(and therefore not out of the cloud). Keil further
remarks: "This wonderful manifestation of the
divine glory only took place at the dedication;
afterwards, the cloud was visible in the holy of
holies only on the great day of atonement, when
the high-priest entered there" (Lev. xvi. 2). This,
however, is quite contrary to the rabbinical be-
lief, which was that the shekinah hung constantly
above the ark of the covenant; and it also pre-
supposes that the wonderful manifestation was
regularly repeated on that solemnity of atonement,
although neither the text nor the Jewish tradition
mentions such a thing; and this would have no
analogy with God's miracles, which never recur
regularly on a particular day. Our text only men-
tions a dark cloud, which, as it filled the whole house,
must necessarily have only been a passing phe-
nomenon; it served to show that the Lord, as once
in the tent, would now henceforth dwell in the
house built for Him.
stands, as Solo-

would have been no temple without the ark of the Deut. iv. 11; v. 9; Ps. xcvii. 2, both words are covenant, that alone made it a sanctuary" (Heng-conjoined as synonymes. Keil, too, thinks they stenberg). According to Hebr. ix. 4, the ark contained, besides the tables of the law, the golden pot with manna (Ex. xvi. 33), and Aaron's rod (Numb. xvii. 25). The endeavor has been made to reconcile this passage with the one under consideration, by the supposition that those two additional objects were no longer in the ark in Solomon's time, having only been there when Moses lived, the latter period being the one in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews (Ebrard, Moll, and others). But the passages quoted only say they were laid before Jehovah" or "before the testimony;" not in the ark. The Jewish tradition alone renders it in (Schöttgen, hor. Hebr. p. 973), and this tradition, with which the reader of this epistle may have been familiar, was probably in the writer's mind, for he was not desirous of giving an exact archæological description (comp. Tholuck and Bleek on Heb. ix. 4). V. Meyer's opinion, which Lisco also adopts, that the manna and rod were not in the ark any longer because "the direct theocracy, with its spiritual sceptre, and its blessings, had departed, and the people had an earthly king who was now to guide and watch over them," is in the highest degree erroneous. Horeb is not the highest summit of the mountains of Sinai, but a general name for the mountain-range of which Sinai is only a part: comp. Thenius on the place. Vers. 10-13. And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, &c. Ex. xl. 34, 35, is almost the same as vers. 10 and 11; "then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the taber- mon's phrase in ver. 12 shows, for Jehovah himnacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the self, and is the standing Old Testament designation tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode of the being (majesty) of God [like the dosa of the thereon() and the glory of the Lord filled the New Testament.-E. H.], raised absolutely above tabernacle." It is plain that the author meant, all that is creaturely, yet stooping (, Ex. xl. 35), what once happened at the dedication of the taber-i. e., concentrating himself, in order to manifest and nacle took place again at the dedication of the house. The cloud, not a cloud (Luther), but that, in and with which, as once at the tabernacle, the glory of the Lord came down, though naturally

not the same cloud as at that time. What ver. 10

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assert himself, either blessing and saving as here, or punishing and destroying, as for instance, in Ps. xviii. The Lord said. Because there is no passage showing that the Lord spoke those words, Thesays of the cloud, ver. 11 says of the glory of the nius translates the Lord proposeth to dwell Lord; it filled the house, not only the most holy in the thick darkness: or, He has made known place, but the whole dwelling, so that the priests that He will dwell in the thick darkness: but were prevented for a moment from performing just because the Lord had said so. Solomon beheld their functions in the sanctuary. We cannot pos- in the cloud a sign that he had come down to dwell sibly conceive this to have been the cloud of smoke in the temple (2); he remembered the plain decwhich, rising from the burning offerings on the laration Ex. xix. 9; Levit. xvi. 2. Overpowered altar, veiled the glory of the Lord" (Bertheau on 2 Chron. v. 14); for in this case the priests them by that sublime moment, and filled with joy that he selves would have been prevented from officiating. to build a house for the Lord, he utters the joyful was counted worthy of the favor of being allowed Nor can we, on account of the think as words "(Bertheau):, surely! I have Thenius, of the "bright and streaming cloud" built; for which Chron. gives : I, yea, I which the Rabbins name have built. For the words in ver. 13. an house to could not have said, on beholding it: Jehovah | dwell in, a settled place, see on chap. vi. 2, a, Histori dwalls; this word denoting, as Thenius cal and Ethical. iy is similar to Josh. iv. 7;

כְבּוֹד־יְהוָה

for Solomon שְׁכִינָה

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