2 Chronicles 8
McGeeCHAPTERS 8 AND 9THEME: Accomplishments and fame of SolomonThese next two chapters tell something of the experience and the work of Solomon and his testimony in other areas. This man became a very energetic ruler. He attempted to carry out all the plans and purposes and promises of David.
2 Chronicles 8:1
This building of the temple was a long project. It actually took half his reign to build it. This is the thing of which God took special note.
2 Chronicles 8:2
This is the only war that is recorded during the reign of Solomon, and it doesn’t seem to be very significant at all.
2 Chronicles 8:9
Solomon put his own people in the army and in places of leadership, while the menial tasks were assigned to descendants of the Canaanite tribes, the old possessors of the land, who had not been exterminated.
2 Chronicles 8:10
This is something that Solomon did which caused great difficulty later on. God notes it, but He does not commend it or bless it.
2 Chronicles 8:11
This is an interesting decision which Solomon made in reference to his wife, the daughter of Pharaoh. He built her a palace away from the city of David. I notice that an interpretation that one gets in Israel today is that Solomon married these different women from various other countries for political advantage. Your father-in-law is not apt to make war against you. So this was one of the ways in which Solomon brought peace to the land. A man would not come up to fight against a country in which his daughter was the queen. I do not know whether this reason for Solomon’s many wives is true or not. I have a notion that it is partly accurate. Under any circumstance, it was against God’s command. The remainder of the chapter tells more about the temple and that Solomon celebrated the feasts and appointed the priests and Levites to their courses just as David had planned it. As we come to chapter 9, we see that it is the final chapter that concerns Solomon. We have seen that Solomon’s most important accomplishment was the construction of the temple. Now what else in Solomon’s life does God consider important enough to record a second time? It is very interesting to see that Solomon did succeed in doing what God had intended Israel to dothat is, be a witness to the world. We are told here how it was accomplished. The way Israel was to witness was different from the way the church is to witness in our day. Israel faced in; the church faces out. Israel was to go up to Jerusalem to the temple and invite the world to come with her to worship. But the church is to begin at Jerusalem and go to the ends of the earth. In other words, the church is to take the gospel to the world, and Israel was to invite the world to come and share in the revelation of God in the temple. Israel was to bear witness to the living and true God as a nation in a world of polytheism, of many gods.
And the church is to bear witness to a resurrection, and the living Savior, as individuals to all the nations in a world of atheism. Now, Israel fulfilled her God-given purpose to a certain extent, which is evidenced by the number of Gentiles who came to Jerusalem to worship and to know God through the service of the temple there. The measuring rod for the success of the church is the number of tribes and nations to whom we carry the gospel today. Now it is the inclination of all of us who are in the church to disparage the efforts of Israel and at the same time to magnify the success of the church. Constantly we hear on every hand of the failure of the nation Israel. And at the same time the exaggerated report is given of the success of the gospel in faraway places. I remember after World War II we heard about a revival in China and then a revival in Germany. I checked with those who were in both places and they said there was no revival there. It is interesting that we always hear of revivals in faraway places. The fact of the matter is that we are in an awful apostasy today. The days are getting darker. There are many wonderful churches and pastors who are still faithful today, but they know the difficulty of the hour in which we are living. Although there are still a few preachers and teachers who are sheltered in institutions who see the present-day situation as though they were looking through rose-colored glasses, anyone who is working out in the world knows that we are in an apostasy today. On the other hand, Israel succeeded in a far greater measure than we often realize. We tend to measure their success by their final failurethe final apostasy of the nation which led to their captivity. There was a period when they did not fail God. A witness went forth from Jerusalem to the nations of the world. They were drawn to Jerusalem like a magnet. The high water mark was during the reign of Solomon. The nation reached a pinnacle at that time. Afterward there was deterioration, and decline set in like dry rot. The Scriptures give us two isolated examples of the influence on the Gentiles during the reign of David and Solomon. Undoubtedly there were many others that we do not know about. Hiram, the king of Tyre and friend of David, came to know God. He made lavish gifts for the temple. He furnished material and workmen for the temple. Do you remember what he wrote to Solomon? “…Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, that made heaven and earth, who hath given to David the king a wise son …” (2Ch_2:12). Hiram was a son of Japheth. The story of the queen of Sheba is given to us to record that Israel reached the ends of the then-known world with a witness for God. She is a representative of the son of Ham. It is her story that is given to us in this chapter. May I remind you that in the New Testament, when we are told about the early church and its outreach into the world, we are also given just a few examples. There is the Ethiopian eunuch who is the son of Ham. There is Cornelius who is the son of Japheth. There is Saul of Tarsus who is the son of Shem.