Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Chronicles 22

Then. — And.

This is the house. — Better, This is a house of Jehovah, the (true) God, and this (is) an altar of burnt offering for Israel. The verse resumes the narrative suspended at 1 Chronicles 21:28. The place of the apparition is called a house of God, as in Genesis 28:17. Obviously, we have here the goal of the entire narrative of the census and the pestilence, which the chronicler would probably have omitted, as he has omitted that of the famine (2 Samuel 21:0), were it not for the fact that it shows how the site of the Temple was determined.

And David commanded to gather together the strangers. —The word rendered “to gather together” (kânas) is different from the terms used in 1 Chronicles 15:3–4; 1 Chronicles 19:7, and is late in this sense.

The strangers (gêrîm) — Sojourners, or resident foreigners, such as Israel had been in Egypt (Genesis 15:13). The Canaanite population is meant, who lived on sufferance under the Israelite dominion and were liable to forced service if the government required it. (See 2 Chronicles 8:7–8, and 1 Kings 9:20–21.) Solomon found them by census to be 153,600 souls. The census was a preliminary to apportioning their several tasks. (See 2 Chronicles 2:17–18.) David, probably on the present occasion, had held a similar census of the Canaanite serfs (2 Chronicles 2:17).

And he set. — Appointed (1 Chronicles 15:16–17); literally, caused to stand.

Masons. — Hewers; selected, apparently, from among “the strangers.”

Wrought stones. —“Saxum quadratum,” square stones (1 Kings 5:31; Isaiah 9:9).

To build the house —that is, for building it later. It is not said that the work was begun at once, but only that the organization of the serf labor originated with David.

David gathers craftsmen and accumulates materials for building the house of God.

For the nails. — Mismĕrîm occurs only in the later books of the Old Testament, but may well be an ancient word. (Compare the Assyrian asmarê “spears,” which derives from the same root.)

For the doors of the gates. — The doors were to be what we call folding-doors (1 Kings 6:34–35).

For the joinings. — Literally, things that couple, or connect (feminine participle): i.e., iron clamps and hinges. In 2 Chronicles 34:11, the same term is used of wooden clamps or braces.

And brass. — This refers to bronze, which was much used in the ornamental work of ancient buildings. Compare the plates of bronze that once adorned the doors of the temple of Shalmaneser II (B.C. 854), at Balawât, and are now in the British Museum. Sennacherib, in a later age (B.C. 700), describes the doors of his palace at Nineveh as “overlaid with shining bronze.”

Without weight. — This is a natural hyperbole. The actual amounts would, of course, have been known to the royal treasurers. (Compare the common use of the phrases la niba, la mani, “without number,” “without measure,” in Assyrian accounts of spoils and captives.)

Also cedar trees in abundance. —Literally, and beams or logs of cedars without number. A rhetorical exaggeration, like that which we have just noted. (See also 1 Chronicles 14:1.)

The Zidonians and they of Tyra (i.e., the Phoenicians) brought much cedar wood —i.e., in the way of ordinary commerce, to barter them for supplies of grain, wine, oil, and other products of the soil, which their own rocky coast-land did not yield sufficiently. (Compare 1 Chronicles 14:1.) At a later time Hiram entered into an express contract with Solomon to supply the cedar and other materials required for building the Temple (1 Kings 5:8–11).