What Does 2 Chronicles 2:5 Mean?
And the house I am building is great, for great is our God above all gods.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods.THE KEY
The house and the God it honors share the word “great,” but the verse places God above every rival and beyond the house’s measure.
THE MEANING
The work you build can express the greatness you recognize, but it does not create that greatness. God remains greater than every power you can name or every structure you can raise.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A great work is not what makes God great; its greatness points beyond itself.
THE ROOT
גָּדוֹל
gadol
GROWS FROM
גדל
g-d-l
To grow or become great.
“is great” in this verse is gadol. The verse calls both the house and God גָּדוֹל (gadol, great), then places God above all gods. The shared word joins the human work to the greatness it honors, while the comparison makes clear that no work sets God’s scale.
ALSO GROWS
gadal: To grow or become great.
גָּדַל
This verb reveals greatness as increase or enlargement, giving the verse’s repeated adjective a sense of scale.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
A tower rises high, but the verse’s “above all gods” carries greatness past even the height a human structure can reach.
gedullah: Greatness.
גְּדוּלָּה
This noun from the same root appears in Psalm 145:3, where God’s greatness is described as unsearchable.
THE PATTERN
A humanly raised house can honor God, while God’s greatness remains beyond every house and rival.
But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Yet the Highest does not settle in what is made by hands, as the prophet says.Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness cannot be searched out.THE THREAD
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness cannot be searched out.The Hebrew root גדל (g-d-l, grow or become great) joins the “great” house and God in this verse to the LORD’s “greatness” in the psalm. There, that greatness is unsearchable: the house can point toward it, but cannot contain its measure.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us