What Does 2 Chronicles 3:8 Mean?
And he made the most set apart house, its length facing the width of the house, twenty forearms, and its width twenty forearms; and he covered it with good gold, six hundred talents.
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 he made the most holy house, the length whereof was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits: and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to six hundred talents.THE KEY
The “most holy” is literally the “holy of holies”: the innermost set-apartness is a bounded, equal-sided space, not an undefined abstraction.
THE MEANING
The verse places the innermost set-apart place before you as a space with equal length and breadth, twenty cubits each, wholly overlaid with fine gold. Its repeated language of set-apartness and exact measure makes holiness visible as an ordered center.
THE ROOT
קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים
qodesh ha-qodashim
GROWS FROM
קדש
q-d-sh
To set apart, make distinct for a sacred purpose.
“most set apart” in this verse is qodesh ha-qodashim. The Hebrew phrase is “holy of holies,” repeating the same root rather than simply applying the strongest degree of an adjective. The repetition marks a set-apart center within a set-apart house, and the verse gives that center precise dimensions and a gold covering.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; sacred.
קָדוֹשׁ
The adjective shares the root and names the quality that distinguishes this innermost space.
miqdash: A sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
This branch makes the connection between set-apartness and a physical dwelling explicit.
THE PATTERN
Gold gives visible form to the objects and spaces that mark God’s dwelling.
And you sheathe it in clean gold, within and without you sheathe it, and make upon it a crown of gold round about.And the innermost room, in its forepart, was twenty forearms in length, and twenty forearms in breadth, and twenty forearms in its height; and he sheathed it with clean gold; and so he covered the altar which was of cedar.And the wall is built of jasper, and the city is clean gold, like clear glass.THE THREAD
And the innermost room, in its forepart, was twenty forearms in length, and twenty forearms in breadth, and twenty forearms in its height; and he sheathed it with clean gold; and so he covered the altar which was of cedar.The two descriptions give the inner room the same twenty-cubit length and breadth, then place gold over it. The parallel shows that “most holy” names an actual measured center of the temple, not a free-floating label.
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