Bible Commentaries

IV. PREPARATIONS FOR THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE

1. The Preparations and Charge to Solomon

CHAPTER 22

1. The material (1 Chronicles 22:1-5)

2. The charge to Solomon (1 Chronicles 22:6-16)

3. The charge to the princes (1 Chronicles 22:17-19)

God had accepted the sacrifice. The judgment had passed. Prayer had been answered and David, therefore, could truthfully say “this is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of the burnt-offering for Israel.” The place had therefore been pointed out on which the temple was to be reared. And from now on up to the twenty-eighth verse of chapter 26 all concerns the house which is to be built. The temple is from now on prominently in the foreground and that which the book of Kings does not mention, David’s great interest in making preparations for it, is recorded in these chapters. And so we see David with great energy making vast preparations. It shows again how grace had worked in his heart. All else seems to have been forgotten by him. Only one desire controls the king, to make provision of everything necessary for the construction of the Temple. And the house, according to David’s conception “must be exceeding magnificent, of fame and of glory throughout all countries.” His heart burned with zeal to glorify Jehovah, whose mercy and grace he knew so well and who had kept and prospered him in all his ways. “I will therefore now make preparation for it,” David said. Then he prepared abundantly before his death. David, making preparation for the temple his son was to put up, is not without a very striking typical meaning. Both David and Solomon are types of our Lord Jesus Christ. David typifies Him in His humiliation and suffering, Solomon in His exaltation and glory. What Christ has done in His grace results in the coming glory. This is foreshadowed in the preparations David made for the house and the glorious reign of his son. If this is kept in mind these historical statements will take on a blessed meaning.

He gathered the strangers (the descendants of the Canaanites) and he set them at work. Stones, iron and timber all were prepared before hand on a large scale. Then he called for Solomon, young and tender in years, and addressed him. First he restated the reason why he had been barred from building the house. Then he recited the promise made to him that his son should have rest and build a house for His name. “For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. He shall build a house for my name.” David believed all the Lord had spoken through Nathan, and, believing the promise, he had made all preparations and was telling his son about it.

Then he exhorted him to build the house, to keep the law of the Lord and to take heed. “Be strong, and of good courage and dread not nor be dismayed.” Once more he speaks of all he had done in preparation of the house of the Lord. Even in the days of trouble and adversity he had prepared for the house and remembered the claims of Jehovah. Immense amounts of gold and silver, the spoils of wars, had been stored up by him. Many millions of dollars in gold and silver were in his possession and devoted for the one object. And Solomon was to add unto it. Then he told him to arise and to be doing. In the same way he commanded the princes of Israel to help his son Solomon.

May this teach us who know the riches of the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, to be as devoted to Him, as zealous to glorify Him, as David was in making these preparations for the building of the temple.