²¹And, behold, there are the courses of the priests and the Levites, for all the service of the house of God: and there shall be with thee in all manner of work every willing man that hath skill, for any manner of service: also the captains and all the people will be wholly at thy commandment.
21. every willing man that hath skill] Compare Exodus xxxv. 5, 10 ff.
Chapter XXIX.
1–5.
David’s Challenge to Liberality.
¹And David the king said unto all the congregation, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.
1. congregation] or, assembly; the Hebrew word is cognate to the verb translated assembled in xxviii. 1.
whom alone God hath chosen] Compare xxviii. 5.
the palace] Hebrew bīrāh, a late word in Hebrew, perhaps derived from Assyrian bīrtu. Ordinarily it denoted a palace or fortress (compare Nehemiah i. 1; Esther i. 2), and is applied to the Temple only here and verse 19. In Nehemiah ii. 8 (compare Ryle in loco) the building which afterwards became the Tower of Antonia (ἡ παρεμβολή, the castle, Acts xxi. 37, xxii. 24) which overlooked the Temple is called the castle (bīrāh) which appertaineth to the house. In Nehemiah i. 1 Shushan is described as a bīrāh, probably as being a fortress as well as a royal city. See G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, II. 347.
The Temple is frequently called hēykāl (palace, great house) in the Old Testament, but the normal appellation is simply kabbayith (the house) or such a phrase as the house of the Lord, or again qǒdshěkhā (Thy sanctuary).