Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 1-4.

I feel like I am being redundant what I write this, but this passage holds Solomon up as a model for all people, but especially rulers and leaders.  When asked what he most desired from God, Solomon requested wisdom and knowledge.  Wisdom and knowledge may lead us to power, wealth, and a long life, but seeking power and/or wealth will not lead us to wisdom.  More importantly, wisdom will show us how to find joy in God’s plans for our life, even if those plans do not include wealth or power.

I think I have touched on this before, but I want to focus on something Solomon wrote to King Hiram of Tyre about the Temple he was about to build.  Solomon wrote that the temple he was going to build needed to be great because God was greater than any other god.  But, unlike other gods, God would not live in the Temple which Solomon (or anyone else, for that matter) built for Him because not even heavens could contain Him.  I am confident that Solomon was referring to the Universe which we see when we look up at night when he wrote heavens there.  So, Solomon was pointing out that the God of Israel was unlike the gods of other nations, because those gods lived in the temples which their people built for them, but Israel’s God did not live in the Temple which they would build for Him.  And this is one of those places where the fact that this book was compiled after the Return from Exile is important.  Those who returned from Exile were making a similar statement about the rebuilt Temple they were working on.  And the peoples around them still worshiped gods who lived in the temples built for them.  I will make one further note.  Jesus built a Temple for God in which He does indeed live.  That Temple consists of those who put their faith in Jesus.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.