2 Chronicles 2:18

(18) And he set . . .—Literally, and he made seventy thousand of them bearers of burdens, and eighty thousand hewers in the mountains. This exactly agrees with 1 Kings 5:15.

And three thousand and six hundred overseers.—The same number was given in 2 Chronicles 2:2. In 1 Kings 5:16 we read of 3,300 officers. In the Hebrew, three (shâlôsh) and six (shêsh) might easily be confused; our reading appears right. The chronicler omits all notice of the levy of 30,000 Israelites, which the parallel passage records (1 Kings 5:13-14); whether by an oversight, or from disapproval, we cannot say. Adding that number to the 70,000 and 80,000 other labourers, we get a grand total of 180,000, which gives a company of 50 for each of the 3,600 overseers.

Overseers.—Heb. mĕnaççĕhîm. Only here and in 2 Chronicles 2:2 supra, and 2 Chronicles 34:13. It is the plural of a participle which occurs only in the titles of the Psalms (including Habakkuk 3:19), while the verb is read only in Chronicles and Ezra 3:8-9. (See Note on 1 Chronicles 15:21.)

To set the people a work—i.e., on work or a-working. (Comp. “I go a-fishing,” John 21:3.) Literally, to make the people work.