2 Chronicles 4:9 - Exposition

The court of the priests . The construction of this court of the priests, withheld here, given there, leaves it ambiguous whether the "three rows of hewed stones and one row of cedar beams "intends a description of fence, as the Septuagint seems to have taken it, or of a higher floor with which the part in question was dignified. The citation Jeremiah 36:10 , though probably pointing to this same court, can scarcely be adduced as any support of J. D. Michaelis' suggestion of this latter, as its עֶלְיוֹן (translated "higher") does not really carry the idea of the comparative degree at all. For once that it is so translated (and even then probably incorrectly), there are twenty occurrences of it as the superlative excellentiae. The introduction just here of any statement of these courts at all, which seems at first inopportune, is probably accounted for by the desire to speak in this connection of their doors and the brass overlaying of them. It is worthy of note that the word employed in our text, as also 2 Chronicles 6:13 , is not the familiar word חַצֵר of all previous similar occasions, but עֲזרָהַ , a word of the later Hebrew, occurring also several times in Ezekiel, though not in exactly the same sense, and the elementary signification of the verb-root of which is "to gird," or "surround."