2 Chronicles 20:28

2Ch 20:28 And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps and trumpets unto the house of the LORD.

Ver. 28. Unto the house of the Lord.] Not to tippling houses and wine taverns, {a} as now-a-days the manner of some is.

{a} Non recta in aenopolia se contulerunt. - Lavat.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2Ch_20:28

Every one helped to destroy another.

Mutual destruction

As we look upon the world at large, how do we see men occupied but as destroying one another! This is a marked character of the lower and worse forms of vice, that each degraded one has a wretched pleasure in bringing down other souls to the same level of degradation and ruin; but the same tendency to mutual destruction is to be seen in the first fallings away from God through all the subsequent steps in the downward road. When young men first lead one another away from home into the strange ways and strange company against which the wise man has raised his voice, what do they but destroy one another? And in the wildness which they call, for a time, pleasure--whatever form the self-indulgence, the sensuality, may wear--every one still helps to destroy another: actually, as to the misused and worn body, and with not less reality as to the corrupted and earth-engrossed soul. In another way, also, not less direct, not less fatal, though less regarded, each wanderer from God helps to destroy others. Example is sufficient to make danger. It would be a bold thing, indeed, for any one human being to look back upon his life, and to say that his example had not been fatal to some other soul. When the Spirit has done His work of converting the heart to God, and the saved sinner turns his eyes upon the sins which made the Cross necessary for him, who will not have Pauls remembrance of having given his word for death? Who will not have John Newtons memory of souls led into wrong, for whom there remains no power of recovery? And what is the record of this kind preparing for the unconverted, when a more true and more awful scene than the great dramatist has conceived of the presence of wronged souls in the visions of the night shall be upon the dying man, or, yet worse, upon the man after death; when the memory, no longer clouded by the flesh, no longer impeded by prejudice or passion, shall recall the multitudes to whom evil has been taught by word or by example; when the immortal spirit shall have the light of eternity poured upon the passed events of life, and the evil example of one look or one word shall be traced through all its train of consequences up to its final ruin of other souls? And this mutual destruction, which belongs to the very character of the unregenerate man, follows him hither even into the house of God. How is it that the children of our schools have so little profit here? that they know so little of all that passes here? How is it that we so rarely find the truth making its way from either desk or pulpit to the hearts of our docile young ones? Simply because they are destroying one another by combined inattention. The trifle which draws off the mind from prayer, the whispered word which puts some thought of earth in the place of the Bible, the merry smile which catches anothers ready eye--these are the means by which every one helps to destroy another; so that grace is provided and preached in vain. And we can scarcely hope that this will be with children alone. In a congregation of merely nominal Christians, met merely for the sake of respectability, the work of mutual destruction would go on in the general support of their common lukewarmness, and every one would help to destroy another in the subjects for conversation prepared in Gods house, and the discussion of them in the homeward way. (David Laing, M.A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

(28) With psalteries.—So Vulg. Rather, with harps, guitars, and clarions. (Comp. Psa_47:5-6, which may be supposed to commemorate this procession to the Temple.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets,.... The three principal instruments of music used in singing the praises of God; these they played upon as they came to the city, and entered it, and passed through it:

unto the house of the Lord; the temple, there to offer praise and thanksgiving again.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

To renew their praises in the court of the temple, the proper and usual place for it.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

28. They came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps — It was one of the most magnificent triumphal enterings into Jerusalem that had ever been witnessed, and it was celebrated accordingly.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To the house - To renew their praises in the court of the temple, the proper and usual place for it. Praising God must not be the work of a day only, but our praises when we have received mercy, must be often repeated, as our prayers were, when we where in pursuit of it. Every day we must bless God: as long as we live, and while we have any being, we must praise him, spending our time in that work, in which we hope to spend our eternity.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries, with harps, and with trumpets These three musical instruments correspond to “all the men of Judah and Jerusalem and Jehoshaphat.”

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.