2 Chronicles 3:5

2Ch 3:5 And the greater house he cieled with fir tree, which he overlaid with fine gold, and set thereon palm trees and chains.

Ver. 5. Which he overlaid with fine gold.] As the parts of this temple were not seen naked, so neither must our souls be seen without faith, love, and other golden graces.

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.

3:5-7 The interior of the Temple was finished with costly materials (see 1 Kgs 6:15-18, 29).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

the greater house--that is, the holy places, the front or outer chamber (see Kg1 6:17).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(5) The greater house.—Or, the great chamber, i.e. the Holy Place, or nave. (Comp. 1Ch_28:11.)

He cieled with fir tree.—He covered with planks of fir; or, panelled with fir. To ciel, or rather seel (from syle or cyll, a canopy: Skeat, Etymol. Dict. s.v.) a room, meant in old English to wainscot or panel it. (Comp. 1Ki_6:15-16.)

Which he overlaid with fine gold.—And covered it (the chamber) with good gold. The cypress wainscoting was plated with gold.

And set thereon palm trees and chains.—Brought up on it (i.e., carved upon it) palms and chain-work (1Ki_7:17). (For the palms, see 1Ki_6:29; Eze_41:18.) The chain-work must have consisted of garland-like carvings on the fir panels. 1Ki_6:18 omits mention of it; LXX., “carved on it palms and chains”; Syriac, “figured on it the likeness of palms and lilies”; Vulgate, “graved on it palms and as it were chainlets intertwining.”

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

5–7 (cp. 1Ki_6:15; 1Ki_6:21; 1Ki_6:29-30). The Temple

5. the greater house] It was forty cubits long (1Ki_6:17), whereas the shrine was twenty (1Ki_6:16; 1Ki_6:20).

he cieled] i.e. lined or boarded. The same Hebrew word is translated overlaid in this same verse.

set thereon] R.V. wrought thereon, perhaps in the form of reliefs.

palm trees and chains] The “chains” perhaps connected one palm tree with another. In 1Ki_6:29, “cherubim and palm trees and open flowers.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The greater house - i. e., the holy place, or main chamber of the temple, intervening between the porch and the holy of holies (so in 2Ch 3:7).

He cieled with fir tree - Rather, “he covered,” or “lined.” The reference is not to the ceiling, which was entirely of wood, but to the walls and floor, which were of stone, with a covering of planks (marginal reference). The word translated “fir” bears probably in this place, not the narrow meaning which it has in 2Ch 2:8, where it is opposed to cedar, but a wider one, in which cedar is included.

Palm trees and chains - See 1Ki 6:29. The “chains” are supposed to be garlands or festoons.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

House. between the most holy place and the porch, (Tirinus) or it may comprise all but the porch. Hebrew, "he covered (or boarded) all this great house." (Calmet) --- Deal boards interspersed with those of cedar, 3 Kings vi. 9. (Tirinus) --- Fine, (obrizi.) Hebrew, "of Parvaim, which is probably the same as Sepharvaim, Ophir, &c., not far from Media and Colchis. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The greater house, i.e. the holy place, which was thrice as large as the lesser house, or the holy of holies, which is called the most holy house, Deu 8. See Poole "1Ch 28:11".

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

The greater house; i.e. the holy place. He ceiled. This rendering is wrong. The verb is (a) given above (ver. 4). It is repeated in the next clause of this very verse as "overlaid," as also in vers. 7, 8, 9. The generic word "covered" would serve all the occasions on which the word occurs here. From a comparison of the parallel it becomes plain that the meaning is that the crone structure of floor and walls was covered over with wood. (1Ki_6:7, 1Ki_6:15, 1Ki_6:18) That wood for the floor was fir, (1Ki_6:15) probably slim for the walls, which must depend partly on the translation of this ver. 15. It would seem to say that (beside the stone) there was an inner stratum, both to walls and floor, of cedar (reason for which would be easy of conjecture). But another translation obviates the necessity of this inner stratum supposition, rendering "from the floor to the top of the wall." According to this, while the overlaying gold was on cedar for walls and ceiling, (1Ki_6:9) it was on fir for the floor, which does not seem what our present verse purports, unless, according to the suggestion of some, "fir" be interpreted to include cedar. Set thereon palm trees and chains. These were, of course, carvings. The chains, not mentioned in the parallel, (1Ki_6:29; but see 1Ki_7:17) were probably wreaths of chain design or pattern. Easier modern English would read "put thereon."

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Greater house - The holy place, which was thrice as large as the holy of holies.

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

and he overlaid it with gold i.e., When he made all the decorations, he overlaid the walls with gold after the decorations, and he reinforced them with nails in the wooden wall, in order that it should not move; which is something that he could not do on a stone wall. For this reason, he overlaid the entire House with juniper wood.

and chains He made many decorations, filling it completely, and when he saw that there was any blank space between one decoration and another, he painted a decoration like a sort of chain, with which things are connected, so did he do here between one decoration and another, in order that there should be no blank space in between. Another interpretation is that he made real golden chains and connected the shapes together with them.

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.