2 Chronicles
Chapter 5

1

When all the work undertaken by Solomon for the temple of the LORD had been completed, he brought in the dedicated offerings of his father David, putting the silver, the gold and all the other articles in the treasuries of the house of God.

2

At Solomon's order the elders of Israel and all the leaders of the tribes, the princes of the Israelite ancestral houses, came to Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the LORD'S covenant from the City of David (which is Zion).

3

All the men of Israel assembled before the king during the festival of the seventh month.

4

¹ When all the elders of Israel had arrived, the Levites took up the ark,

5

and they carried the ark and the meeting tent with all the sacred vessels that were in the tent; it was the levitical priests who carried them.

6

King Solomon and the entire community of Israel gathered about him before the ark were sacrificing sheep and oxen so numerous that they could not be counted or numbered.

7

The priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place beneath the wings of the cherubim in the sanctuary, the holy of holies of the temple.

8

The cherubim had their wings spread out over the place of the ark, sheltering the ark and its poles from above.

9

² The poles were long enough so that their ends could be seen from that part of the holy place nearest the sanctuary; however, they could not be seen beyond. The ark has remained there to this day.

10

There was nothing in it but the two tablets which Moses put there on Horeb, the tablets of the covenant which the LORD made with the Israelites at their departure from Egypt.

11

When the priests came out of the holy place (all the priests who were present had purified themselves without reference to the rotation of their various classes),

12

the Levites who were singers, all who belonged to Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and brothers, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps and lyres, stood east of the altar, and with them a hundred and twenty priests blowing trumpets.

13

When the trumpeters and singers were heard as a single voice praising and giving thanks to the LORD, and when they raised the sound of the trumpets, cymbals and other musical instruments to "give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever," the building of the LORD'S temple was filled with a cloud.

14

The priests could not continue to minister because of the cloud, since the LORD'S glory filled the house of God.

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Footnotes

¹ [4] The Levites: The parallel passage in 1 Kings 8:3 has the priests; but see 2 Chron 5:5 where the Deuteronomic term levitical priests is used, as also in 2 Chron 23:18; 30:27.

² [9] The ark has remained there to this day: the Chronicler must have copied this from his source (1 Kings 8:8) without reflecting that the ark was lost in the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem; cf 2 Macc 2:4-8.

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