(9) The court of the priests.--See 1Kings 6:36; 1Kings 7:12, "the inner court;" Jeremiah 36:10, "the higher court."

And the great court.--'Az?r?h, "court," a late word, common in the Targums for the classical h?q?r, which has just occurred. The 'az?r?h was the outer court of the temple. It is not mentioned at all in the parallel narrative. The LXX. calls it "the great court;" the Vulg., "the great basilica." The Syriac renders the whole verse: "And he made one great court for the priests and Levites, and covered the doors and bolts with bronze." (Comp. Note on 2Chronicles 4:3 for this plating of the doors with bronze.) The bronze plated doors of Shalmaneser's palace at Balawat were twenty-two feet high, and each leaf was six feet wide.

Verse 9. - The court of the priests (comp. 1 Kings 6:36, where this court is denominated the inner court, and any other court an outer one, i.e. the great court only implicated thereby). 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 עֶלְיון (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 (1 Kings 7:12; 2 Kings 23:12; 2 Chronicles 20:5; Ezekiel 40:28; Condor's 'Handbook to the Bible,' p. 370). 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."

4:1-22 The furniture of the temple. - Here is a further account of the furniture of God's house. Both without doors and within, there was that which typified the grace of the gospel, and shadowed out good things to come, of which the substance is Christ. There was the brazen altar. The making of this was not mentioned in the book of Kings. On this all the sacrifices were offered, and it sanctified the gift. The people who worshipped in the courts might see the sacrifices burned. They might thus be led to consider the great Sacrifice, to be offered in the fulness of time, to take away sin, and put an end to death, which the blood of bulls and goats could not possibly do. And, with the smoke of the sacrifices, their hearts might ascend to heaven, in holy desires towards God and his favour. In all our devotions we must keep the eye of faith fixed upon Christ. The furniture of the temple, compared with that of the tabernacle, showed that God's church would be enlarged, and his worshippers multiplied. Blessed be God, there is enough in Christ for all.See Introduction to Chapter 4