1 Kings 8:27

But will God indeed dwell on the earth?.... Is it true? Can any credit be given to it?

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded? No JFB commentary on these verses.

Reflecting upon God’ s performance of his promise concerning the building of the temple, he breaks forth into admiration, Is it possible that the great, and high, and lofty God should stoop so low, as to take up his dwelling here amongst men? O astonishing condescension! The heaven; all this vast space of the visible heaven. And heaven of heavens; the third and highest, and therefore the largest heaven, called the heaven of heavens here, as also , for its eminency and comprehensiveness. Cannot contain thee; for thy essence teacheth far beyond them, being omnipresent. How much less this house that I have builded? this house therefore was not built as if it were proportionable to thy greatness, or could contain thee, but only that therein we might serve and glorify thee.

1 Kings 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?Ver. 27. Will God indeed dwell on the earth?] Mirabundus ita exclamat, saith Vatablus, who further observeth here, that the Hebrew words are preposterously put together, as importing an ecstasy of admiration. Behold, the heaven.] The visible heaven. And heaven of heavens.] The third heaven, the place of the blessed. Cannot contain thee.] Such is thine immensity: thou fillest all places, and art comprehended of no place. God is a circle, said Empedocles, whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere. Orpheus, Aratus, and Aeschylus say the same in effect. God is higher than the heaven, saith a father, deeper than hell, broader than the earth, more diffuse than the sea. He is nowhere, and yet everywhere, quia nec abest illi, nec ullo capitur loco. Neither yet must we conceive that God is commensurable by the place; for he is everywhere all-present. The heavens have a large place, but they have one part here and another there; but the Lord is totally present, wheresoever present. Oh, wonderful! Bernard.

(23-53) The prayer of Solomon, uttered (see 1 Kings 8:54) on his knees with hands uplifted to heaven, long and detailed as it is, is yet of extreme simplicity of idea. It begins (a), in 1 Kings 8:23-25, with a thankful acknowledgment of the fulfilment of one part of the great promise to David, and a prayer for the like fulfilment of the other; next (b), in 1 Kings 8:26-30, acknowledging that God’s presence can be limited to no Temple, it yet Asks that His peculiar blessing may rest on prayer uttered toward the place which He has hallowed; and then (c), in 1 Kings 8:31-53, applies that petition to the various contingencies, of oath taken in His name, of rain withheld, of disaster in battle, of famine and pestilence, of captivity in a foreign land, and extends it not only to Israel, but to the stranger who shall acknowledge and invoke the Lord Jehovah. Its constantly recurring burden is, “Hear Thou from heaven thy dwelling-place, and when Thou hearest, Lord, forgive.” It is plain that before Solomon’s mind there are continually present in some form the blessing and the curse pronounced in the Law (see Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28); and it is most true to human nature, and especially characteristic of the thoughtfulness of his philosophic temper, that over the bright hour of exultation there seems to hover a constant foreboding of evils and trials to come.

Verse 27. But will God indeed dwell on the earth?] This expression is full of astonishment, veneration, and delight. He is struck with the immensity, dignity, and grandeur of the Divine Being, but especially at his condescension to dwell with men: and though he sees, by his filling the place, that he has come now to make his abode with them, yet he cannot help asking the question, How can such a God dwell in such a place, and with such creatures? Behold, the heaven] The words are all in the plural number in the Hebrew: השמים ושמי השמים hashshamayim, ushemey hashshamayim; "the heavens, and the heavens of heavens." What do these words imply? That there are systems, and systems of systems, each possessing its sun, its primary and secondary planets, all extending beyond each other in unlimited space, in the same regular and graduated order which we find to prevail in what we call our solar system; which probably, in its thousands of millions of miles in diameter, is, to some others, no more than the area of the lunar orbit to that of the Georgium Sidus. When God, his manifold wisdom, his creative energy, and that space which is unlimited, are considered, it is no hyperbole to say that, although the earth has been created nearly six thousand years ago, suns, the centres of systems, may have been created at so immense a distance that their light has not yet reached our earth, though travelling at the rate of one hundred and ninety thousand miles every second, or upwards of a million times swifter than the motion of a cannon ball! This may be said to be inconceivable; but what is even all this to the vast immensity of space! Had God created a system like ours in every six days since the foundation of the world, and kept every seventh as a Sabbath; and though there might have been by this time [A.M. 5823 ineunte, A.D. 1819, ineunte] three hundred and three thousand five hundred and seventy-five mundane systems, they would occupy but a speck in the inconceivable immensity of space. Reader, all this and millions more is demonstrably possible; and if so, what must God be - illud inexprimibile - who i-n-h-a-b-i-t-e-t-h E-t-e-r-n-i-t-y!

27. will God in very deed dwell on the earth?] The LXX. adds ‘with men.’ the heaven and heaven of heavens] The expression is found in Deuteronomy 10:14; Ps. 67:36, Ps. 113:16, and is used to express the widest compass of heaven. this house which I have builded] The LXX. adds ‘for Thy name.’

heaven of heavens - Compare Deuteronomy 10:14; Psalms 148:4. It seems to mean the heaven in its most extended compass.

27. Will God indeed dwell on the earth — An expression of pious wonder and astonishment, and, with the sequel, an utter refutation of those rationalistic critics who affirm that the Israelites had no