II Chronicles

aCf. 1 Kings 7.51–8.11. When all the work that King Solomon undertook for the House of GOD was completed, Solomon brought the things that his father David had consecrated—the silver, the gold, and the utensils—and deposited them in the treasury of the House of God.

Then Solomon convoked the elders of Israel—all the heads of the tribes and the ancestral chiefs of the Israelites—in Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of GOD from the City of David, that is, Zion.

The entire body of Israelbentire body of Israel I.e., the elders of vv. 2 and 4, representing the nation. assembled before the king at the Feast [of Booths], in the seventh month.

When all the elders of Israel had come, the Levites carried the Ark.

They brought up the Ark and the Tent of Meeting and all the holy vessels that were in the Tent—the Levite priests brought them up.

Meanwhile, King Solomon and the whole community of Israel, who had gathered to him before the Ark, were sacrificing sheep and oxen in such abundance that they could not be numbered or counted.

The priests brought the Ark of GOD’s Covenant to its place in the inner Sanctuary of the House, in the Holy of Holies, beneath the wings of the cherubim;

for the cherubim had their wings spread out over the place of the Ark so that the cherubim covered the Ark and its poles from above.

The poles projected beyond the Ark and the ends of the poles were visible from the front of the inner Sanctuary, but they could not be seen from the outside; and there they remain to this day.

There was nothing inside the Ark but the two tablets that Moses placed [there] at Horeb, when GOD made [a Covenant] with the Israelites after their departure from Egypt.

When the priests came out of the Sanctuary—all the priests present had sanctified themselves, without keeping to the set divisions—

all the Levite singers, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, their sons and their brothers, dressed in fine linen, holding cymbals, harps, and lyres, were standing to the east of the altar, and with them were 120 priests who blew trumpets.

The trumpeters and the singers joined in unison to praise and extol GOD; and as the sound of the trumpets, cymbals, and other musical instruments, and the praise of GOD, “who is good—and whose steadfast love is eternal,” grew louder, the House, the House of GOD, was filled with a cloud.

The priests could not stay and perform the service because of the cloud, for the glory of the ETERNAL filled the House of God.