2nd Chronicles Chapter 3 verse 2 Holy Bible
And he began to build in the second `day' of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in ASV
The building was started in the second month in the fourth year of his rule.
read chapter 3 in BBE
And he began to build on the second of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in DARBY
And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in KJV
And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in WBT
He began to build in the second [day] of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in WEB
and he beginneth to build in the second `day', in the second month, in the fourth year of his reign.
read chapter 3 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 2. - In the second day. The word "day" as italicized in our Authorized Version type is of course not found in the Hebrew text. Several manuscripts fail also to show the other words of this clause, viz. "In the second;" and that they are probably spurious derives confirmation from the fact that neither the Arabic nor Syriac Versions, nor the Septuagint nor Vulgate translations, produce them. In the second month, in the fourth year. Reading the verse, therefore, as though it began thus, the most interesting but doubtful question of fixing an exact chronology for what preceded Solomon's reign is opened. In our present text there is little sign of anything to satisfy the offers to do so, if only again to disappoint the more grievously. There we read of "four hundred and eighty years" from the Exodus to this beginning of the building of Solomon's temple. Now, this latter date can be determined with tolerable accuracy (viz. as some twenty years before B.C. 1000) by travelling backwards from the date (n.c. 536) of Cyrus taking Babylon, and the beginning of the return from the Captivity ( B.C. 535), making allowance for the seventy years of the Captivity, the duration of the line of separate Judah-kings, and the remanet, a large one, of the years of Solomon's reign. All this, however, helps nothing at all the period stretching from the Exodus to the beginning of the building of the temple. And the events of this period, strongly corroborated by other testimony (see Canon Rawlinson, 'Speaker's Commentary,' vol. it. pp. 575, 576), seem to show convincingly that no faith can be reposed in the authenticity of the chronological statement of our parallel.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(2) In the second day of the second month.--Heb., in the second month in the second. The versions omit the repetition, which is probably a scribe's error. "On the second day" would be expressed in Hebrew differently. Read simply, "And he began to build in the second month," i.e., in Zif (or April--May). See 1Kings 6:1.
