1 Kings 7:37

7:13-47 The two brazen pillars in the porch of the temple, some think, were to teach those that came to worship, to depend upon God only, for strength and establishment in all their religious exercises. Jachin, God will fix this roving mind. It is good that the heart be established with grace. Boaz, In him is our strength, who works in us both to will and to do. Spiritual strength and stability are found at the door of God's temple, where we must wait for the gifts of grace, in use of the means of grace. Spiritual priests and spiritual sacrifices must be washed in the laver of Christ's blood, and of regeneration. We must wash often, for we daily contract pollution. There are full means provided for our cleansing; so that if we have our lot for ever among the unclean it will be our own fault. Let us bless God for the fountain opened by the sacrifice of Christ for sin and for uncleanness.

After this manner he made the ten bases,.... This was the form and fashion of them as above described: all of them had one casting, one measure, and one size; they were all cast into the same mould, and were exactly alike in their form, figures, and size, and each weighed 2000 talents, and the weight of a talent was ninety three pounds and upwards, according to Jacob Leon (b). (b) Relation of Memorable Things in the Temple, c. 4. p. 21.

This appearance is fixed by 1 Kings 9:1 to Solomon's twenty-fourth year, the year in which he completed his palace 1 Kings 6:37-38 ; 1 Kings 7:1 . The fact seems to be that, though the temple was finished in Solomon's eleventh year, the dedication did not take place until his twenty-fourth year. The order of the narrative in Kings agrees with this view, since it interposes the account of the building of the palace 1 Kings 7:1-12 , and of the making of the furniture 1 Kings 7:13-51 , between the completion of the building of the temple 1 Kings 6:38 and the ceremony of the Dedication 1 Kings 8 .

27-39. he made ten bases of brass—These were trucks or four-wheeled carriages, for the support and conveyance of the lavers. The description of their structure shows that they were elegantly fitted up and skilfully adapted to their purpose. They stood, not on the axles, but on four rests attached to the axles, so that the figured sides were considerably raised above the wheels. They were all exactly alike in form and size. The lavers which were borne upon them were vessels capable each of holding three hundred gallons of water, upwards of a ton weight. The whole, when full of water, would be no less than two tons [Napier].

"Thus he made the ten stools of one kind of casting, measure, and form, and also ten brazen basins (כּיּרות), each holding forty baths, and each basin four cubits." In a round vessel this can only be understood of the diameter, not of the height or depth, as the basins were set upon (על) the stands. על־המּכונה אחד כּיּור is dependent upon ויּעשׂ: he made ten basins, ... one basin upon a stand for the ten stands, i.e., one basin for each stand. If then the basins were a cubit in diameter at the top, and therefore their size corresponded almost exactly to the length and breadth of the stand, whilst the crown-like neck, into which they were inserted, was only a cubit and a half in diameter ( 1 Kings 7:31 ), their shape must have resembled that of widespreading shells.

And the form thus given to them required the shoulder-pieces described in 1 Kings 7:30 and 1 Kings 7:34 as supports beneath the outer rim of the basins, to prevent their upsetting when the carriage was wheeled about. (Note: The description which Ewald has given of these stands in his Geschichte, iii. pp. 311,312, and still more elaborately in an article in the Gttingen Gelehrten Nachr. 1859, pp. 131-146, is not only obscure, but almost entirely erroneous, since he proposes in the most arbitrary way to make several alterations in the biblical text, on the assumption that the Solomonian stands were constructed just like the small bronze four-wheeled kettle-carriages (hardly a foot in size) which have been discovered in Mecklenburg, Steyermark, and other places of Europe. See on this subject G. C. F. Lisch, "ber die ehernen Wagenbecken der Bronzezeit," in the Jahrbb. des Vereinsf. Mecklenb. Geschichte, ix. pp. 373,374, where a sketch of a small carriage of this kind is given.)

This matter may be simply explained by the circumstance, that the author of this book was using as an authority the book of the chronicles alluded to in Esther 10:2 , and is quite analogous with the mode observed in the books of Kings and Chronicles by historians both of Babylonian and post-Babylonian days, who quote from the documents they make use of such events only as seem to them important with regard to the plan of their own work, and then at the close of each reign refer to the documents themselves, in which more may be found concerning the acts of the kings, at the same time frequently adding supplementary information from these sources, - comp. e.g., 1 Kings 14:30 ; 1 Kings 15:7 , 1 Kings 15:23 , 1 Kings 15:32 ; 1 Kings 22:47-50 ; 2 Kings 15:37 ; 2 Chronicles 12:15 , - with this difference only, that in these instances the supplementary notices follow the mention of the documents, while in the present book the notice precedes the citation.