1 Kings 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After finishing the temple, Solomon spends thirteen years building his palace complex: the House of the Forest of Lebanon, a hall of pillars, the Hall of Justice where he judged cases, his own residence, and a house for his Egyptian wife. Solomon then brings in Hiram of Tyre, a skilled bronze worker, who casts the temple's bronze furnishings, the two pillars Jachin and Boaz, the great basin called the Sea resting on twelve oxen, ten wheeled stands with their basins, and the pots, shovels, and bowls. The chapter lists the gold furnishings Solomon made as well, and ends with all the work finished and David's dedicated silver and gold placed in the temple treasuries.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Solomon built his own house over thirteen years.
   • Solomon finished his entire house.
2. 7:2
   • Solomon built the House of the Forest of Lebanon.
   • Its length was a hundred cubits.
   • Its width was fifty cubits.
   • Its height was thirty cubits.
   • It stood on four rows of cedar pillars.
   • Cedar beams rested on the pillars.
3. 7:3
   • It was roofed with cedar above.
   • The cedar roofing lay over the beams that rested on the pillars.
   • There were forty-five of them.
   • There were fifteen to a row.
4. 7:4
   • There were window frames in three rows.
   • Window faced window three times over.
5. 7:5
   • All the doorways and their doorposts were squared with a frame.
   • Opening faced opening three times over.
6. 7:6
   • He made the hall of pillars.
   • Its length was fifty cubits.
   • Its width was thirty cubits.
   • A porch stood in front of them.
   • Pillars and a thick beam stood in front of them.
7. 7:7
   • He made a hall for the throne, where he would give judgment.
   • This hall was the Hall of Judgment.
   • It was paneled with cedar from floor to floor, which may mean from the floor to the ceiling or from one floor to the other.
8. 7:8
   • The house where Solomon lived was in the other court, set back inward from the hall.
   • That house was made of the same workmanship.
   • Solomon made a house for Pharaoh's daughter.
   • Solomon had taken Pharaoh's daughter as wife.
   • Her house was like this hall.
9. 7:9
   • All these buildings were of costly stones.
   • The stones were cut to the measurements of dressed stone.
   • The stones were sawn with saws on the inside and the outside.
   • This held from the foundation up to the coping.
   • This held from the outside as far as the great court.
10. 7:10
    • The foundation was laid with costly stones.
    • The foundation stones were large stones.
    • Some stones were ten cubits.
    • Some stones were eight cubits.
11. 7:11
    • Above the foundation were costly stones cut to the measurements of dressed stone.
    • Above the foundation there was also cedar.
12. 7:12
    • The great court all around had three rows of dressed stone.
    • The great court all around had one row of cedar beams.
    • The same held for the inner court of the house of the LORD.
    • The same held for the porch of the house.
13. 7:13
    • King Solomon sent and brought Hiram from Tyre.
14. 7:14
    • Hiram was the son of a widow.
    • His mother was of the tribe of Naphtali.
    • His father was a man of Tyre.
    • His father was a worker in bronze.
    • Hiram was filled with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to do every kind of work in bronze.
    • Hiram came to King Solomon.
    • Hiram did all of Solomon's work.
15. 7:15
    • He cast two pillars of bronze.
    • The height of one pillar was eighteen cubits.
    • A line of twelve cubits went around each pillar.
16. 7:16
    • He made two capitals of cast bronze to set on the tops of the pillars.
    • The height of the one capital was five cubits.
    • The height of the second capital was five cubits.
17. 7:17
    • There were nets of lattice work and wreaths of chain work for the capitals on top of the pillars.
    • There were seven for the one capital.
    • There were seven for the second capital.
18. 7:18
    • He made the pillars.
    • He made two rows around the one network to cover the capitals, with pomegranates.
    • He did the same for the second capital.
19. 7:19
    • The capitals on top of the pillars in the hall were lily work.
    • They were four cubits.
20. 7:20
    • The capitals were on the two pillars.
    • There was also work above, next to the rounded part beside the network.
    • The pomegranates were two hundred, in rows all around, on the second capital.
21. 7:21
    • He set up the pillars at the porch of the temple.
    • He set up the right-hand pillar.
    • He named it Jachin.
    • He set up the left-hand pillar.
    • He named it Boaz.
22. 7:22
    • On top of the pillars was lily work.
    • The work of the pillars was finished.
23. 7:23
    • He made the cast metal sea.
    • It measured ten cubits from rim to rim.
    • It was round all around.
    • Its height was five cubits.
    • A line of thirty cubits went around it.
24. 7:24
    • Gourd-shaped ornaments were under its rim, encircling it.
    • There were ten of them to a cubit.
    • They went all the way around the sea.
    • The ornaments were in two rows.
    • They were cast together with the sea in one casting.
25. 7:25
    • The sea stood on twelve oxen.
    • Three of the oxen faced north.
    • Three faced west.
    • Three faced south.
    • Three faced east.
    • The sea rested on top of them.
    • All their hindquarters were turned inward.
26. 7:26
    • It was a handbreadth thick.
    • Its rim was made like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom.
    • It held two thousand baths.
27. 7:27
    • He made ten stands of bronze.
    • The length of each stand was four cubits.
    • Its width was four cubits.
    • Its height was three cubits.
28. 7:28
    • The stands were made in this way: they had panels.
    • The panels were set between the frames.
29. 7:29
    • On the panels between the frames were lions, oxen, and cherubim.
    • On the frames above there was a pedestal.
    • Below the lions and oxen were wreaths of hammered work.
30. 7:30
    • Each stand had four bronze wheels.
    • Each stand had bronze axles.
    • Its four corners had supports.
    • The supports were cast beneath the basin.
    • There were wreaths beside each support.
31. 7:31
    • The opening of the stand, inside the crown and above it, was a cubit.
    • Its opening was round, made like a pedestal.
    • It measured a cubit and a half.
    • On its opening there were engravings.
    • Their panels were square, not round.
32. 7:32
    • The four wheels were under the panels.
    • The axles of the wheels were attached to the stand.
    • The height of each wheel was a cubit and a half.
33. 7:33
    • The wheels were made like a chariot wheel.
    • Their axles, rims, felloes, and spokes were all of cast metal.
34. 7:34
    • There were four supports at the four corners of each stand.
    • The supports were part of the stand itself.
35. 7:35
    • At the top of the stand was a round band half a cubit high.
    • On top of the stand its supports and panels were of one piece with it.
36. 7:36
    • He engraved cherubim, lions, and palm trees on the plates of its supports and on its panels.
    • He engraved them according to the space available on each.
    • There were wreaths all around.
37. 7:37
    • He made the ten stands in this manner.
    • All of them had one casting.
    • All of them had one measure.
    • All of them had one shape.
38. 7:38
    • He made ten basins of bronze.
    • Each basin held forty baths.
    • Each basin measured four cubits.
    • There was one basin on each of the ten stands.
39. 7:39
    • He placed five stands on the right side of the house.
    • He placed five stands on the left side of the house.
    • He set the sea on the right side of the house, toward the east, opposite the south.
40. 7:40
    • Hiram made the basins.
    • Hiram made the shovels.
    • Hiram made the sprinkling bowls.
    • Hiram finished all the work he did for King Solomon on the house of the LORD.
41. 7:41
    • The work included the two pillars.
    • It included the two bowl-shaped capitals on top of the pillars.
    • It included the two networks covering the two bowls of the capitals on top of the pillars.
42. 7:42
    • It included four hundred pomegranates for the two networks.
    • There were two rows of pomegranates for each network.
    • They covered the two bowls of the capitals on the pillars.
43. 7:43
    • It included the ten stands.
    • It included the ten basins on the stands.
44. 7:44
    • It included the one sea.
    • It included the twelve oxen under the sea.
45. 7:45
    • It included the pots, the shovels, and the sprinkling bowls.
    • All these vessels that Hiram made for King Solomon for the house of the LORD were of burnished bronze.
46. 7:46
    • The king cast them in the plain of the Jordan.
    • He cast them in the clay ground.
    • The place was between Succoth and Zarethan.
47. 7:47
    • Solomon left all the vessels unweighed.
    • The reason was that they were exceedingly many.
    • The weight of the bronze was not determined.
48. 7:48
    • Solomon made all the vessels that belonged to the house of the LORD.
    • These included the golden altar.
    • These included the table on which the bread of the Presence was set.
    • The table was of gold.
49. 7:49
    • These included the lampstands of pure gold, five on the right and five on the left, before the inner sanctuary.
    • These included the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs, of gold.
50. 7:50
    • These included the bowls, snuffers, sprinkling bowls, spoons, and censers, of pure gold.
    • These included the hinges of gold for the doors of the inner house, the Most Holy Place.
    • These included the hinges of gold for the doors of the main hall of the house.
51. 7:51
    • All the work King Solomon did for the house of the LORD was completed.
    • Solomon brought in the things his father David had dedicated.
    • These were the silver, the gold, and the vessels.
    • He put them among the treasures of the house of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

The account of the temple in chapter 6 ended with the note that it took seven years to build; the thirteen years here are set against that figure. Solomon's "house" is the royal palace complex described in the verses that follow, not a private residence.

7:2

A cubit was about eighteen inches or forty-five centimetres, roughly the length of a forearm from elbow to fingertip, so this building was about 150 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. It was called the House of the Forest of Lebanon because its rows of cedar columns stood inside it like a stand of trees; cedar was timber imported from the mountains of Lebanon to the north and was the prestige building material of the region.

7:6

A "hall of pillars" is a colonnade, a roofed space whose roof rests on rows of free-standing columns rather than on solid walls.

7:7

Deciding lawsuits was one of a king's basic duties in the ancient Near East; subjects could bring disputes directly to him. This hall was the public room set aside for that business.

7:8

Marriage to a daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh (mentioned earlier at 3:1) was a diplomatic alliance between two royal houses, sealed by the marriage rather than a private matter.

7:9

Cutting stone with saws rather than splitting it with hammer and chisel gave smooth, exactly matching blocks, and it was slow, expensive work. Saying the stones were sawn on the inside faces as well as the outside is a way of saying no expense was spared even where nobody would see it. "Coping" is the finishing course of stone along the top of a wall.

7:12

The temple complex was a set of nested courtyards, with the outer great court open to more people and the inner court closer to the building itself. The description is tracing how the same expensive construction method was used throughout.

7:13

Tyre was a Phoenician port city on the Mediterranean coast north of Israel, famous for its traders and metalworkers. This Hiram is a craftsman; he is not the king Hiram of Tyre who supplied Solomon with timber in chapter 5, though they share a name. Chronicles spells the craftsman's name Huram.

7:14

Where the King James Version says "brass" the metal meant is bronze, an alloy of copper and tin; brass in the modern sense was not made at this period. "Cunning" in 1611 English meant skilled or expert, with none of the modern sense of slyness. Naphtali was one of the northern tribes, whose territory lay near Phoenician country.

7:15

A line of twelve cubits around each pillar means a circumference of about eighteen feet, giving a pillar roughly six feet thick and twenty-seven feet tall.

7:16

A capital (the King James word is "chapiter") is the decorative block or crown set on top of a column.

7:17

The decoration was cast bronze made to imitate woven material: an open mesh like netting, hung with lengths of chain twisted into loops.

7:18

The pomegranate is a round, thick-skinned red fruit packed with seeds, common in the region and a standard decorative motif in Israelite temple work and on priestly clothing.

7:19

"Lily work" describes a flared, open blossom shape, a design motif widely used in Egyptian and Phoenician craftsmanship.

7:21

The two names are Hebrew words, and the text does not explain them. Jachin means something like "he establishes" or "he will set firm"; Boaz is usually read as "in him is strength" or "by strength." The pillars stood free at the entrance rather than holding up the roof; what exactly they signified is not stated.

7:23

"The Sea" was simply the name given to this enormous basin, from its size. "Cast" means the bronze was poured molten into a mold rather than hammered into shape. It measured about fifteen feet across and seven and a half feet high; 2 Chronicles 4:6 says it was for the priests to wash in.

7:24

Ten buds to every cubit means roughly ten ornaments in every eighteen inches around the rim.

7:25

The oxen faced outward in four groups of three, one group toward each compass direction, with their hindquarters hidden underneath the basin. Bulls were a standard image of strength in the region, used here as the supports for an enormous weight of bronze and water.

7:26

A handbreadth is the width of four fingers, about three inches or seven and a half centimetres. A bath was a liquid measure of roughly five or six gallons (about twenty-two liters), so two thousand baths is somewhere around eleven thousand gallons or forty-four thousand liters. The parallel account in 2 Chronicles 4:5 gives the figure as three thousand baths.

7:27

These stands were wheeled trolleys, bronze carts on which the washing basins sat, so that water could be moved about the temple courtyard.

7:29

Cherubim (the plural of cherub) were winged composite creatures, known across the ancient Near East as guardians of thrones and holy places, and often shown with the body of an animal. They bear no relation to the plump winged infants of later European art.

7:30

"Undersetters" are supporting brackets, and a "laver" is a basin for washing. These stands were essentially large bronze carts, wheels and axles included.

7:31

"Foursquare" simply means square. The passage is distinguishing between the round opening at the top, where the basin sat, and the flat square panels of the stand's sides.

7:33

Wheels of this period were built up from a hub at the center, spokes radiating out, and a rim (the King James words are "naves" and "felloes"), here all cast in bronze rather than made of wood.

7:38

Forty baths is roughly 230 gallons or 880 liters per basin. According to 2 Chronicles 4:6 these smaller basins were used for rinsing the parts of animals offered in sacrifice.

7:39

Hebrew describes direction as though facing east, the way the temple faced, so "right" means south and "left" means north. The verse is placing five stands along the south wall, five along the north, and the Sea at the south-eastern corner.

7:40

The sprinkling bowls were used to catch the blood of sacrificed animals and throw it against the sides of the altar; the shovels were for clearing ash from the altar.

7:45

"Bright brass" means bronze that has been burnished to a polish, so that it shone.

7:46

Succoth and Zarthan were towns in the Jordan valley. The heavy clay soil there held the shape of a mold under molten metal, which is why the casting was done at a distance from Jerusalem.

7:47

Metal was normally weighed and recorded when it entered a royal or temple store, so leaving it unweighed is the writer's way of saying the quantity was beyond accounting.

7:48

This gold altar is the small altar for burning incense that stood inside the temple building, not the large bronze altar for animal sacrifice out in the courtyard. The bread set out before the LORD (the King James "shewbread") was twelve loaves kept permanently on a table inside the temple, replaced with fresh loaves each sabbath, the old ones then being eaten by the priests.

7:49

The inner room is what the King James Version calls "the oracle", a word here meaning the innermost sanctuary at the back of the building, not a prophecy or a person who gives one. The tongs were for handling burning wicks and coals.

7:50

The Most Holy Place was the innermost windowless room, which held the ark; entry to it was restricted to the high priest, once a year. The "snuffers" were trimmers for lamp wicks, and censers were pans in which incense was burned over coals.

7:51

"Dedicated" means set apart for God's exclusive use so that it could not be spent on anything else. According to 2 Samuel 8:11 these were spoils David took in his wars. The treasuries were storerooms attached to the temple, functioning as a national reserve.