1 Kings 7

What happens in this chapter

The chapter starts with Solomon's own buildings, thirteen years in the making: the House of the Forest of Lebanon, a hundred cubits long on rows of cedar pillars, the Hall of Pillars, the Hall of the Throne where he judged, his own house and a house for Pharaoh's daughter. Then Solomon brings Hiram from Tyre, the son of a widow of Naphtali and a skilled bronze-worker, who casts two pillars eighteen cubits high, crowns them with capitals of network and pomegranates and names them Jachin and Boaz. He casts the Sea, ten cubits across on twelve oxen, ten wheeled stands with their basins, and the pots, shovels and bowls, all in the clay ground of the Jordan plain. Last come the gold furnishings for inside the house, and David's dedicated silver and gold brought into the treasuries.

What the lab shows, and where to look

For the bronze work, go to the porch of Solomon's Temple lab: Jachin on the south side and Boaz on the north, drawn free-standing before the porch rather than holding up its roof, a reading the lab marks plausible. The capitals are five cubits high, as the text says, but their shape is a guess. In the court, The bronze Sea is shown two ways, straight-sided and bowl-shaped, because the text allows both, and The ten bronze stands and basins are modelled on the smaller wheeled stands found in Cyprus. Solomon's palace complex sits south of the temple court in low detail; the House of the Forest of Lebanon's 100 × 50 × 30 cubits are from the text, while where the buildings stood is a guess.

• Jachin · Solomon's Temple
• Boaz · Solomon's Temple
• The capitals · Solomon's Temple
• The bronze Sea · Solomon's Temple
• The ten bronze stands and basins · Solomon's Temple
• Solomon's palace complex · Solomon's Temple

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