Hoofing. — Very little is told us concerning the roof of the house. 1 K 6'''7 is made by Uuhr, Keil, Thenius, in their Comm. and Treatises, as also by the Targ., Pesh., Vulg., and Arabic versions, to refer to the covering of the roof. But Benzingei and the LXX take it to mean the covering or wainscotting of the walls ; and I KV S shows that the same verb certainly can be used of the walls,
two dimensions, mean the greater and smaller measurement respectively. . 1 K 6«. ^ Ezk 41».
r' He covered the house with beams and planks of cedar.* ' And it (the throne porch) was covered with oedor (roa floor to floor.'
TEMPLE
TEMPLE
690
—which Thenius is inclined to deny, — and that it probably is so used in this passage. Vet, as Thenius objects, the Avainscotting of the walls is described iu 6". V." is otherwise awkward iu its present position ; and it Ls hard to make out the exact meaning of the technical terms translated 'beams and planks.'o Probably the verse is an interpolation.
1 K G"^ in the EV has the word 'ceiling' in it. Instead of ' walls ' wo must read ' beams ' : 7 ' from the floor of the house unto the beams of the ceil- ing.' We thus karn tliat the ceiling had cedar beams, but that is all we learn about it.
But these beams must have been covered with stone, probably the hard limestone of which the walls were built, to protect the house from the rain. In the three most rainy months there descends as much rain in Jerusalem and its neigh- bourhood as the average rainfall upon any similar area in Great Britain throughout the year.
Was the Tooi Jlat or yaiUformed''. Most cer- tainly it was tlat, as all ancient temples and houses were, and as, with hardly an exception. Eastern houses continue to be up to the present time. The custom witli regard to private houses is to have a parapet all around the roof to prevent persons who are on the umcli-frequented roofs from falling.5 Certainly no other kind of roof than the flat one is hinted at anywhere in the Bible, nor is any other known in tlie primitive East. It is remarkable to find leading Rabbinical writers, followed by Lun(i,f Hirt, Schniiase. Winer, and Thenius, plead that the roof was gabled. Hirt argues tliat there were spikes on the roof to keep otl'the birds, and that the roof was overlaid with gold. But he gets these, as perhaps also his gable roof, from the tem]ile of Herod. f
Inner supports or r^t f — It is uncertain whether inside the house theiV; were pillars to bear up the roof. In the hckal, at all events, it is very likely there were such supports, as the walls were 30 cubits high, and a roof of wood and of stone would be in great danger of tumbiin" unless there were something besides the walls to keep it up.
Fergu8son»j ar^es for euch pillars, and he thinks there would be eight in all, four on each side of the house, one be- tween each couple of tables and latnpstands.ff Surli an ar- rangement would, he thinks, promote at once arcliitectural effect and the stability of the structure. He refers to 1 K iili-,i but the word rendered pillars x means 'support,* and the parallel word in Chron.X means ' hii,'hways,' though it is rendere<! in EV ' terraces.' There is so nmch doubt as to what is meant that the passage cannot be mode to carry what is put upon it.
The material of which the house and its ap- pendages were built was the white hard limestone which abounds in the country, and which can be polished like marble ; indeed it is a kind of marble. The slabs used were pre|)ared at the quarry before they were brought to the temple, so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the bouse while it was in build- ing.^
The inside walla of the house were, as seen before, overlaid with cedar planks,!/ on which were
• O'?:, nii-j'.
^ * And he built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar, from the door of the bouse unto the walls of the ceiliny.'
y nn-p for nn"p with LXX, Then., Keil, Bahr, Stade, Bern., and II 2 Uh 3'.
i Dt ■Ji:\ J),' lOfJ. 1 2SI (or 324). { See art. Pinnacle.
»i TfiiiiiUg uf the Jewg, p. '.y f.
C On the tables and lamjistands of the hikal see below under 'Contents of hl'kdt.'
t ' And the king made of the almug trees jn7/ar« for the house of Jehovah, and tor the king's house.'
» 1VP?. A 2 Ch 9" n'lVpp.
M 1 K 0'. Ewald (Gesch. lii. 324, n. 2), Sta<le (ZATW 111. 13fi), and Benzinpcr (Coin, in ioc.) doubt the genuineness of this verse. It comes into the middi* o^ the account of the side ohomhera (see art. QuiKBY),
I 1 K 61l>.
carved 'knops' and 'open flo\vers.' As to the gold said to cover the inside of the house,a see below under ' The gold covering of Solomon's temple' (p. 700'').
The floor of the house was probably made of hewn stone of the same material as that of the walls. But this stone floor was covered with cypress /3 wood, as the walls were with cedar; so tliat nowhere inside could the stone be seen.