The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Kings — Section 134

relievi in imita.tion of flowering lilios. Prob- of four hundred, as given in ver. 42, and in ably the bowl-shaped cha.piter was treated 2 Chronicles, and with the " hundred round as a fnll-blo= lily, just as the ca.pitals of about" (i.e., the number in each row) men, Egyptian pillars took the form of the lotus. tioned in Jer. lii. 23. We gather from this The molten sea was similarly treated (ver. latter passage that ninety-six out of the 26). The lily (lt;i~r:i, from t:i~t:i, to be white), hundred faced the folll· quarters, for this is was undoubtedly an emblem of purity. apparently the meaning of i1i;t~i, wind- Bahr observes that it may justly be named wards; see Ezek. xiii. 16-18, not that the " the flower of th(' promised land," and that pomegranates could be " set in motion by as the lotus was the religious flower of the the play of the wind," as Ewald confidently Indian and Egyptian religions, so was the affirms. The remflining four pomegranates, lily of the Jewish] ill the porch [These of course, occupied the four corners. The necessary inference from this statement, words, o,~:-:::i, are '"ery obscure. Keil T T viz., that this po.rt of the capital was four- understands " as in the hall" (cf. .,,mi ro square, seems to have escaped the notice of av>-.aµ,, LXX.) But that idea would have the co=entators] round about upon the been expressed by o,~:-:::i, and nothing is other chapiter. [Some words have evidently dropped out of the Hebrew here, as in ver. said elsewhere about any lily-work in the T 15. The text, no doubt, 01-i.ginally stood porch (Biihr). Ewald, too, thinks the "two hundred in rows round about the one decoration of the porch is referred to, and chapiter, and two hundred in rows round holds that a description of this lily-work about upon the other chapiter." There has must once have preceded this statement, been no intentional compression-that is though it is now wanting. Thenins, al. not the genius of the Semitic languages- suppose them to refer to the porition of the but an accidental omission, occasioned by pillars within the porch, and the "four the recurrence of almost identical words. cubits" mentioned presently, they take Ver. 21-And he set up the pillars in the to indicate the diamet.er of the capita.ls. porch [We are now confronted by the much Wordsworth would render "inside or to- vexed questions, (1) What was the position, ward the porch," and nndersta.nds that the and (2) what the purpose, of these two lily-work was only on the inside of the columns? Were they in the porch, or be- pillars. It is, perhaps, impossible to arrive fore it? And were they architectural or at any certain conclusion], four cubits. monumental? Did they support the roof of [This may either mean that of five cubita the porch, or were they isolat.ed and detached, (which was the height of the entire capi- after the manner of obelisks ? I incline to tal), four, and these the upper four (ver. the opinion of Bahr, that they stood in the 22), were covered with lily-work, while one porch, but that they formed no part of the cubit at the bottom of the capital was orna- building, i.e., that they were not for any mented with chain-work or festoons-we structi..;·.Ll use, but simply for ornament. can hardly believe that nets, chains, and This appears to me, on the whole, to result lily-work were all combined in the same from the following considerations: (1) The space, or it may refer to the position of the language used favours a position within the pillars in the portico.] Ver. 20.-And the cbapiters upon the two porch. We have here Cl~~? (="at or in pillars had pomegranates [Instead of the the porch," perhaps for the "porch, as Biihr), italics, Keil would supply Hiram made, but and in ver.19 (where see note) Cl~~t(~. And it is doubtful whether this is any improve- ment. We have already heard more than with this agree the expression of the Chron. once that be made the chapiters. It is "before (').~?) the houee," and "before better to supply pro_iected or were, as in the ('..)'f·S~) th; temple " (2 Chron. iii. 15, 17). preceding verse. This verse is extremely obscure ; but its design appears to be to ex- The pillars would, however, be "before the plain how the bowl of the chapiter projected temple," whether they stood within or in al.Jove its base] also above (i.e., above the uont of the porch, and it may be safely neck, or lowest cubit, on which was the net allowed that the language of the historian is not decisive one way or the other. The pre- and chain-work], over a.ga.inst [n?P.V~r.> with positions of the text, however, seem to lend two prefixes is a rare form J the belly [or some support to Biibr'e view. (2) We know "bowl" (ver. 41)] which wa.a by [Heb. that "the Pha,nioie.ns used isolated metal beyond, on the other side of, i.e., as it columns as sacred ornaments, so tho.t Hiram appeared to a spectator sto.nding below] tile would be familiar with such e. mode ot network : and the pomegranates were two ornamentation " (Rawlinson). "Whenever hundred 1n rowa [This agrees with the total in coins or hiatories we get e. represent&- 0B, VII, 1-51.] THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS. 181