1 Kings 7:40-47·~1 min

Completion of the Bronze Works

Huram's bronze works are listed in summary form: vessels, pillars, pomegranates, stands, and the Sea, all belonging to the house of the LORD.

A⁴⁰dditionally, Huram made the pots, shovels, and sprinkling bowls. ⁴¹the two pillars; ⁴²the four hundred pomegranates for the two sets of network (two rows of pomegranates for each network covering both the bowl-shaped capitals atop the pillars); ⁴³the ten stands; ⁴⁴the Sea; ⁴⁵and the pots, shovels, and sprinkling bowls.

The account names the Jordan plain as the casting place and notes that the bronze is left unweighed because its quantity is beyond reckoning.

⁴⁶All the articles that Huram made for King Solomon in the house of the LORD were made of burnished bronze. The king had them cast in clay molds in the plain of the Jordan between Succoth and Zarethan. ⁴⁷Solomon left all these articles unweighed, because there were so many. The weight of the bronze could not be determined.

Section summaryThe chapter gathers Huram's bronze work into a final inventory and notes where it was cast and how abundant it was. The list gives closure while also enlarging the sense of scale: there is so much bronze that its weight is left undetermined.

Role in the chapterThis section sums up the bronze phase of the work. It turns scattered description into a completed whole and marks the abundance of Solomon's provision for the temple.