1 Kings 7:16

And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:13-47 The two brazen pillars in the porch of the temple, some think, were to teach those that came to worship, to depend upon God only, for strength and establishment in all their religious exercises. Jachin, God will fix this roving mind. It is good that the heart be established with grace. Boaz, In him is our strength, who works in us both to will and to do. Spiritual strength and stability are found at the door of God's temple, where we must wait for the gifts of grace, in use of the means of grace. Spiritual priests and spiritual sacrifices must be washed in the laver of Christ's blood, and of regeneration. We must wash often, for we daily contract pollution. There are full means provided for our cleansing; so that if we have our lot for ever among the unclean it will be our own fault. Let us bless God for the fountain opened by the sacrifice of Christ for sin and for uncleanness.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The general character of the "chapiters" or capitals, their great size in proportion to the shaft, which is as one to two, and their construction of two quite different members, remind us of the pillars used by the Persians in their palaces, which were certainly more like Jachin and Boaz than any pillars that have reached us from antiquity. The ornamentation, however, seems to have been far more elaborate than that of the Persian capitals.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15-22. two pillars of brass of eighteen cubits high—They were made of the brass (bronze) which was taken from the king of Zobah (1Ch 18:8). In 2Ch 3:15 they are said to have been thirty-five cubits high. There, however, their joint lengths are given; whereas here the length of the pillars is given separately. Each pillar was seventeen and a half cubits long, which is stated, in round numbers, as eighteen. Their dimensions in English measure are as follows: The pillars without the capitals measured thirty-two and a half feet long, and seven feet diameter; and if hollow, as Whiston, in his translation of Josephus, thinks (Jer 52:21), the metal would be about three and a half inches thick; so that the whole casting of one pillar must have been from sixteen to twenty tons. The height of the capitals was eight and three-fourths feet; and, at the same thickness of metal, would not weigh less than seven or eight tons each. The nature of the workmanship in the finishing of these capitals is described (1Ki 7:17-22). The pillars, when set up, would stand forty feet in height [Napier, Metal].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The height of the one chapiter was five cubits.

Object. It is but three cubits in 2 Kings 25:17.

Answ. The word chapiter is taken diversely, as hundreds of other words are; either more largely for the whole, so it is five cubits; or more strictly, either for the pommels, as they are called, 2 Chronicles 4:12, or for the cornice or crown; and so it was but three cubits, to which the pomegranates being added make it four cubits, as it is below, 1 Kings 7:19; and the other work upon it took up one cubit more, which in all made five cubits.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars,.... These were large ovals in the form of a crown, as the word signifies; or like two crowns joined together, as Ben Gersom; or bowls, as they are called, 1 Kings 7:41,

the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits; in 2 Kings 25:17 they are said to be but three cubits high; but that is to be understood only of the ornamented part of them, the wreathen work and pomegranates on them, as there expressed; here it includes, with that, the part below unornamented.

Geneva Study Bible

And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 16. - And he made two chapiters [or capitals] of molten [Heb. poured] brass, to put upon the tops [Heb. heads] of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits [In 2 Kings 25:17 the height is given as three cubits; but this is obviously a clerical error. See 2 Chronicles 3:15; Jeremiah 52:22. A much more important question is whether the chapiter (כֹּתֶרֶת same word, akin to כֶּתֶר, crown) of four cubits mentioned in ver. 19 is to be understood as a part of this chapiter, or something additional and superposed, the entablature, e.g. The former appears the more probable. See note on ver. 19. But it is not a fatal objection to the latter view that it would make the entire chapiter, or both members, nine cubits high; no less, that is, than one-half the length of the shaft. No doubt to modern ideas this appears wholly disproportionate; but a double chapiter, bearing the same proportion to the shaft, is found in some of the buildings of Persepolis (Fergusson,. Dict. Bib. 3. p. 1457). From the expression of vers. 41, 42, "the bowls of the chapiters" (cf. 2 Chronicles 4:12, 13; Jeremiah 52:23), and the word "belly" (בֶּטֶן) in ver. 20, we gather that the chapiters were bowl shaped, or bellied out something like the so called "cushion capital" in Norman architecture. 1 Kings 7:16

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"And he made two capitals (כּתרות), to set them on the heads of the pillars, cast in brass, five cubits the height of the one and of the other capital." If, on the other hand, in 2 Kings 25:17 the height of the capital is said to have been three cubits, this discrepancy cannot be explained on the supposition that the capitals had been reduced two cubits in the course of time; but the statement rests, like the parallel passage in Jeremiah 52:22, upon an error of the text, i.e., upon the substitution of ג (3) for ה (5).