1 Kings 7:5

And all the doors and posts were square, with the windows: and light was against light in three ranks.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:1-12 All Solomon's buildings, though beautiful, were intended for use. Solomon began with the temple; he built for God first, and then his other buildings. The surest foundations of lasting prosperity are laid in early piety. He was thirteen years building his house, yet he built the temple in little more than seven years; not that he was more exact, but less eager in building his own house, than in building God's. We ought to prefer God's honour before our own ease and satisfaction.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

All the doors and posts - The doorways, and the posts which formed them, seem to be intended. These were square at top, not arched or rounded. In Assyrian buildings arched doorways were not uncommon. The doorways also, like the windows, exactly faced one another.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

1Ki 7:2-7. Of the House of Lebanon.

2. He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon—It is scarcely possible to determine whether this was a different edifice from the former, or whether his house, the house of the forest of Lebanon, and the one for Pharaoh's daughter, were not parts of one grand palace. As difficult is it to decide what was the origin of the name; some supposing it was so called because built on Lebanon; others, that it was in or near Jerusalem, but contained such a profuse supply of cedar columns as to have occasioned this peculiar designation. We have a similar peculiarity of name in the building called the East India house, though situated in London. The description is conformable to the arrangement of Eastern palaces. The building stood in the middle of a great oblong square, which was surrounded by an enclosing wall, against which the houses and offices of those attached to the court were built. The building itself was oblong, consisting of two square courts, flanking a large oblong hall which formed the center, and was one hundred cubits long, by fifty broad. This was properly the house of the forest of Lebanon, being the part where were the cedar pillars of this hall. In front was the porch of judgment, which was appropriated to the transaction of public business. On the one side of this great hall was the king's house; and on the other the harem or royal apartments for Pharaoh's daughter (Es 2:3, 9). This arrangement of the palace accords with the Oriental style of building, according to which a great mansion always consists of three divisions, or separate houses—all connected by doors and passages—the men dwelling at one extremity, the women of the family at the other, while public rooms occupy the central part of the building.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He speaks either, first, of the same lights mentioned 1 Kings 7:4, it being the manner of the Hebrews to repeat the same things; or rather, of the smaller windows or lights, which were over the several doors, as the manner of many buildings is.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And all the doors and posts were square with the windows,.... The doors into the several stories and apartments, and the posts and lintel of them, and the windows over them, were all square:

and light was against light in three ranks; they answered one another as before.

Geneva Study Bible

And all the doors and posts were square, with the windows: and light was against light in three ranks.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. And all the doors and posts were square, with the windows] It is not easy to say how the last word of the Hebrew should be rendered. It is akin to that rendered ‘windows’ by the A.V. in 1 Kings 7:4. Hence a like meaning has been assigned to it here. But there is nothing in the original to represent ‘with the.’ The R.V. used prospects in the previous verse, and so gives here were square in prospects, adding in the margin ‘were made square with beams.’ Taking these ‘beams’ to signify, as before, the ‘framework’ of the doorways, the sense would be ‘were set square in the framework,’ i.e. of the doorways.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - And all the doors and posts [For מְזוּזֹת posts, Thenius would read מֶהְזות outlooks, after ver. 4, which seems a natural emendation, especially as the LXX. has χῶραι. We should then get the sense of "doors and windows "] were square of beam. [The word translated "windows" in ver. 4; the proper rendering is beam, and the meaning apparently is that all these openings were square in shape. Nothing is said about the height of the rooms, and as the commentators are not agreed whether there was one story or three, that can obviously be only matter of conjecture. Rawlinson, who thinks of but one hall, with three rows of windows, supposes, after Houbigant, that one row was placed in a wall which ran down the middle of the apartment. Such an arrangement, he observes, was found by Layard at Nimrud.] 1 Kings 7:5

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"And all the doorways and mouldings were square of beams" (שׁקף is an accusative of free subordination, denoting the material or the mode of execution; cf. Ewald, 284, a., β). "Square with a straight upper beam" (Thenius) cannot be the correct rendering of שׁקף רבעים. Thenius proposes to read והמּחזת for והמּזוּזת, after the reading αἱ χῶραι of the Seventy, who have also rendered מחזה in 1 Kings 7:4 by χῶρα, a broad space. It may be pleaded in support of this, that רבעים taht , is less applicable to the doorposts or mouldings than to the doorways and outlooks (windows), inasmuch as, if the doorways were square, the square form of the moulding or framework would follow as a matter of course. הפּתחים are both the doors, through which the different rooms were connected with one another, and also those through which the building and its stories were reached, of course by stairs, probably winding staircases, as in the side stories of the temple. The stairs were placed, no doubt, at the front of the building. The height given is thirty cubits, corresponding to that of the whole building (1 Kings 7:2). If we reckon the height of the lower pillars at eight cubits, there were twenty-two cubits left for the stories; and assuming that the roofing of each was one cubit in thickness, there remained eighteen cubits in all for the rooms of the three stories; and this, if equally distributed, would give an internal height of six cubits for each story, or if arranged on a graduated scale, which would probably be more appropriate, a height of seven, six, and five cubits respectively.