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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Chronicles 3:15 - 3:15
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The two brazen pillars before the house, i.e., before the porch, whose form is more accurately described in 1Ki 7:15-22. The height of it is here given at thirty-five cubits, while, according to 1Ki 7:15; 2Ki 25:17; Jer 52:21, it was only eighteen cubits. The number thirty-five has arisen by confounding יח = 18 with לה = 35; see on 1Ki 7:16. הַצֶּפֶת (ἁπ. λεγ.) from צָפָה, overlay, cover, is the hood of the pillar, i.e., the capital, called in 1Ki 7:16. כֹּתֶרֶת, crown, capital, five cubits high, as in 1Ki 7:16.
2Ch 3:16
“And he made little chains on the collar (Halsreife), and put it on the top of the pillars, and made 100 pomegranates, and put them on the chains.” In the first clause of this verse, בַּדְּבִיר, “in (on) the most holy place,” has no meaning, for the most holy place is not here being discussed, but the pillars before the porch, or rather an ornament on the capital of these pillars. We must not therefore think of chains in the most holy place, which extended thence out to the pillars, as the Syriac and Arabic seem to have done, paraphrasing as they do: chains of fifty cubits (i.e., the length of the holy place and the porch). According to 1Ki 7:17-20 and 1Ki 7:41., compared with 2Ch 4:12-13, each capital consisted of two parts. The lower part was a circumvolution (Wulst) covered with chain-like net-work, one cubit high, with a setting of carved pomegranates one row above and one row below. The upper part, or that which formed the crown of the capital, was four cubits high, and carved in the form of an open lily-calyx. In our verse it is the lower part of the capital, the circumvolution, with the chain net-work and the pomegranates, which is spoken of. From this, Bertheau concludes that דְּבִיר must signify the same as the more usual שְׂבָכָה, viz., “the lattice-work which was set about the top of the pillars, and served to fasten the pomegranates,” and that bdbyr has arisen out of בְּרָבִיד by a transposition of the letters. בְּרָבִיד (chains) should be read here. This conjecture so decidedly commends itself, that we regard it as certainly correct, since רָבִיד denotes in Gen 41:42; Eze 16:11, a necklace, and so may easily denote also a ring or hoop; but we cannot adopt the translation “chains on a ring,” nor the idea that the שְׂבָכָה, since it surrounded the head of the pillars as a girdle or broad ring, is called the ring of the pillars. For this idea does not agree with the translation “chains in a ring,” even when they are conceived of as “chain-like ornaments, which could scarcely otherwise be made visible on the ring than by open work.” Then the chain-like decorations were not, as Bertheau thinks, on the upper and under border of the ring, but formed a net-work which surrounded the lower part of the capital of the pillar like a ring, as though a necklace had been drawn round it. רָבִיד consequently is not the same as שְׂבָכָה, but rather corresponds to that part of the capital which is called גֻּלָּה (גֻּלֹּות) in 1Ki 7:14; for the שְׂבָכֹות served to cover the גֻּלֹּות, and were consequently placed on or over the גֻּלֹּות, as the pomegranates were on the chains or woven work. הַגֻּלָּה denotes the curve, the circumvolution, which is in 1Ki 7:20 called הַבֶּטֶן, a broad-arched band, bulging towards the middle, which formed the lower part of the capital. This arched part of the capital the author of the Chronicle calls רָבִיד, ring or collar, because it may be regarded as the neck ornament of the head of the pillar, in contrast to the upper part of the capital, that consisted in lily-work, i.e., the ball wrought into the form of an open lily-calyx (כֹּתֶרֶת( xylac-).
2Ch 3:17
As to the position of the pillars, and their names, see on 1Ki 7:21.