1 Kings, Volume 12 by Simon DeVries

Author:Simon DeVries [Devries, Simon J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006060 Religion / Biblical Commentary / Old Testament
Publisher: Zondervan Academic

It is in vv 2–10 that the narrator tells about the temple, the porch, the windows, the platform, and the stories, with door and stairway. At vv 2, 3, 6, and 8 he incorporates dimensions drawn from his architectural record. According to the preferred reading, the king is not named, though his identification as Solomon would be understood. In v 9 the Heb reads . We translate this, “And he constructed the temple and dressed it out,” understanding this to mean that he first built the walls, stories, etc., and then completed it by constructing the roof. In v 14 the Heb reads an almost identical . The proper name drops out as nonoriginal and we translate, “Thus did he build the temple and dress it out,” understanding this as a resumptive summary to all of vv 2–10. M. Görg (BN 13 [1980] 22–25) proposes an Egyptian equivalent meaning “roof” for the word in v 2. J. Ouellette (RB 76 [1969] 365–78) sees v 4’s , “windows,” as justification for his conjecture that this temple was actually a bit ḫilāni (Akkadian for an open, pillared portico); this same scholar derives v 4’s , “latticed” from a Dravidian word meaning “raised platform” (BIJS 2, 99–102); Ouellette likewise goes far afield for “platform” in v 5 and “stories” in vv 5–6 (JNES 31 [1972] 187–91); M. Gil in BMik 50 (1972) 279–301 reads “flights of stairs” in v 8 as “passageways”; M. Görg in BN 10 (1979) 12–15, goes to Egyptian to find a new meaning for “coffer work and rows of beams” in v 9; he would translate, “side buildings and halls of columns” (on see also P. de Lagarde in Mittheilungen, IV, 235). The validity of such suggestions has to be questioned because many of them are drawn from culture-areas far removed from Palestine and because they disrupt the integrated image of the temple that one must derive from all the biblical data taken together (cf. Busink).

V 7 is not deuteronomistic, as some have believed, but clearly does not belong to the original document. It divides the verses dealing with the stories (6, 8) and differs from the original document in style and conception (on its meaning, see H. Schult, ZDPV 88 [1972] 53–54). The deuteronomistic intrusion in vv 11–13 likewise disrupts the context, inserting Yahweh’s promise to be present among the Israelites on condition of Solomon’s obedience to the commandments.

The narrative style continues in vv 15–34, where the temple’s walls and floor, the adytum, and the outer entrance to the nave are described. We observe the specification of four special costly materials: cedar for the wall panels, juniper for the floors and door panels, oilwood for the doorways and cherubim, and gold for the front of the adytum, the altar, and the cherubim. Our author turns to his architectural record(s) for the dimensions of the adytum and the cherubim and for the technical details concerning the outer door. It is especially in vv 23–26, 28 that our foregoing analysis

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