The most remarkable of all the work done at Solomon's Temple was the casting of the enormous basin known as the Sea of Bronze and both of the huge bronze pillars known as Jachin and Boaz. This large-scale casting was difficult and technologically advanced, and the man sent by King Hiram to undertake the work is singled out in the Bible by name. A man ‘filled with wisdom and understanding', he too was called Hiram, and he is described as ‘a widow's son' (1 Kings 7:13-14).
The Sea of Bronze, an ablutions basin used by the priests, rested on twelve bronze oxen and stood near the southeast corner of the Temple. At 10 cubits in diameter and 5 cubits high, it held 10,000 gallons of water, sufficient for over 2000 baths. The oxen were in groups of three and faced the cardinal points; possibly they suggested fertility, as they did in the Canaanite and Egyptian worlds, and the basin was meant to suggest the sacred lakes of Egyptian temples.
The two hollow bronze pillars, each 18 cubits (nine yards) high, were placed on either side of the entrance porch. The pillars were free-standing and supported nothing, but they were surmounted with capitals five cubits high and of elaborate design, opening out into lotus or lily forms adorned with garlands of pomegranates. Hiram the widow's son gave them each a name, calling the one on the south side of the porch Jachin, meaning ‘He shall establish', and the one on the north side Boaz, ‘In it is strength'. Most likely the names were meant to be read together, as something like ‘He (Yahweh) shall establish (the Temple) in its strength', or perhaps the message was that both God and David's dynasty would endure, ‘Yahweh will establish his throne forever. Let the king rejoice in the strength of Yahweh'. The pillars themselves may have served as incense burners or torch holders; or they may have been symbolic, pointing godwards like the Egyptian obelisks raised to the sun god, or representing the tree of life.
These gigantic bronze objects were cast in the Jordan river valley where there was suitable earth to make the moulds, water in abundance and wind to operate the draught of the furnaces. Then with great difficulty they had to be transported to Jerusalem. These things we know about Hiram the widow's son, but with the completion of the Temple the Bible lets him quietly leave the scene and tells us nothing more-though the widow's son and Jachin and Boaz would capture imaginations and appear in legends for thousands of years to come.
World History
