20. the oracle in the fore-part] The two words thus rendered would, if they stood alone, be rendered ‘before the oracle.’ In this verse, however, this cannot be the meaning. But in standing before such a room as is here described, it is in front of you, and you see the interior. In this way ‘before the oracle’ may be taken to indicate what is seen when you stand there. Hence we may arrive at the sense in the R.V. ‘within the oracle was a space &c.’ It is difficult to assign any meaning to the A.V., and it may be that some error has crept into the text.

Some have preferred to render literally thus, ‘And before the oracle—twenty cubits was it in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof, and he overlaid it with pure gold—he overlaid also the altar with cedar.’ But the accents of the Hebrew do not favour such a parenthetic clause, and the last sentence is very awkward.

The LXX. (Vat.) omits at the beginning of the verse ‘before the oracle,’ then takes the next sentences as a specification of the size of the oracle, and makes an addition to the last clause thus, ‘and he made an altar before the oracle and overlaid it with gold,’ making no mention of the cedar at all. Most probably this represents the correct text.

and so covered the altar which was of cedar] We cannot, in the face of the preceding clause, translate otherwise than and he covered an altar with cedar. The construction in the two cases is identical. But then arises a difficulty. The altar in question was the altar of incense in the holy place. This stood in front of the vail which separated the most holy place (see Exodus 40:5; Exodus 40:26), and in Ezekiel 41:22 it is called ‘the altar of wood’ (cf. Exodus 30:1-6). From the description in the verse before us there must have been some substance underneath the wood. The LXX. (Alex.) solves the difficulty by reading ‘and he made’ for ‘and he covered,’ i.e. ויעשׂ for ויצף, καὶ ἐποίησε θυσιαστήριον κέδρου.

Verse 20. - And the oracle in the forepart [or, the interior of the oracle. Keil, after Kimchi, maintains that לִפְנֵי is the construct of the noun לִפְנִים. See ver. 29, where it clearly means interior, as its opposition to "without" shows. The A.V. yields no sense] was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof [that is to say, it was a perfect cube. When we consider that the oracle of the tabernacle was a cube of ten cubits and the Holy City (Revelation 21:16; cf. Ezekiel 48:8-35, especially ver. 20) is a cube of 12,000 furlongs, we cannot but regard these measurements as significant. To the ancients the square seemed the most appropriate shape to express the idea of moral perfection. The idea of the cube consequently was that of entire completeness, of absolute perfection. A little light is thrown on this subject by the use of τετράγωνος among the Greeks. See the quotation from Simonides in Plat. Protag. 334 A; Arist. Rhet. 3:11; Eth. Nic. 1:10, 11, and compare the familiar "totus teres atque rotundus." The height of the oracle (internally) being only twenty cubits, while that of the house was thirty (ver. 2), several questions of some interest suggest themselves for consideration. It is perhaps impossible in the present state of our knowledge to arrive at any very positive conclusions, but it may be well, nevertheless, if only to show in how much uncertainty the architecture of the temple is involved, to state them. First among them is this: Was the roof of the temple flat or ridged? (See above on ver. 9).

(2) In either case, was the height of thirty cubits, or any uniform height, maintained throughout, or was the roof of the oracle some ten cubits lower than that of the house? The analogy of the tabernacle, of which the temple was a copy, would lead us to suppose that the ridge - if there was a ridge - of the entire building was level and unbroken, though the analogy of the Gothic church, which, we have already seen, is almost a reproduction of the temple, suggests that the oracle (like the chancel, and, it may be added, like the adytum of Egyptian temples) may possibly have had a lower roof. But

(3) supposing the same height was maintained from end to end, to what use, if any, was the vacant space of ten cubits (15 feet) between cieling and roof of oracle applied? It has been held by some that there was a chamber here, but that it was empty, being formed, in fact, not for use, but in order to procure the cubical shape of the oracle. Others contend that this upper room, or one which ran the entire length of the building, was designed to serve as a receptacle for the reliques of the tabernacle, and they would identify it with the עֲלִיות. (LXX, τὸ ὑπερῷον) of 2 Chronicles 3:9. And untrustworthy as Josephus is when not supported by independent evidence, it is worth mentioning here that beth he and the Talmud "persistently assert that there was a superstructure on the temple equal in height to the lower part" (Fergusson, who, consequently, is of opinion that there undoubtedly was some such superstructure, as in the tomb of Darius, near Persepolis (see Dict. Bib. 3. pp. 1456, 1-457), and that it was used for worship (2 Kings 23:12), where see note). Bahr, however, argues forcibly against this idea. He says, inter alia, that there was no approach provided to these chambers; but our account is so manifestly imperfect that this argument is at the best a precarious one. He sees in the "upper chambers" (the Hebrew word is plural) the upper stories of the side structure. He agrees, however, with Ewald that there was a chamber over the oracle, but thinks it was unoccupied. Keil identifies this space with the "upper chambers" of 2 Chronicles 3:9, and upon the whole this appears to be the most feasible view.

(4) How was the cieling, whether with or without this upper chamber, and whether at the height of twenty or thirty cubits - how was it supported? For "no cedar beam could be laid across a space of twenty cubits without sinking in the centre by its own weight." Fergusson hence argues that the roof must have been carried on pillars - four in the sanctuary and ten in the hall. He remarks that they were used in the house of the Forest of Lebanon, where they were less suitable than here]: and he overlaid it [lit. made it shine] with pure gold [marg. shut up (from סָגַר clausit). Cf. Job 28:15 (Heb.) The same gold is described as טָהור (Exodus 25:11) and טוב (2 Chronicles 3:8). It is called "shut up gold," not because it was concealed (κειμέλιον), but because of the exclusion of impure ingredients (Vulg. aurum purissimum). The lavish use of gold in the interior of the temple - its weight 600 talents (75,000 lbs.), its value almost incalculable - was not for mere display (for most of it was never seen except by the priests), but was symbolical of light and purity (Job 37:22, 23; Revelation 21:18), and stamped the place as the abode of Him who dwelleth in light (1 Timothy 6:16). See Bahr in loc. The palace of the Lord must be "exceeding magnifical." The overlaying was not gilding, but laminae of gold were attached to the woodwork with nails. This art was probably derived from Egypt (Exodus 25:11, 13). Egyptian figures ornamented with gold plates are found both in the Louvre and British Museum. See Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," 2. p. 233 sqq.) Rawlinson remarks that "such ornamentation was common in Babylon, in Assyria, and in Media." See Isaiah 46:6; Herod. 1:98; Layard, 2:264. In addition to the gold, the house was garnished with precious stones (2 Chronicles 3:6). Cf. 1 Chronicles 29:2, 8]; and so covered the [Heb. an] altar which was of cedar. [The italics in the A.V. lead us to suspect a mistranslation, and such it proves to be. What the writer means, supposing the present text to be retained, is, not that Solomon covered the cedar altar with gold, but that he overlaid the (stone?) altar with cedar. It is true the article is wanting, but this may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the altar is now mentioned for the first time (Keil). It is much more probable, however, that the text has been slightly corrupted. The LXX. reads, καὶ ἐποίησε θυσιαστήριον (Cod. Alex. adds κέδρου), which proves that the Seventy had וַיַּעַשׂ instead of וַיְּצַפ in their text. If so, the absence of the article is at once explained, and an unmeaning repetition in ver. 22 avoided. The mention of the altar - of course it is the altar of incense that is meant: the altar of burnt sacrifice was outside the building - in connexion with the oracle is significant. In ver. 22 it is called the "altar that (belonged) to the oracle," because it stood just outside it. In the tabernacle it was placed "before the vail" (Exodus 30:6; Exodus 40:5, 26; Leviticus 16:12-18), and it occupied this position because the incense burned upon it was offered before the Invisible Presence within. It is an argument in favour of the textual emendation suggested above that the altar in the tabernacle was of wood (Exodus 30:1), and that Ezekiel speaks of the "altar of wood" (Ezekiel 41:22), the altar of sacrifice being of earth stones (Exodus 20:24, 25), or brass (2 Chronicles 4:1) If we retain the Received Text we are almost compelled to believe that this altar was also of stone, as they would hardly cover a wooden altar with wood. 1 Kings 6:20"And the interior of the hinder room was twenty cubits the length, twenty cubits the breadth, and twenty cubits its height." The word לפני I agree with Kimchi in regarding as the construct state of the noun לפנים, which occurs again in 1 Kings 6:29 in the sense of the inner part or interior, as is evident from the antithesis לחיצום (on the outside). "And he overlaid it with fine gold." סגוּר זהב ( equals סגור equals ( ז in Job 28:15) unquestionably signifies fine or costly gold, although the derivation of this meaning is still questionable; viz., whether it is derived from סגר in the sense of to shut up, i.e., gold shut up or carefully preserved, after the analogy of כּתם; or is used in the sense of taking out or selecting, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold condensed or unadulterated (Frst and Delitzsch on Job 28:15).

The Most Holy Place had therefore the form of a perfect cube in the temple as well as in the tabernacle, only on an enlarged scale. Now, as the internal elevation of the house, i.e., of the whole of the temple-house, the hinder portion of which formed the Most Holy Place, was thirty cubits, there was a space of about ten cubits in height above the Most Holy Place and below the roof of the temple-house for the upper rooms mentioned in 2 Chronicles 3:9, on the nature and purpose of which nothing is said in the two accounts.

(Note: This upper room does not presuppose, however, that the party wall, which follows as a matter of course from 1 Kings 6:16, was not merely a cedar wall, but a wall two cubits thick. The supposed difficulty of setting up a cedar wall thirty cubits high is not so great as to necessitate assumptions opposed to the text. For we cannot possibly see why it could not have been made secure "without injuring the temple wall." The wood panelling must have been nailed firmly to the wall without injuring the wall itself; and therefore this could be done just as well in the case of the cedar beams or boards of the party wall.)

"And he overlaid (clothed) the altar with cedar wood." There is something very striking in the allusion to the altar in this passage, since the verse itself treats simply of the Most Holy Place; and still more striking is the expression לדּביר אשׁר המּזבּח, "the altar belonging to the Debir," in 1 Kings 6:22, since there was no altar in the Most Holy Place. We cannot remove the strangeness of these sentences by such alterations as Thenius and Bttcher propose, because the alterations suggested are much too complicated to appear admissible. The allusion to the altar in both these verses is rather to be explained from the statements in the Pentateuch as to the position of the altar of incense; viz., Exodus 30:6, "Thou shalt place it before the curtain, which is above the ark of the testimony before the capporeth over the testimony;" and Exodus 40:5, "before the ark of the testimony;" whereby this altar, although actually standing "before the inner curtain," i.e., in the Holy Place, according to Exodus 40:26, was placed in a closer relation to the Most Holy Place than the other two things which were in the Holy Place. The clothing of the altar with cedar presupposes that it had a heart of stone; and the omission of the article before מזבּח may be explained on the ground that it is mentioned here for the first time, just as in 1 Kings 6:16, where דּביר was first mentioned, it had no article.

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