[264] Lilies symbolised beauty and innocence; pomegranates good works (so the Chaldee in Cant. iv. 13, vi. 11, Bähr, Symbol., ii. 122). Raphael crowns his Theology with pomegranates, Giotto places a pomegranate in the hand of his youthful Dante, and Giovanni Bellini in the hand of the Virgin Mary.
[265] Some suppose that the words imply "He will establish" (Jachin) "in strength" (Boaz). "After some favourite persons of the time, perhaps young sons of Solomon," says Ewald, very improbably. LXX. (2 Chron. iii. 17), Κατόρθωσις and Ἰσχύς. See a description of these pillars in Jer. lii. 21-23.
[266] Some writers have supplied the Temple with a porch 180 feet high, misled by the astounding method of the chronicler of adding the four sides into the total. Thus, he tells us that the wings of the cherubim were 30 feet long, meaning that each single wing was 7½ feet long (2 Chron. iii. 11). Josephus does the same in telling us the height of the Temple wall.
[267] The ground plans of most ancient temples were alike.
[268] 2 Sam. viii. 7; 1 Chron. xviii. 7.
[269] So 2 Chron. iv. 8. But it would seem from 1 Kings vii. 48; 2 Chron. xiii. 11, xxix. 18 that only one table and one candlestick were ordinarily used.
[270] St. Jerome rendered debir by oraculum, but some derive it from the Arabic root dabar, "to be behind," not from דָבָר, "to speak" (Munk, p. 290).
[271] In Zerubbabel's and Herod's Temples there was a curtain (Parocheth) before the Holiest; but we read of no such curtain in Solomon's, except in 2 Chron. iii. 14. The fact that the staves of the Ark were visible seems to show that there was not one. The chronicler speaks of "the vail" (2 Chron. iii. 14), showing, apparently, that there was only one; and does not mention the Māsak, which hung between the Porch and the Holy Place. Except in 2 Chron. iii. 14, the only mention of either is in the "Priestly Code." Since the Oracle had a door, one hardly sees why there should also have been a curtain. But the whole subject is obscure, and perhaps the chronicler is sometimes thinking of the second Temple.
[272] We read nothing, however, of any observance of the Day of Atonement till centuries later.
[273] 2 Sam. xxiv. 25 (LXX.); 1 Chron. xxii. 1; 2 Chron. iii. 1; Josephus, Antt., I. xiii. 1, VII. xiii. 4; Targum of Onkelos on Gen. xii.