on their feet] Not “couchant” nor “rampant” but standing, as the winged bulls of Assyria stand.
toward the house] as though to protect the Holiest Place from violation by anyone advancing through the house.
14 (compare Exodus xxvi. 31, 32).
The Veil.
¹⁴And he made the veil of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubim thereon.
No veil for Solomon’s Temple is mentioned in 1 Kings, but (1 Kings vi. 31, 32) doors of olive wood with cherubim carved upon them stood at the entrance of the Holy of Holies. The description of the veil seems to have been borrowed by the Chronicler from the account of the tabernacle given in Exodus.
15–17 (compare 1 Kings vii. 15–22).
The Pillars Jachin and Boaz.
¹⁵Also he made before the house two pillars of thirty and five cubits high, and the chapiter that was on the top of each of them was five cubits.
15. before the house two pillars] Compare 1 Kings vii. 21, he set up the pillars at the porch of the temple, and Jeremiah lii. 17 (translate, the pillars ... that belonged to the house). These pillars were immediately in front of the porch, but (it seems) detached from it. They were cast in brass (iv. 11–17), were hollow (Jeremiah lii. 21), and were crowned with “chapiters” (capitals) in shape like bowls (1 Kings vii. 41). A pair of lofty frontal pillars, detached from the main building, was a not uncommon feature of temples in Western Asia and Egypt—e.g. at the Temple of Hercules (Melkart) at Tyre (Herodotus II. 44), the Temple of Paphos in Cyprus (see W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites², p. 488), at Karnak in Egypt (compare Perrot and Chipiez, Egyptian Art, II. 170). In Solomon’s Temple these twin columns may have been conventional imitations of the prevailing type of temple building, but it is rather to be supposed that there also they were considered to be symbolic of the presence of God, and were developments of the ancient stone pillars (maṣṣeboth) which were a constant feature at Semitic shrines and had originally been regarded as the abode of the Deity.
thirty and five cubits high] 35 is also given in the LXX. of Jeremiah lii. 21; but is almost certainly an error. Read eighteen, as in 1 Kings vii. 15; Jeremiah lii. 21 (Hebrew).
¹⁶And he made chains in the oracle, and put them on the tops of the pillars; and he made an hundred pomegranates, and put them on the chains.