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Context No. 757 of 4322 · 2 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

2 Chronicles 4:12-22: in context

12the two pillars, the bowls, the two capitals which were on the top of the pillars, the two networks to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars, 13and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks—two rows of pomegranates for each network, to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the pillars. 14He also made the bases, and he made the basins on the bases— 15one sea, and the twelve oxen under it. 16Huram-abi also made the pots, the shovels, the forks, and all its vessels for King Solomon, for the LORD’s house, of bright bronze. 17The king cast them in the plain of the Jordan, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredah. 18Thus Solomon made all these vessels in great abundance, so that the weight of the bronze could not be determined. 19Solomon made all the vessels that were in God’s house: the golden altar, the tables with the show bread on them, 20and the lamp stands with their lamps to burn according to the ordinance before the inner sanctuary, of pure gold; 21and the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs of gold that was purest gold; 22and the snuffers, the basins, the spoons, and the fire pans of pure gold. As for the entry of the house, its inner doors for the most holy place and the doors of the main hall of the temple were of gold.

Second Chronicles takes an inventory of everything that furnished Solomon's temple, and it is a staggering list. The master craftsman Huram-abi makes the two great pillars and their capitals, the networks and the four hundred pomegranates, the huge basin called the sea resting on twelve bronze oxen, and pots and shovels and forks, all of bright bronze. There is so much of it that the passage says the weight of the bronze could not be determined. Then it turns to the gold, and everything nearest the heart of the house is pure gold: the altar, the tables of showbread, the lampstands, the flowers and lamps and tongs, even the doors of the Most Holy Place.

But one line about the bronze is easy to pass over. Solomon cast it, the text says, in the plain of the Jordan, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredah. Before any of it gleamed in the sanctuary, it was poured into molds packed in riverbank mud, out at a hot, dirty foundry far from the temple courts. The vessels that would stand in the holiest place on earth were first shaped in the clay, in a process nobody would call beautiful. What shines in the sanctuary was formed in the mud, and the forming came first.

The temple's gleaming vessels were first cast in riverbank clay, out at a dirty foundry. What hidden, unglamorous forming am I resenting or rushing, that is actually where the thing meant to shine is being made?

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