










OT usage.

In Solomon’s palace complex was the “Hall of Pillars” (RSV), but the more accurate tr. would be a porch of columns (1 Kings 7:6). These were made of cedar, but Solomon also used rare almug wood for columns (10:12). The twin bronze pillars, named [[Jachin and Boaz]], stood before the Temple and may have held up the architrave of the vestibule, or they may have been free-standing memorial pillars, recalling the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire of the Exodus days. Note that they were given specific names (7:15-22, 41, 42). There is a possibility that one of the columns was the pillar by which the king stood on crisis occasions, as when young Joash was proclaimed king at the close of Athaliah’s usurpation (2 Kings 11:14) and when King Josiah made his great reformation covenant (23:3).

The columns in the Philistine temple that Samson pulled down on the assembled crowd were “the two middle pillars upon which the house rested” (Judg 16:25, 26, 29). The pillars ref