1 Kings 7:38

He also made ten bronze basins, each holding forty baths and measuring four cubits across, one basin for each of the ten stands.

Berean Standard Bible

Follow its threads on the canvas →

Study note

Setting — The narrator records the completion of Solomon’s temple furnishings, describing the artisan’s fabrication of the washing stations immediately before detailing their strategic placement in the sanctuary.

The words — נְחֹשֶׁת (nechoshet) means bronze, and בַּת (bat) denotes a bath, a standardized unit of liquid volume.

The thread — The bronze basin appears in the wilderness tabernacle instructions (Exodus 30:17, Exodus 30:28) and its initial casting (Exodus 38:8), tracing a direct line of ritual washing equipment from the Tent of Meeting to the permanent temple.

Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to acknowledge the precise engineering and uniform capacity built into the cultic apparatus, grounding priestly purification in measurable, physical reality.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

Then made he ten lavers of brass: one laver contained forty baths: and every laver was four cubits: and upon every one of the ten bases one laver.

Cross-references

Exodus 30:17 And the LORD said to Moses,
Exodus 30:28 the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand.
Exodus 38:8 Next he made the bronze basin and its stand from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
Exodus 40:11 Anoint the basin and its stand and consecrate them.
2 Chronicles 4:6 He also made ten basins for washing and placed five on the south side and five on the north. The parts of the burnt offering were rinsed in them, but the priests used the Sea for washing.
Zechariah 13:1 “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the people of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.
Hebrews 9:10 They consist only in food and drink and special washings—external regulations imposed until the time of reform.
Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Revelation 7:14 “Sir,” I answered, “you know.” So he replied, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.