Bible Strands
Jeremiah 52:18
They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, dishes, and all the articles of bronze used in the temple service.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The narrator records the Babylonian soldiers’ systematic dismantling of the Jerusalem temple during the city’s fall, cataloging the sacred objects removed as the bronze infrastructure is carted away.
The words — מְזַמְּרוֹת (m.za.me.Rot) literally denotes the snuffers or wick trimmers used to tend the temple lamps, specifying the exact ritual implements stripped from the sanctuary.
The thread — The bronze pots, shovels, and sprinkling bowls listed here trace back to the tabernacle construction (Exodus 27:3; Numbers 4:14) and Solomon’s temple inventory (1 Kings 7:45), showing the continuity of worship furnishings across Israel’s sacred spaces.
Why it lands — It demands recognition that divine presence is not bound to objects, and that prophetic judgment executes through the concrete removal of the very tools meant to mediate it.
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
The caldrons also, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the bowls, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they away.
Cross-references
- Exodus 27:3 Make all its utensils of bronze—its pots for removing ashes, its shovels, its sprinkling bowls, its meat forks, and its firepans.
- Numbers 4:14 and place on it all the vessels used to serve there: the firepans, meat forks, shovels, and sprinkling bowls—all the equipment of the altar. They are to spread over it a covering of fine leather and insert the poles.
- 1 Kings 7:45 and the pots, shovels, and sprinkling bowls. All the articles that Huram made for King Solomon in the house of the LORD were made of burnished bronze.
- 1 Kings 7:40 Additionally, Huram made the pots, shovels, and sprinkling bowls. So Huram finished all the work that he had undertaken for King Solomon in the house of the LORD:
- Exodus 25:29 You are also to make the plates and dishes, as well as the pitchers and bowls for pouring drink offerings. Make them out of pure gold.
- Exodus 37:16 He also made the utensils for the table out of pure gold: its plates and dishes, as well as its bowls and pitchers for pouring drink offerings.
- Exodus 37:23 He also made its seven lamps, its wick trimmers, and trays of pure gold.
- Exodus 38:3 He made all the altar’s utensils of bronze—its pots, shovels, sprinkling bowls, meat forks, and firepans.
- Numbers 4:7 Over the table of the Presence they are to spread a blue cloth and place the plates and cups on it, along with the bowls and pitchers for the drink offering. The regular bread offering is to remain on it.
- Numbers 7:13 His offering was one silver platter weighing a hundred and thirty shekels, and one silver bowl weighing seventy shekels, both according to the sanctuary shekel and filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering;