1 Kings 7:15

of eighteen cubits high apiece The Hebrew says -eighteen cubits was the height of one pillar." There can be very little doubt that this should be followed by -and eighteen cubits was the height of the other pillar." But the similarity of the words has caused the scribe to overlook them. And there is a like defect in the other half of this verse. For instead of -did compass either of them about" the original gives -did compass the second pillar." The whole of the latter passage was no doubt -a line of twelve cubits did compass about the one pillar, and a line of twelve cubits the second pillar." The A. V. gives the sense, and in a better fashion than by introducing italics to represent the missing words. The full form in similar phrases occurs immediately in 1 Kings 7:16-17, and then in 18 there is an omission of one-half the description, just as has happened here.

The first portion of these pillars was 18 cubits = 27 feet high by 12 cubits = 18 feet in circumference. This of itself would make a pillar of disproportionate dimensions, but on the top there were placed chapiters (capitals) of 5 cubits = 7½ feet high. Thus the whole height would be 23 cubits or 34½ feet. It is said (2 Chronicles 3:15) that the pillars were 35 cubits high. In that case we should have to suppose them raised on bases of 12 cubits, which is out of all proportion. The metal work may have had some stone base to rest on, but that would never have been 18 feet high. It is more reasonable to suppose that the numbers, marked in Hebrew letters, have been misread by the Chronicler. See however the note on 1 Kings 6:3 above, with reference to these dimensions.

These pillars were broken up and carried away along with other metal at the time of the Babylonian invasion, see 2 Kings 25:13; Jeremiah 52:17, in which latter passage the heights of the pillar and its capital are exactly as here, and in the former there is only a variation in the dimension of the capital, not of the pillar.