Numbers

Boaz and Jachin

Boaz and Jachin (Jakin) were the columns that stood at the entrance to the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon.

He cast two bronze pillars, each eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits around, by line. He also made two capitals of cast bronze to set on the tops of the pillars; each capital was five cubits high. A network of interwoven chains festooned the capitals on top of the pillars, seven for each capital. He made pomegranates in two rows encircling each network to decorate the capitals on top of the pillars. He did the same for each capital. The capitals on top of the pillars in the portico were in the shape of lilies, four cubits high. On the capitals of both pillars, above the bowl-shaped part next to the network, were the two hundred pomegranates in rows all around. He erected the pillars at the portico of the temple. The pillar to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz. The capitals on top were in the shape of lilies. And so the work on the pillars was complete.—1Ki 7:15-22.

In the front of the temple he made two pillars, which together were thirty-five cubits long, each with a capital on top measuring five cubits. He made interwoven chains and put them on top of the pillars. He also made a hundred pomegranates and attached them to the chains. He erected the pillars in the front of the temple, one to the south and one to the north. The one to the south he named Jachin and the one to the north Boaz.—2 Ch 3:15-17.

How It's Used

"For centuries, men have speculated about the appearance of King Solomon's Temple, symbol of one of the most glorious epochs in Jewish history. This is the subject treated in the captivating exhibition 'Jerusalem Under the Reign of King Solomon' featuring some 50 antique maps, woodcuts and engravings produced in Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries...

"A number of prints delineate the furnishings of the Temple: the magnificent throne, symbol of wisdom, justice and learning; the Brazen Sea, the giant incense bowl decorated with images of oxen; the bronze columns of Jachin and Boaz (which were a major architectural feature of a synagogue built in 1798 at Karlsruhe, Germany); and the great seven-branched candelbrum carved from one ingot of gold."

"In the northwest corner of the room stand Jachin and Boaz, pillars topped by globes of heaven and Earth and said to represent pillars that flanked the outer porch of the Temple of Solomon."

"When Bernini came to build the canopy over the high altar of the new St Peter's in the 17th century, he combined the idea of twisted columns with the great bronze monsters, Jachin and Boaz, which guarded the porch of the Temple, to produce his magnificent Baldacchino. This captured the imagination of Archbishop Laud and in the 1640s he got his carver Nicholas Stone to make two magnificent twisted columns for the Baroque porch which was added incongruously to the Gothic church of St Mary's in Oxford. Those infuriated the Puritans at the time (and helped to get Laud executed) and have puzzled visitors ever since. The Temple also inspired the strange and powerful cult of freemasonry, an 18th-century invention in its modern form and an extraordinary combination of credulous myth and hard-headed mutual self-advancement. Masons argue that King David, the Temple's inspiration, was the first patron of Masons, and details of the Temple, its measurements and references to Jachin and Boaz, play major roles in Masonic rituals and passwords: 'in strength - pass, Boaz' is one of them."

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