Temple: Movable stand, cart, stand, base

A detailed description of the movable stand is given in 1 Kings 7:27–39. It was a box about 2 meters (6.5 feet) long, 2 meters (6.5 feet) wide, and 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep. The sides were bronze panels decorated with figures of various animals. The box stood on four wheels connected to axles on its four corners. The wheels were about 65 centimeters (25 inches) in diameter. On the upper corners of the box were four handles. Thus it was a kind of large decorated pushcart.

The top of the box was left open, and lining the top part of its inside was a round strip or sleeve in which sat a round container, also made of bronze. This container may have been shaped like a bowl or basin, or it may have been more like a cone, tapering down almost to a point. According to 2 Chronicles 4:6, the container held water for washing the parts of the animals that were to be burned as sacrifices (see Leviticus 1:9, Leviticus 1:13). Given the size of the cart, the fact that it was made of bronze, and the weight of the large volume of water in it (about 800 liters [200 gallons]), it would have been very difficult to move, even though it had wheels. It has been estimated that each stand, when filled with water, could have weighed between two and three tons.

In the Bible

The Hebrew and Greek words for it, and every verse where each is used

Box on wheels

Water container

Also in Furniture of the Tabernacle and Temple

Sources

Plants and Trees in the Bible, Animals in the Bible and Human-made Things in the Bible © United Bible Societies, 2025 (adapted from Each According to its Kind: Plants and Trees in the Bible by Robert Koops, All Creatures Great and Small: Living Things in the Bible by Edward R. Hope, and The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible by Ray Pritz), CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted for eRhema