1 Kings 6:4

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv, the second month of the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, he began to build the house of the LORD. ²The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. ³The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple was twenty cubits long, extending across the width of the temple and projecting out ten cubits in front of the temple. ⁴He also had narrow windows framed high in the temple.⁵Against the walls of the temple and the inner sanctuary, Solomon built a chambered structure all around the temple, in which he constructed the side rooms. ⁶The bottom floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits, and the third floor seven cubits. He also placed offset ledges all around the outside of the temple, so that nothing would be inserted into its walls. ⁷The temple was constructed using finished stones cut at the quarry, so that no hammer, chisel, or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. ⁸The entrance to the bottom floor was on the south side of the temple. A stairway led up to the middle level, and from there to the third floor. ⁹So Solomon built the temple and finished it, roofing it with beams and planks of cedar. ¹⁰He built chambers all along the temple, each five cubits high and attached to the temple with beams of cedar.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

windows of narrow lights: or, windows broad within, and narrow without; or, skewed and closed, 1 Kings 6:4, Song of Solomon 2:9, Ezekiel 40:16, Ezekiel 41:26

Reciprocal: 1 Kings 7:4 - windows Ezekiel 41:16 - narrow

Cross-References

Genesis 6:15
And this is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

Genesis 6:20
Two of every kind of bird and animal and crawling creature will come to you to be kept alive.

Genesis 6:21
You are also to take for yourself every kind of food that is eaten and gather it as food for yourselves and for the animals."

Genesis 6:22
So Noah did everything precisely as God had commanded him.

Genesis 11:4
"Come," they said, "let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth."

Numbers 13:33
We even saw the Nephilim there-the descendants of Anak that come from the Nephilim! We seemed like grasshoppers in our own sight, and we must have seemed the same to them!"

Numbers 16:2
a rebellion against Moses, along with 250 men of Israel renowned as leaders of the congregation and representatives in the assembly.

Deuteronomy 3:11
(For only Og king of Bashan had remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide, is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

1 Samuel 17:4
Then a champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out from the Philistine camp. He was six cubits and a span in height,

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And for the house he made windows of narrow lights. Or "open, shut" o, which could be both, having shutters to them, to open or shut at pleasure; windows which they could open, and look through at them, or shut when they pleased; the Targum is,

"open within, and shut without;''

or, as others understand it, they were wide within, and narrow without; by being narrow without, the house was preserved from bad weather, as well as could not so easily be looked into by those without; and by being broader within, the light that was let in spread itself within the house; which some interpret only of the holy place, the most holy place having, as they suppose, no windows in it, which yet is not certain: now these windows may denote the word and ordinances of the church of God, whereby light is communicated to men; which in the present state is but narrow or small, in comparison of the new Jerusalem church state, and the ultimate glory; and especially so it was under the legal dispensation, which was very obscure; see Song of Solomon 2:9

Isaiah 55:8.

o אטמים שקפים "apertas clausas", Vatablus; "perspectui accommodas, clausas", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Windows of narrow lights - Either (as in the margin) windows, externally mere slits in the wall, but opening wide within, like the windows of old castles: or, more probably, “windows with fixed lattices.” The windows seem to have been placed high in the walls, above the chambers spoken of in 1 Kings 6:5-8.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 1 Kings 6:4. Windows of narrow lights. — The Vulgate says, fenestras obliquas, oblique windows; but what sort of windows could such be?

The Hebrew is חלוני שקפים אטמים challoney shekuphim atumim, windows to look through, which shut. Probably latticed windows: windows through which a person within could see well; but a person without, nothing. Windows, says the Targum, which were open within and shut without. Does he mean windows with shutters; or, are we to understand, with the Arabic, windows opening wide within, and narrow on the outside; such as we still see in ancient castles? This sense our margin expresses. We hear nothing of glass or any other diaphanous substance. Windows, perhaps originally windore, a door to let the wind in, in order to ventilate the building, and through which external objects might be discerned.