¹ He made a bronze altar, twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high.

² He made the Sea of cast metal, ten cubits from rim to rim, circular in shape and five cubits high; a cord thirty cubits long gave the measurement of its girth.

³ Under it and completely encircling it were things like oxen, ten to the cubit round the entire Sea; the oxen were in two rows, of one and the same casting with the rest.

⁴ It rested on twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, three facing east; on these, their hindquarters all turned inwards, stood the Sea.

⁵ It was a hand's breadth in thickness, and its rim was shaped like the rim of a cup-lily-shaped. It could hold three thousand bat.

⁶ He made ten basins, putting five on the right and five on the left, for washing in; the things to be offered as burnt offerings were to be rinsed in these, but the Sea was for the priests to wash in.

⁷ He made the ten golden lamp-stands according to the pattern and placed them in the Hekal, five on the right and five on the left.

⁸ He made ten tables which he set up in the Hekal, five on the right and five on the left. He also made a hundred golden sprinkling bowls.

⁹ He made the court of the priests and the great court with its gates and plated the gates with bronze.

¹⁰ The Sea he placed on the right-hand side of the Temple, to the south-east.

¹¹ Huram made the ash containers, the scoops and the sprinkling bowls. Thus Huram completed all the work done for King Solomon for the Temple of God:

¹² the two pillars; the mouldings of the capitals surmounting the two pillars; the two sets of filigree to cover the two mouldings of the capitals surmounting the pillars;

¹³ the four hundred pomegranates for the two sets of filigree -- two rows of pomegranates for each set of filigree;

¹⁴ the ten stands and the ten basins on the stands;

¹⁵ the one Sea and the twelve oxen beneath it;

¹⁶ the ash containers, scoops and forks. All these utensils made by Huram-Abi for King Solomon for the Temple of Yahweh were of burnished bronze.

¹⁷ The King made them by the process of sand casting, in the plain of the Jordan between Succoth and Zeredah.

¹⁸ There was such an enormous quantity of them that the weight of the bronze could not be calculated.

¹⁹ Solomon made all the objects designed for the Temple of God, as well as the golden altar and the tables for the loaves of permanent offering;

²⁰ the lamp-stands with their lamps to burn, as prescribed, in front of the Debir, of pure gold;

²¹ the floral work, the lamps, the tongs, of gold (and it was pure gold);

²² the snuffers, the sprinkling bowls, incense ladles and the pans, of real gold; and the entrance to the Temple, the inner doors (for the Holy of Holies) and the doors of the Temple itself, that is of the Hekal, were also made of gold.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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