12. The surrounding great courtyard had three rows of cut stones and a row of trimmed cedar just like the inner courtyard of the Lord’s temple and its porch.
13. Then King Solomon sent a message and brought Hiram from Tyre.
14. Hiram’s mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali. His father was a Tyrian skilled in bronze work. He was amazingly skillful in the techniques and knowledge for doing all kinds of work in bronze. He came to King Solomon and did all his work.
15. He cast two bronze pillars. Each one was twenty-seven feet high and required a cord of eighteen feet to reach around it.
16. He made two capitals of cast bronze for the tops of the columns. They were each seven and a half feet high.
17. He made an intricate network of chains for the capitals on top of the columns, seven for each capital.
18. He made the pillars and two rows of pomegranates for each network to adorn each of the capitals.
19. The capitals on top of the columns in the porch were made like lilies, each six feet high.
20. Above the round-shaped part and next to the network were two hundred pomegranates. These were placed in rows around both of the capitals on top of the columns.
21. He set up the columns at the temple’s porch. He named the south column Jachin. The north column he named Boaz.
22. After putting the lily shapes on top of the columns, he was finished with the columns.
23. He also made a tank of cast metal called the Sea. It was circular in shape, fifteen feet from rim to rim, seven and a half feet high, forty-five feet in circumference.
24. Under the rim were two rows of gourds completely encircling it, ten every eighteen inches, each cast in its mold.
25. The Sea rested on twelve oxen with their backs toward the center, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east.
26. The Sea was as thick as the width of a hand. Its rim was shaped like a cup or an open lily blossom. It could hold two thousand baths.
27. He also made ten bronze stands. Each was six feet long, six feet wide, and four and a half feet high.
28. This is how each stand was made: There were panels connected between the legs.
29. Lions, bulls, and winged otherworldly creatures appeared on the panels between the legs. On the legs above and below the lions and bulls were wreaths on panels hanging off the stands.