“Scoured” Brass

If we understands 1 Kings 8:43-50 aright, Solomon personally superintended the making of all the vessels of gold for the house of Jehovah, and Hiram, King of Tyre, made all the vessels of brass. Under him wrought a skilled man of the same name, “son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre” (2 Chron. 2:14). The association of the Israelite and the Gentile in the two kings, and the union of both in the person of the skilled workman, reminds us again that Jehovah had Gentiles in His mind for blessing as well as His people Israel when He caused the Temple to be built. “Let not the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to Jehovah, speak, saying, Jehovah hath utterly separated me from His people.... Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer: their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon My altar; for Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people” (Isa. 56:3-7). How evil therefore were the zealots who assaulted Paul in Jerusalem because they supposed that he had taken Trophimus an Ephesian into the Temple area! (Acts 21:28). Our Lord’s warning in Matthew 8:11 might well have been thundered into their ears.
The brazen vessels for the Temple were numerous. The princes of Israel, before David’s death, gave 18,000 talents of brass, in addition to their contributions of gold, silver, and iron (1 Chron. 29:7). But this was not all. “Solomon left all the vessels unweighted, because they were exceeding many; neither was the weight of the brass found out” (1 Kings 7:47).
We are told that “all the vessels which Hiram made to King Solomon for the house of Jehovah were of bright brass” (1 Kings 7:45). “Bright brass,” or, as the margin reads, “made bright,” or “scoured.” A small detail not to be overlooked by those who would learn the mind of the Spirit. Thus scouring makes bright. Surely a parable is here! “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). There are three ways in which chastening may be treated. We may despise it; we may faint under it; or we may be exercised by it. For the exercised soul there is a blessed “afterward.” The scouring has done its work. Yet we all shrink from the ordeal. Paul, when first conscious of the thorn in his flesh, besought the Lord to remove it. He was persistent. No immediate reply being granted him, he besought the Lord thrice. But when the word of the Lord came to him, the suffering man was satisfied. “He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:7-10). If his afflictions, which tended to reduce him to a nullity, furnished opportunity for the power of Christ to spread itself like a tent over him, it was enough. Christ was seen, not Paul. This was as it should be.
God sometimes gets His best out of suffering saints. The late G. V. Wigram said, “With a heart broken, and a will subdued, I have given thanks for sorrows in which the iron entered into my very soul. I say not with levity, but as before God, ‘Thou knowest that I could not have lived through this and that if Thou hadst not given me grace to receive it at Thy hand, and to find that out of the eater came forth meat.’” The philosopher Bacon reminds us that “the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more to describe the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.” It is noticeable also that the Spirit of God has devoted more than treble the space to the history of David than to the history of Solomon. The suffering David has left us a priceless heritage in the Book of Psalms, but it is certainly true that “David’s psalms had ne’er been sung, If David’s heart had ne’er been wrung.”
The Spirit has recorded the locality, and the character of the ground, in which Hiram did his work. “In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan” (1 Kings 7:46). We are all surely living in “the clay ground” while we await the coming of the Lord Jesus; but we are being formed and fashioned by His hand, and as certainly as Hiram at the end of his labors presented to Solomon a multitude of brightly shining sacred vessels fit for the sanctuary of God, so the Holy Spirit at the end of His present gracious work will present in heavenly glory a multitude of souls meet in every way for the companionship of the Firstborn Son.
It is painful to refer, if ever so briefly, to the after history of all that which Solomon and Hiram wrought. Only five years after Solomon’s death, Shishak, King of Egypt, plundered the Temple. “He took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah, and the treasures of the king’s house: he even took away all: and he took the shields of gold which Solomon had made” (1 Kings 14:16). There were probably some replacements, but the Temple was plundered more than once by unfaithful kings in order to pay tribute to Gentile Powers. In due course came the terrible day when Jehovah could no longer tolerate the evil nation, and everything was given up to destruction. With sorrow of heart the inspired historian tells us of the breaking up of the famous pillars Jachin and Boaz, the bases, the molten sea, the twelve brazen bulls, etc.—all then loaded up as “scrap” in a dismal convoy of wagons, and transported to Babylon! “The brass of all these vessels was without weight” (Jer. 52:20). Thus did “the times of the Gentiles” begin, and they are not ended yet. Israel still bleeds, and the nations of the earth find no rest. Oh, the folly of sin against God!
“Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned My hand against their adversaries” (Psa. 81:13-14).