Chapiter

The chapiter of older English Bibles is, in plain sense, the head of a pillar — the broadened, ornamented capital that sits on top of an upright shaft. UPDV renders the word "capital" in every occurrence. Scripture's chapiter is almost wholly a sanctuary object: it appears at the screen of the tabernacle door, on the two free-standing bronze pillars Hiram cast for the porch of Solomon's temple, in the Chronicler's parallel inventory of those pillars, and in the two prophetic accounts of the pillars' destruction at the fall of Jerusalem. The same vocabulary names a ledge on the temple's wheeled bronze bases. Across these settings the chapiter is consistently the pillar's crown — measured, networked, and ornamented with pomegranates and lily-work — and what is reported about it is its dimensions, its overlay, and its eventual carrying-off as bronze plunder.

Overlaid Capitals at the Tabernacle Door

The chapiter first appears not in the temple at all but in the entrance-screen of the tabernacle. The screen is hung on five pillars at the door of the tent, and the heads of those pillars are overlaid in gold: "and the five pillars of it with their hooks: and he overlaid their capitals and their fillets with gold; and their five sockets were of bronze" (Ex 36:38). The verse fixes the basic vocabulary — pillar, capital, fillet, socket — and the pattern of materials. The capitals and the connecting fillets are gold; the sockets at the foot are bronze. The chapiter is here a small overlaid head on a portable sanctuary's doorway, not yet the monumental bronze object it will become at Solomon's porch.

The Two Bronze Pillars of the Porch

The chapiter's longest sustained appearance is on the pair of free-standing bronze pillars Hiram casts for the front of Solomon's temple. The pillars carry oversized molten capitals: "And he made two capitals of molten bronze, to set on the tops of the pillars: the height of the one capital was five cubits, and the height of the other capital was five cubits" (1Ki 7:16). Two networks then cover the capitals: "There were nets of checker-work, and wreaths of chain-work, for the capitals which were on the top of the pillars; seven for the one capital, and seven for the other capital" (1Ki 7:17). The networks are themselves the carriers of the pomegranate ornament: "So he made the pillars; and there were two rows round about on the one network, to cover the capitals that were on the top of the pomegranates: and so he did for the other capital" (1Ki 7:18).

The capitals' upper surface is shaped as lily-work and reduced to four cubits: "And the capitals that were on the top of the pillars in the porch were of lily-work, four cubits" (1Ki 7:19). The lower bulge — a "belly" beside the network — carries two hundred pomegranates: "And there were capitals above also on the two pillars, close by the belly which was beside the network: and the pomegranates were two hundred, in rows round about on the other capital" (1Ki 7:20).

The pillars are then set, named, and finished. The placement and naming come together: "And he set up the pillars at the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called its name Jachin; and he set up the left pillar, and called its name Boaz" (1Ki 7:21). The closing line returns to the capital's lily-work crown: "And on the top of the pillars was lily-work: so the work of the pillars was finished" (1Ki 7:22). The summary of Hiram's commission, several verses later, restates the pillar-and-capital pair as the head of his finished work: "the two pillars, and the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars; and the two networks to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars; and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks; two rows of pomegranates for each network, to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the pillars" (1Ki 7:41-42).

A Smaller Capital on the Wheeled Bases

The same vocabulary names a much smaller object inside the temple court. Each of the ten wheeled bronze bases that carry the lavers has a raised round mouth in its top, and that mouth is called a capital: "And the mouth of it inside the capital and above was a cubit: and its mouth was round after the work of a pedestal, a cubit and a half; and also on the mouth of it were gravings, and their panels were foursquare, not round" (1Ki 7:31). The chapiter here is no longer a five-cubit head on a free-standing pillar but a foot-and-a-half ledge framing the basin's mouth. The same word is doing double duty in Solomon's bronze-work for two scaled-down classes of "head" — one monumental at the porch, one functional on the bases.

The Chronicler's Parallel Inventory

The Chronicler's inventory of Hiram's bronze-work repeats the porch-pillar capital-and-network pair almost verbatim, in its own enumeration of finished items: "the two pillars, and the bowls, and the two capitals which were on the top of the pillars, and the two networks to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars, and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks; two rows of pomegranates for each network, to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the pillars" (2Ch 4:12-13). The inventory's structure is the same as 1 Kings — pillars, bowls of the capitals, networks, four hundred pomegranates in two rows on each — and it confirms that the chapiter is being counted as a discrete item with its own bowl, its own network, and its own ornament.

The Carrying-Off of the Capitals

When Jerusalem falls and the temple is plundered, the chapiter reappears in the breakage-list. The two pillars are broken up for their bronze and their capitals are carried away. The Kings narrative gives the dimensions one last time: "The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a capital of bronze was on it; and the height of the capital was three cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital round about, all of bronze: and like these had the second pillar with network" (2Ki 25:17). The capital here is reported at three cubits rather than five — the figure agrees with the Jeremiah parallel only in part — and the network and pomegranates are noted again as part of the head that is going to Babylon as bronze.

The Jeremian parallel records the same scene with the pillar-shaft first: "And as for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits; and a line of twelve cubits encircled it; and its thickness was four fingers: it was hollow" (Jer 52:21). The capital then follows in its own verse: "And a capital of bronze was on it; and the height of the one capital was five cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital round about, all of bronze: and the second pillar also had like these, and pomegranates" (Jer 52:22). Jeremiah's five-cubit figure matches the original casting in 1 Kings 7:16. Both prophetic destruction-accounts treat the capital as a separate item from the pillar — measured separately, named separately, and carried off separately — in the same way Hiram had cast it as a discrete piece at the start.

What the Chapiter Carries

Across these settings the chapiter is a remarkably stable object: a head fitted onto an upright, measured by its own cubit-figure, faced with a network, and crowned with lily-work or ringed with pomegranates. At the tabernacle door it is overlaid with gold on a tent-pole. At the porch of the temple it is the great molten bronze head of Jachin and Boaz, ornamented with two hundred pomegranates apiece and capped in lily-work. On the wheeled bases it is the round mouth-ring of a basin. In the Chronicler's parallel it is a counted item with its own bowl and network. And at the end it is the five-cubit bronze head broken off and carried to Babylon with the rest of the temple's metal. The chapiter, in Scripture's vocabulary, is the part of the pillar that announces what the pillar is for — a screen-post overlaid in gold, a porch-pillar named Jachin and Boaz, a basin-ledge graven with cherubim, or a piece of plunder whose dimensions a chronicler still bothers to record.