2 Chronicles 4:22 - Exposition

The snuffers ; Hebrew, מְזַמְרוֹת , occurring five times, and always translated "snuffers." A slightly different form of the word is translated "pruning-hooks "four times in the Prophets Isaiah, Joel, Micah. No doubt these snuffers were something different from the tongs of the preceding verse; the use of one may have been rather to cut the wicks, and the other to trim them. The spoons; Hebrew, כַף . This is the word used so often for the "hand," but the essential idea of which is the hollow of either hand or foot or other thing, and among other things of a spoon shape. The word is used of the frankincense-cups ( Numbers 7:14 , Numbers 7:20 , Numbers 7:26 ) brought to the dedication of the tabernacle by the several princes. The censers; Hebrew, מַחְתּוֹת ,werbeH ;. These were "snuff-dishes" ( Exodus 25:38 ; Exodus 37:23 ; Numbers 4:9 ). The entry of the house; Hebrew, פֶּתַח . Some think this word refers to the door-frames, as distinct from the door-leaves or doors themselves. But the parallel ( 1 Kings 7:50 ) gives us what is translated as "hinges" (Hebrew, פתֹ ), a word that occurs only here in any such sense, as presumably (Gesenius, ' Lexicon ') "the hollowed part of a hinge," and Isaiah 3:17 for the pudenda muliebria. The mistaken transcribing of a kheth for a tau will amply account for the difference.