1 Kings 6:8

6:8 The entrance to the bottom ¹  level of side rooms was on the south side of the temple; stairs went up ²  to the middle floor and then on up to the third ³  floor.

1 Kings 7:21

7:21 He set up the pillars on the porch in front of the main hall. He erected one pillar on the right ⁴  side and called it Jakin; ⁵  he erected the other pillar on the left ⁶  side and called it Boaz. ⁷ 

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¹ tc The Hebrew text has “middle,” but the remainder of the verse suggests this is an error.

² tn Heb “by stairs they went up.” The word translated “stairs” occurs only here. Other options are “trapdoors” or “ladders.”

³ tc The translation reads with a few medieval Hebrew mss, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate הַשְּׁלִשִׁית (hashÿlishit, “the third”) rather than MT הַשְּׁלִשִׁים (hashÿlishim, “the thirty”).

⁴ tn Or “south.”

⁵ sn The name Jakin appears to be a verbal form and probably means, “he establishes.”

⁶ tn Or “north.”

⁷ sn The meaning of the name Boaz is uncertain. For various proposals, see BDB 126-27 s.v. בעז. One attractive option is to revocalize the name as בְּעֹז (be’oz, “in strength”) and to understand it as completing the verbal form on the first pillar. Taking the words together and reading from right to left, one can translate the sentence, “he establishes [it] in strength.”