4:1 He made a bronze altar, 30 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 15 feet high. 4:2 He also made the big bronze basin called “The Sea.” It measured 15 feet from rim to rim, was circular in shape, and stood seven and one-half feet high. Its circumference was 45 feet. 4:3 Images of bulls were under it all the way around, ten every eighteen inches all the way around. The bulls were in two rows and had been cast with “The Sea.” 4:4 “The Sea” stood on top of twelve bulls. Three faced northward, three westward, three southward, and three eastward. “The Sea” was placed on top of them, and they all faced outward. 4:5 It was four fingers thick and its rim was like that of a cup shaped like a lily blossom. It could hold 18,000 gallons. 4:6 He made ten washing basins; he put five on the south side and five on the north side. In them they rinsed the items used for burnt sacrifices; the priests washed in “The Sea.”
The dimensions given for the bronze basin (15 feet in diameter, 45 feet in circumference) are approximate. This does not please some inerrantists, as Bill Mounce writes:
‘My dad, a well-respected New Testament scholar, wrote an article years ago about a supposed error in the Bible. It concerned the large caldron located in front of Solomon’s temple that was called the “bronze Sea.” The text says it was ten cubits in diameter and thirty cubits in circumference: “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it” (2 Chron 4:2). However, we learned in high school math that you can’t express the diameter and circumference of any object in real numbers—you must use pi. Did the Chronicler make an error here? Of course not. As my dad argued, it’s an approximation.
‘A condescending author wrote that Dad was wrong and had a deficient view of inspiration, claiming that if you measured the inside circumference of the caldron and the outside diameter, the measurements were exact. Not only was this comment foolish—the numbers still don’t add up, and I wonder if the author ever saw a handmade object—but it was cruel. My father was no longer allowed to be a conference speaker at a well-known Christian ministry that my family had been involved with for years, all because this author had concluded that Dad had a low view of Scripture.’
(Why I Trust the Bible)
The ‘condescending author’ referred to is Harold Lindsell, writing in The Battle for the Bible (p165f).
According to this summary:
‘The text says that the sea was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in circumference. According to mathematical theory, a ten cubit diameter should yield a circumference of 31.4 cubits. Lindsell solves this discrepancy by suggesting that the sea walls were probably four inches thick and that the circumference described in the text referred to the inside of the sea. So an outside diameter of ten cubits would yield an inside circumference of 30 cubits.’
Lindsell’s proposal that the measurements pertain to the inside circumference and outside diameter is conjectural.
Moreover, he assumes a standard length for a cubit: ‘a cubit was a cubit was a cubit’.
But, according to the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch:
‘As with weights, precision was rarely an issue with lengths and distances in ancient Israel. For example, the basic unit of length was the cubit; however, its precise length varied from place to place and from time to time. In Deuteronomy 3:11, a cubit is defined as the length of a forearm—and because body lengths vary, so must the length of a cubit. According to 2 Chronicles 3:3, Solomon’s temple was constructed based upon the old standard of cubits, indicating that there must have existed a new standard of cubit length. Ezekiel defined a cubit as 20.6 inches (Ezek 40:5). The Roman cubit used in NT Palestine was seventeen inches. As O. R. Sellers comments, “That there were different cubits in Israel is clear” (Sellers, 837).’