---
title: 1 Kings 7:25
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-7-25/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-7-25.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Kings 7:25
testament: OT
section: History
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Kings 7:25

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> The Sea stood on twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. The Sea rested on them, with all their hindquarters toward the center.

## JW Usage

The twelve bronze oxen supporting Solomon's molten Sea are not cited in Watchtower treatments of the second commandment. The verse is inconvenient for the rs absolutist reading: a public sculpture of twelve oxen — "a likeness of anything on the earth below" by the rs reading of Exodus 20:4 — stood in the temple courtyard under direct divine sanction for centuries.

## Protestant Usage

1 Kings 7:25 shows representational art in the most public part of the temple complex. Not a tucked-away teaching aid, not a private cherub on a family-shrine curtain — twelve bronze oxen, three facing each compass direction, holding up the Sea in the outer courtyard where the people came and went. Jehovah commanded it. Nobody bowed down to the oxen; nobody burned incense to them; the structure was architectural and memorial. Use the verse alongside 1 Kings 6:29 and the cherubim texts to pin the Watchtower's absolutist second-commandment claim against the temple itself. The sin is worship, not matter. Ask gently: if the temple courtyard held twelve bronze oxen under divine command, what in Exodus 20:4 can be forbidding their construction? Something else must be going on — and the something else is verse 5's rationale ("a God who requires exclusive devotion") and the consistent Torah-Kings pattern: representation for memorial and teaching is licit; devotional bowing to a creature is not.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Images Are Not the Problem — Worship Is](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/images-in-worship-protestant-response.md) — Numbers 21:8 / 2 Kings 18:4 / Exodus 25:18 [Practice]