---
title: 1 Kings 7:36
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-7-36/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-kings-7-36.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Kings 7:36
testament: OT
section: History
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Kings 7:36

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> He engraved cherubim, lions, and palm trees on the surfaces of the supports and panels, wherever each had space, with wreaths all around.

## JW Usage

1 Kings 7:36 is not engaged in Watchtower materials on the second commandment. The verse reports that the bronze stands Solomon made for the temple had their panels and frames engraved with "cherubim, lions, and palm trees" — further temple decoration that strains the absolutist reading of Exodus 20:4.

## Protestant Usage

Use 1 Kings 7:36 as the fifth and final temple-witness exhibit. The stands' frames, in addition to the panels (v. 29), were engraved with cherubim, lions, and palm trees. Representational art in the temple was not an embellishment tacked on by Solomon; it was written into the divinely given design. Any reading of the second commandment that forbids representational art collapses on contact with 1 Kings 6-7. The only coherent line — the line the Bible itself draws at 2 Kings 18:4, where Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent only after the people started burning incense to it — is the line between representation and worship. That is the Reformed Protestant line; it is the line the Watchtower itself applies to its own publications every time it prints an illustration of Jesus; and it is the line 1 Kings 7:36 already encodes in the temple's own bronze. Close the images conversation by bringing the Witness back to the principle that 2 Kings 18:4, Numbers 21:8, and the five temple-witness passages all converge on: worship, not matter.

## 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]