CANDLESTICK (Ican'd'I-stil), (Heb.
men-o-raw', place of lights).
(1) Name. The candelabrum which Moses was commanded to make for the tabernacle, after the model shown him in the Mount, is chiefly known to us by the passages in Exod. xxv:31-4o; xxxvii:17-24; on which some additional light is thrown by the Jewish writers, and by the repre sentation of the spoils of the Temple on the arch of Titus.
(2) Material. The material of which it was made was fine gold, of which an entire talent was expended on the candelabrum itself and its ap pendages. The mode in which the metal was to be worked is described by a term which appears to mean wrought with the hammer, as opposed to east by fusion.
(3) Construction. The structure of the can delabrum, as far as it is defined in the passages referred to, consisted of a base; of a shaft rising out of it; of six arms, which came out by three from two opposite sides of the shaft; of seven lamps, which were supported on the summits of the central shaft and the six arms, and of three different kinds of ornaments belonging to the shaft and arms. These ornaments are called by names which mean cups, globes and blossoms. The cups • receive, in verse 33. the epithet almond-shaped (it being uncertain whether the resemblance was to the fruit or to the flowers). Three such cups are allotted to every arm, but four to the shaft two-and-twenty in all. Of the four on the shaft, three are ordered to be placed severally under the spots where the three pairs of arms set out from the shaft. The place of the fourth is not assigned, but we may conceive it to have been either between the base and the cup below the lowest tier of arms, or, as Bahr prefers, to have have been near the summit of the shaft.
As for the name of the second ornament, the word only occurs in two places in the Old Testa ment, in which it appears to mean the capital of a column, but the Jewish writers generally con cur in considering it to mean apples in this place. Josephus, as he enumerates four kinds of orna ments, and therefore two of his terms must be considered identical. may be supposed to have understood globes or pomegranates (Antiq. :6). 13ahr, however, is in favor of apples (Symbolik, i:414)• The name of the third ornament means blos som, bud, but it is so general a term that it may zpply to any flower. The Septuagint, Josephus
and Alaimonides, understand It of the lily, and Bahr prefers the flower of the almond.
It now remains to consider the manner in which these three ornaments were attached to the can delabrum. The obscurity of verse 33, which orders that there shall be 'three almond-shaped cups on one arm, globe and blossom, and three almond shaped cups on the other arm, globe and blossom; so on all the arms which come out of the shaft,' has led some to suppose that there was only one globe and blossom to every three cups. However, the fact that, according to verse 34, the shaft which, as being the principal part of the whole, is here called the candelabrum itself), which had only four cups, is ordered to have globes and blosscms, is a sufficient proof to the contrary.
(4) Holy Place. It is to be observed, that the original text does not define the height and breadth of any part of the candelabrum, which was placed in the Holy Place, on the south side (i. c., to the left of a person entering the taber nacle), opposite the table of shew-bread (Exod. xxvi:35). Its lamps, which were supplied with pure olive oil only, were lighted every evening and extinguished (as it seems) every morning (Exod. xxvii:2t ; xxx :7, 8; Lev. xxiv :3; t Sam. iii :3; 2 Chron. xiii :1 t). Although the tabernacle had no windows, there is no good ground for be lieving that the lamps burnt by day in it, what ever may have been the usage of the second tem ple. It has also been much disputed whether the candelabrum stood lengthwise or diagonally as re gards the tabernacle, but no conclusive argument can be adduced for either view. As the lamp on the central shaft was by the Jewish writers called the western, or evening lamp, some maintain that the former name could not be applicable, unless the candelabrum stood across the tabernacle, as then only would the central lamp point to the went. Others again adhere to the later significa tion, and build on a tradition that the central lamp alone burnt from evening to evening, the other six being extinguished by day (Reland, Antic/. i :5, 8).