[The remaining silver] was made into utensils for the House of the Lord—service vessels. But in Kings it says, “However, no silver vessels were made at the House of the Lord …” (2 Kings 12:14)! Our Sages, of blessed memory (b. Ketubot 106b), note the discrepancy between these verses, and they explain that one refers to a situaion where the amount that they raised yielded a surplus, and the other to situation where it did not. That is the point when the text says, “When they had finished, they brought to the king and Jehoiada….” For prior to the completion of the work they did not make vessels, as it says in Kings, “because they gave it to the workers” (2 Kings 12:15). But once the work was done—as it says here, “and they restored the House of God to its original form and reinforced it, and when they had finished …” (vv. 13–14)—they made what was left into service vessels.

And ha-‘alot and spoons. Some explain that this is akin to ‘eli, which is a pestle—as in: “together with the grain, with the ‘eli” (Proverbs 27:22)—and that they were made to grind the spices for the incense. But in my opinion this is a small utensil used to draw water from the hin, for libations. We find [a reference to] it in a rabbinic source (b. Eruvin 53b): “When speaking cleverly, the maidservants in the house of Rabbi would say to him: ‘The ‘alat is banging on the jar.’” That is, the small vessel with which they would draw wine from the jar was called an ‘alat, and they would tell him that the ‘alat was hitting the bottom of the vessel, meaning that there was no wine in the jar. They also say (b. Sabbath 119a): “He found a jewel in it, and he sold it for thirteen ‘alita of dinars.” That is, he sold it for thirteen vessels—of this small type called an ‘alat—filled with dinars. In the singular it is called an ‘alat or an ‘alah, and in the plural ‘alot.