Solomon Builds the Temple in Seven Years of Silence and Gold

The fourth year of Solomon’s reign, in the month of Ziv, was the four hundred and eightieth year since Israel came out of Egypt. That was when Solomon began to build the house for the Lord. The numbers were precise: sixty cubits long, twenty wide, thirty high. A porch extended another twenty cubits across the front. The house itself had windows of fixed lattice-work, narrow and set high.

Around the outer walls, Solomon built three stories of side chambers. The lowest story was five cubits broad, the middle six, the third seven. Offsets in the wall kept the beams from cutting into the temple walls themselves. The chambers rested on these offsets, not on the sacred stonework.

Every stone was dressed at the quarry before it arrived. No hammer, no axe, no iron tool was heard at the building site. The house rose in silence. The door to the middle side chambers was on the right side of the house, and a winding stair led up through the stories.

Solomon finished the shell of the house and roofed it with beams and planks of cedar. The three stories of chambers, each five cubits high, were tied to the house with cedar timber. Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon directly: if he walked in the Lord’s statutes, executed His ordinances, and kept His commandments, the Lord would establish His word spoken to David and would dwell among Israel and not forsake them.

Solomon built the house and finished it. Inside, he lined the walls from floor to ceiling with boards of cedar. The floor he covered with boards of fir. At the rear of the house, he partitioned off twenty cubits with cedar boards from floor to ceiling, creating the inner sanctuary, the oracle, the most holy place. The main hall before it was forty cubits long.

Inside, every surface was cedar carved with gourds and open flowers. No stone was visible. The oracle itself was a perfect cube: twenty cubits long, twenty wide, twenty high. Solomon overlaid it with pure gold. He also covered the cedar altar with gold. Chains of gold were drawn across before the oracle, and the whole interior of the house was overlaid with gold until every surface was finished. Even the altar that belonged to the oracle was covered in gold.

Inside the oracle, Solomon made two cherubim from olive wood, each ten cubits high. Each cherub had two wings of five cubits each, so the total wingspan was ten cubits. The two cherubim were identical in measure and form. He set them inside the inner house with wings stretched: one wing of the first cherub touched the north wall, one wing of the second touched the south wall, and the inner wings touched each other in the center of the room. He overlaid the cherubim with gold.

Solomon carved the walls of the whole house round about with cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, both the inner sanctuary and the outer hall. He overlaid the floor with gold, both inside and out. For the entrance to the oracle, he made two doors of olive wood set in a frame that occupied a fifth of the wall. He carved those doors with cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, then spread gold over the carvings.

For the entrance to the main hall, he made doorposts of olive wood set in a fourth of the wall, and two folding doors of fir wood, each with two leaves. He carved the same designs on them and fitted gold over the carved work. He also built the inner court with three courses of hewn stone and one course of cedar beams.

The foundation of the house was laid in the fourth year, in the month of Ziv. The house was finished in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, the eighth month. It was seven years in building, and it was finished throughout all its parts according to every detail of the design.