³⁸ And in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its parts, and according to all its specifications. He was seven years in building it.

^9 (A)“The hands of ^(B)Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also ^(C)complete it. ^(D)Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.

Solomon Builds His Palace

7 Solomon was ^(A)building his own house thirteen years, and he finished his entire house.

²⁰ The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,^[a] and will you raise it up in three days?”

^13 (A)It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord ^(B)and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there^[a] shall be a ^(C)priest on his throne, ^(D)and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”’ ¹⁴ And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord as ^(E)a reminder to ^(F)Helem,^{[b] (G)}Tobijah, ^(H)Jedaiah, and Hen ^(I)the son of Zephaniah.

^15 (J)“And those who are far off shall come and ^(K)help to build the temple of the Lord. ^(L)And you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. ^(M)And this shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

^14 (A)And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. They finished their building by decree of the God of Israel and ^(B)by decree of Cyrus and ^(C)Darius and ^(D)Artaxerxes king of Persia; ¹⁵ and this house was finished on the third day of the ^(E)month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.

Rebuilding the Temple

⁸ Now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, ^(A)Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and ^(B)Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They ^(C)appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to ^(D)supervise the work of the house of the Lord. ⁹ And ^(E)Jeshua with his sons and his brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together ^(F)supervised the workmen in the house of God, along with the ^(G)sons of Henadad and the Levites, their sons and brothers.

¹⁰ And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, ^(H)according to the directions of David king of Israel. ¹¹ And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord,

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. ¹² But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, ^(J)old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, ¹³ so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

^9 (A)So he built the house and finished it, and he made the ceiling of the house of beams and planks of cedar.

Solomon Builds the Temple

6 ^(A)In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, ^(B)he began to build the house of the Lord.