The Temple is Dedicated^(A)

8 Then Solomon gathered together the elders of Israel, including all the heads of the tribes and the leaders of the ancestral households of the Israelis, to meet with him in Jerusalem so they could bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Zion, the City of David. ² So all the men gathered together to meet with King Solomon at the Festival of Tents^[a] in the month Ethanim, the seventh month. ³ All the Elders of Israel showed up, and the priests picked up the ark ⁴ and brought it, the Tent of Meeting, and all the holy implements that were in the tent. The priests and descendants of Levi carried them up to Jerusalem.^[b]

⁵ King Solomon and the entire congregation of Israel that had assembled to be with him stood in front of the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they were neither counted nor inventoried. ⁶ After this, the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to the place prepared for it, into the inner sanctuary of the Temple, under the wings of the cherubim in the Most Holy Place. ⁷ The wings of the cherubim spread over the resting place for the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering over the ark and its poles when viewed^[c] from above. ⁸ The poles extended so far that their ends could be seen from the Holy Place in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside. They remain there to this day. ⁹ The ark was empty except for the two stone tablets that Moses had placed there at Horeb when the Lord had made a covenant with the Israelis after they had come out of the land of Egypt. ¹⁰ When the priests left the Holy Place after setting the ark in place,^[d] the cloud filled the Lord’s Temple ¹¹ so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, since the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s Temple.