Solomon Builds the Temple

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.

The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high.

The word of the Lord came to Solomon:

He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord there.

The foundation of the temple of the Lord was laid in the fourth year, in the month of Ziv.

The great courtyard was surrounded by a wall of three courses of dressed stone and one course of trimmed cedar beams, as was the inner courtyard of the temple of the Lord with its portico.

He also made the pots and shovels and sprinkling bowls. So Huram finished all the work he had undertaken for King Solomon in the temple of the Lord:

the pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls. All these objects that Huram made for King Solomon for the temple of the Lord were of burnished bronze.

Solomon also made all the furnishings that were in the Lord’s temple: the golden altar; the golden table on which was the bread of the Presence;

When all the work King Solomon had done for the temple of the Lord was finished, he brought in the things his father David had dedicated—the silver and gold and the furnishings—and he placed them in the treasuries of the Lord’s temple.

The Ark Brought to the Temple

Then King Solomon summoned into his presence at Jerusalem the elders of Israel, all the heads of the tribes and the chiefs of the Israelite families, to bring up the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Zion, the City of David.

and they brought up the ark of the Lord and the tent of meeting and all the sacred furnishings in it. The priests and Levites carried them up,

The priests then brought the ark of the Lord’s covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place, and put it beneath the wings of the cherubim.

There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after they came out of Egypt.

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord.

And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.

Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud;

Then he said: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his own hand has fulfilled what he promised with his own mouth to my father David. For he said,

“My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

But the Lord said to my father David, ‘You did well to have it in your heart to build a temple for my Name.

“The Lord has kept the promise he made: I have succeeded David my father and now I sit on the throne of Israel, just as the Lord promised, and I have built the temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

I have provided a place there for the ark, in which is the covenant of the Lord that he made with our ancestors when he brought them out of Egypt.”

Solomon’s Prayer of Dedication

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in front of the whole assembly of Israel, spread out his hands toward heaven

and said: “Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below—you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way.

“Now Lord, the God of Israel, keep for your servant David my father the promises you made to him when you said, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor to sit before me on the throne of Israel, if only your descendants are careful in all they do to walk before me faithfully as you have done.’