Beginning

Chapter 2

¹ Solomon conscripted seventy thousand men to carry stones and eighty thousand to cut the stones in the mountains, and over these he placed three thousand six hundred overseers.^{(A) 2 (B)}Moreover, Solomon sent this message to Huram, king of Tyre: “As you dealt with David my father, and sent him cedars to build a house for his dwelling— ³ now I am going to build a house for the name of the Lord, my God, and to consecrate it to him, for the burning of fragrant incense in his presence, for the perpetual display of the showbread, for burnt offerings morning and evening, and for the sabbaths, new moons, and festivals of the Lord, our God: such is Israel’s perpetual obligation.^{(C) 4} And the house I am going to build must be great, for our God is greater than all other gods. ⁵ Yet who is really able to build him a house, since the heavens and even the highest heavens cannot contain him? And who am I that I should build him a house,^(D) unless it be to offer incense in his presence? ⁶ Now, send me men skilled at work in gold, silver, bronze, and iron, in purple, crimson, and violet fabrics, and who know how to do engraved work, to join the skilled craftsmen who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom David my father appointed. ⁷ Also send me boards of cedar, cypress and cabinet wood from Lebanon, for I realize that your servants know how to cut the wood of Lebanon. My servants will work with yours ⁸ in order to prepare for me a great quantity of wood, since the house I intend to build must be great and wonderful. ⁹ I will furnish as food for your servants, the woodcutters, twenty thousand kors of wheat, twenty thousand kors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.”^[a](E)

¹⁰ Huram, king of Tyre, wrote an answer which he sent to Solomon: “Because the Lord loves his people, he has placed you over them as king.” ¹¹ He added: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, for having given King David a wise son of intelligence and understanding, who will build a house for the Lord and also his own royal house.^{(F) 12 (G)}I am now sending you a craftsman of great skill, Huram-abi, ¹³ son of a Danite woman^[b] and of a father from Tyre; he knows how to work with gold, silver, bronze, and iron, with stone and wood, with purple, violet, fine linen, and crimson, and also how to do all kinds of engraved work and to devise every type of design that may be given him and your craftsmen and the craftsmen of my lord David your father. ^14 (H)And now, let my lord send to his servants the wheat, barley, oil, and wine which he has promised. ¹⁵ For our part, we will cut trees on Lebanon, as many as you need, and send them down to you in rafts to the port of Joppa, whence you may take them up to Jerusalem.”^(I)

^16 (J)Thereupon Solomon took a census of all the alien men resident in the land of Israel (following the census David his father had taken of them); they were found to number one hundred fifty-three thousand six hundred. ¹⁷ Of these he made seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand cutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred overseers to keep the people working.^(K)

Chapter 3

Building of the Temple. ^1 (L)Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah,^[c] which had been shown to David his father, in the place David had prepared, the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. ² He began to build in the second month of the fourth year of his reign. ³ These were the specifications laid down by Solomon for building the house of God: the length was sixty cubits according to the old measure, and the width was twenty cubits;^{(M) 4} the front porch along the width of the house was also twenty cubits, and it was twenty cubits high.^[d] He covered its interior with pure gold.^{(N) 5} The nave he overlaid with cypress wood and overlaid that with fine gold, embossing on it palms and chains.^{(O) 6} He also covered the house with precious stones for splendor; the gold was from Parvaim. ⁷ The house, its beams and thresholds, as well as its walls and its doors, he overlaid with gold, and he engraved cherubim upon the walls. ⁸ He also made the room of the holy of holies. Its length corresponded to the width of the house, twenty cubits, and its width was also twenty cubits. He overlaid it with fine gold to the amount of six hundred talents.^{(P) 9} The weight of the nails was fifty gold shekels. The upper chambers he likewise overlaid with gold.

^10 (Q)For the room of the holy of holies he made two cherubim of carved workmanship, which were then covered with gold. ¹¹ The wings of the cherubim spanned twenty cubits: one wing of each cherub, five cubits in length, extended to a wall of the house, while the other wing, also five cubits in length, touched the corresponding wing of the other cherub. ¹² The wing of the cherub, five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and the other wing, five cubits, was joined to the wing of the other cherub. ¹³ The combined wingspread of the two cherubim was thus twenty cubits. They stood upon their own feet, facing toward the nave. ¹⁴ He made the veil^[e] of violet, purple, crimson, and fine linen, and had cherubim embroidered upon it.^(R)

^15 (S)In front of the house he set two columns thirty-five cubits high; the capital of each was five cubits. ¹⁶ He devised chains in the form of a collar with which he encircled the capitals of the columns, and he made a hundred pomegranates which he set on the chains. ¹⁷ He set up the columns to correspond with the nave, one for the right side and the other for the left, and he called the one to the right Jachin and the one to the left Boaz.

Chapter 4

¹ Then he made a bronze altar twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high.^{(T) 2 (U)}He also made the molten sea. It was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference. ³ Under the brim a ring of figures of oxen^[f] encircled it for ten cubits, all the way around the compass of the sea; there were two rows of oxen cast in one mold with the sea. ⁴ This rested on twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east, with their haunches all toward the center; upon them was set the sea. ⁵ It was a handbreadth thick, and its brim resembled that of a cup, being lily-shaped. It had a capacity of three thousand baths.^[g]

⁶ Then he made ten basins for washing, placing five of them to the right and five to the left. In these the victims for the burnt offerings were washed; but the sea was for the priests to wash in.^(V)

⁷ He made the menorahs of gold, ten of them as was prescribed, and placed them in the nave, five to the right and five to the left.^{(W) 8} He made ten tables and had them set in the nave, five to the right and five to the left; and he made a hundred golden bowls.^{(X) 9} He made the court of the priests and the great courtyard^(Y) and the gates of the courtyard; the gates he covered with bronze. ¹⁰ The sea he placed off to the southeast from the south side of the house.^(Z)

^11 (AA)When Huram had made the pots, shovels, and bowls, he finished all his work for King Solomon in the house of God: ¹² two columns; two nodes for the capitals on top of the columns; and two pieces of netting covering the two nodes for the capitals on top of the columns; ¹³ four hundred pomegranates in double rows on both pieces of netting that covered the two nodes of the capitals on top of the columns. ¹⁴ He made the stands, and the basins on the stands; ¹⁵ one sea, and the twelve oxen under it; ¹⁶ pots, shovels, forks, and all the articles Huram-abi made for King Solomon for the house of the Lord; they were of burnished bronze. ¹⁷ The king had them cast in the neighborhood of the Jordan, between Succoth and Zeredah, in thick clay molds. ¹⁸ Solomon made all these vessels, so many in number that the weight of the bronze could not be determined.

¹⁹ Solomon made all the articles that were for the house of God: the golden altar, the tables on which the showbread lay, ²⁰ the menorahs and their lamps of pure gold which were to burn as prescribed before the inner sanctuary, ²¹ flowers, lamps, and gold tongs (this was of purest gold), ²² snuffers, bowls, cups, and firepans of pure gold. As for the entrance to the house, its inner doors to the holy of holies, as well as the doors to the nave of the temple, were of gold.

Chapter 5

Dedication of the Temple. ^1 (AB)When all the work undertaken by Solomon for the house of the Lord was completed, he brought in the votive offerings of David his father, putting the silver, the gold, and other articles in the treasuries of the house of God. ² Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the princes in the ancestral houses of the Israelites, to Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the Lord’s covenant from the City of David, which is Zion. ³ All the people of Israel assembled before the king during the festival of the seventh month.^{[h] 4 (AC)}When all the elders of Israel had arrived, the Levites^[i] took up the ark; ⁵ and they brought up the ark and the tent of meeting with all the sacred vessels that were in the tent. The levitical priests brought them up.

⁶ King Solomon and the entire community of Israel, gathered for the occasion before the ark, sacrificed sheep and oxen too many to number or count. ⁷ The priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place: the inner sanctuary of the house, the holy of holies, beneath the wings of the cherubim. ⁸ The cherubim had their wings spread out over the place of the ark, covering the ark and its poles from above. ⁹ The poles were so long that their ends could be seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary. (They cannot be seen from outside, but they remain there to this day.)^{[j] 10} There was nothing in the ark but the two tablets which Moses had put there at Horeb when the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after they went forth from Egypt.

¹¹ When the priests left the holy place (all the priests who were present had purified themselves regardless of the rotation of their various divisions), ¹² the Levites who were singers, all who belonged to Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and brothers, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar, and with them a hundred and twenty priests blowing trumpets.

¹³ When the trumpeters and singers were heard as a single voice praising and giving thanks to the Lord, and when they raised the sound of the trumpets, cymbals, and other musical instruments to “Praise the Lord, who is so good, whose love endures forever,” the cloud filled the house of the Lord.^{(AD) 14} The priests could no longer minister because of the cloud, since the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.^(AE)