Chronological

Plans to Build the Temple^(A)

5 Now Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon, for he had heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father, and Hiram had always loved David. ² And Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying,

³ “You know how David my father was unable to build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the wars all around him, until the Lord put his enemies under his feet. ⁴ But now the Lord my God has given me peace on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor misfortune. ⁵ So know that I plan to build a house to honor the name of the Lord my God, just as the Lord spoke to my father David, saying, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne after you, shall build a house to honor My name.’

⁶ “Now therefore command that cedar trees from Lebanon be cut down for me, and my servants shall be with your servants, and I will pay your servants whatever you command, for you know that there are none among my people who can cut timber like the Sidonians.”

⁷ When Hiram heard the words of Solomon, he rejoiced greatly and said, “Blessed be the Lord this day, who has given David a wise son over this great people.”

⁸ Hiram sent to Solomon, saying,

“I have considered the things which you contacted me about, and I will do all you asked concerning timber of cedar and fir. ⁹ My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon to the sea, and I will send them by sea in floats to the place that you shall name and will cause them to be discharged into your care there, and in return you will meet my wishes by giving food for my household.”

¹⁰ So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees as he desired. ¹¹ Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand kors^[a] of wheat for his household and twenty baths^[b] of pure oil. This is what Solomon gave to Hiram each year. ¹² The Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as He promised, and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon as they made a treaty together.

¹³ King Solomon drafted men from all Israel, totaling thirty thousand men. ¹⁴ He sent them to Lebanon in turns, ten thousand a month, with each spending a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram administered the labor force. ¹⁵ Solomon had seventy thousand porters and eighty thousand stonecutters in the mountains, ¹⁶ not counting the chief of Solomon’s officers who were over the work, three thousand three hundred, who ruled over the people who did the work. ¹⁷ At the king’s command, they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. ¹⁸ Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders, along with the stonemasons, cut them and prepared timber and stones to build the house.

Solomon Builds the Temple^(B)

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

² The house which King Solomon built for the Lord had a length of sixty cubits, a width of twenty cubits, and a height of thirty cubits.^{[c] 3} The porch in front of the temple was twenty cubits^[d] in length, the same as the width of the house, and ten cubits^[e] deep in front of the house. ⁴ He made beveled windows for the house. ⁵ He also built a structure against the wall of the house, running around the walls of the house, both of the temple and of the inner sanctuary, and he made side chambers all around. ⁶ The lowest story was five cubits^[f] broad, the middle one was six cubits^[g] broad, and the third was seven cubits^[h] broad. For around the outside of the house, he made offsets on the wall so that the supporting beams should not be inserted into the walls of the house.

⁷ The house was built of stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.

⁸ The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house, and it had winding stairs into the middle chamber and out of the middle into the third. ⁹ So he built the house and finished it and covered it with beams and boards of cedar. ¹⁰ Then he built chambers against the whole house, five cubits high, and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.

¹¹ Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, ¹² “Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in My statutes and execute My judgments and keep all My commandments and walk in them, then I will carry out My word with you, which I spoke to David your father, ¹³ and I will dwell among the people of Israel and will not forsake My people Israel.”

¹⁴ So Solomon built the house and finished it. ¹⁵ He built the interior walls of the house with boards of cedar. From the floor of the house to the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood; and he covered the floor of the house with planks of fir. ¹⁶ He lined twenty cubits on the sides of the house, both the floor and the walls, with boards of cedar, and he even lined them within, even the inner sanctuary and the Most Holy Place. ¹⁷ The house, that is, the nave in front of the inner sanctuary, was forty cubits^[i] long. ¹⁸ The cedar of the house within had carvings of gourds and open flowers. All was cedar. There was no stone seen.

¹⁹ He prepared the inner sanctuary in the inner part of the house in order to set there the ark of the covenant of the Lord. ²⁰ The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high. He overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the altar of cedar. ²¹ So Solomon overlaid the interior of the house with pure gold, and he made a partition with gold chains in front of the inner sanctuary, and he overlaid it with gold. ²² He overlaid the whole house with gold as well as the whole altar that was by the inner sanctuary.

²³ Within the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim from olive wood, each ten cubits high. ²⁴ One wing of the cherub was five cubits, and the other wing was also five cubits. From the furthest part of the one wing to the furthest part of the other was ten cubits. ²⁵ The other cherub was ten cubits. Both the cherubim were the same shape and size. ²⁶ The height of the one cherub was ten cubits, and so was that of the other cherub. ²⁷ He set the cherubim within the inner sanctuary, and they stretched forth the wings of the cherubim, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall, and their wings touched one another in the middle of the house. ²⁸ He overlaid the cherubim with gold.

²⁹ He carved all the walls of the house with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers both inside and out. ³⁰ He overlaid the floor of the house with gold, both inside and out.

³¹ For the entrance to the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood; the lintel and doorposts were five-sided. ³² The two doors were also made of olive wood. He carved on them cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, overlaid them with gold, and spread gold upon the cherubim and upon the palm trees. ³³ So also he made for the entrance to the nave four-sided posts of olive wood. ³⁴ The two doors were made from fir tree, with two leaves of each door folding. ³⁵ He carved on them cherubim and palm trees and open flowers and covered them with gold fitted upon the carved work.

³⁶ He built the inner court with three rows of hewed stone and a row of cedar beams.

³⁷ In the fourth year, in the month Ziv, the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid, ³⁸ and in the eleventh year, in the month Bul (which is the eighth month), the house was completely finished. All the details and plans were met. So he took seven years to build it.

Plans for Building the Temple^(A)

2 Now Solomon wanted to build a temple for the name of the Lord and a royal house for his kingship. ² And Solomon designated seventy thousand men to carry materials, eighty thousand men to cut stone in the hills, and three thousand six hundred supervisors to oversee these men.

³ And Solomon sent word to Hiram^[a] king of Tyre saying,

“As you did for David my father and sent him cedar trees in order to build for himself a house in which to dwell, so deal with me. ⁴ I am going to build a temple for the name of the Lord my God, sanctified for Him, for making sacrifices before Him, and for incense of fragrant spices, and for the continual showbread, for burnt offerings on both morning and evening, and for Sabbaths, New Moons, and appointed feasts of the Lord our God, as an ordinance forever for Israel.

⁵ “And the house that I am building will be great because our God is greater than all other gods. ⁶ But who is able to build a house for Him, since the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain Him? Who am I that I build a house for Him, except to make offerings before Him?

⁷ “Now may you send to me a wise man who works with gold, silver, bronze, iron, and in purple, crimson, and violet threads and knows how to engrave, who will be with the skilled workers and me in Judah and Jerusalem, which David my father established.

⁸ “And may you send me trees of cedar, cypress, and algum from Lebanon because I realize that your slaves know how to cut timber in Lebanon; and my servants will be alongside your servants, ⁹ to prepare an abundance of timber for me, because the temple that I will build will be great and marvelous. ¹⁰ I will provide for the woodsmen, your servants who cut timber, twenty thousand dry kors^[b] of crushed wheat, twenty thousand kors^[c] of barley, twenty thousand liquid baths^[d] of wine, and twenty thousand liquid baths of oil.”

¹¹ Then Hiram king of Tyre responded in a letter that he sent to Solomon,

“Because the Lord loves His people, He has made you king over them.”

¹² And Hiram said,

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who made heaven and earth and has given King David a wise son, having insight and understanding, who is building a temple for the Lord and a royal house for his kingship.

¹³ “And now I have sent a skilled man, endowed with understanding, Huram-Abi, ¹⁴ the son of a woman from the daughters of Dan and the son of a man of Tyre, who knows gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, wood, and purple, violet, blue, and crimson threads, and who knows how to make all types of engravings and to devise every type of design that is given to him, with your skilled men and the skilled men of my lord David your father.

¹⁵ “Now the wheat, the barley, the oil, and the wine that my lord has declared, may he send these items to his slaves. ¹⁶ And let us cut the timber from Lebanon, whatever you need, and we will bring it to you on rafts on the sea to Joppa, and you will bring it up to Jerusalem.”

¹⁷ Then Solomon numbered all the male foreigners who were in the land of Israel, after the census that David his father had taken. And there were found one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred. ¹⁸ And he made seventy thousand of them to carry materials, eighty thousand to cut stone in the hills, and three thousand six hundred supervisors to make the people work.

Solomon Builds the Temple^(B)

3 So Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where He appeared to David his father, at the place that David established on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. ² He began to build in the second month^[e] on the second day during the fourth year of his reign.^[f]

³ These are the foundation measurements that Solomon used for building the house of God. The cubit^[g] length in the former standard measure was sixty cubits and the width twenty cubits.^{[h] 4} The porch vestibule that was in front of the nave hall had its length, like the width of the house, as twenty cubits,^[i] and its height was one hundred and twenty cubits;^[j] and he overlaid the inside with pure gold.

⁵ And he paneled the great house with cypress trees and then covered it with fine gold. Then he decorated it with palm trees and chain work. ⁶ And he overlaid the house with precious stones for decoration, and the gold was from Parvaim. ⁷ And he covered the house—its beams, thresholds, walls, and doors—with gold, and he engraved cherubim on the walls.

⁸ Then he made the dwelling of the Most Holy Place. Its length was as the width of twenty cubits, and its width also twenty cubits; and he covered it with fine gold, six hundred talents^[k] worth. ⁹ And the weight in gold for the nails was fifty shekels.^[l] And he covered the upper chamber in gold.

¹⁰ Then in the dwelling of the Most Holy Place, he made two cherubim that were cast metal and overlaid them with gold. ¹¹ And the wings of the cherubim were the length of twenty cubits. The wing of one cherub was five cubits, reaching the wall of the house, and the wing of the other was five cubits,^[m] reaching to the wing of the other cherub. ¹² And the wing of this cherub was five cubits, reaching to the other wall of the house, and the other wing was five cubits, touching the wing of the first cherub. ¹³ So the wings of these cherubim spread out were twenty cubits; they were upright on their feet facing inward toward the house.

¹⁴ Then he made the curtain of violet, purple, crimson, and blue thread, and he wove cherubim into it.

¹⁵ And he made two pillars in front of the house thirty-five cubits^[n] high, with a five cubit capital on the top of the pillar. ¹⁶ Then he made ornamental chain work, like in the Most Holy Place, and set it on the top of the pillars. Then he designed a hundred pomegranates and set them on the chain work. ¹⁷ He then raised the pillars in front of the temple, with one on the right to the south and the other on the left to the north, and the pillar to the south he called Jakin, and the pillar to the north he called Boaz.