Chronological
5 King Hiram of Tyre had always been a great admirer of David, so when he learned that David’s son Solomon was the new king of Israel, he sent ambassadors to extend congratulations and good wishes. 2-3 Solomon replied with a proposal about the Temple of the Lord he wanted to build. His father David, Solomon pointed out to Hiram, had not been able to build it because of the numerous wars going on, and he had been waiting for the Lord to give him peace.
4 “But now,” Solomon said to Hiram, “the Lord my God has given Israel peace on every side; I have no foreign enemies or internal rebellions. 5 So I am planning to build a Temple for the Lord my God, just as he instructed my father that I should do. For the Lord told him, ‘Your son, whom I will place upon your throne, shall build me a Temple.’ 6 Now please assist me with this project. Send your woodsmen to the mountains of Lebanon to cut cedar timber for me, and I will send my men to work beside them, and I will pay your men whatever wages you ask; for as you know, no one in Israel can cut timber like you Sidonians!”
7 Hiram was very pleased with the message from Solomon. “Praise God for giving David a wise son to be king of the great nation of Israel,” he said. 8 Then he sent this reply to Solomon: “I have received your message and I will do as you have asked concerning the timber. I can supply both cedar and cypress. 9 My men will bring the logs from the Lebanon mountains to the Mediterranean Sea and build them into rafts. We will float them along the coast to wherever you need them; then we will break the rafts apart and deliver the timber to you. You can pay me with food for my household.”
10 So Hiram produced for Solomon as much cedar and cypress timber as he desired, 11 and in return Solomon sent him an annual payment of 125,000 bushels of wheat for his household and 96 gallons of pure olive oil. 12 So the Lord gave great wisdom to Solomon just as he had promised. And Hiram and Solomon made a formal alliance of peace.
13 Then Solomon drafted thirty thousand laborers from all over Israel, 14 and rotated them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month, so that each man was a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was the general superintendent of this labor camp. 15 Solomon also had seventy thousand additional laborers, eighty thousand stonecutters in the hill country, 16 and thirty-three hundred foremen. 17 The stonecutters quarried and shaped huge blocks of stone—a very expensive job—for the foundation of the Temple. 18 Men from Gebal helped Solomon’s and Hiram’s builders in cutting the timber and making the boards, and in preparing the stone for the Temple.
6 It was in the spring of the fourth year of Solomon’s reign that he began the actual construction of the Temple. (This was 480 years after the people of Israel left their slavery in Egypt.) 2 The Temple was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. 3 All along the front of the Temple was a porch thirty feet long and fifteen feet deep. 4 Narrow windows were used throughout.
5 An annex of rooms was built along the full length of both sides of the Temple against the outer walls. 6 These rooms were three stories high, the lower floor being 7-1/2 feet wide, the second floor 9 feet wide, and the upper floor 10-1/2 feet wide. The rooms were connected to the walls of the Temple by beams resting on blocks built out from the wall—so the beams were not inserted into the walls themselves.
7 The stones used in the construction of the Temple were prefinished at the quarry, so the entire structure was built without the sound of hammer, ax, or any other tool at the building site.
8 The bottom floor of the side rooms was entered from the right side of the Temple, and there were winding stairs going up to the second floor; another flight of stairs led from the second to the third. 9 After completing the Temple, Solomon paneled it all, including the beams and pillars, with cedar. 10 As already stated, there was an annex on each side of the building, attached to the Temple walls by cedar timbers. Each story of the annex was 7-1/2 feet high.
11-12 Then the Lord sent this message to Solomon concerning the Temple he was building: “If you do as I tell you to and follow all of my commandments and instructions, I will do what I told your father David I would do: 13 I will live among the people of Israel and never forsake them.”
14 At last the Temple was finished. 15 The entire inside, from floor to ceiling, was paneled with cedar, and the floors were made of cypress boards. 16 The thirty-foot inner room at the far end of the Temple—the Most Holy Place—was also paneled from the floor to the ceiling with cedar boards. 17 The remainder of the Temple—other than the Most Holy Place—was sixty feet long. 18 Throughout the Temple the cedar paneling laid over the stone walls was carved with designs of rosebuds and open flowers.
19 The inner room was where the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord was placed. 20 This inner sanctuary was thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty feet high. Its walls and ceiling were overlaid with pure gold, and Solomon made a cedar-wood altar for this room. 21-22 Then he overlaid the interior of the remainder of the Temple—including the cedar altar—with pure gold; and he made gold chains to protect the entrance to the Most Holy Place.
23-28 Within the inner sanctuary Solomon placed two statues of Guardian Angels[a] made from olive wood, each fifteen feet high. They were placed so that their outspread wings reached from wall to wall, while their inner wings touched each other at the center of the room; each wing was 7-1/2 feet long, so each Angel measured fifteen feet from wing tip to wing tip. The two Angels were identical in all dimensions, and each was overlaid with gold.
29 Figures of Guardian Angels, palm trees, and open flowers were carved on all the walls of both rooms of the Temple, 30 and the floor of both rooms was overlaid with gold.
31 The doorway to the inner sanctuary was a five-sided opening, 32 and its two olive-wood doors were carved with Guardian Angels, palm trees, and open flowers, all overlaid with gold.
33 Then he made square doorposts of olive wood for the entrance to the Temple. 34 There were two folding doors of cypress wood, and each door was hinged to fold back upon itself. 35 Angels, palm trees, and open flowers were carved on these doors and carefully overlaid with gold.
36 The wall of the inner court had three layers of hewn stone and one layer of cedar beams.
37 The foundation of the Temple was laid in the month of May in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, 38 and the entire building was completed in every detail in November of the eleventh year of his reign. So it took seven years to build.
2 Solomon now decided that the time had come to build a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself. 2 This required a force of 70,000 laborers, 80,000 stonecutters in the hills, and 3,600 foremen. 3 Solomon sent an ambassador to King Hiram at Tyre, requesting shipments of cedar lumber such as Hiram had supplied to David when he was building his palace.
4 “I am about to build a temple for the Lord my God,” Solomon told Hiram. “It will be a place where I can burn incense and sweet spices before God, and display the special sacrificial bread, and sacrifice burnt offerings each morning and evening, and on the Sabbaths, and at the new moon celebration and other regular festivals of the Lord our God. For God wants Israel always to celebrate these special occasions. 5 It is going to be a wonderful temple because he is a great God, greater than any other. 6 But who can ever build him a worthy home? Not even the highest heaven would be beautiful enough! And who am I to be allowed to build a temple for God? But it will be a place to worship him.[a]
7 “So send me skilled craftsmen—goldsmiths and silversmiths, brass and iron workers; and send me weavers to make purple, crimson, and blue cloth; and skilled engravers to work beside the craftsmen of Judah and Jerusalem who were selected by my father David. 8 Also send me cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees from the forests of Lebanon, for your men are without equal as lumbermen, and I will send my men to help them. 9 An immense amount of lumber will be needed, for the temple I am going to build will be large and incredibly beautiful. 10 As to the financial arrangements, I will pay your men 20,000 sacks of crushed wheat, 20,000 barrels of barley, 20,000 barrels of wine, and 20,000 barrels of olive oil.”
11 King Hiram replied to King Solomon: “It is because the Lord loves his people that he has made you their king! 12 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who made the heavens and the earth and who has given to David such a wise, intelligent, and understanding son to build God’s Temple and a royal palace for himself.
13 “I am sending you a master craftsman—my famous Huramabi! He is a brilliant man, 14 the son of a Jewish woman from Dan in Israel; his father is from here in Tyre. He is a skillful goldsmith and silversmith, and also does exquisite work with brass and iron and knows all about stonework, carpentry, and weaving; and he is an expert in the dyeing of purple and blue linen and crimson cloth. He is an engraver besides, and an inventor! He will work with your craftsmen and those appointed by my lord David, your father. 15 So send along the wheat, barley, olive oil, and wine you mentioned, 16 and we will begin cutting wood from the Lebanon mountains, as much as you need, and bring it to you in log floats across the sea to Joppa, and from there you can take them inland to Jerusalem.”
17 Solomon now took a census of all foreigners in the country (just as his father David had done) and found that there were 153,600 of them. 18 He indentured 70,000 as common laborers, 80,000 as loggers, and 3,600 as foremen.
3 Finally the actual construction of the Temple began. Its location was in Jerusalem at the top of Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to Solomon’s father, King David, and where the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite had been. David had selected it as the site for the Temple. 2 The actual construction began on the seventeenth day of April in the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign.
3 The foundation was ninety feet long and thirty feet wide. 4 A covered porch ran along the entire thirty-foot width of the Temple, with the inner walls and ceiling overlaid with pure gold! The roof was 180 feet high.
5 The main part of the Temple was paneled with cypress wood, plated with pure gold, and engraved with palm trees and chains. 6 Beautiful jewels were inlaid into the walls to add to the beauty; the gold, by the way, was of the best, from Parvaim. 7 All the walls, beams, doors, and thresholds throughout the Temple were plated with gold, with Guardian Angels engraved on the walls.
8 Within the Temple, at one end, was the most sacred room—the Holy of Holies—thirty feet square. This too was overlaid with the finest gold, valued at millions of dollars. 9 Twenty-six-ounce gold nails were used. The upper rooms were also plated with pure gold.
10 Within the innermost room, the Holy of Holies, Solomon placed two sculptured statues of Guardian Angels and plated them with gold. 11-13 They stood on the floor facing the outer room, with wings stretched wing tip to wing tip across the room, from wall to wall.[b] 14 Across the entrance to this room he placed a veil of blue and crimson finespun linen, decorated with Guardian Angels.
15 At the front of the Temple were two pillars 52-1/2 feet high, topped by a 7-1/2-foot capital flaring out to the roof. 16 He made chains[c] and placed them on top of the pillars, with 100 pomegranates attached to the chains. 17 Then he set up the pillars at the front of the Temple, one on the right and the other on the left. And he gave them names: Jachin (the one on the right), and Boaz (the one on the left).
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.