Chapter 3
Building of the Temple. 1 (A)Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah,[a] 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;(B) 4 the front porch along the width of the house was also twenty cubits, and it was twenty cubits high.[b] He covered its interior with pure gold.(C) 5 The nave he overlaid with cypress wood and overlaid that with fine gold, embossing on it palms and chains.(D) 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.(E) 9 The weight of the nails was fifty gold shekels. The upper chambers he likewise overlaid with gold.
10 (F)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[c] of violet, purple, crimson, and fine linen, and had cherubim embroidered upon it.(G)
15 (H)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.
Footnotes
- 3:1 Mount Moriah: Gn 22:2 speaks of a “height in the land of Moriah.” This is the only place in the Bible where the Temple mount is identified with the site where Abraham was to have sacrificed Isaac.
- 3:4 The front porch…twenty cubits high: this figure, not given in 1 Kgs 7, is based on a variant Greek text that may be due to a later revision. The Hebrew text itself has “one hundred and twenty cubits high.” The Chronicler nearly doubles the height of the two free-standing columns adjacent to the porch in 2 Chr 3:15 as compared with the source, 1 Kgs 7:15–16.
- 3:14 The veil: this was suspended at the entrance of the holy of holies, in imitation of the veil of the Mosaic meeting tent (Ex 26:31–32). Solomon’s Temple had doors at this point, according to 1 Kgs 6:31. Apparently the Temple of the Chronicler’s time did have a veil, just as did Herod’s Temple (Mt 27:51; Mk 15:38; Lk 23:45).