1 Kings 6

1 In the four hundred and fortieth year after the children of Israel came out of Egypt, in the fourth year and the second month of the reign of King Solomon over Israel, the king gave the order, and they brought great and costly stones for the foundation of the house, and stones still unworked; and the men of Solomon and the men of Hiram cut them and laid them down. In the fourth year he laid the foundation of the house of the Lord, in the month of Niso, the second month. In the eleventh year, in the month of Baal — that is the eighth month — the house was finished, according to everything said of it and everything laid out for it. [a] †

2 And the house that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty-seven and a half feet high. [d] 3 And the porch in front of the temple was thirty feet long, running along the width of the house, and fifteen feet deep in front of the house. And he built the house and finished it. [e] 4 And he made windows for the house that a man could look out through, set back and hidden.

5 And against the wall of the house he set beams all around the temple and the inner room, and he made side rooms all around. [f] 6 The lowest side room was seven and a half feet wide, the middle one nine feet, and the third ten and a half feet wide; for he left a step back all around the outside of the house, so that the beams would not take hold of the walls of the house. 7 And the house, in the building of it, was built of rough quarried stone left unworked; and no hammer or axe or any iron tool was heard in the house while it was being built. [g] 8 And the doorway of the lowest side room was under the right shoulder of the house, and a winding stair went up to the middle story, and from the middle story to the third. [h] 9 So he built the house and finished it, and he panelled the ceiling of the house with cedar. 10 And he built the binding courses right through the house, each of them seven and a half feet high, and he held the binding course together with cedar timbers. [i]

15 And he built the walls of the house on the inside with cedar wood, from the floor of the house up to the beams and up to the walls; he panelled it within with boards fitted close together, and he lined the inside of the house with planks of pine. [j] 16 And he built the thirty feet from the far end of the house — the one side, from the floor up to the beams — and he made it, from the inner room on, into the most holy place. 17 And the temple was sixty feet long, standing in front of [k] 19 the inner room, in the middle of the house within, where the ark of the covenant of the Lord was to be set.

20 It was thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty feet high, and he covered it with refined gold. And he made an altar [l] 21 in front of the inner room, and he covered it with gold. 22 And he covered the whole house with gold, until the whole house was finished.

23 And in the inner room he made two cherubim, each measured out at fifteen feet. [m] 24 One wing of the first cherub was seven and a half feet, and its other wing seven and a half feet — fifteen feet from the tip of the one wing to the tip of the other. 25 So it was with the second cherub: one measure and one finish for both. 26 And the height of the first cherub was fifteen feet, and so was the second cherub.

27 And both the cherubim stood in the middle of the innermost part of the house. And they spread out their wings, and one wing touched the wall, and a wing of the other touched the second wall, and their wings in the middle of the house touched wing to wing. 28 And he covered the cherubim with gold.

29 And on all the walls of the house all around he cut carvings with a graving tool: cherubim, and palm trees on the inside and on the outside. 30 And he covered the floor of the house with gold, the innermost part and the outermost.

31 And for the doorway of the inner room he made doors of juniper wood, and doorposts set back in five stages, [n] 32 and two doors of pine wood, and on them carvings cut in — cherubim and palm trees and open flowers; and he covered them with gold, and the gold ran down over the cherubim and over the palm trees. [o] 33 And so he did for the gateway of the temple: doorposts of juniper wood, and porches in a four-fold way. [p]

34 And in both doors was pine wood: the one door had two leaves and their hinges, and the second door had two leaves, and they turned. 35 They were carved with cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, and covered with gold laid down over the carved work. 36 And he built the innermost court: three rows of unhewn stone and a row of dressed cedar all around. And he built the curtain of the court of the porch of the house that stands in front of the temple. [q]