Dual Panel1Four hundred and eighty years after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's rule over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, Solomon started building The Temple of GOD.
2The Temple that King Solomon built to GOD was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high.
3There was a porch across the thirty-foot width of The Temple that extended out fifteen feet.
4Within The Temple he made narrow, deep-silled windows.
5Against the outside walls he built a supporting structure in which there were smaller rooms:
6The lower floor was seven and a half feet wide, the middle floor nine feet, and the third floor ten and a half feet. He had projecting ledges built into the outside Temple walls to support the buttressing beams.
7The stone blocks for the building of The Temple were all dressed at the quarry so that the building site itself was reverently quiet--no noise from hammers and chisels and other iron tools.
8The entrance to the ground floor was at the south end of The Temple; stairs led to the second floor and then to the third.
9Solomon built and completed The Temple, finishing it off with roof beams and planks of cedar.
10The supporting structure along the outside walls was attached to The Temple with cedar beams and the rooms in it were seven and a half feet tall.
11The word of GOD came to Solomon saying,
12"About this Temple you are building--what's important is that you live the way I've set out for you and [do] what I tell you, following my instructions carefully and obediently. Then I'll complete in you the promise I made to David your father.
13I'll personally take up my residence among the Israelites --I won't desert my people Israel."
14Solomon built and completed The Temple.
15He paneled the interior walls from floor to ceiling with cedar planks; for flooring he used cypress.
16The thirty feet at the rear of The Temple he made into an Inner Sanctuary, cedar planks from floor to ceiling--the Holy of Holies.
17The Main Sanctuary area in front was sixty feet long.
18The entire interior of The Temple was cedar, with carvings of fruits and flowers. All cedar--none of the stone was exposed.
19The Inner Sanctuary within The Temple was for housing the Chest of the Covenant of God.
20This Inner Sanctuary was a cube, thirty feet each way, all plated with gold. The Altar of cedar was also gold-plated.
21Everywhere you looked there was pure gold: gold chains strung in front of the gold-plated Inner Sanctuary
22--gold everywhere--walls, ceiling, floor, and Altar. Dazzling!
23Then he made two cherubim, gigantic angel-like figures, from olivewood. Each was fifteen feet tall.
27The outstretched wings of the cherubim (they were identical in size and shape) measured another fifteen feet. He placed the two cherubim, their wings spread, in the Inner Sanctuary. The combined wingspread stretched the width of the room, the wing of one cherub touched one wall, the wing of the other the other wall, and the wings touched in the middle.
28The cherubim were gold plated.
29He then carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and flower blossoms on all the walls of both the Inner and the Main Sanctuary.
30And all the floors of both inner and outer rooms were gold plated.
31He constructed doors of olivewood for the entrance to the Inner Sanctuary; the lintel and doorposts were five-sided.
32The doors were also carved with cherubim, palm trees, and flowers, and then covered with gold leaf.
33Similarly, he built the entrance to the Main Sanctuary using olivewood for the doorposts but these doorposts were four-sided.
34The doors were of cypress, split into two panels, each panel swinging separately.
35These also were carved with cherubim, palm trees, and flowers, and plated with finely hammered gold leaf.
36He built the inner court with three courses of dressed stones topped with a course of planed cedar timbers.
37The foundation for GOD's Temple was laid in the fourth year in the month of Ziv.
38It was completed in the eleventh year in the month of Bul (the eighth month) down to the last detail, just as planned. It took Solomon seven years to build it.