2 Chronicles 2
SOLOMON’S LETTER TO HIRAM
Solomon decided to build a temple for the name of the Lord and a royal palace for himself,
2 so he assigned 70,000 men as porters, 80,000 men as stonecutters in the mountains, and 3,600 as supervisors over them.
3 Then Solomon sent word to King Hiram of Tyre:
Do for me what you did for my father David. You sent him cedars to build him a house to live in. 4 Now I am building a temple for the name of the Lord my God in order to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for displaying the rows of the Bread of the Presence continuously, and for sacrificing burnt offerings for the morning and the evening, the Sabbaths and the New Moons, and the appointed festivals of the Lord our God. This is ordained for Israel permanently. 5 The temple that I am building will be great, for our God is greater than any of the gods. 6 But who is able to build a temple for him, since even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain him? Who am I then that I should build a temple for him except as a place to burn incense before him? 7 Therefore, send me an artisan who is skilled in engraving to work with gold, silver, bronze, and iron, and with purple, crimson, and blue yarn. He will work with the artisans who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, appointed by my father David. 8 Also, send me cedar, cypress, and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your servants know how to cut the trees of Lebanon. Note that my servants will be with your servants 9 to prepare logs for me in abundance because the temple I am building will be great and wondrous. 10 I will give your servants, the woodcutters who cut the trees, one hundred twenty thousand bushels of wheat flour, one hundred twenty thousand bushels of barley, one hundred twenty thousand gallons of wine, and one hundred twenty thousand gallons of oil.
HIRAM’S REPLY
11 Then King Hiram of Tyre wrote a letter and sent it to Solomon:
Because the Lord loves his people, he set you over them as king.
12 Hiram also said:
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who made the heavens and the earth! He gave King David a wise son with insight and understanding, who will build a temple for the Lord and a royal palace for himself. 13 I have now sent Huram-abi, a skillful man who has understanding. 14 He is the son of a woman from the daughters of Dan. His father is a man of Tyre. He knows how to work with gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, with purple, blue, crimson yarn, and fine linen. He knows how to do all kinds of engraving and to execute any design that may be given him. I have sent him to be with your artisans and the artisans of my lord, your father David. 15 Now, let my lord send the wheat, barley, oil, and wine to his servants as promised. 16 We will cut logs from Lebanon, as many as you need, and bring them to you as rafts by sea to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem.
SOLOMON’S WORKFORCE
17 Solomon took a census of all the resident alien men in the land of Israel, after the census that his father David had conducted, and the total was 153,600. 18 Solomon made 70,000 of them porters, 80,000 stonecutters in the mountains, and 3,600 supervisors to make the people work.
2 Chronicles 3
BUILDING THE TEMPLE
Then Solomon began to build the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the site David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
2 He began to build on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign. 3 These are Solomon’s foundations for building God’s temple: the length was ninety feet, and the width thirty feet. 4 The portico, which was across the front extending across the width of the temple, was thirty feet wide; its height was thirty feet; he overlaid its inner surface with pure gold. 5 The larger room he paneled with cypress wood, overlaid with fine gold, and decorated with palm trees and chains. 6 He adorned the temple with precious stones for beauty, and the gold was the gold of Parvaim. 7 He overlaid the temple — the beams, the thresholds, its walls and doors — with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls.
THE MOST HOLY PLACE
8 Then he made the most holy place; its length corresponded to the width of the temple, 30 feet, and its width was 30 feet. He overlaid it with forty-five thousand pounds of fine gold. 9 The weight of the nails was twenty ounces of gold, and he overlaid the ceiling with gold.
10 He made two cherubim of sculptured work, for the most holy place, and he overlaid them with gold. 11 The overall length of the wings of the cherubim was 30 feet: the wing of one was 7 1/2 feet, touching the wall of the room; its other wing was 7 1/2 feet, touching the wing of the other cherub. 12 The wing of the other cherub was 7 1/2 feet, touching the wall of the room; its other wing was 7 1/2 feet, reaching the wing of the other cherub. 13 The wingspan of these cherubim was 30 feet. They stood on their feet and faced the larger room.
14 He made the curtain of blue, purple, and crimson yarn and fine linen, and he wove cherubim into it.
THE BRONZE PILLARS
15 In front of the temple he made two pillars, each 27 feet high. The capital on top of each was 7 1/2 feet high. 16 He had made chainwork in the inner sanctuary and also put it on top of the pillars. He made a hundred pomegranates and fastened them into the chainwork. 17 Then he set up the pillars in front of the sanctuary, one on the right and one on the left. He named the one on the right Jachin and the one on the left Boaz.
1 Kings 5
HIRAM’S BUILDING MATERIALS
King Hiram of Tyre sent his emissaries to Solomon when he heard that he had been anointed king in his father’s place, for Hiram had always been friends with David.
2 Solomon sent this message to Hiram: 3 “You know my father David was not able to build a temple for the name of the Lord his God. This was because of the warfare all around him until the Lord put his enemies under his feet. 4 The Lord my God has now given me rest on every side; there is no enemy or misfortune. 5 So I plan to build a temple for the name of the Lord my God, according to what the Lord promised my father David: ‘I will put your son on your throne in your place, and he will build the temple for my name.’
6 “Therefore, command that cedars from Lebanon be cut down for me. My servants will be with your servants, and I will pay your servants’ wages according to whatever you say, for you know that not a man among us knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians.”
7 When Hiram heard Solomon’s words, he rejoiced greatly and said, “Blessed be the Lord today! He has given David a wise son to be over this great people! ” 8 Then Hiram sent a reply to Solomon, saying, “I have heard your message; I will do everything you want regarding the cedar and cypress timber. 9 My servants will bring the logs down from Lebanon to the sea, and I will make them into rafts to go by sea to the place you indicate. I will break them apart there, and you can take them away. You then can meet my needs by providing my household with food.”
10 So Hiram provided Solomon with all the cedar and cypress timber he wanted, 11 and Solomon provided Hiram with one hundred twenty thousand bushels of wheat as food for his household and one hundred twenty thousand gallons of oil from crushed olives. Solomon did this for Hiram year after year.
12 The Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he had promised him. There was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a treaty.
SOLOMON’S WORKFORCE
13 Then King Solomon drafted forced laborers from all Israel; the labor force numbered thirty thousand men. 14 He sent ten thousand to Lebanon each month in shifts; one month they were in Lebanon, two months they were at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. 15 Solomon had seventy thousand porters and eighty thousand stonecutters in the mountains, 16 not including his thirty-three hundred deputies in charge of the work. They supervised the people doing the work. 17 The king commanded them to quarry large, costly stones to lay the foundation of the temple with dressed stones. 18 So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders, along with the Gebalites, quarried the stone and prepared the timber and stone for the temple’s construction.
1 Kings 6
BUILDING THE TEMPLE
Solomon began to build the temple for the Lord in the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of his reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month.
2 The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. 3 The portico in front of the temple sanctuary was thirty feet long extending across the temple’s width, and fifteen feet deep in front of the temple. 4 He also made windows with beveled frames for the temple.
5 He then built a chambered structure along the temple wall, encircling the walls of the temple, that is, the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary. And he made side chambers all around. 6 The lowest chamber was 7 1/2 feet wide, the middle was 9 feet wide, and the third was 10 1/2 feet wide. He also provided offset ledges for the temple all around the outside so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls. 7 The temple’s construction used finished stones cut at the quarry so that no hammer, chisel, or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.
8 The door for the lowest side chamber was on the right side of the temple. They went up a stairway to the middle chamber, and from the middle to the third. 9 When he finished building the temple, he paneled it with boards and planks of cedar. 10 He built the chambers along the entire temple, joined to the temple with cedar beams; each story was 7 1/2 feet high.
11 The word of the Lord came to Solomon: 12 “As for this temple you are building — if you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep all my commands by walking in them, I will fulfill my promise to you, which I made to your father David. 13 I will dwell among the Israelites and not abandon my people Israel.”
14 When Solomon finished building the temple, 15 he paneled the interior temple walls with cedar boards; from the temple floor to the surface of the ceiling he overlaid the interior with wood. He also overlaid the floor with cypress boards. 16 Then he lined thirty feet of the rear of the temple with cedar boards from the floor to the surface of the ceiling, and he built the interior as an inner sanctuary, the most holy place. 17 The temple, that is, the sanctuary in front of the most holy place, was sixty feet long. 18 The cedar paneling inside the temple was carved with ornamental gourds and flower blossoms. Everything was cedar; not a stone could be seen.
19 He prepared the inner sanctuary inside the temple to put the ark of the Lord’s covenant there. 20 The interior of the sanctuary was thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty feet high; he overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the cedar altar. 21 Next, Solomon overlaid the interior of the temple with pure gold, and he hung gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary and overlaid it with gold. 22 So he added the gold overlay to the entire temple until everything was completely finished, including the entire altar that belongs to the inner sanctuary.
23 In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim 15 feet high out of olive wood. 24 One wing of the first cherub was 7 1/2 feet long, and the other wing was 7 1/2 feet long. The wingspan was 15 feet from tip to tip. 25 The second cherub also was 15 feet; both cherubim had the same size and shape. 26 The first cherub’s height was 15 feet and so was the second cherub’s. 27 Then he put the cherubim inside the inner temple. Since their wings were spread out, the first one’s wing touched one wall while the second cherub’s wing touched the other wall, and in the middle of the temple their wings were touching wing to wing. 28 He also overlaid the cherubim with gold.
29 He carved all the surrounding temple walls with carved engravings — cherubim, palm trees, and flower blossoms — in the inner and outer sanctuaries. 30 He overlaid the temple floor with gold in both the inner and the outer sanctuaries.
31 For the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made olive wood doors. The pillars of the doorposts were five-sided. 32 The two doors were made of olive wood. He carved cherubim, palm trees, and flower blossoms on them and overlaid them with gold, hammering gold over the cherubim and palm trees. 33 In the same way, he made four-sided olive wood doorposts for the sanctuary entrance. 34 The two doors were made of cypress wood; the first door had two folding sides, and the second door had two folding panels. 35 He carved cherubim, palm trees, and flower blossoms on them and overlaid them with gold applied evenly over the carving. 36 He built the inner courtyard with three rows of dressed stone and a row of trimmed cedar beams.
37 The foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid in Solomon’s fourth year in the month of Ziv. 38 In his eleventh year in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, the temple was completed in every detail and according to every specification. So he built it in seven years.
— 2 Chronicles 2-3; 1 Kings 5-6 (CSB)