1 Kings 5:12-6:13

English Standard Version

¹² And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, ^(A)as he promised him. And there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a treaty.

¹³ King Solomon drafted ^(B)forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. ¹⁴ And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. ^(C)Adoniram was in charge of the draft. ¹⁵ Solomon also ^(D)had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country, ¹⁶ besides Solomon's 3,300 ^(E)chief officers who were over the work, ^(F)who had charge of the people who carried on the work. ¹⁷ At the king's command ^(G)they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. ¹⁸ So Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and ^(H)the men of Gebal did the cutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.

Solomon Builds the Temple

6 ^(I)In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, ^(J)he began to build the house of the Lord. ^2 (K)The house that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits^[a] long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. ³ The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was twenty cubits long, equal to the width of the house, and ten cubits deep in front of the house. ⁴ And ^(L)he made for the house windows with recessed frames.^{[b] 5 (M)}He also built a structure^[c] against the wall of the house, running around the walls of the house, both the nave and ^(N)the inner sanctuary. And he made ^(O)side chambers all around. ⁶ The lowest story^[d] was five cubits broad, the middle one was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad. For around the outside of the house he made offsets on the wall in order that the supporting beams should not be inserted into the walls of the house.

⁷ When the house was built, ^(P)it was with stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.

⁸ The entrance for the lowest^[e] story was on the south side of the house, and one went up by stairs to the middle story, and from the middle story to the third. ^9 (Q)So he built the house and finished it, and he made the ceiling of the house of beams and planks of cedar. ¹⁰ He built the structure against the whole house, five cubits high, and it was joined to the house with timbers of cedar.

¹¹ Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon, ¹² “Concerning this house that you are building, ^(R)if you will walk in my statutes and obey my rules and keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will establish my word with you, ^(S)which I spoke to David your father. ¹³ And ^(T)I will dwell among the children of Israel ^(U)and will not forsake my people Israel.”