Then Huram continued, “Blessed be the class="small-caps" >Lord, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, who has given King David a wise son, endowed with discretion and understanding, who will build a house for the class="small-caps" >Lord and a royal palace for himself.

“Now then, I am sending Huram-abi, a skilled man, endowed with understanding,

the son of a Danite woman and a Tyrian father, who knows how to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, violet, linen, and crimson fabrics, and who knows how to make all kinds of engravings and to execute any design which is assigned to him, to work with your skilled workers and with those of my lord, your father David.

Now then, let my lord send his servants wheat and barley, oil and wine, of which he has spoken.

We will cut whatever timber you need from Lebanon and bring it to you as rafts by sea to Joppa, so that you may carry it up to Jerusalem.”

Solomon counted all the foreigners who were in the land of Israel, following the census which his father David had taken; and 153,600 were found.

He appointed seventy thousand of them to carry loads and eighty thousand to quarry stones in the mountains, and 3,600 supervisors to make the people work.

The Temple Construction in Jerusalem

Then Solomon began to build the house of the class="small-caps" >Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the class="small-caps" >Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

He began to build on the second day in the second month of the fourth year of his reign.

Dimensions and Materials of the Temple

Now these are the foundations which Solomon laid for building the house of God. The length in cubits, according to the old standard, was sixty cubits, and the width, twenty cubits.

The porch which was in front of the house was as long as the width of the house, twenty cubits, and the height twenty; and inside he overlaid it with pure gold.

He overlaid the main room with juniper wood and overlaid it with fine gold; and he ornamented it with palm trees and chains.

He also overlaid the house with gold—the beams, the thresholds, and its walls and doors; and he carved cherubim on the walls.

Then he made the room of the Most Holy Place: its length across the width of the house was twenty cubits, and its width was twenty cubits; and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to six hundred talents.

Then he made two sculptured cherubim in the room of the Most Holy Place and overlaid them with gold.

The wingspan of the cherubim was twenty cubits; the wing of one, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and its other wing, of five cubits, touched the wing of the other cherub.

The wing of the other cherub, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house; and its other wing, of five cubits, was attached to the wing of the first cherub.

The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits, and they stood on their feet facing the main room.

He made the veil of violet, purple, crimson, and fine linen, and he worked cherubim into it.

He also made two pillars for the front of the house, thirty-five cubits high, and the capital on the top of each was five cubits.

He made chains in the inner sanctuary and placed them on the tops of the pillars; and he made a hundred pomegranates and placed them on the chains.

He erected the pillars in front of the temple, one on the right and the other on the left, and named the one on the right Jachin and the one on the left Boaz.

Furnishings of the Temple

Then he made a bronze altar, twenty cubits in length, twenty cubits in width, and ten cubits in height.

He also made the Sea of cast metal, ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits and its circumference thirty cubits.

Now figures like oxen were under it and all around it, ten cubits, entirely encircling the Sea. The oxen were in two rows, cast in one piece.