whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre. He is trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen. He is experienced in all kinds of engraving and can execute any design given to him. He will work with your skilled workers and with those of my lord, David your father.

“Now let my lord send his servants the wheat and barley and the olive oil and wine he promised,

and we will cut all the logs from Lebanon that you need and will float them as rafts by sea down to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem.”

Solomon took a census of all the foreigners residing in Israel, after the census his father David had taken; and they were found to be 153,600.

He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stonecutters in the hills, with 3,600 foremen over them to keep the people working.

Solomon Builds the Temple

Then Solomon began to build the temple of the class="small-caps" >Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the class="small-caps" >Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.

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

The foundation Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide (using the cubit of the old standard).

The portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits long across the width of the building and twenty cubits high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold.

He paneled the main hall with juniper and covered it with fine gold and decorated it with palm tree and chain designs.

He overlaid the ceiling beams, doorframes, walls and doors of the temple with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls.

He built the Most Holy Place, its length corresponding to the width of the temple—twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. He overlaid the inside with six hundred talents of fine gold.

For the Most Holy Place he made a pair of sculptured cherubim and overlaid them with gold.

The total wingspan of the cherubim was twenty cubits. One wing of the first cherub was five cubits long and touched the temple wall, while its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the other cherub.

Similarly one wing of the second cherub was five cubits long and touched the other temple wall, and its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the first cherub.

The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits. They stood on their feet, facing the main hall.

He made the curtain of blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it.

For the front of the temple he made two pillars, which together were thirty-five cubits long, each with a capital five cubits high.

He made interwoven chains and put them on top of the pillars. He also made a hundred pomegranates and attached them to the chains.

He erected the pillars in the front of the temple, one to the south and one to the north. The one to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz.

The Temple’s Furnishings

He made a bronze altar twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high.

He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.

Below the rim, figures of bulls encircled it—ten to a cubit. The bulls were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.

The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center.

It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held three thousand baths.