He made narrow windows high up in the temple walls.

The lowest floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits and the third floor seven. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls.

In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.

The entrance to the lowest floor was on the south side of the temple; a stairway led up to the middle level and from there to the third.

So he built the temple and completed it, roofing it with beams and cedar planks.

And he built the side rooms all along the temple. The height of each was five cubits, and they were attached to the temple by beams of cedar.

“As for this temple you are building, if you follow my decrees, observe my laws and keep all my commands and obey them, I will fulfill through you the promise I gave to David your father.

So Solomon built the temple and completed it.

He lined its interior walls with cedar boards, paneling them from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, and covered the floor of the temple with planks of juniper.

He partitioned off twenty cubits at the rear of the temple with cedar boards from floor to ceiling to form within the temple an inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place.

The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds and open flowers. Everything was cedar; no stone was to be seen.

He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord there.

Solomon covered the inside of the temple with pure gold, and he extended gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary, which was overlaid with gold.

He placed the cherubim inside the innermost room of the temple, with their wings spread out. The wing of one cherub touched one wall, while the wing of the other touched the other wall, and their wings touched each other in the middle of the room.

On the walls all around the temple, in both the inner and outer rooms, he carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers.

He also covered the floors of both the inner and outer rooms of the temple with gold.

The foundation of the temple of the Lord was laid in the fourth year, in the month of Ziv.

In the eleventh year in the month of Bul, the eighth month, the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years building it.

The great courtyard was surrounded by a wall of three courses of dressed stone and one course of trimmed cedar beams, as was the inner courtyard of the temple of the Lord with its portico.

The Temple’s Furnishings

King Solomon sent to Tyre and brought Huram,

He erected the pillars at the portico of the temple. The pillar to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz.

He placed five of the stands on the south side of the temple and five on the north. He placed the Sea on the south side, at the southeast corner of the temple.

He also made the pots and shovels and sprinkling bowls. So Huram finished all the work he had undertaken for King Solomon in the temple of the Lord:

the pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls. All these objects that Huram made for King Solomon for the temple of the Lord were of burnished bronze.

Solomon also made all the furnishings that were in the Lord’s temple: the golden altar; the golden table on which was the bread of the Presence;