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Tabernacle and temple
Solomon’s temple
The first temple · begun about 966 BC · destroyed 586 or 587 BC
David bought the site, a threshing floor; his son Solomon began building in his fourth year, by a common reckoning about 966 BC, and finished in seven years (1 Kings 6:1, 38). Hiram, king of Tyre, sent cedar from Lebanon, and a bronze-worker from Tyre named Huram cast the pillars and furnishings. The stone was dressed at the quarry, so no hammer or iron tool was heard at the site (1 Kings 6:7). The house was 60 by 20 cubits and 30 high, roughly 27 by 9 by 13 meters, with a porch, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, a cube of 20 cubits.
Cedar paneling carved with cherubim and palms was overlaid with gold, and two olive-wood cherubim stood over the ark. In the court stood the bronze altar, ten wheeled basins and the “Sea”, a great bronze tank on twelve bronze oxen. Two bronze pillars at the porch were named Jachin and Boaz. No remains have been found, as the site cannot be excavated, but its plan resembles temples dug up at Ain Dara in Syria and Tell Tayinat in southern Turkey. The Babylonians burned it in 586 BC (by some reckonings 587).
Key verses
Now therefore, order that cedars of Lebanon be cut down for me. My servants will be with your servants, and I will pay your servants whatever wages you set, for you know that there are none among us as skilled in logging as the Sidonians.”In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv, the second month of the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, he began to build the house of the LORD. The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.The temple was constructed using finished stones cut at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any other iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.Thus he set up the pillars at the portico of the temple. The pillar to the south he named Jachin, and the pillar to the north he named Boaz.He also made the Sea of cast metal. It was circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim, five cubits in height, and thirty cubits in circumference.He burned down the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Temple: Background; Temple: Date; Temple: Superintendents and Workforce; Temple: Description; Temple: Later History
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
