Temple Built and Dedicated

1 Kings 6:1-38

It happened in the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites went out from the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s rule over Israel, the month of Ziv (that is the second month), that he began to build the house for Yahweh. Now the house that King Solomon built for Yahweh was sixty cubits in its length and twenty cubits in its width and thirty cubits in its height. The vestibule on the face of the main hall of the temple was twenty cubits in its length, and the width of the temple was ten cubits wide on the face of the temple. And he made for the temple specially designed framed windows, and he built a structure against the wall of the temple running all along the walls of the house, for the outer sanctuary and for the inner sanctuary, and made side rooms all around. The lower structure was five cubits in its width and the middle was six cubits in its width and the third was seven cubits in its width, for he made niches for the temple all around to the outside, so that beams would not attach to the walls of the temple. Now while the temple was being built, it was built with stones finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or stone shaping tool or any instrument of iron was heard in the temple as it was being built. The doorway of the side room in the middle of the side of the temple was on the south; they went up with a stairway to the middle and from the middle to the third floor . So he built the house and finished it. He covered the temple with rafters and wood planks and with the cedars. He also built the structure against all of the temple five cubits in height and fastened it to the temple with beams of cedar. Then the word of Yahweh came to Solomon, saying, “ Regarding this temple that you are building: if you walk in my ordinances and if you do my judgments and you keep all my commandments to walk in them, then I will establish my promise with you which I made to David your father. And I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will not forsake my people Israel.” So Solomon built the temple and finished it. He lined the walls of the inside of the house with boards of cedar; from the floor of the temple up to the rafters of the ceiling he covered them with wood on the inside. He also covered the floor of the temple with cypress boards. He built twenty cubits from the rear of the house with boards of cedar from the floor up to the ceiling, and he built for it an inner sanctuary on the inside, as the most holy place. The main hall of the temple was forty cubits in front of the inner sanctuary, with the cedar within the inner house having carvings of gourds and buds of flowers. It was entirely of cedar; there was not a stone visible. Now in the inner sanctuary in the middle of the temple he prepared the inside to place the ark of the covenant of Yahweh there. In front, the inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide and twenty cubits high, and he overlaid it with pure gold and covered the altar with cedar. Solomon overlaid the temple on the inside with pure gold, and he drew across it with golden chains in front of the inner sanctuary, which he overlaid with gold. All of the temple he overlaid with gold until all of the temple was finished; all of the altar which belonged to the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold. He made two cherubim of olive wood for the inner sanctuary, ten cubits high. Five cubits was the first wing of the cherub, and five cubits the second wing of the cherub; ten cubits from the tip of his one wing up to the tip of his other wing. The second cherub was ten cubits according to the same measurement, and there was one shape for the two cherubim. The height of the first cherub was ten cubits and so was the second cherub. He placed the cherubim in the middle of the inner house, and they spread out the wings of the cherubim; the wing of the first cherub touched against the wall and the wing of the second cherub was touching against the second wall; their wings spread to the middle of the house and were touching wing to wing. He also overlaid the cherubim with gold. On all of the walls around the house, he carved engravings of cherubim and palm tree images and budding flowers both inside and out. He overlaid the floor of the house with gold both inside and out. He made doors of olive wood for the doorway of the inner sanctuary, as well as for the doorpost of the fifth doorframe. On the two doors of olive wood he made carvings of cherubim and palm tree images and budding flowers, and he overlaid them with gold by beating out the gold on the cherubim and the palm tree images. Thus he made doorframes of olive wood on four sides for the doorway of the main hall and two doors of cypress wood; one door with two folding panels and the second door with two folding panels. He carved cherubim and palm tree images and budding flowers and overlaid them with gold evenly applied on the carved work. Then he built the inner courtyard with three rows of dressed stone and a row of cedar beams. In the fourth year, the house of Yahweh was founded in the month of Ziv. In the eleventh year in the month of Bul, that is, the eighth month, the house was finished according to all his specifications and according to all his plans. He had built it in seven years.

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1 Kings 8:22-61

Then Solomon stood before the altar of Yahweh in the presence of all of the assembly of Israel, and he spread out his hands to the heavens, and he said, “O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no god like you in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, keeping the covenant and the loyal love for your servants who are walking before you with all their heart. You have kept for your servant David my father what you promised to him, and you have spoken with your mouth, and with your hand you have fulfilled it this very day. So then, O Yahweh, God of Israel, keep for your servant David my father what you promised to him, saying, ‘For you, no man will be cut off from before me who will be sitting on the throne of Israel, if only your sons keep their ways to walk before me just as you have walked before me.’ So then, O God of Israel, please let your word be confirmed which you have promised to your servant David my father. For will God really dwell on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens could not contain you! How could this house that I have built? You must regard the prayer of your servant and his plea! O Yahweh my God, listen to the pleading and to the prayer that your servant is praying before you this day, so that your eyes will be open to this house night and day, to the place which you said, ‘My name will be there,’ to hear the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. You must listen to the plea of your servant and your people Israel which they pray toward this place; and you must hear from the place where you live, from heaven you must hear and you must forgive. If a man sins against his neighbor and he pronounces an oath against him to curse him, and the curse comes before your altar in this house, then you shall hear in heaven and you shall act and you shall judge your servant, to declare the wicked guilty by bringing his way upon his head and to declare the righteous innocent by rewarding him according to his righteousness. When your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they sinned against you, and when they turn to you and confess your name and pray and beg for mercy from you in this house, then you shall hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel, and you shall bring them back to the ground which you gave to their ancestors. When you shut up the heavens so there is no rain because they have sinned against you, then they pray to this place and they confess your name and they return from their sin because you punished them, then you shall hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants and your people Israel, for you will teach them the good way in which they should go, and you will give rain upon your land which you have given to your people as an inheritance. If there should be in the land famine or disease, if there should be blight or mildew or locust or caterpillars, if it happens that his enemy lays siege against him in the land of his gates, if any plague or any disease, any prayer or any plea which is offered by any person for all of your people Israel, who each knows the infestation of his own heart and spreads out his palms to this house, then you shall hear in heaven the place of your dwelling, and you shall forgive and act and give to the man whose heart you know, according to all his ways, for you alone know the heart of all the sons of man. Do these things so that they may fear you all the days that they live on the face of the land that you gave to our ancestors. Also for the foreigner who is not from your people Israel, and he comes from a distant land because of your name, (for they shall hear of your great name and your powerful hand and your outstretched arm), and he shall come and pray toward this house, you shall hear in heaven, the place of your dwelling, and act according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name, to fear you as your people Israel, and to know that your name has been invoked over this house that I have built. If your people go out to battle against his enemy in the way that you shall send them and they pray to Yahweh, toward the city which you have chosen and the house which I have built for your name, then you shall hear in heaven their prayer and their plea, and you shall vindicate them. “If they sin against you (for there is not a person who does not sin) and you are angry with them and you give them to an enemy and they take them captive to the land of the enemy far or near, and then they return their heart in the land where they have been taken captive and they return and plead to you in the land of their captivity, saying, ‘We have sinned and we did wrong. We acted wickedly,’ if they return to you with all of their heart and with all of their soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive and they pray to you toward their land which you gave to their ancestors, the city that you have chosen and the house that you built for your name, then you shall hear in heaven, the place of your dwelling, their prayer and their plea, and you shall vindicate them. You shall forgive your people who sinned against you, even for all their transgressions which they committed against you. You shall give them compassion before their captors so that they may have compassion on them, for they are your people and your inheritance whom you brought from Egypt from the middle of the smelter of iron. O, that your eyes may be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, to listen to them in all things when they call to you. For you have separated them for yourself as an inheritance from all the peoples of the earth, as you promised through the hand of Moses your servant when you brought out our ancestors from Egypt, my Lord Yahweh!” It happened that when Solomon finished praying to Yahweh all of the prayer and this plea, he got up from before the altar of Yahweh, from kneeling down on his knees with his palms outstretched to heaven. He stood and blessed all of the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying, “Blessed be Yahweh who gave a resting place to his people Israel. According to all that he promised, not one word has fallen from all of his promises concerning the good which he spoke through the hand of Moses his servant. May Yahweh our God be with us as he was with our ancestors, and may he not leave us or abandon us, to incline our hearts toward him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his judgments which he commanded our ancestors. Let these my words which I pleaded before Yahweh be near to Yahweh our God, by day and by night, to maintain the justice of his servant and the justice of his people Israel as each day requires so that all of the people of the earth may know that Yahweh, he is God; there is none other. Let your heart be completely with Yahweh our God by walking in his statutes, by keeping his commands as this day.”

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