1. Then it happened that, in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel departed from the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, the house of the Lord began to be built.
2. Now the house, which king Solomon was building to the Lord, was sixty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in width, and thirty cubits in height.
3. And a portico was before the temple, of twenty cubits in length, in accord with the measure of the width of the temple. And it had ten cubits of width before the face of the temple.
4. And he made oblique windows in the temple.
5. And upon the wall of the temple, he built panels on all sides, in the walls of the house around the temple and the oracle. And he made side chambers all around.
6. The flooring on the bottom level held five cubits in width, and the middle floor was six cubits in width, and the third floor held seven cubits in width. Then he positioned beams on the house all around the outside, in such a way that they would not be fastened to the walls of the temple.
7. Now the house, while it was being built, was made from cut and finished stones. And so, neither mallet, nor chisel, nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.