1. Solomon's workers started building the temple during Ziv, the second month of the year. It had been four years since Solomon became king of Israel, and four hundred and eighty years since the people of Israel left Egypt.
2. The inside of the Lord's temple was twenty-seven metres long, nine metres wide, and thirteen and a half metres high.
3. A four and a half metre porch went all the way across the front of the temple.
4. The windows were narrow on the outside but wide on the inside.
5-6. Along the sides and back of the temple, there were three levels of storage rooms. The rooms on the bottom level were just over two metres wide, the rooms on the middle level were over two and a half metres wide, and those on the top level were just over three metres wide. There were ledges on the outside of the temple that supported the beams of the storage rooms, so that nothing was built into the temple walls.
7. Solomon did not want the noise of hammers and axes to be heard at the place where the temple was being built. So he made the workers shape the blocks of stone at the quarry.
8. The entrance to the bottom storage rooms was on the south side of the building, and stairs to the other rooms were also there.
9. The roof of the temple was made out of beams and cedar boards.The workers finished building the outside of the temple.
10. Storage rooms just over two metres high were all around the temple, and they were attached to the temple by cedar beams.
11. The Lord told Solomon:
12-13. If you obey my commands and do what I say, I will keep the promise I made to your father David. I will live among my people Israel in this temple you are building, and I will not desert them.
14. So Solomon's workers finished building the temple.
15. The floor of the temple was made out of pine, and the walls were lined with cedar from floor to ceiling.
16. The most holy place was in the back of the temple, and it was nine metres square. Cedar boards standing from floor to ceiling separated it from the rest of the temple.