1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. And he made for the temple specially designed framed windows,
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. So he built the house and finished it. He covered the temple with rafters and wood planks and with the cedars.
10. He also built the structure against all of the temple five cubits in height and fastened it to the temple with beams of cedar.
11. Then the word of Yahweh came to Solomon, saying,
12. “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.
13. And I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will not forsake my people Israel.”
14. So Solomon built the temple and finished it.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. The main hall of the temple was forty cubits in front of the inner sanctuary,
18. 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.