1. In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.
2. The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high.
3. The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple extended the width of the temple, that is twenty cubits, and projected ten cubits from the front of the temple.
4. He made narrow windows high up in the temple walls.
5. Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure around the building, in which there were side rooms.
6. The lowest floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits and the third floor seven. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls.
7. In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.
8. The entrance to the lowest floor was on the south side of the temple; a stairway led up to the middle level and from there to the third.
9. So he built the temple and completed it, roofing it with beams and cedar planks.