The Daily Audio Bible

Solomon Prepares to Build the Temple

5 Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon because he heard that Solomon had been anointed king in his father’s place, and because Hiram had been a dear friend of David all his days.^[a]

² Solomon sent the following message to Hiram.

⁷ When Hiram heard Solomon’s words, he was very happy and he said:

⁸ So Hiram sent word to Solomon:

¹⁰ So Hiram gave Solomon all the cedar and fir that he desired. ¹¹ In return, Solomon gave Hiram one hundred twenty thousand bushels^[b] of wheat as provisions for his palace and one hundred twenty thousand gallons^[c] of beaten^[d] olive oil. Solomon gave this amount to Hiram every year. ¹² The Lord gave wisdom to Solomon just as he had promised him, so there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and they made a treaty.

¹³ King Solomon drafted a labor force from all over Israel. It numbered thirty thousand men. ¹⁴ He sent ten thousand men per month to Lebanon in shifts. They would spend one month in Lebanon. Then for two months they would be at home. Adoniram was in charge of this forced labor. ¹⁵ Solomon had seventy thousand men to transport materials and eighty thousand men to quarry stones in the mountains, ¹⁶ not counting the officials who were overseeing the work for Solomon. There were thirty-three hundred men supervising the people who were doing the work. ¹⁷ The king gave a command, and they quarried large, high-quality stones to serve as a foundation for the temple building, which was made of trimmed stones. ¹⁸ Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the men from Gebal^[e] cut and prepared the wood and stones to construct the temple building.^[f]

The Construction of the Temple

6 In the four hundred eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, during the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month named Ziv,^[g] which is the second month, Solomon began to build the house for the Lord.

² The house which King Solomon built for the Lord was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high.^{[h] 3} The porch^[i] in front of the temple building^[j] was thirty feet wide, the same as the width of the building. It extended out fifteen feet from the front of the building.

⁴ He made latticed windows^[k] high on the walls of the building.

⁵ He added a structure along the outer walls of the building, all the way around the three sides of the building. It was built against the walls of both the front room^[l] and the inner room^[m] of the sanctuary. In this structure he constructed three levels of storage rooms, all the way around the building. ⁶ The width of the rooms on the lowest story was seven and a half feet. The rooms of the middle story were nine feet wide, and the rooms of the third story were ten and a half feet wide, because he had built three receding ledges into the outside wall of the temple building all the way around, so that the floor beams of each story would not have to be inserted into the walls of the main building.

⁷ While the building was under construction, only stones that had been finished at the quarry were used in the building. No hammer or chisel or any other iron tool was heard in the building while it was under construction. ⁸ The entrance into the lowest story^[n] of the side rooms was on the south side^[o] of the building. Winding stairs^[p] went up to the middle floor, and also from the middle floor to the third floor. ⁹ So Solomon finished building the house, and he covered^[q] the house with beams and planks of cedar. ¹⁰ He built the floors for the storerooms that were all around the house. Each story was seven and a half feet high. Each story was supported by cedar timbers which rested on the receding ledges constructed along the walls of the building.^[r]

¹¹ The word of the Lord came to Solomon. He said, ¹² “In regard to this house which you are building, if you walk according to my statutes and carry out my ordinances and keep all my commands by walking according to them, you will be the one through whom I will fulfill my promise which I spoke to your father David. ¹³ I will dwell among the descendants of Israel, and I will not forsake my people Israel.”

¹⁴ So Solomon finished building the house. ¹⁵ He paneled the inside walls of the building with cedar boards, from the floor of the building to the rafters^[s] of the ceiling. He covered the inside walls with wood. He also covered the floor of the building with boards of fir wood.

¹⁶ Thirty feet from the back wall of the building he built a wall of cedar boards from the floor to the ceiling. He built this wall inside the building to create an inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place.

¹⁷ The front part of the building became a main room sixty feet long. ¹⁸ Gourds^[t] and open flowers were carved into the cedar on the inside of the building. Everything was covered with cedar. No stone was visible.

¹⁹ He prepared the inner room of the sanctuary inside the building as a place to set the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. ²⁰ The inner sanctuary was thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty feet high, and he overlaid it with pure gold.

He also overlaid the cedar altar with gold. ²¹ So Solomon covered the inside of the building with pure gold. He stretched gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary, and he overlaid the sanctuary with gold. ²² He overlaid the whole building with gold, until the whole building had been covered. He also overlaid the whole altar, which was in front of the inner sanctuary, with gold.

The Cherubim

²³ For the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim^[u] of olive wood. Each one was fifteen feet tall. ²⁴ Seven and a half feet was the length of one wing of a cherub, and seven and a half feet was the length of the other wing of a cherub. The distance from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other was fifteen feet.^{[v] 25} The other cherub also was fifteen feet wide. Both of the cherubim were the same size and looked the same. ²⁶ One cherub was fifteen feet tall, and so was the other cherub. ²⁷ He set the cherubim inside the inner sanctuary of the house. The wings of the cherubim were stretched out, so that the outer wing of the first one touched the wall, and the outer wing of the other cherub touched the opposite wall, and their wings touched one another in the middle of the room. ²⁸ He overlaid the cherubim with gold.

²⁹ He decorated the walls on all sides of both rooms of the building with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. ³⁰ He overlaid the floor of the building with gold in both the inner and outer rooms.

The Doors

³¹ For the entrance to the inner sanctuary, he made olive wood doors with five-sided frames.^{[w] 32} He carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers on them and overlaid them with gold. He shaped sheets of hammered gold to cover the cherubim and the palm trees.

³³ He did the same for the entrance to the front room. It had door posts of olive wood that were four-sided ³⁴ and two doors of fir wood. The door on one side was made with two folding leaves, and the door on the other side was made with two folding leaves. ³⁵ He carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers on them, and he overlaid them with gold leaf, shaped to the carvings.

The Courtyard

³⁶ He built the inner courtyard with three courses of cut stone and one course of cedar beams.

³⁷ The foundation of the Lord’s house was laid in the fourth year, in the month named Ziv.^{[x] 38} In the eleventh year, in the month named Bul,^[y] which is the eighth month, all the parts of the house were finished according to all its specifications. Solomon had spent seven years building it.

Stephen Defends Himself

7 Then the high priest asked, “Are these things true?”

² Stephen said, “Gentlemen, brothers and fathers, listen! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ³ God said to him, ‘Leave your land and your relatives and come to the land that I will show you.’^[a]

⁴ “Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God had him move from there to this land where you are now living.

⁵ “He gave him no inheritance in this land, not even enough to set his foot on. But God promised to give it as a possession to him and to his descendants^[b] after him,^[c] even though Abraham still had no child. ⁶ God revealed that his descendants^[d] would live as strangers in a foreign country, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. ⁷ God added, ‘I will judge the nation that they will serve as slaves, and after that they will leave there and serve me in this place.’^[e]

⁸ “Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

Stephen Defends Himself

⁹ “The patriarchs, filled with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him. ¹⁰ God rescued him from all his troubles and granted him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And Pharaoh made him governor over Egypt and over his whole palace.

¹¹ “A famine came over all of Egypt and Canaan, causing great suffering, and our fathers found no food. ¹² But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit. ¹³ On their second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent word and invited his father Jacob and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five people in all. ¹⁵ Jacob went down to Egypt, and there he died, he and our fathers. ¹⁶ Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

¹⁷ “As the time approached that God spoke about in the promise he had made^[f] to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt. ¹⁸ This continued until another king who knew nothing about Joseph became ruler of Egypt. ¹⁹ He took advantage of our people in a cunning way, and he mistreated our fathers by forcing them to get rid of their babies so that they would not survive.^[g]

Stephen Defends Himself

²⁰ “At that time, Moses was born, and he was favored by God. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. ²¹ After he was placed outside,^[h] Pharaoh’s daughter took him in and brought him up as her own son. ²² Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and actions.

²³ “But when he was forty years old, it entered his mind to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. ²⁴ When he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended him and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He thought that his brothers would understand that God was giving them deliverance by his hand, but they did not understand. ²⁶ The next day, he came across two of them while they were fighting, and he tried to reconcile them. He said, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you harming each other?’ ²⁷ But the one who was harming his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? ²⁸ Do you want to kill me the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’^{[i] 29} At this remark, Moses fled and lived as an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

Psalm 127

The Lord Builds the House

Heading
A song of the ascents. By Solomon.

The Lord Builds the House