The Daily Audio Bible

Solomon’s temple equipment

4 He^[a] also made a bronze altar thirty feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifteen feet high. ² Then he made a tank of cast metal called the Sea. It was circular in shape, fifteen feet from rim to rim, seven and a half feet high, and forty-five feet in circumference. ³ Under the rim were two rows of oxlike figures completely encircling it, ten every eighteen inches, each cast in its mold. ⁴ The Sea rested on twelve oxen with their backs toward the center, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. ⁵ The Sea was as thick as the width of a hand. Its rim was shaped like a cup or an open lily blossom. It could hold three thousand baths.^{[b] 6} He also made ten washbasins and put five on the south and five on the north. The items used for the entirely burned offerings were rinsed in these. The priests washed in the Sea. ⁷ He made ten gold lampstands as prescribed and put them in the sanctuary, five on the south and five on the north. ⁸ He also made ten tables and put them in the sanctuary, five on the south and five on the north, as well as a hundred gold bowls. ⁹ He made the courtyard of the priests and the great courtyard, with doors covered with bronze for the courtyard. ¹⁰ He placed the Sea at the southeast corner.

¹¹ Huram made the pots, the shovels, and the bowls. So Huram finished all his work on God’s temple for King Solomon:

All the things that Huram-abi made for King Solomon for the Lord’s temple were made of polished bronze. ¹⁷ The king cast them in clay molds in the Jordan Valley between Succoth and Zarethan.^{[e] 18} Due to the very large number of objects, Solomon didn’t even try to weigh the bronze. ¹⁹ Solomon also made all the equipment for God’s temple: the gold altar; the tables for the bread of the presence; ²⁰ the lampstands with their lamps, all of pure gold, to burn before the inner sanctuary as prescribed; ²¹ the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs of pure gold; ²² and the wick trimmers, bowls, ladles, and censers of pure gold. As for the temple entrance, the inner doors to the most holy place as well as the doors to the main hall were made of gold.

5 When all of Solomon’s work on the Lord’s temple was finished, he brought the silver, gold, and all the objects his father David had dedicated and put them in the treasuries of God’s temple.

Solomon dedicates the temple

² Then Solomon assembled Israel’s elders, all the tribal leaders, and the clan chieftains of Israel at Jerusalem to bring up the chest containing the Lord’s covenant from Zion, David’s City. ³ Everyone in Israel assembled before the king in the seventh month,^[f] during the festival. ⁴ When all Israel’s elders had arrived, the Levites picked up the chest. ⁵ They brought the chest, the meeting tent, and all the holy objects that were in the tent. The priests and^[g] the Levites brought them up, ⁶ while King Solomon and the entire Israelite assembly that had joined him before the chest sacrificed countless sheep and oxen. ⁷ The priests brought the chest containing the Lord’s covenant to its designated spot beneath the wings of the winged creatures in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the most holy place. ⁸ The winged creatures spread their wings over the place where the chest rested, covering the chest and its carrying poles. ⁹ The carrying poles were so long that their tips could be seen from the holy place^[h] in front of the inner sanctuary, though they weren’t visible from outside. They are still there today. ¹⁰ Nothing was in the chest except the two stone tablets Moses placed there while at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after they left Egypt.

¹¹ Then the priests left the holy place. All the priests who were present had sanctified themselves, regardless of their divisions. ¹² All the levitical musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their families and relatives—were dressed in fine linen and stood east of the altar with cymbals, harps, and zithers, along with one hundred twenty priests blowing trumpets. ¹³ The trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the Lord as one. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and other musical instruments, they began to sing, praising the Lord:

Then a cloud filled the Lord’s temple.^{[i] 14} The priests were unable to carry out their duties on account of the cloud because the Lord’s glory filled God’s temple.

6 Then Solomon said, “The Lord said that he would live in a dark cloud; ² but God, I have built you a lofty temple—a place where you can live forever.”

³ The king turned around, and while the entire assembly of Israel was standing there, he blessed them, ⁴ saying:

Freedom from the Law

7 Brothers and sisters, I’m talking to you as people who know the Law. Don’t you know that the Law has power over someone only as long as he or she lives? ² A married woman is united with her husband under the Law while he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the Law concerning her husband. ³ So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she’s committing adultery. But if her husband dies, she’s free from the Law, so she won’t be committing adultery if she marries someone else. ⁴ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also died with respect to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you could be united with someone else. You are united with the one who was raised from the dead so that we can bear fruit for God. ⁵ When we were self-centered, the sinful passions aroused through the Law were at work in all the parts of our body, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶ But now we have been released from the Law. We have died with respect to the thing that controlled us, so that we can be slaves in the new life under the Spirit, not in the old life under the written Law.

The function of the Law

⁷ So what are we going to say? That the Law is sin? Absolutely not! But I wouldn’t have known sin except through the Law. I wouldn’t have known the desire for what others have if the Law had not said, Don’t desire to take what others have.^{[a] 8} But sin seized the opportunity and used this commandment to produce all kinds of desires in me. Sin is dead without the Law. ⁹ I used to be alive without the Law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, ¹⁰ and I died. So the commandment that was intended to give life brought death. ¹¹ Sin seized the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and killed me. ¹² So the Law itself is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.

Living under the Law

¹³ So did something good bring death to me? Absolutely not! But sin caused my death through something good so that sin would be exposed as sin. That way sin would become even more thoroughly sinful through the commandment.

Psalm 17

A prayer of David.