1 Kings 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the 480th year after Israel left Egypt, and the fourth year of his reign, Solomon begins building the house of the LORD. The chapter gives the measurements and materials in detail: stone finished at the quarry, side rooms on three floors, cedar paneling, gold overlay, an inner room for the ark of the covenant, two large olive-wood cherubim, and walls and doors carved with cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. Partway through, the word of the LORD comes to Solomon: if he keeps God's statutes, decisions, and commands, God will make good through him the promise made to David, and will live among the Israelites and not abandon them. The chapter closes with the dates the work started and finished, seven years apart.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, Solomon built the house of the LORD.
   • The exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt had occurred four hundred and eighty years earlier.
   • Solomon reigned over Israel.
   • The month Ziv is the second month.
   • Solomon built a house for the LORD.
2. 6:2
   • King Solomon built the house for the LORD.
   • The house was sixty cubits long.
   • The house was twenty cubits wide.
   • The house was thirty cubits high.
3. 6:3
   • There was a porch in front of the main hall of the house.
   • The porch was twenty cubits long, matching the width of the house.
   • The porch was ten cubits deep in front of the house.
4. 6:4
   • He made windows for the house.
   • The windows were recessed and framed and narrowed, though the exact description is uncertain.
5. 6:5
   • He built a structure of chambers against the wall of the house, all around.
   • The structure went around the walls of the house on all sides, both of the main hall and of the inner sanctuary.
   • He made side chambers all around.
6. 6:6
   • The lowest story was five cubits wide.
   • The middle story was six cubits wide.
   • The third story was seven cubits wide.
   • He made offset ledges around the outside of the house.
   • The offsets were made so that the beams would not be fastened into the walls of the house.
7. 6:7
   • The house was built of whole stone made ready before it was brought to the site.
   • No hammer, axe, or any iron tool was heard in the house while it was being built.
8. 6:8
   • The doorway of the middle side chamber was on the right side of the house.
   • The right side is the south side.
   • People went up by winding stairs into the middle story.
   • From the middle story people went up into the third story.
9. 6:9
   • He built the house.
   • He finished the house.
   • He roofed the house with beams and rows of planks of cedar.
10. 6:10
    • He built the structure of chambers against the whole house.
    • Each story of the structure was five cubits high.
    • The structure was fastened to the house with cedar timber.
11. 6:11
    • The word of the LORD came to Solomon.
12. 6:12
    • The LORD spoke concerning the house Solomon was building.
    • The LORD said: if you walk in my statutes.
    • The LORD said: if you carry out my judgments.
    • The LORD said: if you keep all my commandments to walk in them.
    • The LORD said he would then establish with Solomon the word he spoke to David his father.
    • The LORD had spoken a word to David, Solomon's father.
13. 6:13
    • The LORD said he would dwell among the children of Israel.
    • The LORD said he would not forsake his people Israel.
    • The LORD called Israel his people.
14. 6:14
    • Solomon built the house.
    • Solomon finished the house.
15. 6:15
    • He built the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar.
    • The cedar covered from the floor of the house up to the walls of the ceiling.
    • He covered the interior with wood.
    • He covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress.
16. 6:16
    • He built off twenty cubits at the rear of the house with boards of cedar, from the floor to the walls.
    • He built this within the house as an inner sanctuary.
    • The inner sanctuary was for the most holy place.
17. 6:17
    • The house, that is the main hall in front of the inner sanctuary, was forty cubits long.
18. 6:18
    • The cedar on the inside of the house was carved with gourds and open flowers.
    • Everything was cedar.
    • No stone was visible.
19. 6:19
    • He prepared an inner sanctuary inside the house.
    • The inner sanctuary was prepared to place there the ark of the covenant of the LORD.
20. 6:20
    • The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long.
    • The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits wide.
    • The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits high.
    • He overlaid it with pure gold.
    • He overlaid an altar of cedar.
21. 6:21
    • Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold.
    • He drew chains of gold across in front of the inner sanctuary.
    • He overlaid it with gold.
22. 6:22
    • He overlaid the whole house with gold until all the house was finished.
    • He overlaid with gold the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary.
23. 6:23
    • In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim.
    • The cherubim were made of olive wood.
    • Each cherub was ten cubits high.
24. 6:24
    • One wing of the cherub was five cubits.
    • The other wing of the cherub was five cubits.
    • From the tip of one wing to the tip of the other wing was ten cubits.
25. 6:25
    • The second cherub was ten cubits.
    • Both cherubim were of one measure.
    • Both cherubim were of one shape.
26. 6:26
    • The height of the one cherub was ten cubits.
    • The height of the second cherub was ten cubits.
27. 6:27
    • He set the cherubim inside the inner room of the house.
    • The wings of the cherubim were spread out.
    • The wing of the one cherub touched one wall.
    • The wing of the second cherub touched the other wall.
    • Their wings met in the middle of the room, wing touching wing.
28. 6:28
    • He overlaid the cherubim with gold.
29. 6:29
    • He carved all the walls of the house all around with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers.
    • The carving was done in both the inner room and the outer room.
30. 6:30
    • He overlaid the floor of the house with gold.
    • The gold overlay was in both the inner room and the outer room.
31. 6:31
    • For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made doors of olive wood.
    • The lintel and doorposts were a fifth part, though whether this means five-sided or a fifth of the wall is uncertain.
32. 6:32
    • The two doors were of olive wood.
    • He carved on them carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers.
    • He overlaid them with gold.
    • He spread the gold over the cherubim and over the palm trees.
33. 6:33
    • He did the same for the entrance of the main hall.
    • He made doorposts of olive wood for it.
    • They were a fourth part, though whether this means four-sided or a fourth of the wall is uncertain.
34. 6:34
    • The two doors were of cypress wood.
    • The two leaves of the one door were folding.
    • The two leaves of the other door were folding.
35. 6:35
    • He carved on them cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers.
    • He overlaid them with gold.
    • The gold was fitted evenly over the carved work.
36. 6:36
    • He built the inner court.
    • The inner court was built with three rows of hewn stone and one row of cedar beams.
37. 6:37
    • The foundation of the house of the LORD was laid in the fourth year.
    • The foundation was laid in the month Ziv.
38. 6:38
    • In the eleventh year, in the month Bul, the house was finished.
    • The month Bul is the eighth month.
    • The house was finished in all its parts and according to all its specifications.
    • Solomon was seven years building the house.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"The house of the LORD" is the temple. Hebrew uses the ordinary word for a dwelling-house: the building is spoken of throughout as a residence for God, not as a meeting hall for worshipers, who stayed in the courtyards outside. (Zif (also spelled Ziv) is an old Canaanite-style month name, used only here in the Bible; the writer adds "which is the second month" because by his day Israelites numbered their months instead of naming them. It falls in our April–May. Solomon's fourth year is usually dated to around 966 BC.) The figure of 480 years is the Bible's one direct statement of the gap between the exodus and the temple. It is exactly twelve times forty, and forty is the standard round number for a generation, so scholars disagree over whether it is a literal total or a schematic one; the text itself does not say.

6:2

A cubit was the distance from elbow to fingertip, about eighteen inches (45 cm). The building was therefore roughly 90 feet long, 30 wide, and 45 high (27 x 9 x 13.5 m), small by the standards of ancient temples, since crowds never went inside.

6:3

A porch here means a roofed entrance chamber, open at the front, running the full width of the building, a standard feature of temples in Syria and Canaan, which were typically entered through a shallow vestibule like this.

6:4

The point of "narrow lights" is that the openings were splayed: narrow on the outside and wider within, or wider outside and narrowing in. The Hebrew phrase is unusual and its exact sense is uncertain.

6:5

The King James word for the inner room is "oracle," which in 1611 meant the place where God speaks, not a prediction. Modern translations render the same Hebrew word as "inner sanctuary."

6:6

The wall was built in steps, each stage slightly thinner than the one below, leaving a ledge the floor beams of the side rooms could rest on. That way no beam had to be cut into the temple wall itself, so the sanctuary wall was never pierced.

6:7

Dressing stone means cutting and squaring it. Doing all of it at the quarry was practical, less weight to haul, but the writer's interest is the silence: no iron was heard at the site. Israelite law required altar stones to be untouched by iron tools (Exodus 20:25), and iron carried associations with weapons and war.

6:8

"The right side" is right as you face east, the direction the temple faced; that is the south side, which is how modern translations render it.

6:9

Cedar came from Lebanon, bought from King Hiram of Tyre (chapter 5). It was the prestige timber of the ancient Near East, fragrant, resistant to rot and insects, and expensive because it had to be shipped and hauled inland.

6:11

"The word of the LORD came to Solomon" is the Bible's usual way of saying God gave someone a message.

6:12

The promise to David is the one recorded in 2 Samuel 7, where God tells David that his son will build the temple and that his dynasty will be established. Here it is restated with a condition attached.

6:15

"Fir" in the King James translates a Hebrew tree name whose identity is uncertain; cypress and juniper are the usual modern guesses. It was a hardwood used for flooring and doors.

6:16

The Most Holy Place (literally "the holy of holies," a Hebrew way of forming a superlative) was the innermost room, kept dark and empty except for the ark. Under Israelite law only the high priest entered it, and only once a year.

6:17

"The temple" here is used in its narrow sense for the main hall only, the long room in front of the inner sanctuary, not for the whole complex. The King James uses the word both ways in this chapter.

6:18

"Knops" is an old English word for knobs or buds; the Hebrew word suggests gourd shapes. Palm trees, flowers and gourds were common decorative motifs in the region, and evoke a garden.

6:19

The ark of the covenant was a gold-covered wooden chest, about four feet long, carried on poles. It held the stone tablets of the law and had traveled with Israel since the wilderness, housed until now in a tent.

6:20

"Covered" means overlaid: thin sheets of gold hammered over wood, not solid gold. The cedar altar in the inner room is the incense altar. Its placement is described inconsistently in the Bible: elsewhere it stands in the main hall just outside the inner room, and the Hebrew here is ambiguous about which side of the partition it belonged to.

6:21

The gold chains stretched across the entrance of the inner room, marking it off. Other accounts describe a woven curtain there instead; the two are not necessarily in conflict, but the text does not explain the relationship.

6:23

Cherubim (the plural of cherub; the King James "cherubims" doubles the plural ending) were not infants. In ancient Near Eastern art they are composite winged creatures (often a lion or bull body, wings, and a human face) placed as guardians beside thrones and doorways. Here two of them, each about fifteen feet high, stand over the ark, and their outstretched wings span the full twenty-cubit width of the room.

6:24

Each cherub stood about fifteen feet high with a wingspan of about fifteen feet, so the two side by side spanned the full thirty-foot width of the room.

6:27

The room was twenty cubits wide, and each cherub's wings spread ten cubits. Side by side, the four wings stretched exactly wall to wall.

6:29

Carved palm trees and open flowers were standard temple decoration across the region, evoking a garden. "Within and without" here means in the inner room and in the outer hall, not indoors and outdoors.

6:31

The Hebrew here is obscure. It may describe a five-sided or five-tiered recessed doorframe, or state that the doorway took up a fifth of the wall's width; translators are divided, and the plain rendering picks one of the possibilities.

6:33

Same obscure construction as verse 31, with "four" instead of "five", either a four-sided frame or a proportion of the wall.

6:34

Folding panels means each door leaf was itself hinged in two, so it could concertina back against the wall, a way of opening a wide doorway in a shallow space.

6:36

Three courses of stone topped by a course of timber was a recognized building technique in the region; the wooden layer gave the wall some flexibility, which helped it survive earth tremors.

6:38

Bul is another old Canaanite-style month name, our October–November. Fourth year to eleventh year is seven years by the ancient way of counting, which includes both the year work started and the year it ended, even though neither was a full twelve months.