Solomon’s temple
Solomon built the house of the LORD in Jerusalem. At its dedication he prayed that even the heaven of heavens could not contain God.
Press play: the paintings change with the story and the words come as the narrator reads them. The whole story is written out below.
Now playing: Solomon’s temple
The whole story
Solomon built the house in seven years on Mount Moriah, of stone made ready before it was brought there, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was building. Its inner sanctuary was overlaid with pure gold, and two great cherubim of olive wood spread their wings across it.
When the priests brought in the ark, the cloud filled the house so that they could not stand to minister. Solomon spread forth his hands toward heaven and prayed that God would hear from heaven whoever prayed toward that house, even the stranger from a far country. The Chronicles say fire came down from heaven and consumed the offerings.
The temple stood nearly four hundred years until the Babylonians burned it in 586 BC. It was rebuilt after the exile, splendidly enlarged by Herod the Great, and destroyed by Rome in AD 70. Its great retaining wall survives, and the Western Wall is a place of prayer for Jews from all over the world.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?
1 Kings 8:27, KJV
Where it happened
Jerusalem.
The city is known; the gold mark is the Temple Mount, where Solomon’s temple stood.
Every story stands at its place on the Worldwide Watch map: the Bible’s world, on the map.
More from the kingdom
Samuel and Kings
Sources and editorial method
Research and editorial references used for this page include:
- The King James Bible, as published by bible-api.com
- The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles (1917), Project Gutenberg
Every story is told from the King James Bible, and from the Book of Enoch in R. H. Charles’s translation (1917) where a story names it. Every quotation was checked word for word against those texts. Where a place is not known, the page says so. The paintings and the narration were made for the house.
