|
|
|
|
|
The Temple....
|
The crowning achievement of King Solomon's reign was the
erection of a magnificent Temple (Beit ha-Midkash) in
Jerusalem. His father,
King David, had wanted to build a great Temple for God a generation earlier,
as a permanent resting place for the Ark containing the Ten Commandments. A
divine edict, however, had forbidden him from doing so. "You will not build
a house for My name," God said to him, "for you are a man of battles and
have shed blood" (I Chronicles 28:3).
|
|
 |
|
The Bible's description of
Solomon's Temple suggests that
the inside ceiling was was 180 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 50 feet high.
The highest point on the Temple that King Solomon built was actually 120
cubits tall (about 20 stories or about 207 feet). According to the Tanach
(II Chronicles):
3:3 The length by cubits after the ancient measure was threescore cubits,
and the breadth twenty cubits.
3:4 And the porch that was before the house, the length of it, according to
the breadth of the house, was twenty cubits, and the height a hundred and
twenty; and he overlaid it within with pure gold. |
|
|
|
|
|
The Holy of
Holies from inside
|
|
He spares no expense in the building's creation. He
orders vast quantities of cedar from King Hiram of Tyre (I Kings 5:2025),
has huge blocks of the choicest stone quarried, and commands that the
building's foundation be laid with hewn stone. To complete the massive
project, he imposes forced labor on all his subjects, drafting people for
work shifts lasting a month at a time. Some 3,300 officials are appointed to
oversee the Temple's erection (5:2730). Solomon assumes such heavy debts in
building the Temple that he is forced to pay off King Hiram with twenty
towns in the Galilee (I Kings 9:11). |
|
|
|
|
Until the Temple was destroyed by the
Babylonians some
four hundred years later, in 586 B.C.E., sacrifice was the predominant mode
of divine service there. Seventy years later, a second Temple was built on
the same site, and sacrifices again resumed. During the first century B.C.E.,
Herod greatly enlarged and expanded this Temple. The Second Temple was
destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., after the failure of the Great Revolt. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
