II Chronicles 3, Construction of the Temple

Solomon has been crowned king and is preparing to build a permanent temple to God in Jerusalem. The date is about 966 BC.

2 Chronicles 3: 1-7, Building the temple

Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David. He began building on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign.

The foundation Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide (using the cubit of the old standard). The portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits long across the width of the building and twenty cubits high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold. He paneled the main hall with pine and covered it with fine gold and decorated it with palm tree and chain designs. He adorned the temple with precious stones. And the gold he used was gold of Parvaim. He overlaid the ceiling beams, doorframes, walls and doors of the temple with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls.

We are given details of the extravagance used in building the temple. Payne suggests that the second month of the fourth year of Solomon's reign is in the spring of 966 BC.

The temple will be built on Mount Moriah. Mount Moriah has an ancient history. It is where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22) and more recently (and important for the author of Chronicles) it is where the angel of YHWH appeared in David's time, during the three day plague (1 Chronicles 21: 18-30.)

Apparently (says Payne) the "old standard" cubit was longer than the cubit of the Second Temple period. In Ezekiel 40: 5 we have the long cubit defined as the short cubit plus "one handbreadth". 

The Masoretic Text has the temple height as 120 cubits instead of 20 cubits. Twenty long cubits is probably about 33-35 feet; 120 cubits is about 200 feet (approximately 20 stories?) difficult to imagine in the architecture of that day. (A 200 foot tall temple would place it among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, twice as tall as the Colossus of Rhodes.)

The temple is "adorned... with precious stones." Payne suggests that this was probably a mosaic inlaid floor.

2 Chronicles 3: 8-17, The Most Holy Place

He built the Most Holy Place, its length corresponding to the width of the temple--twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. He overlaid the inside with six hundred talents of fine gold. The gold nails weighed fifty shekels. He also overlaid the upper parts with gold.

In the Most Holy Place he made a pair of sculptured cherubim and overlaid them with gold. The total wingspan of the cherubim was twenty cubits. One wing of the first cherub was five cubits long and touched the temple wall, while its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the other cherub. Similarly one wing of the second cherub was five cubits long and touched the other temple wall, and its other wing, also five cubits long, touched the wing of the first cherub. The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits. They stood on their feet, facing the main hall.

He made the curtain of blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it.

In the front of the temple he made two pillars, which [together] were thirty-five cubits long, each with a capital on top measuring five cubits. He made interwoven chains and put them on top of the pillars. He also made a hundred pomegranates and attached them to the chains.

He erected the pillars in the front of the temple, one to the south and one to the north. The one to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz.

There were two cherubim, placed side by side in the temple, with a wing of one cherub touching a wing of the second. The total wingspan of the two sculptured cherubim was 20 (long) cubits, about 35 feet! 

The curtain is to separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (see Exodus 26: 31-33.)

This chapter includes material overlapping with 1 Kings 6.