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Solomon’s Magnificent Temple
For seven years Jerusalem was filled with busy workers leveling
the chosen site of the temple, building huge retaining walls, lay-
ing broad foundations, shaping timbers brought from the Lebanon
forests, and constructing the magnificent sanctuary. See
1 Kings
5:17
. At the same time the furnishings were being made under the
leadership of Hiram of Tyre, “a skillful man, ... skilled to work in
gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, purple and blue,
fine linen and crimson.”
2 Chronicles 2:13, 14
.
The building on Mount Moriah went up noiselessly with “stone
finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool
was heard in the temple while it was being built.”
1 Kings 6:7
. Its
beautiful furnishings included the altar of incense, the table of show-
bread, the lampstand and lamps, with the vessels and instruments
connected with the holy place, all of “purest gold.”
2 Chronicles
4:21
. The bronze altar of burnt offering, the laver supported by
twelve oxen, with many other vessels—“in the plain of Jordan the
king had them cast in clay molds.”
2 Chronicles 4:17
.
The Surpassing Beauty of the Temple
The palatial building Solomon constructed for God and His wor-
ship had no rival in its splendor. Adorned with precious stones and
lined with carved cedar and smoothed gold, the temple with its rich
furnishings was a suitable emblem of the living church of God on
earth, which through the ages has been building with materials that
have been compared to “gold, silver, [and] precious stones,” “sculp-
tured in palace style.”
1 Corinthians 3:12
;
Psalm 144:12
. Christ is
“the chief Cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted
together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”
Ephesians 2:20, 21
.
At last the temple was completed. “All that came into his heart to
make in the house of the Lord,” Solomon had “successfully accom-
plished.”
2 Chronicles 7:11
. Now, in order that the palace crowning
20