The Dedication of the First Temple

The dedication was set for the month of Ethanim—Tishrei, the season of the autumn festivals. Elders and tribal heads assembled from all Israel. The Ark was brought up from the City of David into the inner sanctuary, beneath the wings of the cherubim; its poles were so long that their ends could be seen from behind the curtain. Inside it, the text says, there was nothing but the two stone tablets Moses had placed there.

When the priests came out, a cloud filled the House and they could not stand to serve: "the glory of the Lord filled the house."

Then Solomon stood before the altar, spread his hands toward heaven, and prayed the prayer that defines what a Temple is for. Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, how much less this house; yet may Your eyes be open toward this place, and hear and forgive every prayer directed here. He listed seven situations—disputes, defeat in war, drought, famine and plague, captivity—and added a plea for the foreigner who comes from a distant land for the sake of Your name.

The offerings were beyond counting. They kept seven days of dedication and the seven days of Sukkot, and on the eighth Solomon sent the people home, glad and good-hearted.

Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.