The Building of the First Temple Begins
In the fourth year of Solomon's reign, 480 years after the Exodus, construction of the Temple begins on Mount Moriah. The work will take seven years.
The book of Kings dates the start of construction with unusual precision: "In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign, in the month of Ziv, he began to build the house of the Lord." The site had long been prepared: Araunah's threshing floor on Mount Moriah, bought by David.
Materials came from the north. Hiram king of Tyre supplied cedar and cypress in exchange for wheat and oil, floated down the coast by sea. Solomon imposed a labour levy: thirty thousand men served in shifts in Lebanon, tens of thousands more in the quarries.
One detail is spelled out in the text: the stones were finished at the quarry, "so that no hammer or axe or any iron tool was heard in the house while it was being built." Behind this stands the Torah's law that iron must not be lifted over the stones of the altar, because iron shortens life while the altar lengthens it.
The house itself was not large: sixty cubits by twenty by thirty, with three storeys of side chambers around it. Inside, cedar panelling carved with flowers and overlaid with gold; in the Holy of Holies two olive-wood cherubim ten cubits high, their wings touching the walls and each other. The work took seven years.
How we know
On the chronology
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.
Sources
Tanakh
- Melachim I 5:15–32 — the treaty with Chiram and the labour levy
- Melachim I 6 — the date — 480 years from the Exodus, the month of Ziv; the dimensions and seven years of building
- Divrei HaYamim II 2–3 — “on Mount Moriah, at the threshing floor of Ornan” — the anchoring of the site
- Shemot 20:22 — the ban on raising iron over the stones of the altar
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sotah 48b — the shamir, with which the stones were cut
- Gittin 68a–68b — how Shlomo obtained the shamir: the tale of Ashmedai
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
King David · King Solomon · Gibeon · Temple Mount · The Mishkan · The Temple