A Word Concerning This House
23 In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olive wood, each ten cubits high. 24 Five cubits was the length of one wing of the cherub, and five cubits was the length of the other wing of the cherub. From the tip of one wing to the tip of the other was ten cubits. 25 The other cherub was ten cubits. Both the cherubim were of one measure and one form. 26 One cherub was ten cubits high, and so was the other cherub. 27 He set the cherubim within the inner house. The wings of the cherubim were stretched out, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall; and their wings touched one another in the middle of the house. 28 He overlaid the cherubim with gold. 29 He carved all the walls of the house around with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, inside and outside. 30 He overlaid the floor of the house with gold, inside and outside. 31 For the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood. The lintel and door posts were a fifth part of the wall. 32 So he made two doors of olive wood; and he carved on them carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, and overlaid them with gold. He spread the gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees. 33 He also made the entrance of the temple door posts of olive wood, out of a fourth part of the wall, 34 and two doors of cypress wood. The two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding. 35 He carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers; and he overlaid them with gold fitted on the engraved work. 36 He built the inner court with three courses of cut stone and a course of cedar beams. 37 The foundation of Yahweh’s house was laid in the fourth year, in the month Ziv. 38 In the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished throughout all its parts and according to all its specifications. So he spent seven years building it.
Two olive-wood giants with touching wings fill the inner room — and the seven-year work is dated to the month, without a word of self-congratulation.
In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olive wood, each ten cubits high.
The scale is the surprise. The tabernacle's cherubim were small figures worked into the ends of the ark's cover Exodus 25:18–19; these are fifteen feet tall, wings spread thirty feet from wall to wall, meeting in the middle over the place where the ark will stand 1 Kings 6:27. The old mercy seat is not replaced — it goes underneath them — but the guardians of the throne have been enlarged to fill the room.
What that does to a visitor's sense of the place is the point of it. The inner sanctuary is a twenty-cubit cube, gold on every surface, dominated by two figures whose wings touch both walls. Nobody entered it but the high priest, once a year Leviticus 16:2; the room was built to be occupied by God and known about by everyone else.
He carved all the walls of the house around with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, inside and outside.
The garden motif runs everywhere — walls, doors, both rooms — and this is not decoration chosen for beauty alone. Palms and flowers and guardian figures put the worshiper, symbolically, back at the gate of Eden, and the whole apparatus of sacrifice is about the terms on which that gate is approached. The last chapters of Scripture take the same imagery and remove the barrier: a city with the tree of life in it, and no temple at all, because God is its temple Revelation 21:22 Revelation 22:2.
He built the inner court with three courses of cut stone and a course of cedar beams.
The graded structure — outer court, inner court, holy place, inner sanctuary — is a diagram of holiness in architecture. Each layer admits fewer people, and the direction of travel is always inward toward a room nobody may enter. That is the arrangement the New Testament reports as ended by a torn curtain Matthew 27:51 Hebrews 10:19–20, and the architecture is what makes the tearing meaningful.
In the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished throughout all its parts and according to all its specifications. So he spent seven years building it.
The closing verse is dated to the month and says two things without comment. The work was completed according to all its specifications — done as designed, not improvised. And it took seven years, which the reader is expected to hold in mind for exactly one verse, because the next sentence in the book reports that Solomon spent thirteen years on his own house 1 Kings 7:1. The narrator sets the two numbers side by side and says nothing at all about them.
settled What this mark means