2 Chronicles 3

What happens in this chapter

Chronicles gives the place before the plan: Solomon builds on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, where the LORD had appeared to David. Work starts on the second day of the second month of his fourth year, and the measurements follow in cubits 'after the first measure': sixty by twenty for the house, and a porch twenty cubits across with a height given as a hundred and twenty, overlaid inside with gold. The most holy place is twenty cubits square, covered with six hundred talents of fine gold, with gold nails and two cherubim whose wings reach from wall to wall. Then come the veil of blue, purple, crimson and fine linen with cherubim worked on it, and two pillars before the house, Jachin and Boaz, thirty-five cubits high.

What the lab shows, and where to look

Solomon's Temple lab starts this chapter outside, at Mount Moriah. The threshing-floor site is textual; the shape of the hill and the city around it are reconstruction, and the card notes that only Chronicles links the site with Abraham's 'land of Moriah'. Go to The porch next: the lab draws it thirty cubits high, level with the house, which is neither the Hebrew 120 nor the 20 of some ancient versions, and it marks the height as speculative. Inside, The veil hangs just behind the open doors, a way of showing both Kings' doors and Chronicles' veil. Temples Side by Side sets Solomon's house beside the others, and Jerusalem Through the Ages has the threshing floor of Araunah in David's city.

• Mount Moriah · Solomon's Temple
• The porch (ulam) · Solomon's Temple
• The veil · Solomon's Temple
• Solomon's Temple · Temples Side by Side
• The threshing floor of Araunah · Jerusalem Through the Ages

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