Solomon's Temple
The tabernacle in stone — its proportions doubled, its glory made permanent, its ark at last at rest.
What Moses raised in acacia and linen, Solomon raised in cedar and hewn stone. The house itself measured sixty cubits by twenty, with a porch of twenty by ten before it. The inner sanctuary — the oracle — was a twenty-cubit cube overlaid with pure gold, and within it stood two immense cherubim of olive wood, wings touching from wall to wall. Two great bronze pillars, Jachin and Boaz, stood before the porch.
"The cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister" (1 Kings 8:10–11). It was the same cloud that had rested on the tabernacle, at rest at last.
It stood for nearly four hundred years. In 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon burned it, broke its bronze, and carried its remaining vessels into exile (2 Kings 25).