The Temple

It is the Day of Atonement, when the Jerusalem Temple was ritually purified. Priests are serving in the courtyard outside. On this day only the High Priest is permitted inside the building, where he is burning incense, creating a cloud of fragrant smoke preparatory to entering the Holy of Holies.

Not one stone survives of the Temple Solomon built in Jerusalem during the tenth century B.C.E (the First Temple). This reconstruction is based on biblical descriptions, comparable temples excavated in Syria and examples of decoration from Phoenician and Syrian art.

Reconstruction of the enterior of Solomon's Temple. (Reconstruction © Lawrence E. Stager 2003. Painting: Christopher Evans.)

The Temple was built on a platform and surrounded by a courtyard. The garden planted in this courtyard included olive and plane trees, date palms and even cedars of Lebanon. In front of the Temple stood a great sacrificial altar and the Sea, a gigantic bronze basin supported by twelve bronze oxen. On either side of the platform were five much smaller basins set in wheeled stands, also of bronze. Nehushtan, the bronze seraph, or winged cobra, said to have been fashioned by Moses, was displayed here on a standard.

A monumental staircase ascended to the building's portico, where two forty-foot-high pillars, cast in bronze, supported the broad lintel. These remarkable pillars had names, Jachin ("he establishes") and Boaz ("in strength"), referring to the Temple itself or to the House of David, or to both together.

A doorway led from the portico into the main room, some seventy feet long. Clerestory windows just below the coffered ceiling admitted light. Palmettes, stylized palm trees, decorated the cedar-paneled walls, along with rosettes and colocynths (wild gourds). Carved sphinxes, the cherubim, protected the holy space. The walls and floor were covered in gold leaf. Here stood an incense altar, ten lamp stands and a table, all of gold.

Reconstruction of the interior of Solomon's Temple. (Reconstruction © Lawrence E. Stager 2003. Painting: Christopher Evans.)

Seraphim kept watch above the doors into the Holy of Holies. Two huge cherubim stood inside, each more than seventeen feet tall and with outstretched wings that spanned the width of the room. These great beasts formed the throne of the invisible Yahweh. The Ark of the Covenant, in the middle of the floor in front of them, served as the divine footstool. As in the main room, everything in the Holy of Holies was sheathed in gold.

Around the sides and back of the Temple were three stories of storerooms and treasuries.