2 Chronicles3chapter 3

The first verse names the site three ways at once: Mount Moriah, the place where the LORD appeared to David, and the threshing floor of Ornan. This is the only passage in Scripture that puts the name Moriah on the temple hill, which ties the altar to the mountain where Abraham was sent to offer Isaac and where a ram was provided instead.

The measurements are given with a note that the cubit is 'of the former measure.' Cubits varied — the older long cubit ran about twenty and a half inches, the later short one about seventeen and a half — so the writer flags which standard he means, exactly as a modern text might specify which gallon.

The main hall is overlaid with gold, the beams and doors and walls carved with palm trees and chains and cherubim, and the finest gold is called gold of Parvaim, a source name whose location is no longer known. In the innermost room two carved cherubim stand with their wings touching each other in the middle and reaching the walls on either side, spanning the full width of the room.

The curtain of blue, purple, crimson, and fine linen with cherubim worked into it repeats the tabernacle's veil, which is the point — the new house keeps the old pattern. The porch height given in the Hebrew text is unusually large and most take it as a copying slip in the numeral, since the figure does not fit the rest of the building.

The two bronze pillars at the entrance carried names: Jachin, 'he will establish,' and Boaz, 'in him is strength.' Free-standing pillars at temple doors are known from Phoenician sites; here they were given sentences to say.