1 Kings 6:7

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt, in the month of Ziv, the second month of the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, he began to build the house of the LORD. ²The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. ³The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple was twenty cubits long, extending across the width of the temple and projecting out ten cubits in front of the temple. ⁴He also had narrow windows framed high in the temple. ⁵Against the walls of the temple and the inner sanctuary, Solomon built a chambered structure all around the temple, in which he constructed the side rooms. ⁶The bottom floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits, and the third floor seven cubits. He also placed offset ledges all around the outside of the temple, so that nothing would be inserted into its walls. ⁷The temple was constructed using finished stones cut at the quarry, so that no hammer, chisel, or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.⁸The entrance to the bottom floor was on the south side of the temple. A stairway led up to the middle level, and from there to the third floor. ⁹So Solomon built the temple and finished it, roofing it with beams and planks of cedar. ¹⁰He built chambers all along the temple, each five cubits high and attached to the temple with beams of cedar.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

built of stone: 1 Kings 5:17, 1 Kings 5:18, Deuteronomy 27:5, Deuteronomy 27:6, Proverbs 24:27, Romans 9:23, 2 Corinthians 5:5, Colossians 1:12, 1 Peter 2:5

neither hammer: Isaiah 42:2, Acts 9:31, James 1:20, James 3:17, James 3:18

Reciprocal: 1 Chronicles 22:2 - masons 2 Chronicles 8:16 - General Ephesians 2:21 - fitly

Cross-References

Genesis 6:1
Now when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them,

Genesis 6:2
the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.

Genesis 6:3
So the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years."

Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and afterward as well, when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.

Genesis 6:20
Two of every kind of bird and animal and crawling creature will come to you to be kept alive.

Genesis 6:22
So Noah did everything precisely as God had commanded him.

Psalms 37:20
But the wicked and enemies of the LORD will perish like the glory of the fields. They will vanish; like smoke they will fade away.

Proverbs 10:27
The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be shortened.

Proverbs 16:4
The LORD has made everything for His purpose-even the wicked for the day of disaster.

Hosea 4:3
Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And the house, when it was in building,.... And all the while it was building:

was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; being hewn or squared by the builders and stonesquarers of Solomon and Hiram, 1 Kings 5:18; wherefore the builders had nothing more to do than to lay them in their proper places in the building; it was built with these stones quite up to the ceiling, as Josephus says t; and these so admirably polished, and so artificially joined together, that not the least sign of an axe, or of any working tool, could be discerned in them:

so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, [nor] any tool of iron, heard in the house while it was in building; the first of these observations shows, that none are to be laid in the spiritual building of the church, but such as are first hewed and squared by the Spirit, grace, and word of God: or who have an experience of the grace of God, are sound in the faith, and of becoming lives and good conduct; and the other denotes, that such as are therein, whether ministers or members, should do all they do for the edification of the church in a quiet and peaceable manner, without clamour, contention, fights, and tumults.

t Antiqu. l. 8. c. 3. sect. 2.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The spirit of the command (marginal references), was followed. Thus the fabric rose without noise.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 1 Kings 6:7. The house - was built of stone — It appears that every stone was hewn and squared, and its place in the building ascertained, before it came to Jerusalem: the timbers were fitted in like manner. This greatly lessened the trouble and expense of carriage. On this account, that all was prepared at Mount Lebanon, there was neither hammer, axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the building; nothing except mallets to drive the tenons into the mortises, and drive in the pins to fasten them, was necessary: therefore there was no noise. But why is this so particularly marked? Is it not because the temple was a type of the kingdom of God; and the souls of men are to be prepared here for that place of blessedness? There, there is no preaching, exhortations, repentance, ears, cries, nor prayers; the stones must be all squared and fitted here for their place in the New Jerusalem, and, being living stones, must be built up a holy temple for a habitation of God through the Spirit.