1 Kings 6:8

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

side: Heb. shoulder

went up: Ezekiel 41:6, Ezekiel 41:7

Reciprocal: 2 Kings 11:2 - in the bedchamber Ezekiel 40:6 - stairs Ezekiel 40:38 - the chambers Ezekiel 42:6 - General Ezekiel 43:17 - look toward

Cross-References

Genesis 6:12
And God looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt; for all living creatures on the earth had corrupted their ways.

Genesis 6:17
And behold, I will bring floodwaters upon the earth, to destroy every creature under the heavens that has the breath of life. Everything on the earth will perish.

Genesis 19:19
Your servant has indeed found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness by sparing my life. But I cannot run to the mountains; the disaster will overtake me, and I will die.

Psalms 84:11
For the LORD God is a sun and a shield; the LORD gives grace and glory; He withholds no good thing from those who walk with integrity.

Psalms 145:20
The LORD preserves all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy.

Proverbs 3:4
Then you will find favor and high regard in the sight of God and man.

Proverbs 8:35
For whoever finds me finds life and obtains the favor of the LORD;

Proverbs 12:2
The good man obtains favor from the LORD, but the LORD condemns a man who devises evil.

Jeremiah 31:2
This is what the LORD says: "The people who survived the sword found favor in the wilderness when Israel went to find rest."

Luke 1:30
So the angel told her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

The door of the middle chamber [was] in the right side of the house,.... The south side of it:

and they went up with winding stairs into the middle [chamber]; which were outside the chambers, and which winded about for the sake of taking up less room, and which led up to the door of the middle chamber, on the south of which they went into it; according to the Vulgate Latin and Tigurine versions, they went up in the forth of a cockle, or the shell of a snail; in like manner as was the ascent of the temple of Pan at Alexandria, as Strabo u relates:

and out of the middle into the third; the third chamber, and by winding stairs up to that; and the like might be on the north side, though not expressed, and on the west: the Jews say w, that in the second temple, these winding stairs went from the northeast to the northwest, whereby they went up to the roof of the chambers, and so to the south and west; with this compare Ezekiel 41:7; and which may represent the windings and turnings of God's people in this present state, their many afflictions and tribulations, through which they pass from one state to another.

u Geograph. l. 17. p. 547. w Misn. Middot, c. 4. sect. 5. See Lightfoot's Prospect of the Temple, &c. c. 12. p. 1071.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The door for the middle chamber - i. e., the door which gave access to the mid-most “set of chambers.” The chambers on the ground-floor were possibly reached each by their own door in the outer wall of the lean-to. The middle and upper floors were reached by a single door in the right or south wall, from which a winding staircase ascended to the second tier, while another ascended from the second to the third. The door to the stairs was in the outer wall of the building, not in the wall between the chambers and the temple. That would have desecrated the temple far more than the insertion of beams.