¹ Solomon then began building the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where David his father had had a vision -- on the site which David had prepared -- on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

² He began building it on the second day of the second month of the fourth year of his reign.

³ These are the dimensions which Solomon fixed for the structure of the house of God: its length in cubits, according to the old standard, was sixty cubits and its width twenty cubits;

⁴ and the portico in front of the house was the full width of the house, that is, twenty cubits, and its height was a hundred and twenty cubits; on the inside he overlaid it with pure gold.

⁵ The Great Hall he lined with juniper, which he overlaid with fine gold and ornamented with palm trees and festoons,

⁶ and he decorated the hall beautifully with precious stones and with gold from Parvaim,

⁷ overlaying the hall, its beams and its thresholds, its walls and its doors, with gold and engraving the walls with great winged creatures.

⁸ He also made the Holy of Holies, the length of which corresponded to the width of the Great Hall, being twenty cubits, with a width of twenty cubits, and this he overlaid with fine gold weighing six hundred talents,

⁹ while the weight of the gold nails was fifty shekels. He also overlaid the upper rooms with gold.

¹⁰ In the Holy of Holies he modelled two winged creatures of wrought metal work and overlaid them with gold.

¹¹ The total span of their wings was twenty cubits; one wing, being five cubits long, touched the wall of the house and the other wing, being five cubits long, touched the wing of the other winged creature;

¹² while one wing of the other, five cubits long, touched the other wall of the house and the other wing, five cubits long, touched the wing of the other winged creature.

¹³ The spread of these creatures' wings was twenty cubits. They stood in an upright position, with their faces towards the Hall.

¹⁴ He also made the Curtain of violet, scarlet, crimson and fine linen, working a design of winged creatures on it.

¹⁵ In front of the Hall he made two pillars thirty-five cubits high, and on the top of each a capital measuring five cubits.

¹⁶ He made festoons, in the Debir, to go at the tops of the pillars, and made a hundred pomegranates to go on the festoons.

¹⁷ He erected the pillars in front of the Temple, one on the right, the other on the left; the one on the right he called Jachin and the one on the left, Boaz.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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