When was Solomon’s Temple built?

Begun in the month of Ziv

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build Yahweh’s house.

Few dates in the Bible are this precise. Ziv is the spring month of April to May. Solomon’s reign is usually dated about 970 to 931 BC, which puts the start around 966 BC. The 480 years back to the Exodus are less sure: many scholars read them as twelve generations of forty years, a round figure rather than a count.

The work had begun before the first stone was laid. Hiram of Tyre floated cedar down the coast, and Solomon drafted thirty thousand Israelites to cut it, ten thousand a month in Lebanon (1 Kings 5:13–14). Stone was dressed at the quarry, so no iron tool was heard at the site (6:7).

Seven years, then a feast

The house was finished “in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month” (6:38): seven and a half years, which the text rounds to seven. Solomon’s palace took thirteen (7:1). The dedication waited for the feast in the month Ethanim, the seventh month (8:2), the autumn Feast of Tabernacles, at least eleven months after the builders finished. The priests carried in the Ark, and a cloud filled the house (8:10). On the usual dating, the Temple stood complete by about 959 BC.

Four centuries of raids and repairs

Solomon’s gold did not stay long. Kings keeps the record:

• About 925 BC. Five years after Solomon’s death, Pharaoh Shishak carries off the treasures of the Temple and the palace, gold shields and all (14:25–26).
• Asa sends the silver and gold left in its treasuries to the king of Damascus to buy an alliance (15:18).
• Joash. The priest Jehoiada sets a chest with a hole in its lid beside the altar, and the money pays for repairs (2 Kings 12:9–12).
• Ahaz, about 732 BC, builds a new altar copied from one he saw in Damascus (16:10–16).
• Hezekiah, in 701 BC, strips the gold from its doors to pay Assyria (18:16).
• Manasseh builds altars to the stars in its two courts (21:5).
• Josiah, in 622 BC, repairs it again, and the high priest finds a book of the law inside (22:3–8).
• 597 BC. Nebuchadnezzar takes the treasures and cuts up Solomon’s gold vessels (24:13).

How long it stood

On the usual dating, Solomon’s house stood about 370 years, from about 959 BC until the summer of 587 or 586 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar’s captain of the guard, Nebuzaradan, burned it along with the city (2 Kings 25:8–9). The bronze pillars and the great basin were broken up and hauled to Babylon (25:13). How it fell, and how a second temple fell to Rome in AD 70, is the subject of when the Temple was destroyed. Of Solomon’s building itself, nothing has been identified: the Western Wall is Herod’s.