1 Kings 7:5-20

⁵All the doorways and door casings had rectangular frames, the openings facing each other in sets of three.

⁶He also had the Hall of Columns made—forty cubits long and thirty cubits wide. It had a porch in front, its canopy also supported by columns.

⁷The throne room where he sat as judge was called the Hall of Justice, lined with cedar panels from floor to ceiling.

⁸Solomon's own palace where he lived was in a courtyard behind the porch, made in a similar way to the Temple. He also had a palace made for Pharaoh's daughter, whom he'd married.

⁹All these buildings were built using stone blocks that were expensive to produce. They were cut to size and trimmed with saws on the inside and outside. These stones were used from the foundation to the eaves, from the outside of the building all the way to the great courtyard.

¹⁰The foundations were laid with very large top-quality stones, between eight and ten cubits long.

¹¹On these were placed top-quality stones, cut to size, along with cedar timber.

¹²Around the great courtyard, the inner courtyard, and the porch of the Lord's Temple were three courses of dressed stone and a course of cedar beams.

¹³King Solomon sent for Hiram from Tyre.

¹⁴He was the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was from Tyre, a craftsman who worked in bronze. Hiram had great expertise, understanding and being familiar with all kinds of bronze work. He came to King Solomon and carried out all that the king required.

¹⁵He cast two columns in bronze. They were both eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in circumference.

¹⁶He also cast two capitals in bronze to place on top of the columns. Each capital was five cubits high.

¹⁷He made a network of lattice of interlinked chains for both capitals, seven for each one.

¹⁸Around the lattice network he made two rows of ornamental pomegranates to cover the capitals on the top of both the columns.

¹⁹The capitals placed on top of columns in the porch were in the shape of lilies, four cubits high.

²⁰On the capitals of both columns were the two hundred pomegranates in rows that encircled them, just above the rounded part that was next to the chain network.