1 Kings 8:3-16

³When they had all arrived, the priests lifted up the Sacred Chest

⁴and brought it to the temple. The descendants of Levi who assisted the priests helped them to carry to the temple the Sacred Tent and all the sacred things that had been in the tent.

⁵Then King Solomon and many of the Israeli people who had gathered in front of Yahweh's Sacred Chest sacrificed a huge amount of sheep and oxen. No one was able to count the sacrifices because there were so many.

⁶The the priests then brought the Sacred Chest into the Very Holy Place in the temple, and they placed it under the wings of the statues of the winged creatures.

⁷The wings of those statues spread out over the Sacred Chest and over the poles by which it was carried.

⁸The poles were so long that the ends of the poles could be seen by people who were standing at the entrance to the Most Holy Place, but they could not be seen by people standing outside the temple. Those poles are still there.

⁹The only things that were in the Sacred Chest were the two stone tablets that Moses had put there at Sinai Mountain, where Yahweh made an agreement with the people after they left Egypt.

¹⁰When the priests came out of the temple, suddenly it was filled with a cloud.

¹¹It was rhe glory/radiance of Yahweh that filled the temple, with the result that the priests were not able to continue their work.

¹²Then Solomon prayed this: “Yahweh, you have placed the sun in the sky, but you have decided that you would live in very dark clouds.

¹³I have built for you a magnificent temple, a place for you to live in forever.”

¹⁴Then, while all the people stood there, the king turned around and faced them, and he asked God to bless them.

¹⁵He said, “Praise Yahweh, the God whom we Israelis belong! By his own power he has done what he promised to give to my father David. What he promised was this:

¹⁶From the time that I brought my people out of Egypt, I have never chosen any city in Israel in which a temple should be built for my people to worship me there. But I chose you, David, to rule my people.”