And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of Jehovah.
Two dates anchor this verse: 480 years since Israel walked out of Egypt, and the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Why does Scripture date the temple from a rescue almost five centuries earlier? And why did God wait so long for a settled house?
The clock does not start with David's plans or Solomon's crowning. It starts with Israel's rescue from Egypt. The month named here also carries a meaning:
The Holy Spirit in 1 Kings 6:1 dates the building of the Temple from Israel's deliverance from Egypt. In this way He shows that the Lord was about to make His home among a people saved by sovereign grace. Solomon started the work in the fourth year of his reign, "in the month of Ziv, which is the second month." This month lines up with May. Ziv means "splendour." Spring was in its glory, physically and otherwise.
What Israel sang at the Red Sea now stood in stone. Two men brought it there: one prepared, the other built. That pair pictures Christ's own work:
Four hundred and eighty years have passed since the exodus from Egypt; the Lord's purpose in delivering His people has been reached. What Israel had sung on the shore of the Red Sea is at last realised: "You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established" (Ex. 15:17). The two things named there are pictured by David and by Solomon. To prepare is not the same as to build. It was David who had prepared everything for the construction of the temple (1 Chr. 22:14)... Solomon built. The Saviour "prepares"; the Lord "establishes by His hands." God prepared the materials for His dwelling with men and for carrying out all His purposes. They are the fruit of the sufferings and rejection of the true David.
Israel had no temple through the desert years, the wars of Canaan, the judges, or David's reign. The reason is not delay, but what a settled home requires:
David could not build this house. There had to be peace first (v. 3), before the Lord could make His lasting home among His people. As long as they wandered in the desert, the Lord joined Himself to them in the tabernacle, sharing their life as pilgrims and travellers. Then followed the wars of Canaan under Joshua and the judges; these had not ceased until the reign of David. God cannot dwell in rest where there is war... It is the same, spiritually, for the Church. When the "good news of peace" is announced, the house of God, the holy temple in the Lord, is built up. That work goes on until the full rest of glory.
The 450 years named in Acts 13 are hard to fit inside the 480 years counted here. Commentators differ on how to settle it. One reads the gap as deliberate — years God refused to count:
The building of Solomon's temple runs on the line of God's intentions for His people. He had redeemed them so that they might live wholly to Himself and prepare a home for Him (Ex. 15:2). But during the ninety-three years in which they served His enemies and theirs, they were not living to Him. This was not His purpose for them — and as a result, He could not reckon these sad years in His calendar.
Others say the problem lies in the translation of Acts 13:20, not in the numbers:
In Acts 13:20 the older English version reads that God gave them judges for about 450 years, until Samuel the prophet. That does not agree with the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. But Acts 13 has a different reading, and editors of the Greek New Testament have adopted it. They did so for reasons that have nothing to do with chronology. It reads, "...he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges." So the 450 years are not applied to the length of the judges' rule.
(The first reading comes from an older English Bible. The words in quotation marks are the ESV of Acts 13:19–20.)
The temple was a real fulfilment, but not the final one:
Israel needed all that time to reach the height of their power and splendour. Sadly, it did not last very long. Yet it fulfilled God's promise to take Israel out of Egypt and establish them in great blessing in the land of promise. The permanent fulfilment of this promise awaits the coming of the Messiah in power and glory.
- Rescued — the count starts at the exodus. God was about to settle among a people saved by grace.
- Reckoned — the 480 years may leave out the ninety-three years Israel served God's enemies. Those years could not enter His calendar. Others settle the numbers through the reading of Acts 13:20.
- Rested — David could not build. God makes no settled home where there is still war. Peace comes first, then the house.
- Reared — David prepared, Solomon built. So the Saviour prepares and the Lord establishes with His own hands. The same work goes on in His Church through the good news of peace.
- Reserved — Israel's height of splendour under Solomon faded fast. The lasting fulfilment waits for the Messiah in power and glory.
And the house that king Solomon built for Jehovah was sixty cubits in length, and twenty in breadth, and thirty cubits in height.
Scripture gives only three figures for the house Solomon built for the LORD: sixty, twenty and thirty cubits. They raise two questions: why was God's house so small, and what do the measurements teach?
The first surprise is how small the building was. One writer sets it beside the huge temples of Egypt:
At first glance the proportions of the temple are surprising, because they are so restrained. Even unbelievers have noticed it. There is a great difference between the size of Solomon's temple and the huge sanctuaries of Egypt. Size is not what marks His house. Holiness, perfect order, righteousness, and glory mark it — that is to say, the balance and harmony of all the perfections of God.
Another writer puts the cubit into inches:
The size of the temple was fairly small, though nothing surpassed its splendour… The cubit is understood to be between 18 and 22 inches.
These numbers are not new. They come from the tabernacle, the portable tent Israel carried through the wilderness:
The temple was exactly double the tabernacle in length, in width, and in height. But the proportions of the different parts stayed the same. While Israel crossed the wilderness, the tabernacle might have seemed a small thing next to what the house of God was to be in glory. Yet all God's plan, all the order of His house, was already in that temporary building, and was to be shown there. It is the same with the Church. In glory the order of the government of the house will be fully shown, as we see in the description of the New Jerusalem in relation to the kingdom (Rev. 21).
So the hunt for foreign models behind the design misses the point:
Look closely at the way the temple was built. Beyond the striking likeness between its dimensions and those of the tabernacle, you see that the temple followed no model but that one. We stress this because men who disbelieve God's revelation, often without a second thought, will go to great lengths to find out whether Tyrian, Assyrian, Egyptian, or Babylonian temples served more or less as models for Solomon's. In fact it served as its own model. Is this not worthy of the True Architect of the temple, who revealed all its details to David, just as He had earlier revealed those of the tabernacle to Moses?
The verse gives thirty cubits for the height, though the house itself stood lower. One writer accounts for the extra ten cubits with rooms above:
The whole length was 60 cubits, the breadth 20 cubits, and the height also 20 cubits… The upper chambers were 10 cubits high, which is why the height of the whole building is given as 30 cubits.
Another writer gives the same measurements, and draws a lesson from the shape of the innermost room:
In the temple, the measurements were double those of the tabernacle, but in the same relative proportions. The whole building was 60 cubits long, 20 broad, and 20 high. Of this the holy place was 40 cubits long and the holiest 20 — again a perfect cube, its breadth and length and height equal. How easy it is to recognise here that God's mind is perfectly realised only in the holiest.
The building has a meaning past its stone and cedar:
Finally, the temple is Christ. "Destroy this temple," He said, "and in three days I will raise it up." Here below He was the temple in which the Father dwelt. But if the temple as a whole is Christ, then each of its parts shows Him in a different character… everything, just as in the tabernacle in the wilderness, speaks to us of Him. Everything shows His glories, the effectiveness of His work, the light of His Spirit, the fragrance of His Name, the value of His blood, and the purity, holiness and glory of His Person.
This house had its place in God's dealings with an earthly people:
Once God had an earthly people, a tabernacle or a temple was necessary, and it became the centre of all their political and religious life. When God declared the people "Lo-ammi" — "not my people" — the glory of the LORD left the temple. The temple itself finally disappeared, after being destroyed and rebuilt many times. But when the LORD sets up His sure relationship with His people again, under the new covenant of grace, the temple will reappear, more glorious than it has ever been.
- Small — sixty by twenty by thirty cubits is a modest building. Holiness, order, righteousness and glory mark God's house, not size.
- Doubled — the plan is the wilderness tent at twice the size, with every proportion kept. That temporary tent already held the whole order of God's house.
- Original — the temple copied no Tyrian, Egyptian or Babylonian design; it served as its own model.
- Perfect — upper rooms account for the thirty; inside, the holiest is a cube of twenty, where God's mind is perfectly realised.
- Christ — every part of the house speaks of Him, the true temple in whom the Father dwelt. The house itself will yet reappear, more glorious than ever.