the wings covered the ark and its poles. The cherubim were overlaid with gold. Also within the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. The ark was essentially the backbone of the Temple. The ark set Solomon’s Temple apart from every other temple or shrine because it was where the presence of God was deemed to be. I Chronicles 22 says that the Temple was built to house the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God and to be the sanctuary of the Lord God. The ark remained in its place in the Temple of Jerusalem for more than three hundred years. There is not mention of the ark in connection with the sack of the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. Very probably, it had been removed beforehand, in hopes that it might be concealed in some safe place. But, there is no known evidence to the whereabouts of the ark at this time.Solomon lined the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar, and he covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress. The floor was overlaid with gold in the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. For the entrance to the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olivewood; the lintel and the doorposts formed a pentagon. Solomon overlaid these doors with gold. He made the doorposts to entrance into the Holy Place out of olivewood, in the form of a square, and two doors of cypress wood. Solomon overlaid these with gold. And in the eleventh year, the House of God was finished in all its parts, according to all its specifications. The Downfall of the TempleEven with all of Solomon’s wisdom, he failed to heed the counsel of God and of his father David. He, in the course of time, excelled his father’s love of women by accumulating 700 wives and 300 concubines. Solomon’s wives turned his heart away from God. Because of his foreign wives, Solomon built many shrines to other gods than Yahweh. The Lord became very angry with him and told him that because he...
