1 Kings 6:16 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Kings 6:16
And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house, both the floor and the walls with boards of cedar: he even built them for it within, even for the oracle, even for the most holy place.
to build (literally and figuratively) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
twenty
עֶשְׂרִ֨ים'es.Rim
H6242
twenty · noun, common masculine plural absolute
cubits
אַמָּ֜ה'a.Mah
H520
properly · noun, common feminine singular absolute
sides
מִֽיַּרְכְּתֵ֤יmi.yar.ko.tei
H3411
properly · preposition + noun, common feminine dual construct
house
הַבַּ֙יִת֙ha.Ba.yit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
both
מִןmin-
H4480
properly · preposition
floor
הַקַּרְקַ֖עha.kar.Ka'
H7172
floor (as if a pavement of pieces or tesseroe) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
walls
הַקִּיר֑וֹתha.ki.Rot
H7023
a wall (as built in a trench) · definite article + noun, common feminine plural absolute
boards
בְּצַלְע֣וֹתbe.tzal.'ot
H6763
a rib (as curved) · preposition + noun, common feminine plural construct
cedar
אֲרָזִ֔ים'a.ra.Zim
H730
a cedar tree (from the tenacity of its roots) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
built
וַיִּ֤בֶןvai.Yi.ven
H1129
to build (literally and figuratively) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
within
מִבַּ֣יִתmi.Ba.yit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
oracle
לִדְבִ֔ירlid.Vir
H1687
the shrine or innermost part of the sanctuary · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
most
לְקֹ֖דֶשׁle.Ko.desh
H6944
a sacred place or thing · preposition + noun, masculine singular construct
holy
הַקֳּדָשִֽׁיםha.ko.da.Shim
H6944
a sacred place or thing · definite article + noun, masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
1 Kings 8:6 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the LORD unto his place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, even un…
2 Chronicles 3:8 And he made the most holy house, the length whereof was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty…
Leviticus 16:2 And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail before the mer…
Hebrews 9:3 And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all;
Ezekiel 45:3 And of this measure shalt thou measure the length of five and twenty thousand, and the breadth of ten thousand: and in it shall be the sanct…
Exodus 25:21-22 And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.
Exodus 26:23 And two boards shalt thou make for the corners of the tabernacle in the two sides.
Exodus 26:33-34 And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and the vail s…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Kings 6:15–end
Here, I. We have a particular account of the details of the building.
1. The wainscot of the temple. It was of cedar (Kg1 6:15), which was strong and durable, and of a very sweet smell. The wainscot was curiously carved with knops (like eggs or apples) and flowers, no doubt as the fashion then was, Kg1 6:18.
2. The gilding. It was not like ours, washed over, but the whole house, all the inside of the temple (Kg1 6:22), even the floor (Kg1 6:30), he overlaid with gold, and the most holy place with pure gold, Kg1 6:21. Solomon would spare no expense necessary to make it every way sumptuous. Gold was under foot there, as it should be in all the living temples: the abundance of it lessened its w…
THE CEILING AND ADORNING OF IT. (Kg1 6:15-22)
he built the walls of the house within--The walls were wainscotted with cedar-wood; the floor, paved with cypress planks; the interior was divided (by a partition consisting of folding doors, which were opened and shut with golden chains) into two apartments--the back or inner room, that is, the most holy place, was twenty cubits long and broad; the front, or outer room, that is, the holy place, was forty cubits. The cedar-wood was beautifully embellished with figures in relievo, representing clusters of foliage, open flowers, cherubims, and palm trees. The whole interior was overlaid with gold, so that neither wood nor stone was seen; nothing m…
The walls of the ceiling - See the note on Kg1 6:9.
John Gill on 1 Kings 6:16
And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house,.... At the end or extremity of it, as the Targum; that is, he built the most holy place, which was twenty two cubits long, at the end of the holy place, which he wainscotted as the other:
both the floor and the walls with boards of cedar; or from the floor, including that, to the walls on each side, from wall to wall, and taking in them, they were all lined with cedar wood:
he even built them for it within, even for the oracle, even for the most holy place; which explains what building is spoken of, and that the inside of that was covered with cedar from bottom to top.
The Church Fathers
He calls the east side of the temple the rear; for the temple had its entrance on the east and its inner house, that is, the Holy of Holies, on the west. The fact that he says that the board partitions that separated the inner house from the outer one were erected from the floor to the top does not mean they were built to the ceiling, which was at the height of thirty cubits from the floor, as has already been said above, but only up to a height of twenty cubits, as one can clearly read in what follows. But the portion above these partitions up as far as the ceiling was left open and empty to a height of ten cubits and a length of twenty cubits across the width of the house, and, of course, through this aperture the smoke of the burnt offerings from the altar of sacrifice used to ascend and penetrate all the way in to cover the ark of the Lord. This division of the Lord's house is a clear figure of a mystery and, thanks to the explanation of the apostle, is clearer than daylight because the first house into which "the priests" continually "go performing their ritual duties" is the present church, where, intent on works of piety, we daily offer sacrifices of praise to the Lord, but the inner house, which was built at the rear of the temple, is the promised life in heaven, which indeed precedes this life of our exile, which is celebrated there in the presence of the supreme king as a perpetual solemnity of the blessed, both angels and humankind. Hence it is with reference to it that the servant is quite deservedly told, "Enter into the joy of your Lord" but is later in time because it is after the labors of this world that we succeed in entering it.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Temple, Solomon’s — Before his death David had “with all his might” provided materials in great abundance for the building of the temple on the summit of Mount Moriah (1 Chr. 22:14; 29:4; 2 Chr. 3:1), on the east of the…
Holy Of Holies · Was called the: Oracle — Was called the: Oracle
Temple, The First · The oracle or most holy place: Was twenty cubits every way — The oracle or most holy place: Was twenty cubits every way
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Kings 6:14-35
The Internal Arrangements of the Temple-House. - Kg1 6:14-22. Internal covering of the house, and division into Holy and Most Holy. - Kg1 6:14 (cf. Kg1 6:9) resumes the description of the building of the temple, which had been interrupted by the divine promise just communicated.
Kg1 6:15
"He built (i.e., so far as the sense is concerned, he covered) the walls of the house within with boards of cedar; from the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling he overlaid it with wood within, and overlaid the floor with cypress boards." The expression הסּפּן קירות, "walls of the ceiling," is very striking here, and renders it probable that קירות is only a copyist's error for קורות, "beams of the…
paneled with wood: The interior walls were paneled with cedar from floor to ceiling so that no exterior stones could be seen. The effect was exquisitely beautiful, reflecting painstaking care and great expense.
Rashi on 1 Kings 6:16
The twenty amohs at the end of the Beis Hamikdosh. The twenty [amohs] which were at the end of the Sanctuary and beyond, and the twenty [amohs] which were at the end of the building, they are the house containing the Ark cover (i.e., the Holy of Holies).
To the ceiling. He made the walls of cedar until the ceiling to cover the walls of stone in order to coat it with gold.
He built it. Those twenty amohs.
On the inner side of the partition. Inward of the “Amma Traksin” [partition], which separated between the forty [amohs] and the twenty [amohs], and that partition is called “Dvir.”25Also, “Dvir” sometimes means the Holy of Holies. See Rashi in v. 5 above and also the Metzudas Tzion there.…
