"TEMPLE COURT"
Solomon's marvellous temple, like the tabernacle before it, was designed so that only the priests could offer sacrifices on behalf of God's chosen people. On only one day a year (the day of Atonement) the High Priest alone could enter into the Holy of Holies, to offer a perfect lamb as atonement for the sins of Israel. Solomon's temple was doomed to destruction, but others were built to replace it. All shared a common trait: ordinary people were kept apart from the holy places of the temple. Their sinfulness meant they could never come in contact with the righteous God. Luke: 23: 34 notes that the curtain shielding the Holy of Holies was torn in half when Christ died. With that ultimate sacrifice on our behalf, man is no longer separated from God by sin.
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Solomon Builds the Temple
1 Now Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord[a] had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan[b] the Jebusite.
2 And he began to build on the second day of the second month in the fourth year of his reign.
3 This is the foundation which Solomon laid for building the house of God: The length was sixty cubits (by cubits according to the former measure) and the width twenty cubits.
4 And the vestibule that was in front of the sanctuary[c] was twenty cubits long across the width of the house, and the height was one hundred and[d] twenty. He overlaid the inside with pure gold.
5 The larger room[e] he paneled with cypress which he overlaid with fine gold, and he carved palm trees and chainwork on it.
6 And he decorated the house with precious stones for beauty, and the gold was gold from Parvaim.
7 He also overlaid the house—the beams and doorposts, its walls and doors—with gold; and he carved cherubim on the walls.
8 And he made the Most Holy Place. Its length was according to the width of the house, twenty cubits, and its width twenty cubits. He overlaid it with six hundred talents of fine gold.
9 The weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold; and he overlaid the upper area with gold.