1 Chronicles 28:2-3, The First Temple

King David rose to his feet and said: “Listen to me, my brothers and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it. But God said to me, ‘You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.’

//So, Solomon, David’s son, built the House of God. The first temple. Right? What, then, are we to make of the story of Hannah? The LORD had closed her womb, and she was growing discouraged about having a child. Hannah’s rival, the other wife of her husband, provoked her.

1 Samuel 1:9, Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the LORD’s temple. 

Eli and his two sons were priests at Shiloh, tending the temple, which we now see is the “house of the LORD” from the first verse. Here, Hannah prayed for a son and God granted her a son named Samuel.

1 Samuel 1:24, After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh.

As the story goes, Samuel ministers to God under Eli, the priest. Then begins the story of Samuel’s awakening:

1 Samuel 3:2-3, One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.

Sorry about pounding my point into the table. I’m just pointing out multiple times over that there was indeed a temple, a House of God, in the days of Eli, 150 or more years before Solomon ever became king. This temple was in Shiloh, not Jerusalem. Where did this original temple come from? It dates, perhaps, way back to about the year 1400 BC:

Judges 18:31 to 19:1, They continued to use the idols Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. In those days Israel had no king.

David’s idea of a dwelling place for God was hardly original. He simply wanted that place to be in Jerusalem, not in Shiloh.