1 Chronicles 22:14, Solomon’s Temple Walls

Posted on Sunday, July 27, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the LORD an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared; and thou mayest add thereto.

//I had a little fun with my calculator today. This verse tells us that Solomon’s temple was comprised of roughly 7.5 million pounds of gold, and 75 million pounds of silver (depending upon how you measure the weight of a talent). That would be 75,000 cubic feet of gold and 750,000 cubic feet of silver.

The temple itself was 90 x 30 feet. Let’s give it a height of 30 feet as well, resulting in a volume of about 81,000 cubic feet. That means we couldn’t possibly house all of this gold and silver inside the temple; it must have been used to overlay the walls.

Including both the silver and gold, that would make the walls over 100 feet thick with precious metals.

No wonder it took seven years for 153,300 people to build it! (1 Kings 5-6)