1 Reis 6:2

The length. — By comparison with Êxodo 26:16, we find that the Temple itself was in all its proportions an exact copy of the Tabernacle, each dimension being doubled, and the whole, therefore, in cubical contents, eight times the size. It was, therefore — whatever measure we take for the cubit — a small building. Taking the usual calculation of eighteen inches for the cubit, the whole would be ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high — not larger than a good-sized parish church, and in proportion not unlike a church of Gothic construction. It is, indeed, curious to note that this likeness is carried out in the existence of the porch (which is even represented in 2 Crônicas 3:4 as rising into a lofty entrance tower), the division of the house into two parts, like a nave and chancel, the provision of something like aisles (though opening outwards) and of clerestory windows, and the high pitch of the roof. This resemblance is probably not mere coincidence; for in the old Freemasonry, which had a great influence on mediaeval architecture, the plan of Solomon’s Temple was taken in all its details as a sacred guide. The “Oracle” or Most Holy place, was lower than the rest, forming an exact cube of thirty feet; the height of the Holy place (sixty feet long and thirty feet wide) is not given, but was probably the same, so that there would be an upper chamber over the whole under the roof — which, like that of the Tabernacle, appears to have been a high-pitched roof — fifteen feet high along the central beam, with sloping sides. This is apparently alluded to in 2 Crônicas 3:9, and possibly in 2 Reis 23:12, and in the remark of Josephus, “There was another building erected over it, equal in its measures.” The Temple was, in fact, only a shrine for the ministering priests — the outer court, or courts, being the place for the great assembly of the congregation — and it relied for magnificence not on size, but on costliness of material and wealth of decoration.