This temple is designed following the description found at I Kings and 2 Chronicles. There are a few changes to the general outline of the temple as depicted by the society and by other renditions of Solomon’s temple. The porch for instance is only 20 cubits high, where as many go for a 120 cubit high porch. Why the difference? 2 Chronicles 3:4 states: “The porch in front was 20 cubits long, corresponding to the width of the house, and its height was 120; and he overlaid it inside with pure gold.” Throughout the description of the temple, where ever dimensions are mentioned the term “Cubits” is used. All except this one verse where the translated term is “120” and no mention of “Cubits.” A footnote in our new Bible states regarding the height of the porch: “An uncertain dimension.”
However in the Reference Bible the footnote reads: “A hundred and twenty,” MLXXB; LXXASy, “twenty cubits.” By a transposition of the letters of the Heb. word for “a hundred” it would read “cubits,” to produce the expression “twenty cubits.”
The Hebrew word for Cubit uses the hebrew characters for "hma" and the Hebrew word for 100 uses the hebrew characters for "ham." As you can see the same Hebrew characters are used but with the first two characters (reading right to left) are swapped around. A possible scribal error. So the sentence can be translated as “20 cubits” or “120.” As the term cubits is used everywhere else except for this one sentence I have opted for a porch of 20 Cubits. It is remotely possible that the word cubit was left out by mistake, but this is unlikely as the number of letters in each sentence were counted by the scribes to avoid such errors.
If you look carefully at the model you will see that wooden posts separate the Porch, Holy, and Most Holy, from the side buildings. This is to keep in line with 1 Kings 6:6 “ . . .so that nothing was attached to the walls of the house” and 1 Kings 6:10 “. . .He built the side chambers all around the house, each five cubits high, and they were joined to the house by cedar timbers.” The side chambers were separated from the main temple building by wooden timbers.
The width of each level to the side rooms was 5 cubits at the bottom level, 6 cubits at the middle level and 7 cubits at the top level. Thus the side rooms would have a staggered appearance. This is in line with 1 Kings 6:6 “The lowest level of the side chambers was five cubits wide, the middle level was six cubits wide, and the third level was seven cubits wide, for he made offsets all around the house, so that nothing was attached to the walls of the house.”
The two copper pillars Boaz and Jachin I have coloured green as no doubt the copper would have oxidized leaving a layer of verdigris.
In essence then, this is another version of how Solomon’s temple may have appeared.
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