Grand Lodge of IdahoA.F. & A.M.Masonic Education · From a 2017 presentation
The Presence in the Attic of King Solomon’s Temple
An architectural question in the biblical text—and the limits of a reconstruction.
A question above the inner sanctuary
A drawing of Solomon’s Temple can make the building appear more fully known than the written account allows. Walls have precise thicknesses, stairs arrive at particular landings, and rooflines close spaces that the text does not describe in equivalent detail. The resulting image is useful, but some of what it shows belongs to the person who reconstructed it.
The question begins with the space above the inner sanctuary. First Kings describes a building thirty cubits high and an inner sanctuary twenty cubits high. A section drawing that gives both the same floor level and places a continuous roof above them seems to leave a difference of ten cubits.1
The difference suggests an architectural question. Answering it requires choices about floor levels, ceilings and the roofline that are not supplied by the two height measurements alone.
What the dimensions establish
| Description | Cubits |
|---|---|
| Main building height | 30 |
| Inner sanctuary height | 20 |
| Difference | 10 |
The subtraction is straightforward. Its architectural meaning is conditional. A common floor level and a continuous roof height are choices in the reconstruction; floor and roof structures also occupy space. The ten-cubit difference therefore does not prove that the entire volume was an accessible, finished chamber.
Keeping the measurement in cubits avoids another false precision. Converting every figure to feet requires choosing a particular cubit length. A drawing labeled with modern units can conceal that choice and make an approximate reconstruction look like a measured survey.
A reconstruction has to supply those missing relationships before the dimensions can become a section drawing.
Side chambers and upper rooms
First Kings also describes chambers built around the main structure in three levels. Those surrounding rooms should be distinguished from a proposed space above the inner sanctuary. The existence of one arrangement does not establish the location or purpose of the other.1
Second Chronicles mentions upper chambers overlaid with gold. The passage confirms that upper rooms belong to its description, but does not give enough detail to identify a single isolated attic above the inner sanctuary or to assign such a space a particular function. First Chronicles likewise includes upper rooms and other chambers in its description of the plan.2, 3
Read together, these passages describe a building with several kinds of chambers. They still leave questions about how the upper rooms related to the inner sanctuary.
The accounts support the existence of upper rooms, while leaving their precise arrangement and use incompletely described.
Newton’s Temple as an interpretation
Isaac Newton devoted a chapter of The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728 after his death, to a reconstruction of the Temple. The plan reproduced here shows a sustained attempt to organize written dimensions into a coherent building and surrounding courts.4
Newton draws heavily on Ezekiel’s vision while comparing passages from other biblical books. The plan records his interpretation of those texts, not a design preserved from Solomon’s builders.4
The wood engraving at the beginning of this essay is another later reconstruction. Both images help us compare proposed arrangements with the written descriptions.
What “presence” means in the public text
The title’s question can also be read alongside the dedication narrative in First Kings. The Ark is brought into the inner sanctuary, and the account describes a cloud filling the house. Later in the chapter, Solomon acknowledges that even the heavens cannot contain God.5
The dedication narrative connects divine presence with the Ark, the cloud and the house as a whole. It assigns no special religious function to a room above the inner sanctuary.
The building’s religious significance therefore does not resolve the architectural question about its upper spaces.
What can we conclude?
The most defensible conclusion is that the biblical descriptions leave the upper arrangement incompletely specified. They mention upper rooms, but do not provide a floor-by-floor plan that securely identifies the apparent space above the inner sanctuary. Three explanations should therefore be kept separate.1, 2, 3
| Explanation | Assessment |
|---|---|
| A usable room above the sanctuary | Possible; its location and purpose are unconfirmed. The reference to upper chambers supports the existence of upper rooms in the account. Identifying one specifically above the inner sanctuary, and assigning it a use, requires further interpretation. |
| Architectural space rather than a finished room | A possible reconstruction. The ten-cubit difference alone cannot distinguish a usable chamber from space affected by floor levels, roof construction or other structural choices. These alternatives are architectural inferences, not features established by the cited descriptions. |
| An error in a later drawing | Not demonstrated here. A reconstruction can contain unsupported assumptions or mistakes, but no specific drafting error has been established in this essay. A drawing that includes an attic is not automatically wrong; it becomes misleading if its proposed arrangement is presented as certain. |
The conclusion is an unresolved architectural detail, with no demonstrated drawing error. A room above the sanctuary remains a plausible interpretation whose access and function are unknown. The surviving descriptions do not supply enough detail to choose confidently between that room and another architectural arrangement. The later drawings offer proposed answers to the question; they do not settle it.
References & image credits
Adapted for the web from a presentation created April 5, 2017. The original file date is retained above; this expanded web edition and its source review were prepared October 24, 2026. Online sources and image reuse statements checked October 24, 2026.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “1 Kings 6.” See verses 2, 5–10 and 16–20: building dimensions, surrounding side chambers and the inner sanctuary. Modern translation used as a reading aid; figures paraphrased.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “2 Chronicles 3.” See verses 8–9 for the inner sanctuary and the gold-covered upper chambers. The text does not supply a complete location or function for those rooms.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “1 Chronicles 28.” Verse 11 lists the porch, storerooms, upper rooms and inner chambers within the account of the plan given to Solomon.
- Newton, Isaac. The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. London, 1728. Chapter V, “A Description of the Temple of Solomon.” Public-domain work, published posthumously. Text and first plate from The Newton Project, University of Oxford. Newton explicitly draws on Ezekiel as well as the accounts in Kings and Chronicles.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “1 Kings 8.” See verses 6–13 for the Ark and cloud, and verse 27 for Solomon’s statement that even the heavens cannot contain God.
- Wellcome Collection. “The Temple of Solomon: aerial view, with flames billowing from the sacrificial altar. Wood engraving.” Reference 20078i. Public Domain Mark. Date not supplied here. A later imagined reconstruction, not a surviving ancient blueprint.