Shlomo Dedicates the House, and the Fire Comes Down

Before there was a Temple there were tents. First at Gilgal, right after they crossed the Jordan. Then at Shiloh for almost four hundred years, until the Philistines carried the Aron — the golden Ark that held the Ten Commandments — away in a cart. Then at Nov, then at Givon. King David wanted to build a real House for it, but he was told no: he had spent his life at war and there was too much blood on his hands. So David did what a father does for a son. He bought the land on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, gathered the cedar and the gold and the copper, drew the plans, and handed it all to his son Shlomo (Solomon).

Shlomo built for seven years. Thirty thousand workers went up to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month. King Chiram of Tzor sent giant cedars floating down the coast on rafts. Every stone was shaped in the quarry before it arrived, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was ever heard on the mountain while the House was being built.

When it was finally ready, the priests carried the Aron up the mountain and the whole nation followed. Shlomo stood on a copper platform in the courtyard and prayed seven prayers out loud. When he finished, fire fell from the sky onto the altar. A thick cloud filled the room so completely that the priests could not stand up to serve. There were fourteen days of feasting. Then the first Yom Kippur ever kept inside the Temple. Then everyone went home 'happy and glad of heart' for all the good Hashem had done.

This House will stand for four hundred and ten years. Every dispatch after this one will be about what was done to it, or done to the people who lived under it, or what those people did to themselves. To mourn what was lost on the ninth of Av, you first have to picture what was built here — a room with wings of gold over an ark of wood, and a fire that fell from the sky when a young king finished speaking.