CHAPTER 5

¹And the task that Solomon had done for the house of the LORD was finished. And Solomon brought the consecrated things of David his father; the silver and the gold and all the vessels he put in the treasury of the house of God. ²Then did Solomon assemble the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the patriarchal chieftains of the Israelites, to Jerusalem to bring up the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant from the City of David, which is Zion. ³And every man of Israel assembled around the king on the festival which is in the seventh month. ⁴And all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites carried the Ark. ⁵And they brought up the Ark of the Covenant and the Tent of Meeting and all the sacred vessels that were in the Tent. The levitical priests brought them up. ⁶And King Solomon and all the community of Israel meeting with him before the Ark were sacrificing sheep and bulls in such abundance that they could not be counted nor numbered. ⁷And the priests brought the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house, to the Holy of Holies, beneath the wings of the cherubim. ⁸And the cherubim spread wings over the place of the Ark, and the cherubim sheltered the Ark and its poles from above. ⁹And the poles extended outward, and the ends of the poles could be seen in front of the inner sanctuary but could not be seen from without. And they are there to this day. ¹⁰There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets that Moses had put there on Horeb, when the LORD sealed a covenant with the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. ¹¹And it happened when the priests came out from the sanctuary, all the priests there consecrated themselves, without distinction of orders, ¹²and the Levite choristers, all of them, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and their brothers were dressed in fine linen with cymbals and lutes and lyres, standing to the east of the altar, and with them a hundred twenty priests sounding the trumpets. ¹³And in unison did the trumpeters and the choristers raise a single voice to praise the LORD, and when the sound went up with the trumpets and with the cymbals and with the instruments of song and when there was praise to the LORD, “for He is good, for His kindness is forever,” the house, the house of the LORD was filled with cloud. ¹⁴And the priests could not stand up to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God.