The books of Kings and Chronicles describe Solomon building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, using cedar from Lebanon supplied by Hiram of Tyre, skilled Phoenician craftsmen, and a workforce drawn from forced labor, completing the project after seven years of construction. Its plan, as described in 1 Kings 6, followed a tripartite design common to Near Eastern temples of the period: an entrance porch, a main hall called the Hekhal where daily priestly service was performed, and an inner sanctuary, the Devir or Holy of Holies, a windowless cube overlaid in gold and entered only once a year, by the High Priest alone, on the Day of Atonement.
There the Ark of the Covenant was set beneath the outstretched wings of two golden cherubim, and it was there, in the account of the Temple's dedication in 1 Kings 8, that Solomon prayed and the text describes the glory of the Lord filling the house in the form of a cloud. The Temple centralized what earlier biblical narrative describes as worship scattered across regional shrines called high places, and centuries later, under the religious reform attributed to King Josiah in the late seventh century BCE, it became by royal decree the sole legitimate site of sacrifice for the kingdom of Judah, the high places outside Jerusalem ordered closed, a reform modern scholars connect to the promulgation of the law found in the book of Deuteronomy.