Then Shelomoh congregated Yisra’el’s elders
(all the heads of the clans, the Yisra’elites’ ancestral leaders)
to King Shelomoh in Yerushalaim,
to take up Yahweh’s pact chest from David’s Town (i.e. Tsiyyon [Zion]).
All the Yisra’elites congregated to King Shelomoh in the month of Etanim at the festival (i.e. the seventh month). All Yisra’el’s elders came and the priests carried the chest. They took up Yahweh’s chest, the appointment tent and all the sacred articles that were in the tent. The priests and the Levites took them up while King Shelomoh and the entire assembly of Yisra’el who had assembled to him were with him before the chest, sacrificing sheep and cattle that could not be numbered and could not be counted because of the large number.
The priests brought Yahweh’s pact chest to its place, to the inner room of the house, to the very sacred place, under the sphinxes’ wings, because the sphinxes were spreading their wings to the chest’s place; the sphinxes screened the chest and its poles from above. The poles extended and the heads of the poles could be seen from the sacred place in front of the inner room, but they could not be seen outside. They have been there until this day. There was nothing in the chest, only the two stone tablets that Mosheh had set down there at Horeb, when Yahweh solemnized things with the Yisra’elites, when they got out from the country of Misrayim.
The priests were not able to stand to minister before the cloud, because Yahweh’s splendour was filling Yahweh’s house.
Then Shelomoh said: Yahweh has said he would dwell in a thundercloud.
I have indeed built a stately house for you,
an established place for you to live in to the ages.
Goldingay, John The Bible for Everyone . SPCK. Kindle Edition.
Lord, you have given me so much,
I ask for one more thing –
a grateful heart.
George Herbert