Construction of Solomon's Temple Begins

The event

In the fourth year of his reign, Solomon began building the temple in Jerusalem — the permanent house for the LORD's name that David had longed to build but was told to leave for his son. Solomon spared nothing: cedar from Lebanon shipped in through an alliance with King Hiram of Tyre, massive stones cut and finished at the quarry so that 'neither hammer nor axe... was heard in the house while it was being built,' and interior work overlaid in gold from floor to ceiling.

This is also the single most important date-anchor in the whole Old Testament chronology. 1 Kings 6:1 states plainly that construction began '480 years after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign.' Since Solomon's fourth year is reliably dated to 966 BC using the regnal totals of Kings and Chronicles, counting back 480 years places the Exodus at approximately 1446 BC — the anchor for what's often called the 'early date' Exodus that most evangelical chronologies build on.

It's worth being honest that this isn't the only view even among believing scholars. Some evangelicals read the 480 years as a schematic figure rather than a strict literal count, or place the Exodus later, around the thirteenth century BC, largely to align with certain readings of Egyptian and Canaanite archaeology. None of this touches the reliability of the temple's construction itself as real history — the debate is entirely about how precisely to count backward from it, not whether it happened. What all sides agree on is this: 966 BC marks the beginning of the most significant building project in Israel's history, the place where heaven and earth would meet at the center of God's covenant people.

Dating

1 Kings 6:1's '480 years' is the standard evangelical anchor connecting the Exodus to fixed monarchy-era chronology. Taking Solomon's 4th year as 966 BC yields an Exodus date of c. 1446 BC (the 'early date'). A minority of evangelical scholars read the 480 as a round or schematic number (12 generations x 40 years) or favor a 13th-century 'late date' Exodus for archaeological reasons, but this is a dispute over precision in counting, not over the historicity of either the Exodus or Solomon's temple.

Scripture references

• 1 Kings 6:1-38
• 2 Chronicles 3:1-17