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181 tribal chiefs and the military commanders, the priests and the royal office holders, and told them of Yahweh’s promise; and in full view of those gathered he handed to his son Solo- mon “the Zavnit of the temple and all its parts and cham- bers .. . the Tavnit that he received by the Spirit.” There was more, for David also handed over to Solomon “all that Yah- weh, in His own hand written, gave to me for understanding the workings of the Tavnit”: A set of accompanying instruc- tions, divinely written (J Chronicles, Chapter 28). The Hebrew term Tavnit is translated in the King James English Bible “pattern” but is rendered “plan” in more recent translations, suggesting that David was given some kind of an architectural drawing. But the Hebrew word for “plan” is Tokhnit. Tavnit, on the other hand, is derived from the root verb that means “to construct, to build, to erect,” so what David was given and what he handed over to his son Solo- mon was a “constructed model’”—in today’s parlance, a scale model. (Archaeological finds throughout the ancient Near East have indeed unearthed scale models of chariots, wag- ons, ships, workshops, and even multilevel shrines.) The biblical books of Kings and Chronicles provide pre- cise measurements and clear structural details of the Temple and its architectural designs. Its axis ran east-west, making it an “eternal temple” aligned to the equinox. Consisting of three parts (see Fig. 64), it adopted the Sumerian temple plans of a forepart (Ulam in Hebrew), a great central hall (Hekhal in Hebrew, stemming from the Sumerian E.GAL, “Large Abode”), and a Holy of Holies for the Ark of the Cov- enant. That innermost section was called the Dvir (the “Speaker”)—for it was by means of the Ark of the Covenant that God spoke to Moses. As in Sumerian ziggurats, which traditionally were built to express the sexagesimal’s “base sixty” concept, the Tem- ple of Solomon also adopted sixty in its construction: the main section (the Hall) was 60 cubits (about 100 feet) in length, 20 cubits (60:3) wide, and 120 (60 x 2) cubits in height. The Holy of Holies was 20 by 20 cubits—just enough to hold the Ark of the Covenant with the two golden Cher- ubim atop it (“their wings touching”). Tradition, textual evi- The Day of the Lord