Room

Against the walls of the temple and the inner sanctuary, Solomon built a chambered structure around the temple, in which he constructed the side rooms.

The entrance to the bottom floor was on the south side of the temple. A stairway led up to the middle level, and from there to the third floor.

Next he measured the wall of the temple to be six cubits thick, and the width of each side room around the temple was four cubits.

The side rooms were arranged one above another in three levels of thirty rooms each. There were ledges all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side rooms, so that the supports would not be fastened into the wall of the temple itself.

The side rooms surrounding the temple widened at each successive level, because the structure surrounding the temple ascended by stages corresponding to the narrowing of the temple wall as it rose upward. And so a stairway went up from the lowest story to the highest, through the middle one.

I saw that the temple had a raised base all around it, forming the foundation of the side rooms. It was the full length of a rod, six long cubits.

The outer wall of the side rooms was five cubits thick, and the open area between the side rooms of the temple

The side rooms opened into this area, with one entrance on the north and another on the south. The open area was five cubits wide all around.

There were beveled windows and palm trees on the sidewalls of the portico. The side rooms of the temple also had canopies.