2 Chronicles 5

The Ark Enters Its Place

1So all the work that Solomon did for the house of Yahweh was completed. Then Solomon brought in what his father David had dedicated — the silver, the gold and all the vessels — and placed it in the treasuries of the house of God. 2Then Solomon convened in Jerusalem the elders of Israel, all the heads of the tribes and the chiefs of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, to bring up the ark of Yahweh’s covenant from the City of David, that is, Zion. 3All the men of Israel gathered to the king at the festival, in the seventh month. 4Once all the elders of Israel had arrived, the Levites lifted the ark 5and carried it up, along with the tent of meeting and all the holy vessels that were in the tent; the levitical priests carried them up. 6King Solomon and the whole community of Israel, assembled with him before the ark, were sacrificing sheep and cattle past all counting or reckoning. 7The priests then brought the ark of Yahweh’s covenant to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, the Most Holy Place, beneath the wings of the cherubim. 8The cherubim had their wings spread over the place of the ark, so that they screened the ark and its poles from above. 9The poles were long enough that their ends could be seen from the ark, in front of the inner sanctuary, though not from outside; and there they have remained to this day. 10There was nothing in the ark but the two tablets that Moses had put there at Horeb, where Yahweh made a covenant with the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. 11When the priests came out of the holy place — for all the priests present had consecrated themselves, without keeping to their divisions, 12and the levitical singers, all of them, of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their kinsmen, robed in fine linen, stood east of the altar with cymbals, harps and lyres, and with them a hundred and twenty priests sounding trumpets — 13the trumpeters and the singers acted as one, to make a single sound heard in praise and thanks to Yahweh; and as the sound rose with trumpets and cymbals and instruments of song, praising Yahweh — “He is good; his faithful love lasts for ever” — the house was filled with a cloud, the house of Yahweh, 14so that the priests were unable to take their stand and minister, because of the cloud: the glory of Yahweh had filled the house of God.