First Reading
1 Kings 8:1-7, 9-13
Read this as the first big movement of the day. Notice what God is doing, who is speaking, and what part of the story or teaching should stay with you.
1Then all the leaders of Israel with the leaders of the tribes, and the heads of the families of the children of Israel were assembled to king Solomon in Jerusalem: that they might carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, that is, out of Sion.
2And all Israel assembled themselves to king Solomon on the festival day in the month of Ethanim, the same is the seventh month.
3And all the leaders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark,
4And carried the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of the covenant, and all the containers of the sanctuary, that were in the tabernacle: and the priests and the Levites carried them.
5And king Solomon, and all the crowd of Israel, that were assembled to him went with him before the ark, and they sacrificed sheep and oxen that could not be counted or numbered.
6And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord into its place, into the oracle of the temple, into the holy of holies under the wings of the cherubim.
7For the cherubim spread forth their wings over the place of the ark, and covered the art, and the staves thereof above.
9Now in the ark there was nothing else but the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.
10And it happened, when the priests were come out of the sanctuary, that a cloud satisfied the house of the Lord,
11And the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had satisfied the house of the Lord.
12Then Solomon said: The Lord said that he would dwell in a cloud.
13Building I have built a house for your dwelling, to be your most firm throne forever.