Bible Strands
1 Kings 8:21
And there I have provided a place for the ark, which contains the covenant of the LORD that He made with our fathers when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Solomon addresses the assembled Israelite congregation at the temple dedication, declaring his fulfillment of God’s promise to establish the sanctuary.
The words — The Hebrew וָאָשִׂם (va'asim, "I have set up") combined with מָקוֹם (maqom, "place") and שָׁם (sham, "there") stresses a deliberate, fixed location for the ark. This phrasing marks the transition from a mobile covenant container to a permanent national resting place.
The thread — The ark’s contents appear in 1 Kings 8:9 as the two stone tablets from Horeb, while Deuteronomy 31:26 commands the Book of the Law to be placed beside it, tying the covenant’s physical location to its ongoing preservation.
Why it lands — The text records Solomon’s factual statement that the ark containing the Exodus covenant now occupies a designated spot in Jerusalem, requiring the reader to acknowledge the temple as the established center for Israel’s covenant identity rather than a temporary or mobile shrine.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 31:26 “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, so that it may remain there as a witness against you.
- 1 Kings 8:9 There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb, where the LORD had made a covenant with the Israelites after they had come out of the land of Egypt.
- 1 Kings 8:5 There, before the ark, King Solomon and the whole congregation of Israel who had assembled with him sacrificed so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.
- Exodus 34:28 So Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
- Deuteronomy 9:9 When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.
- Deuteronomy 9:11 And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.