מלכים א, פרק ז׳, פסוק ג׳

King Solomon's House of the Forest of Lebanon featured exceptional, complex wooden architecture. Its roofing system relied on a precise engineering arrangement of pillars, beams, and boards to create a grand, well-ventilated structure.

The building was topped with a roof made of cedar boards, which rested upon specific structural supports. The primary approach among commentators is that these supporting elements were cut cedar beams placed directly on top of the pillars, serving as a solid foundation for the ceiling. However, another perspective suggests these supports were actually upper partitions built above the beams [רש״י, רד״ק]. Because the building functioned as a summer house that required constant airflow, these upper partitions ran the entire length of the building and were filled with windows and openings [רש״י]. The final ceiling was then laid securely over these airy partitions.

The architectural records also detail a specific count of forty-five items, arranged fifteen to a row, though there is a fundamental disagreement about what these numbers measure. The primary approach among commentators is that this count refers to the cedar boards making up the ceiling [רש״י, רד״ק, מצודת דוד, מלבי ם ושטיינזלץ]. In this layout, four rows of pillars divided the interior hall into three equal sections. A row of fifteen wooden boards covered each of these three spaces, resulting in a total of forty-five ceiling boards. Conversely, a completely different view argues that these numbers do not track the ceiling boards at all, but rather the pillars and their connecting beams [רלב״ג, אברבנאל]. According to this understanding, the building contained exactly forty-five pillars, arranged in three rows of fifteen, with fifteen cedar beams resting upon each respective row.