It was delayed for eleven months to coincide with the Feast of Tabernacles (see 1 Kings 6:38). At that feast, God’s people camped in a tent—a tabernacle—to remember the time of the wanderings in the desert and the Lord went with them in the cloud. History repeats itself when the cloud comes and fills the temple. The priests had to get out, for “the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:11). The same happened in the desert. Moses could not go in because the cloud had come and “the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (see Exodus 40:34–35).
2 And all the men of Israel assembled to King Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.