He carved means “he [Solomon] made his workers carve.”

Cherubim: See the comments on verse 23.

Open flowers: See the comments on verse 18.

He overlaid them with gold evenly applied upon the carved work: The words evenly applied translate a Hebrew participle meaning “to be straight.” The sense is that the gold was applied in such a way that equal amounts of it were put on the different parts of the carved figures. New Century Version attempts to reflect this with the following separate sentence: “The gold was smoothed over the carvings.” This technical detail is omitted from Contemporary English Version, but there is no reason why it should not be included in translation.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .