Issi ben Akiva proposed a striking interpretation of the altar's construction: it was a copper altar filled with earth. This sounds like a simple engineering detail, but the Mekhilta uses it to resolve a biblical puzzle.
(1 Kings 8:64) says that when Solomon dedicated the Temple, "the copper altar before the Lord was too small to contain the burnt-offerings." But how could the altar be too small? (1 Kings 3:4) tells us that "a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon sacrifice on that altar." An altar that held a thousand offerings one day was suddenly too small the next?
The Mekhilta explains: "too small" does not mean physically insufficient. It means the altar had become unfit for service. The word "small" is used the way people colloquially say "he is a dwarf" — meaning he is disqualified, not literally tiny. The copper altar had served its purpose but was now being superseded. On the day the new altar was built for Solomon's Temple, the old copper altar was secreted away.
This reading resolves the apparent contradiction elegantly. The altar did not shrink. It was retired. The language of "smallness" is a euphemism for obsolescence. What had once been sufficient for a thousand offerings was now replaced by something greater — not because it failed but because the Temple required a new beginning, a fresh altar unmarked by the history of what came before.