Chapter Five

Solomon’s preparations for building the Temple.

1 Kings 5:1. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent his servants to Solomon when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father; for Hiram had always been a friend to David. (Hebrew 15). Hiram (2 Chr 2:2), or Huram (as in the Hebrew), in Josephus Εἰρωμος, Phoenician Ahirom, according to the accounts of Dio and Menander — in Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, VIII, 2, 6; Against Apion, I, 17, 18), was the son of King Abibaals, reigned 34 years (969–936 BC) and died at the age of 53, leaving the throne to his son Baleazar. (2 Chr 2:3), like (1 Kgs 5:1), directly states that Hiram, upon Solomon’s ascent to the throne, sending him a congratulatory embassy and then helping him in his building works, is identical with Hiram — a contemporary of David, who also helped him in the construction of the royal palace (2 Sam 5:11; 1 Chr 14:1). But according to (1 Kgs 9:10-13), compare (1 Kgs 6:1), the Hiram contemporary with Solomon was alive at least in the 24th year of Solomon’s reign; consequently, Hiram could not rule simultaneously with David for more than 10 years (34–24). However, the mentioned building projects of David with the help of Hiram are described at the beginning, not at the end of David’s reign history (2 Sam 5:9-11). To explain this, it is argued that the sacred writer of 2 Kings followed a systematic, not chronological order in describing events of David’s reign. Another explanation (Clericus and others) considers the king who was David’s friend to be a different person than Solomon’s friend — Abibaals, the father of Hiram. But this explanation clearly contradicts (1 Kgs 5:1-2; 2 Chr 2:3). Tyre, alongside Sidon, was the most important city of Phoenicia, in the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 26:4) is represented as a city standing on a bare rock, which corresponds to the Hebrew name of Tyre — tzor (related to tzur — rock).

1 Kings 5:2. And Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying: 1 Kings 5:3. “You know that David, my father, could not build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the wars with the surrounding peoples, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet; 1 Kings 5:4. but now the Lord my God has given me rest on all sides; there is no adversary and no misfortune; 1 Kings 5:5. and behold, I propose to build a house for the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord said to David, my father, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for My name’; 1 Kings 5:6. now therefore command that cedarwood be cut down for me from Lebanon; and my servants will join your servants, and I will pay you for your servants such wages as you set; for you know that there is no one among us who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians. In his reply message to Hiram, Solomon presents the proposed undertaking of building the Temple as the fulfillment of the plan and preparations of David (2 Sam 7:8-13; 1 Chr 22:7-11), points out the need for Phoenician workers in the construction, especially the inhabitants of the city of Sidon (Hebrew: tzidon — near Lebanon, Onomasticon, 871) and asks for cedar timber (v. 6), cypress wood (v. 8), and all kinds of craftsmen for working with wood and metal (compare 1 Kgs 7:13-14; 2 Chr 2:6-7).

1 Kings 5:7. And when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, he was greatly pleased and said: “Blessed be the Lord today, who has given David a wise son to rule over this great people! 1 Kings 5:8. And Hiram sent word to Solomon, saying: “I have heard what you have requested of me. I will furnish all the cedar and cypress wood that you need; The words of blessing placed by the sacred writer in Hiram’s mouth — “blessed be the Lord” (according to (2 Chr 2:12): “blessed be the Lord, God of Israel”) do not prove that Hiram was a proselyte to Judaism, as old commentators believed: this is not known from history, and Hiram’s words of blessing represent a simple response to Solomon’s profession of faith in the Lord.

1 Kings 5:9. “My servants will bring them down from Lebanon to the sea, and I will make them into rafts to be floated to you, and you will receive them. And you shall meet my wishes by providing food for my household. According to (2 Chr 2:16), the timber, hewn by Phoenician workers, was floated in rafts to the seaport city of Jaffa or Joppa (in the tribe of Dan) (Josh 19:46), and from there the workers of Solomon received and transported it to Jerusalem.

1 Kings 5:11. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat as food for his household, and twenty measures of beaten oil; Solomon gave this to Hiram year by year. Every year, during all the building work, Solomon was obliged to deliver to Hiram’s court twenty thousand measures (about thirty thousand four-peck baskets) of wheat and an equal amount of the best olive oil (“beaten,” Hebrew: katit, compare (Exod 27:20), that is, obtained not by pressing, but by striking unripe olive berries). According to (2 Chr 2:11) and Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, VIII, 2, 8), a formal contract was concluded between Solomon and Hiram, copies of which were kept both in Jerusalem and in Tyre.

1 Kings 5:13. And King Solomon conscripted forced labor out of all Israel; the forced labor numbered thirty thousand. 1 Kings 5:14. He sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month in relays; they were a month in Lebanon and two months at home. And Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. To carry out the work, Solomon had to impose compulsory labor service on the native Israelites themselves (much oppressed by this: (1 Kgs 12:4)): thirty thousand Israelites annually, in three shifts, worked on Lebanon together with the Phoenicians.

1 Kings 5:15. And Solomon had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hills, 1 Kings 5:16. besides three thousand three hundred supervisors set by Solomon over the work, to oversee the people who were doing the work. Solomon imposed an even more burdensome, purely forced-labor service on the Canaanites — “sojourners” (Hebrew: gerim, (2 Chr 2:17; compare Josh 16:10; Judg 1:27)), who worked continuously: eighty thousand of them hewn and dressed stones in the hills, while seventy thousand brought the building material to the place of construction. Such an enormous number of workers was required in view of the absence in ancient times of any kind of machinery (an even larger number of workers was used, for example, in the construction of the famous Egyptian pyramids). The number of supervisors set over the workers is defined differently in 3 Kings and in 2 Chronicles, but the total comes out the same: according to (1 Kgs 5:16) — 3,300 people and according to (1 Kgs 9:23) — 550 people; according to (2 Chr 2:18) — 3,600, according to (2 Chr 8:10) — 250 people; in both cases the total number of supervisors is the same: 3,850.

1 Kings 5:17. And the king commanded them to quarry great stones, stones of high quality, to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stone. 1 Kings 5:18. And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites did the hewing; and they prepared the timber and the stone to build the house. [Three years] The stones were not brought from Lebanon, but were hewn in Canaan itself; the dressed stones — Hebrew: abne gazit. The term gazit is technical, denoting a peculiar ancient Hebrew method of stone-dressing, called “dressing with projections”: on all edges of the face of a stone ran a ribbon-like border or projection, so that the middle field of the stone was somewhat raised above its edges and for an observer from afar appeared as if set in a frame, and each stone stood out so distinctly against the general background of the wall that at a considerable distance one could count (compare Mark 13:1) all the stones (Prof. Olesnitskij, Holy Land, Kiev, 1875, vol. I, pp. 15–16. Idem. The Old Testament Temple in Jerusalem, St. Petersburg, 1889, pp. 565–566). “Gebalites” — inhabitants of the Phoenician city of Gebal, Greek Γυβλος, near ancient Sidon, now between Tripoli and Beirut; in (Ezek 27:9) its inhabitants appear as shipbuilders, but here they are stonemasons. The addition in the LXX text and the Slavic-Russian translation in v. 18: “three years” expresses the correct understanding that Solomon carried out preparatory work during the first 3 years of his reign, and only in the 4th year (1 Kgs 6:1; 2 Chr 3:2) began the laying of the building (compare the blessed Theodoret, question 22). These preparatory works consisted, according to Josephus, among other things, in leveling the designated Temple mount of Moriah (2 Chr 3:1) with the help of enormous stone blocks with earth, as well as the specially constructed wall at the foot of the hill (Jewish Antiquities, XV, 11, 3).