Magnificence of Solomon’s Rule
20Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea; they ate and drank and were happy. 21a Solomon was sovereign over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, even to the border of Egypt; they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.
22Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty cors of choice flour, and sixty cors of meal, 23ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle, one hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fatted fowl. 24For he had dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings west of the Euphrates; and he had peace on all sides. 25During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees. 26Solomon also had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. 27Those officials supplied provisions for King Solomon and for all who came to King Solomon’s table, each one in his month; they let nothing be lacking. 28They also brought to the required place barley and straw for the horses and swift steeds, each according to his charge.
Fame of Solomon’s Wisdom
29God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, 30so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt. 31He was wiser than anyone else, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, children of Mahol; his fame spread throughout all the surrounding nations. 32He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish. 34People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.
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a Ch 5.1 in Heb
4.1–19 These two lists of Solomon’s administrative officers were probably taken from old archives or perhaps from the Book of the Acts of Solomon (11.41). Both lists show signs of being slightly garbled during the process of transmission. They are intended to illustrate the effectiveness of Solomon’s administrative skills, but they also illustrate the degree to which his kingdom has expanded and become a typical imperial state. His tendencies in this direction run counter to Deuteronomic norms concerning kingship (Deut 17.14–20) and illustrate the dangers of which Samuel warned the Israelites when they asked for a king (1 Sam 8.11–18).
4.2–6 Some of Solomon’s officials (Zadok, Benaiah, Adoniram, and Jehoshaphat) are holdovers from David’s regime (2 Sam 8.16–18; 20.23–26; 1 Chr 18.15–17); others (Azariah son of Zadok, Azariah son of Nathan, and Zabud son of Nathan) represent the beginning of a hereditary bureaucracy. The inclusion of Abiathar in the list suggests that it comes from the beginning of Solomon’s reign, before the priest’s banishment (2.26–27).
4.3 Secretaries, scribes who kept official records but who also had major administrative responsibilities. Recorder, perhaps the keeper of the royal archives or the royal herald, but in either case one who functioned at the highest levels of the government.
4.5 The one who was over the officials supervised the district administrators listed in vv. 7–19. King’s friend, the king’s chief counselor.
4.6 The official in charge of the palace was probably the overseer of all royal estates and buildings. The officer in charge of the forced labor was the chief tax collector, who supervised the money, goods, and labor that were owed yearly to the crown (see also 12.18).
4.7–19 The list of Solomon’s administrative districts does not seem to conform to Israel’s traditional tribal divisions and is probably an indication that the king deliberately tried to break up the older governmental system. If vv. 13, 19 do not refer to the same district, then Judah lies outside the list of twelve administrative units and may not have been taxed in the same way they were.
4.20–28 The description of Solomon’s empire and court underlines the magnificence of his reign.
4.20–21 The growth of Israel’s population and the expansion of its territory are the fulfillment of the promises of land and progeny that God gave to Israel’s ancestors (Gen 12.2; 13.14–17; 15.18–19; 22.17; 32.12; Deut 1.7–8).
4.22–28 The inventory of Solomon’s daily provisions shows the extraordinary size of his court, particularly since the catalog does not include perishable food that would not have been kept in royal storerooms and livestock pens. Solomon’s extensive empire and the general contentment with his rule did not last to the end of his reign (see ch. 11).
4.22 Cor. See note on 5.11.
4.23 Fat oxen, probably expensive grain-fed animals, in contrast to the more common pasture-fed cattle.
4.29–34 This description of Solomon’s wisdom suggests why he is credited with producing much of the OT’s wisdom literature (Prov 1.1; 25.1; Eccl 1.1; Song 1.1).
4.31 Ethan and Heman are said to have written psalms (Pss 88; 89). Calcol and Darda were perhaps musicians.
4.33 For examples of nature wisdom, see Judg 9.8–15; 2 Kings 14.9; Prov 6.6; 30.15–19, 24–31.
1 KINGS 5a
Preparations and Materials for the Temple
1Now King Hiram 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. 2Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying, 3“You know that my father David could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet.b 4But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary nor misfortune. 5So I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD said to my father David, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name.’ 6Therefore command that cedars from the Lebanon be cut for me. My servants will join your servants, and I will give you whatever wages you set for your servants; for you know that there is no one among us who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians.”
7When Hiram heard the words of Solomon, he rejoiced greatly, and said, “Blessed be the LORD today, who has given to David a wise son to be over this great people.” 8Hiram sent word to Solomon, “I have heard the message that you have sent to me; I will fulfill all your needs in the matter of cedar and cypress timber. 9My servants shall bring it down to the sea from the Lebanon; I will make it into rafts to go by sea to the place you indicate. I will have them broken up there for you to take away. And you shall meet my needs by providing food for my household.” 10So Hiram supplied Solomon’s every need for timber of cedar and cypress. 11Solomon in turn gave Hiram twenty thousand cors of wheat as food for his household, and twenty cors of fine oil. Solomon gave this to Hiram year by year. 12So the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him. There was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and the two of them made a treaty.
13King Solomon conscripted forced labor out of all Israel; the levy numbered thirty thousand men. 14He sent them to the Lebanon, ten thousand a month in shifts; they would be a month in the Lebanon and two months at home; Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. 15Solomon also had seventy thousand laborers and eighty thousand stone-cutters in the hill country, 16besides Solomon’s three thousand three hundred supervisors who were over the work, having charge of the people who did the work. 17At the king’s command, they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. 18So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites did the stonecutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.
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a Ch 5.15 in Heb
b Gk Tg Vg: Heb my feet or his feet
5.1–19 Just as David had built a royal palace and had proposed to build a temple after God had given the king “rest from all his enemies around him” (2 Sa
m 7.1), so now Solomon turns his attention to building houses for himself and for the Lord. Throughout the ancient Near East the establishment of a new king was typically followed by palace and temple construction so that the new ruler and his god could be properly enthroned.
5.1 Tyre, a Phoenician city just off the coast of southern Lebanon that, along with Sidon, another Phoenician city twenty-two miles to the north, dominated coastal trade around the Mediterranean throughout much of the first millennium BCE. Hiram is more than a friend to David; the Hebrew text suggests that the two were treaty partners (see also 2 Sam 5.11). Hiram’s interest in continuing this treaty relationship may have prompted him to send goodwill ambassadors to Solomon (see v. 12).
5.3–5 In spite of the fact that 2 Sam 7 gives no explanation for God’s forbidding David to build a temple, Solomon here suggests that David could not build a divine house because his kingdom had not been firmly established. He was still engaged in warfare with his enemies. This retrospective explanation defends David’s failure to build a temple, but it contradicts 2 Sam 7.1. Until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet may be based on 2 Sam 7.11, which seems to imply that God will give David rest from his enemies sometime in the future. The alternate reading my feet would suggest that only in Solomon’s day was the kingdom established firmly enough to permit temple building, and this reading would provide a better transition to v. 4. Solomon clearly sees the building of the temple as a fulfillment of Nathan’s prophecy (2 Sam 7.13).
5.6 Lebanon was famous in the ancient world as a source for cedar, a wood whose durability made it highly desirable as a building material. Cedar trees in Lebanon grew particularly tall and straight, characteristics that made them useful in the construction of monumental buildings. Solomon proposes to send workers to aid the Phoenicians (here called simply Sidonians) in cutting the timber and offers to pay the wages of the men involved.
5.9 Hiram’s counteroffer leaves all of the timber cutting and logging in the hands of the Phoenicians. In return, Solomon will provide food not just for the Phoenician loggers but for Hiram’s entire royal court.
5.11 Cor, as a dry measure about 14 bushels; as a wet measure 35–60 gallons. Fine oil, lit. “beaten oil,” olive oil produced by allowing the oil to drip naturally out of a basket of crushed olives.
5.13–17 Work on the temple added to the tax burden already imposed to support Solomon’s court.
5.14 Adoniram. See 2 Sam 20.24; notes on 1 Kings 4.2–6; 4.6. The remark that Solomon sent conscripted workers to the Lebanon seems to be at odds with v. 9, which assigns only Phoenicians to the work there.
5.17 Dressed stones, ashlars, huge squared, finished blocks whose size made them very difficult to quarry and transport.
5.18 Gebalites, inhabitants of the Phoenician coastal city Gebal, later called Byblos by the Greeks.
1 KINGS 6
Solomon Builds the Temple
1In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the LORD. 2The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. 3The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was twenty cubits wide, across the width of the house. Its depth was ten cubits in front of the house. 4For the house he made windows with recessed frames.a 5He also built a structure against the wall of the house, running around the walls of the house, both the nave and the inner sanctuary; and he made side chambers all around. 6The lowest storyb was five cubits wide, the middle one was six cubits wide, and the third was seven cubits wide; for around the outside of the house he made offsets on the wall in order that the supporting beams should not be inserted into the walls of the house.
7The house was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron was heard in the temple while it was being built.
8The entrance for the middle story was on the south side of the house: one went up by winding stairs to the middle story, and from the middle story to the third. 9So he built the house, and finished it; he roofed the house with beams and planks of cedar. 10He built the structure against the whole house, each storyc five cubits high, and it was joined to the house with timbers of cedar.
11Now the word of the LORD came to Solomon, 12“Concerning this house that you are building, if you will walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances, and keep all my commandments by walking in them, then I will establish my promise with you, which I made to your father David. 13I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.”
14So Solomon built the house, and finished it. 15He lined the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar; from the floor of the house to the rafters of the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood; and he covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress. 16He built twenty cubits of the rear of the house with boards of cedar from the floor to the rafters, and he built this within as an inner sanctuary, as the most holy place. 17The house, that is, the nave in front of the inner sanctuary, was forty cubits long. 18The cedar within the house had carvings of gourds and open flowers; all was cedar, no stone was seen. 19The inner sanctuary he prepared in the innermost part of the house, to set there the ark of the covenant of the LORD. 20The interior of the inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high; he overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the altar with cedar.d 21Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold, then he drew chains of gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold. 22Next he overlaid the whole house with gold, in order that the whole house might be perfect; even the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold.
The Furnishings of the Temple
23In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high. 24Five cubits was the length of one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the length of the other wing of the cherub; it was ten cubits from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. 25The other cherub also measured ten cubits; both cherubim had the same measure and the same form. 26The height of one cherub was ten cubits, and so was that of the other cherub. 27He put the cherubim in the innermost part of the house; the wings of the cherubim were spread out so that a wing of one was touching the one wall, and a wing of the other cherub was touching the other wall; their other wings toward the center of the house were touching wing to wing. 28He also overlaid the cherubim with gold.
29He carved the walls of the house all around about with carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, in the inner and outer rooms. 30The floor of the house he overlaid with gold, in the inner and outer rooms.
31For the entrance to the inner sanctuary he made doors of olivewood; the lintel and the doorposts were five-sided.e 32He covered the two doors of olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers; he overlaid them with gold, and spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees.
33So also he made for the entrance to the nave doorposts of olivewood, four-sided each, 34and two doors of cypress wood; the two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding. 35He carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, overlaying them with gold evenly applied upon the carved work. 36He built the inner court with three courses of dressed stone to one course of cedar beams.
37In the fourth year the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid, in the month of Ziv. 38In the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its parts, and according to all its specifications. He was seven years in building it.
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a Gk: Meaning of Heb uncertain
b Gk: Heb structure
c Heb lacks each story
d Meaning of Heb uncertain
e Meaning of Heb uncertain
6.1–22 This detailed des
cription of the building of the temple is designed to impress readers with the building’s magnificence and the splendor of Solomon’s reign. The account is sometimes confusing because it uses a large number of rare and probably archaic architectural terms, which even the ancient Greek translators no longer understood. Most of the information in ch. 6 is taken from archival sources or from the Book of the Acts of Solomon (11.41).
6.1 Fourth year of Solomon’s reign, between 966 and 956 BCE. This chronology would place the exodus about the middle of the fifteenth century BCE, a date that most modern scholars would consider too early. Ziv, the second month in the Canaanite calendar (April-May). The temple was built to the north of David’s city on a threshing floor David acquired from Araunah the Jebusite (2 Sam 24.18–25).
6.2 A cubit is about 18 inches. Solomon’s temple, a rectangular building 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 45 feet high, seems to have been built on Phoenician-Syrian models.
6.3 To the central structure was added an unroofed vestibule, or entrance area, 15 feet long and 30 feet wide. A worshiper entering the temple passed through the vestibule and then came to the 60-foot-long nave (v. 17).
6.5 The nave in turn led to an inner sanctuary, or holy of holies, which was a perfect 30-foot cube (v. 20). Around the outside of the nave and the inner sanctuary was a three-story structure, which helped to support the walls and also provided storage space. Latticed windows high in the walls let light in and sacrificial smoke out.
6.11–13 Just as Kings understands God’s dynastic promise to David to be conditional on obedience (2.4) and sees the divine promise of longevity to Solomon in a similar way (3.14), so here Kings reminds Solomon that God’s willingness to dwell in the temple is also conditional. This typically Deuteronomistic perspective runs counter to the widely held belief that God had promised to dwell eternally in Jerusalem (Pss 68.16; 135.21; Jer 7.1–15).
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