V. In contrast with the brief notes of the previous chapter, the fifth chapter begins another section of the fuller history (1 Kings 5:1 to 1 Kings 9:9), describing in great detail the building and consecration of the Temple, and evidently drawn from contemporary documents.... [ Continue Reading ]
HIRAM is first mentioned in 2 Samuel 5:11 (and the parallel, 1 Chronicles 14:1) as having sent workmen and materials to David for the building of his house. He is described as a “lover of David.” Ancient tradition makes him a tributary or dependent monarch; and his attitude, as described in Scriptur... [ Continue Reading ]
THOU KNOWEST. — In the description (1 Chronicles 22:4) of David’s collection of materials for the Temple, it is noted that “the Zidonians and they of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David.” Hence Hiram knew well his desire of building the Temple, and the care with which, when disappointed of it, he... [ Continue Reading ]
CEDAR TREES OUT OF LEBANON. — The central range of Lebanon is bare; but in the lower ranges there is still — probably in old times there was to a far greater extent — a rich abundance of timber, specially precious to the comparatively treeless country of Palestine. The forest of Lebanon was proverbi... [ Continue Reading ]
BLESSED BE THE LORD. — Hiram’s answer is one of deference, still more clearly marked in 2 Chronicles 2:12. His acknowledgment of Jehovah the God of Israel is a token rather of such deference to Israel, than of any acceptance of Him as the one true God.... [ Continue Reading ]
SHALL BRING THEM. — The timber was to be carried down, or, perhaps, let down on slides along the face of the mountain towards the sea, and brought round by rafts to Joppa (2 Chronicles 2:16), to save the enormous cost and difficulty of land carriage. The grant of “food for his household” in return ... [ Continue Reading ]
TWENTY THOUSAND MEASURES OF WHEAT. — This agrees well enough with the calculation in 1 Kings 4:22 of ninety measures a day — something over 32,000 a year — for Solomon’s Court, presumably greater than that of Hiram. But the “twenty measures of oil “ — even of the pure refined oil — is so insignifica... [ Continue Reading ]
LEVY OUT OF ALL ISRAEL. — This, though far from being onerous, appears to have been at this time exceptional. For in 1 Kings 9:22 we read that “of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen: but they were men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his captains.” Thus exceptionally in... [ Continue Reading ]
THE CHIEF OF SOLOMON’S OFFICERS we should certainly have supposed to have been taken from the Israelites (as clearly were the 550 named in 1 Kings 9:23). But the passage in Chronicles (2 Chronicles 2:18) — reckoning them at 3,600 — seems to imply that they were, like the overseers of Israel in the E... [ Continue Reading ]
GREAT STONES. — The stones, so emphatically described as “great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones,” were necessary, not so much for “the foundation” of the Temple itself, which was small, but for the substructure of the area, formed into a square on the irregular summit of Mount Moriah. In thi... [ Continue Reading ]
THE STONE-SQUARERS. — This rendering is a curious gloss on the proper name, “_Giblites”_ (see margin) — the inhabitants of Gebal (mentioned in Ezekiel 27:9 in connection with Tyre, and probably in Psalms 83:7), a city on the coast of Phœnicia — simply because the context shows that they were clever... [ Continue Reading ]