As we read 1 kings chapter 4 it is easy to be put off by all the names!
As I have mentioned elsewhere, it’s easy to think ‘I am bound to get the pronunciation wrong’!
Don’t worry. Spoken Hebrew was lost as a language following the Babylonian exile and was only revived in the last hundred or so years. So no-one can be absolutely sure if one pronunciation is ‘right’ or not. I suggest that you carefully look at the spelling, try a few different pronunciations, settle on one you are comfortable with, and go for it. (There will always be others who will ‘help’ you if they think you are wrong!)
Read 1 Kings 4:1-6 but I’ll comment on each verse separately:
1 So King Solomon ruled over all Israel. 2 And these were his chief officials:
Azariah son of Zadok – the priest;
I’m pleased that top of the list is the Priest – but ‘Zadok the priest’ is very familiar, why is that?
It’s the title that Handel gave the anthem that he composed for the coronation of King George II in 1727, and has been sung at every coronation since. He took the words from 1 Kings 1:38-40.
Next we have:
3 Elihoreph and Ahijah, sons of Shisha – secretaries;
Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud – recorder;
Again, obviously important roles (as any secretary, typist or filing clerk will tell you!)
Then
4 Benaiah son of Jehoiada – commander-in-chief;
Zadok and Abiathar – priests;
Benaiah had been one of David’s ‘Mighty Men’ and had replaced Joab as army commander. It was he who Solomon commanded to rid him of those who had rebelled against him (chapter 2).
Zadok we’ve just mentioned, but Abiathar the priest had just been banished by Solomon (also chapter 2:26-27). I can only assume that although the title ‘High Priest’ had been given to Zadok, Abiathar was still referred to by that title. – rather like Annas and Caiaphas in the New Testament (John 18:1-14).
5 Azariah son of Nathan – in charge of the district governors;
Zabud son of Nathan – a priest and advisor to the king;
Effectively Azariah was to be the Chief Tax Collector – as we will see in a moment.
Zabud – having an advisor who was also a priest should hopefully keep Solomon on the straight and narrow.
6 Ahishar – palace administrator;
Adoniram son of Abda – in charge of forced labour.
Palace Administrator was obviously an important role, and someone in charge of the many slaves was also an onerous task. (Slavery had always been a standard practice – most books of the bible mention slaves. It is thought that the term could better be translated 'servant' or just 'worker' as they were often treated as such.)
Now the next section – 1 Kings 4:7-19 – but we’ll only read verse 7 first:
7 Solomon had twelve district governors over all Israel, who supplied provisions for the king and the royal household. Each one had to provide supplies for one month in the year.
At first glance you might assume that these governors were simply assigned, one to each tribe, but it wasn’t that simple. Some of Israel’s tribes were large, and some small, so Solomon decided to split the land into more equal areas.
Also the division was by months, not tribes.
A sensible, fair decision – but people are not sensible or fair! The divisions cut across ancient tribal boundaries, and sowed the seeds of future dissention.
You could now read verses 8-19, but skimming them might be easier – although verse 8 might trip you up. The Ben-Hur mentioned simply means son of Hur and has no connection with the entirely fictional man in the 1959 film!
Besides the regular taxation of Israel, the surrounding countries that had been subdued also brought tribute.
Read 1 Kings 4:20-21
20 The people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore; they ate, they drank and they were happy. 21 And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the River Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt. These countries brought tribute and were Solomon’s subjects all his life.
22 Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors (5 tons) of the finest flour and sixty cors of meal, 23 ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl. 24 For he ruled over all the kingdoms west of the River Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, and had peace on all sides. 25 During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig-tree.
And verses 27-28
27 The district governors, each in his month, supplied provisions for King Solomon and all who came to the king’s table. They saw to it that nothing was lacking. 28 They also brought to the proper place their quotas of barley and straw for the chariot horses and the other horses.
What a lovely picture of peace and serenity: ‘ . . . they ate, they drank and they were happy . . . everyone under their own vine and under their own fig-tree.’
At last a situation suitable for God to finally establish his Temple. Only one niggle worried the writer of 1 Kings:
verse 26 Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses. But we’ll leave that for now, we’ll look at it again in chapter 10.
So now we can move into the next section, chapters 5-9, which will detail the construction of the Temple that David had planned. There will be a lot of narrative with few comments! (Best to share reading these passages amongst several people.)
Although Solomon had subdued the surrounding nations, the ‘Sea-Peoples’ remained. Philistines in the south were currently subdued, and Phoenicians in the north (Lebanon) were friendly with David.
To build the temple, Solomon would need a lot of timber and the vast ‘Cedars of Lebanon’ forests would be the best source. Ownership appeared not to be an issue, but the cutting and extraction of massive trees (up to six feet or 2 metres in diameter and 130 ft or 40m high) was beyond the skills of the Israelites.
Read 1 Kings 5:1-18
1 When Hiram king of Tyre heard that Solomon had been anointed king to succeed his father David, he sent his envoys to Solomon, because he had always been on friendly terms with David. 2 Solomon sent back this message to Hiram:
3 ‘You know that because of the wars waged against my father David from all sides, he could not build a temple for the Name of the Lord his God until the Lord put his enemies under his feet. 4 But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or disaster. 5 I intend, therefore, to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God, as the Lord told my father David, when he said, “Your son whom I will put on the throne in your place will build the temple for my Name.”
6 ‘So give orders that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me. My men will work with yours, and I will pay you for your men whatever wages you set. You know that we have no one so skilled in felling timber as the Sidonians.’
7 When Hiram heard Solomon’s message, he was greatly pleased and said, ‘Praise be to the Lord today, for he has given David a wise son to rule over this great nation.’
8 So Hiram sent word to Solomon:
‘I have received the message you sent me and will do all you want in providing the cedar and juniper logs. 9 My men will haul them down from Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea, and I will float them as rafts by sea to the place you specify. There I will separate them and you can take them away. And you are to grant my wish by providing food for my royal household.’
10 In this way Hiram kept Solomon supplied with all the cedar and juniper logs he wanted, 11 and Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand cors (3250 metric tons) of wheat as food for his household, in addition to twenty thousand baths (about 440,000 litres) of pressed olive oil. Solomon continued to do this for Hiram year after year. 12 The Lord gave Solomon wisdom, just as he had promised him. There were peaceful relations between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them made a treaty.
Temple foundations (Rgbstock.com)
17 At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of high-grade stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. 18 The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and workers from Byblos cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple.
13 King Solomon conscripted labourers from all Israel – thirty thousand men. 14 He sent them off to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month, so that they spent one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labour. 15 Solomon had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hills, 16 as well as thirty-three hundred foremen who supervised the project and directed the workers.
Before we move on, just look at those numbers again: 10,000 men each month to saw and move timber from the forests of Lebanon. 80,000 men working in the quarries in the hills around Jerusalem.
Iron tools had come into use at least 100 years earlier. Lebanese cedar had always been popular and the workmen of Byblos (the main sea port at the time) would have become skilled in cutting and moving it. The underlying stone in Israel is mainly limestone, and with fewer trees, many people there would have become proficient in working and building with stone.
Before we start to look at the building of the Temple we should bear in mind that since the time of Solomon, various times of destruction and rebuilding of the Temple and its surrounding Courtyard have totally expanded and covered the original site. No archaeological digs are allowed on the current site so no remains from the time of Solomon have yet been discovered.
Also there is no evidence that the ancient quarry under Jerusalem, ‘Zedekiah's Cave’ also called ‘Solomon's Quarries’ was used by Solomon, but it has been shown that it provided stone for Herod’s Temple among other buildings.
To help understand what we are about to read, a cubit is generally considered to be 1½ ft, and Solomon’s temple and courtyard were very roughly twice the size of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26), but generally it followed its design.
Now read 1 Kings 6:1-10
1 In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.
2 The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high. 3 The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple extended the width of the temple, that is twenty cubits, and projected ten cubits from the front of the temple. 4 He made narrow windows high up in the temple walls. 5 Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure around the building, in which there were side rooms. 6 The lowest floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits and the third floor seven. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls.
7 In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.
8 The entrance to the lowest floor was on the south side of the temple; a stairway led up to the middle level and from there to the third. 9 So he built the temple and completed it, roofing it with beams and cedar planks. 10 And he built the side rooms all along the temple. The height of each was five cubits, and they were attached to the temple by beams of cedar.
Verses 6 and 7 begin to suggest that from the outset the whole Temple was to be holy. It was not to be a characteristic building site! The atmosphere would be quiet and orderly. Any part of the Temple that would ordinarily incorporate holes for linking timbers were replaced with additional stone supports built outside the actual structure.
We’ll come back to verses 11-13 in a minute.
Read 1 Kings 6:14-28
14 So Solomon built the temple and completed it. 15 He lined its interior walls with cedar boards, panelling them from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, and covered the floor of the temple with planks of juniper. 16 He partitioned off twenty cubits at the rear of the temple with cedar boards from floor to ceiling to form within the temple an inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. 17 The main hall in front of this room was forty cubits long. 18 The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds and open flowers. Everything was cedar; no stone was to be seen.
19 He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the Lord there. 20 The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty wide and twenty high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar. 21 Solomon covered the inside of the temple with pure gold, and he extended gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary, which was overlaid with gold. 22 So he overlaid the whole interior with gold. He also overlaid with gold the altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary.
23 For the inner sanctuary he made a pair of cherubim out of olive wood, each ten cubits high. 24 One wing of the first cherub was five cubits long, and the other wing five cubits – ten cubits from wing tip to wing tip. 25 The second cherub also measured ten cubits, for the two cherubim were identical in size and shape. 26 The height of each cherub was ten cubits. 27 He placed the cherubim inside the innermost room of the temple, with their wings spread out. The wing of one cherub touched one wall, while the wing of the other touched the other wall, and their wings touched each other in the middle of the room. 28 He overlaid the cherubim with gold.
In this way the Holy of Holies, covered in gold throughout, was prepared to receive the Ark of the Covenant, which would eventually be placed between the giant cherubim.
Read 1 Kings 6:29-37
29 On the walls all round the temple, in both the inner and outer rooms, he carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. 30 He also covered the floors of both the inner and outer rooms of the temple with gold.
31 For the entrance to the inner sanctuary he made doors out of olive wood that were one fifth of the width of the sanctuary. 32 And on the two olive-wood doors he carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid the cherubim and palm trees with hammered gold.
33 In the same way, for the entrance to the main hall he made doorframes out of olive wood that were one quarter of the width of the hall. 34 He also made two doors out of juniper wood, each having two leaves that turned in sockets. 35 He carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers on them and overlaid them with gold hammered evenly over the carvings. 36 And he built the inner courtyard of three courses of dressed stone and one course of trimmed cedar beams.
37 The foundation of the temple of the Lord was laid in the fourth year, in the month of Ziv. 38 In the eleventh year in the month of Bul, the eighth month, the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years building it.
Now we can read 1 Kings 6:11-13
11 The word of the Lord came to Solomon: 12 ‘As for this temple you are building, if you follow my decrees, observe my laws and keep all my commands and obey them, I will fulfil through you the promise I gave to David your father. 13 And I will live among the Israelites and will not abandon my people Israel.’
The words of David, spoken to Solomon in 1 Kings 2:1-4, were now repeated by the Lord himself – confirming his promises as a covenant-keeping God. But they also contain an ‘if’. Holiness had to extend beyond the Temple – the same covenants required it of King and people too.
