Solomon prepares to build the temple
2
📚And Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the LORD 📖, and a house for his kingdom 📖. 2 📚And Solomon assigned seventy thousand men to carry loads, and eighty thousand to cut stones in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred to oversee them.2:2 Verses 17,18; 1 Kings 5:15-16.⚜
3 📚And Solomon sent word to Huram, the king of Tyre, saying, “Deal with me as you dealt with my father David, when you sent him cedars to build a house for himself in which to live. 4 📚See, I will build a house for the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn fragrant incense 📖 before him and for the continual Showbread 📖 and for the burnt offerings 📖, morning and evening, on the Sabbaths and on the new moons and at the solemn festivals 📖 of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance forever for Israel.
5 📚“And the house which I will build will be great, for our God is greater than all gods. 6 📚But who is able to build a house for him, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? Who am I then, that I should build a house for him, except only to burn sacrifice before him?
7 📚“Therefore now send me a man skillful in working with gold and with silver and with bronze and with iron and with purple and crimson and blue, and who is skillful in engraving to work with the skillful men who are with me in Judah and in Jerusalem, whom my father David provided.
8 📚“Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees, from Lebanon; for I know that your servants know how to cut timber in Lebanon. And, see, my servants will be with your servants, 9 📚to prepare timber for me in abundance. For the house which I am about to build will be great and wonderful 📖. 10 📚And, see, I will give to your servants, to those who cut timber, twenty thousand measures of crushed wheat, and twenty thousand measures 📖 of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths 📖 of oil”.
11 📚Then Huram, the king of Tyre, answered in writing, and sent it to Solomon, “Because the LORD loves his people, he has made you king over them”.
2:11 Compare 1 Kings 10:9.⚜
12 📚Huram also said, “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, who has given to King David a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding, so that he might build a house for the LORD and a house for his kingdom.
2:12 Hiram had learned that Jehovah the God of Israel was no mere national God, but the creator of heaven and earth.⚜
13 📚“And now I have sent a skillful man, endued with understanding, of my father Huram. 14 📚He is the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skillful in working with gold and with silver, with bronze, with iron, with stone and with timber, with purple, with blue and with fine linen and with crimson and with any kind of engraving, and to execute any design that may be suggested to him. He can work with your skillful men, and with the skillful men of my lord David, your father.
15 📚“Now therefore let my lord send to his servants the wheat and the barley, the oil and the wine, of which he has spoken, 16 📚and we will cut as much wood as you need from Lebanon, and we will bring it to you on rafts by sea to Joppa. And you can transport it up to Jerusalem”.
17 📚And Solomon took a count of all the foreigners who were in the land of Israel, following the census his father David had taken 📖, and they were found to be a hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred. 18 📚And he appointed seventy thousand of them to be carriers of loads, and eighty thousand to be stone cutters in the mountain, and three thousand six hundred overseers to make the people work.