Study Desk

Solomon gave orders to build a temple for the Name of the LORD and a royal palace for himself.

He conscripted seventy thousand men as carriers and eighty thousand as stonecutters in the hills and thirty-six hundred as foremen over them.

Solomon sent this message to Hiram ^(F6) king of Tyre: "Send me cedar logs as you did for my father David when you sent him cedar to build a palace to live in.

Now I am about to build a temple for the Name of the LORD my God and to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for setting out the consecrated bread regularly, and for making burnt offerings every morning and evening and on Sabbaths and New Moons and at the appointed feasts of the LORD our God. This is a lasting ordinance for Israel.

"The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods.

But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? Who then am I to build a temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before him?

"Send me, therefore, a man skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, and in purple, crimson and blue yarn, and experienced in the art of engraving, to work in Judah and Jerusalem with my skilled craftsmen, whom my father David provided.

"Send me also cedar, pine and algum ^(F7) logs from Lebanon, for I know that your men are skilled in cutting timber there. My men will work with yours

to provide me with plenty of lumber, because the temple I build must be large and magnificent.

I will give your servants, the woodsmen who cut the timber, twenty thousand cors ^(F8) of ground wheat, twenty thousand cors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine and twenty thousand baths of olive oil."