Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon... to build the house. 1 Kings 5 The co-operation of Hiram J. Parker, D. D. According to tradition, Hiram was a tributary or dependent monarch. The embassy which Hiram sent on this occasion was evidently meant to express the congratulations of the King of Tyre — in 2 Chronicles 2:14, 15 , we find the words, "My lord," "My lord David thy father." There is a notable mixture of affection and reverence in the spirit which Hiram showed to Solomon; Hiram was "ever a lover of David," and yet he speaks of David in terms which an inferior would use to a superior. Hiram preserved the continuity of friendship, and herein showed himself an example, not only to monarchs but to other men. Although Solomon was blessed with "rest on every side," and was enabled to look upon a future without so much as the shadow of an adversary upon it, yet he was determined not to be indolent. Suppose a man to come into the circumstances which we have described as constituting the royal position of Solomon, and suppose that man destitute of an adequate and all-controlling purpose, it is easy to see how he would become the victim of luxury, and how what little strength he had would gradually be withdrawn from him. But at all events, in the opening of Solomon's career, we see that the purpose was always uppermost, the soul was in a regnant condition, all outward pomp and circumstance was ordered back into its right perspective, and the king pursued a course of noble constancy as he endeavoured to realise the idea and intent of heaven. The same law applies to all prosperous men. To increase in riches is to increase in temptation, to indolence and self-idolatry: to external trust and vain confidence, to misanthropy, monopoly, and oppression; the only preventive or cure is the cultivation of a noble "purpose," so noble indeed as to throw almost into contempt everything that is merely temporal and earthly. Even the noblest purpose needs the co-operation of sympathetic and competent men. Thus the Jew seeks assistance from the Gentile in building the house of the Lord. How wonderful are the co-operations which are continually taking place in life! so subtly do they interblend, and make up that which is lacking in each other, that it is simply impossible to effect an exhaustive analysis, Nor would it be desirable that such an analysis should be completed. We should fix our minds upon the great fact that no man liveth unto himself, that no man is complete in himself, that every man needs the help of every other man, and thus we shall see how mysteriously is built the great temple of life, and is realised before the eyes of the universe the great purpose of God. Co-operation is only another word for the distributions which God has made of talent and opportunity. In vain had Hiram responded in the language of generous sympathy if Israel itself had been a divided people. This must be the condition of the Church as a great working body in the world. It will be in vain that poetry, history, literature, music, and things which apparently lie outside the line of spiritual activity, send in their offers, tributes, and contributions, each according to its own kind, if the Church to which the offer is made is a divided and self-destroying body. When all Israel is one, the contributions of Tyre will be received with thankfulness and be turned to their highest uses. A beautiful picture is given in verse 14. The picture represents the difference between cutting down and setting up; in other words, the difference between destruction and construction. It was easier to cut down than it was to build up. The two operations should always go on together. The business of the Church is to pull down, and to build up; even to use the materials of the enemy in building up the temple of the living God. The picture has aa evident relation to the ease with which men can pull down faith and darken hope and unsettle confidence. Thus the work of foreign missions should help the work of missions at home. Every idolatry that is thrown down abroad should be turned into a contribution for the upbuilding and strengthening of the Church at home. The care shown of the foundation is another instance of the wisdom of Solomon. The stones which were used in the foundation were in no sense considered insignificant or worthless. The stones which Solomon used are described as "great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones"; the terms which are used to describe the foundation which was laid in Zion are these — "A stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation." We read also of the foundations of the wall of the city which John saw in vision — "The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." A curious illustration of the union between the permanent and the temporary is shown in all earthly arrangements. Solomon laid foundations which might have lasted as long as the earth itself endured. Judging by the foundations alone, one would have said concerning the work of Solomon, This is meant for permanence; no thought of change or decay ever occurred to the mind of the man who laid these noble courses. It is the same with ourselves in nearly all the relations of life. We know that we may die to-day, yet we lay plans which will require years and generations to accomplish. Yet we often speak as having no obligation to the future, or as if the future would do nothing for us, not knowing that it is the future which makes the present what it is, and that but for the future all our inspiration would be lost because our hope would perish. Let us see that our foundations are strong. A beautiful illustration of contrast and harmony is to be found in the distribution which Solomon made of his workers and the labour they were required to undertake. Here we find burden-bearers, hewers in the mountains, officers, and rulers. There was no standing upon one level or claiming of one dignity. Each man did what he could according to the measure of his capacity, and each man did precisely what he was told to do by his commanding officer. It is in vain to talk about any equality that does not recognise the principle of order and the principle of obedience. Our equality must be found in our devotion, in the pureness of our purpose, in the steadfastness of our loyalty, and not in merely official status or public prominence. The unity of the Church must be found, not in its forms, emoluments, dignities, and the like, but in the simplicity of its faith and the readiness of its eager and affectionate obedience. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) When Hiram heard the words of Solomon. 1 Kings 5:7-11 Hiram and Solomon F. Wagstaff. I. GRATIFICATION. Hiram "rejoiced greatly" when he heard the words of King Solomon. This arose partly from the love he bore to his father David. The gratification of Hiram sprang also from a recognition of Solomon's wisdom: gratification in another's good. II. CONSIDERATION (ver. 8). The demand of Solomon was no small one, and deserved consideration. It involved, in all probability, a great sacrifice on the part of the Tyrians. III. SATISFACTION. "All his desire" (ver. 10). There was not one thing which Solomon asked, which Hiram did not grant; it is not right to ask or expect unreasonable things. It is right to grant reasonable requests, even if they should occasion sacrifice. Unreasonable requests should not be granted, even if it should be more easy to do so than to refuse. IV. RECOGNITION. "Endued with understanding " ( 2 Chronicles 2:13 ). Knowledge, genius, skill are of heavenly birth, and to despise them is to be guilty of a sin. V. COMBINATION. Solomon and Hiram were not independent of each other. No one can serve God properly in isolation: "two are better far than one," etc. Query — Have Christians a right to remain detached from the Church of Christ? VI. DISTRIBUTION ( 2 Chronicles 2:16 ). Each did the part allotted to him; the result was success. ( F. Wagstaff. ) Joy of sharing in a good work : — It was a saying of the late Professor Samuel Miller, of Princeton, that he loved to have "a nail in every building intended for the glory of God or the good of man." Here and there he scattered the gifts he had, a portion to seven and also to eight — benedictions wherever he went. Few are so poor but that they can adopt this plan of continuous beneficence. A month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home. 1 Kings 5:14 Church and home J. Stuart. The building of the temple was the distinctive glory of the reign of Solomon, the most important monument of his administration. Although its erection was not originally contemplated in the Mosaic law, it had long been evident that such a building was necessary. I. EVERY GREAT UNDERTAKING DEMANDS GREAT AND VARIED EFFORT FOR ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT. The design of the temple, originated by David, had been adopted and elaborated by Solomon. Solomon's was the inspiring and directing mind. The results which fill us with gladness bear a direct proportion to their causes. "Out of nothing, nothing comes." You can achieve no worthy purpose, you can rear no solid structure, either as a witness to the glory of God or a place of sanctuary and healing for men, without an expenditure of thought, of affection, and of energy. In matters temporal and spiritual alike, success is, under the blessing of God, given to unrestrained labour. There is being reared among men a grander temple than Solomon's. Believers in Jesus Christ are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner-stone. It is for us to dig deep in the earth, to fashion the stones into shape, to place them row upon row, until the whole edifice is complete. We have to rear the columns, to execute the carved workmanship, and to fix in their places the richly stained windows. II. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DUTIES WHICH BELONG TO OUR BUSINESS AND OUR HOME. "A month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home." The men whom Solomon drafted off to aid him in his momentous task were not to neglect the cultivation of their fields and their vineyards. Devotion to the duties of religion neither justifies nor requires the neglect of our "secular calling." Business also is a Divine appointment; an essential element in our moral and spiritual education; training us to habits which can be learned in no other way so simply and effectually. So likewise of our homes. The family is the oldest of all our institutions, older even than the Church. Our first thoughts are associated with it. We should not be absent from our homes more than is really needful. Do not forget the proportion — one month at Lebanon and two at home. By no ethical or spiritual standard with which I am acquainted can negligence be justified. No husband is true to his name unless he is indeed "of house and home the band and stay." Even religious and philanthropic meetings should not be allowed to thrust home duties into a corner. ( J. Stuart. ) Homes and how to make them W. Gladden. Every human being ought to be a member of some household, and every household ought to have a fixed place of residence, a place of its own — in one word, both short and sweet, a home. That is the only right way of living. A home is, for every human being, the first condition of the highest happiness and the best growth. No one ought to be satisfied until he has supplied it for himself. There are among us a multitude of homeless ones. Of these there are several sorts. There are the sturdy tramps, who go wandering about from city to city and from hamlet to hamlet, stopping where night finds them. When men take up the trade of vagrancy, they are too apt to follow it as long as they live. We cannot afford to have this subdivision of our homeless class increase. Next are the gypsies, that dusky race from over the seas, who have managed for so many years to puzzle the ethnologists and frighten the children. Here is a whole race that for centuries has been homeless, and for that reason has no history, no literature, not much religion if any, and hardly any knowledge of the arts of civilisation. Such possessions and acquirements as these are scarcely within the reach of people who have no homes: Next after the gypsies there is a considerable class of persons who are too restless to stay long in any place, and whose lives are spent in constant migrations from one place to another; who tarry nowhere long enough to get wanted. Next after the floating population comes that large class of persons who have a local residence but not a local habitation; who continue to live in the same community, but do not live in homes; who make their abode in such public residences as hotels or boarding-houses. Now, as respects these, it must be said that many of them are compelled to adopt this manner of life. Young men and women whose homes have been broken up by the death of their parents, or who have been called forth from the habitation of their childhood to seek education and livelihood in distant places, cannot, of course, have homes of their own. 1. The strongest justification of the home life, is in the fact that there are certain affections of the soul that can be developed in no other manner of life. The domestic virtues and graces are not easily described or catalogued, but they form an important part of the best human character. There are sentiments, sympathies, habitudes of thought, which are native to the home, and which are essential to the best growth and highest development of human beings. Domesticity gives to every beautiful character an added charm. No man is truly good who is not good at home; and the best men are always best on the side that touches home. 2. Public spirit is fed and fostered at the fireside. The man who has a home of his own is interested that the community in which he lives should be lacking in nothing that could help to make it desirable as a place of residence. He who makes himself a householder by that act gives a hostage to society for his good behaviour and his devotion to public interests. Patriotism, too, has its foundations laid upon the hearthstones of the land. The patriot's love for his country is rooted and grounded in his love for his home. And for the nation's heart-beats you must listen in the nation's homes. When the great mass of the people are not only householders but free-holders — when they own the homes they live in — the sentiment of patriotism finds its intensest development. 3. Your home must be a place of comfort and repose. That, of course. You will take delight in contriving all its appointments so that the burdens of toil shall rest as lightly as possible upon those who have the ordering of it; you will find pleasure in furnishing and arranging it, so far as you can, in such manner that gloom and cheerlessness shall be excluded, and it shall seem to be a true haven of rest and good cheer to all upon whom its hospitable doors shall open. 4. Your home must be a school of culture. I do not mean that you will fill it with pedagogic instruments and appliances; but it will be so arranged as to educate by impression those who dwell within it. Probably few of us are fully aware how sensitive we are to the influence of external objects. A minister travelling in Vermont entered a farmhouse, and fell into conversation with a farmer and his wife, persons in middle age. He inquired for their children, and learned that they had four boys, and that they were all at sea, following the hard trade of the sailor. "But how happened it," asked the minister, "that your boys should take such a fancy? They never lived by the seashore." The good people could offer no explanation whatever. It was simply a notion, they said, and a strange one, they had always thought, but it was a very strong one, and they had found it impossible to dissuade the boys from their purpose. But, pretty soon, the minister was invited into the little room which served the family for parlour, and there, hanging over the mantelpiece, the only picture in the room, was a magnificent engraving of a ship under full sail. The parents said it had been hanging there ever since their boys were little children. Who could doubt that the daily sight of this beautiful picture had had much to do in inflaming the passions of the farmer's boys for the seafaring life? This is hardly an exaggerated instance of the effects produced upon our lives by the objects that surround us. 5. Your home will also be a place of enjoyment. Innocent play will often be in order. If there are young folks in the house, they will more easily be kept at home by liberal provision in this direction than in any other way. The grown people should not only tolerate the children's pastimes, they should participate in them for their own sakes, as well as for the children's. 6. Finally, your home, when it is builded, will be, I trust, a sanctuary of religion. There will be an altar there on which, every day, the sacrifices of prayer and praise will be laid. The children of your household will remember, when they are grown up, that their first impressions of the Christian life, and their strongest impulses to enter upon it, were furnished them in their earliest years at home. ( W. Gladden. ) The conduct of life W. Boyd Carpenter. I. — THE WISDOM OF REGULATED TIME. — In the days in which kings could command the labour of their people, sometimes without regard to their people's convenience, the wisdom of Solomon was shown in this, that he did not press over-harshly upon the people under his command. He gave them labour to do, but tempered it with the opportunity of following their own avocations. When he wanted wood hewn down from Lebanon, he arranged that those who were to be the labourers in this behalf were to work in what we call relays or shifts; they were to spend one month in Lebanon doing that work which was needful for the temple of the Lord, but two months they were to spend at home. It is this division of work, time, and labour, which constitutes one of the suggestions of wisdom. Every man was brought face to face with two sides of life's own affairs, which were constantly pressing upon him, and the larger affairs and interests of the nation. Every man was brought face to face with two aspects of life — the aspect of life in which he had to labour for the support of his own family, and the aspect of his life in which he had to be contributing his share towards the work, as it were, of God in the world. They were to recognise two things — the Divine side and the human side, the heavenly side and the home side of their careers, and therefore they were given that opportunity which contributed to the enlargement of their thoughts. You see, then, the principle which comes here in the conduct of life. What principle then shall I adopt? This, that whatever else my life shall be it shall not be wanting in the capacity of living on the slopes of Lebanon and facing the Divine thought and the Divine meaning of life, neither shall it be so much the life of an indolent recluse, that it cannot minister amidst the neighbours and the friends of my own old home. II. THE RIGHT SYNTHESIS OF LIFE. Is not this the combination .of exactly the two principles — the recognition of the great Divine, the aspiring aspect of life, the recognition also of its serious and solemn duties; the recognition of God, and the recognition also of self as a labourer in the midst of the world. A man who lives upon the slopes of Lebanon all the year round, and is acquainted with the cedars of Lebanon, and knows something of the sky, over his head, and the shifting scenes of the beauty of that sky, may be absolutely without any knowledge whatever about the big world and the home and the children that he has left there, and the man in the home. Why, what destroys our judgment, what makes us full of pride, but this, that we live so much in our own little affairs, that we arc not capable of taking a dispassionate view at all. This man, so eager in business, so devoted to it, measures an event entirely by the influence it will have upon his opportunity, industry, or vocation, as the man who merely measures the legislation which is proposed in the Houses of Parliament by its effect upon his own trade. This makes it impossible for him to judge dispassionately. In order to escape from the egotism which thrusts aside and perverts your judgment you should live somewhat in the Lebanon, that you may come back to the world, and judge somewhat impartially concerning the affairs and the propositions for the improvement of life. III. HOW TO GROW CHARACTER. Not only does all this improve and strengthen the powers and faculties of your minds, delivering you from one-sidedness, delivering you from a dreamy, unreal idea of life, and from that careworn egotism which distorts men from the larger outlook, but it also tends to strengthen character. Over and over again it has been said thought ripens in solitude, character in the busy world. So true it is. Like the artist who wishes to paint his picture truly, you must sometimes go to a distance from your easel to judge of it in its due proportion. Character loses its proportion from being continually in one atmosphere. So, to come down from your Lebanon into the busy world, and test your theories in life, is to find that your character grows by the strenuous necessity of exerting your judgment and exercising your will. Live amongst your fellow-men that you may exercise that, and that you may test judgment, live also upon the sunny heights where the sunlight of God falls, in order that you may have the warm. affectionate, glowing interest in things that take away from you the meanness and selfishness in your lives. IV. LIFE WITHOUT RESERVES. The man who lives — and that is the great temptation in the present day — so much in the busy world that he becomes an eager and constant citizen, following his avocation with keenness, and also public affairs, if you will, with a certain amount of attention, but has no quiet garden, as it were, within his life, Is a man without what I call the reserves of life. As in military matters the strength of a position is guarded by reserves, so the strength of your influence will be in proportion to the possession of some reserve in your being, something which is yours and God's and nobody else's. Like the difference between one man and another is the difference often between the fact that you feel as one speaks he is putting all his wares upon the counter immediately before you, but as another man speaks you know that he is like the prudent shopkeeper who has a large storehouse behind and plenty to bring forth. Also the power that the man is wielding when he is driving the nail into the wall, is not to be measured by the sharpness of the nail, not even the surface of the hammer, but the weight of the hammer which "drives the nail home". And so it is that .men have been, thought to be strong and great in their influence. Emerson, in his essay on Character, calls attention to the fact that Lord Chatham and Mirabeau and Washington, when their achievements are examined, strike you as having left upon the record less reason for their reputation than their reputations seemed, as it were, to lead you to expect; they were bigger in their reputation than in their actual achievement. Is this to their discredit? Nay, nay. Washington lives, you will say, less upon the result of achievement than his great reputation would have led you to expect. But it was precisely because these men carried a weight behind them that they were able to achieve what they did. You are poising the hammer in your hand, and you say it has driven but a few inches home; yes, but what a weight of iron there was in the hammer, and how many inches it could have driven home! This is the possession of reserves. Men knew that there was force behind these men. So I would have it with you. Cultivate, therefore, this habit — the accumulation of the reserves of knowledge, the accumulation of reserves of will, the accumulation of reserves of noble and lofty thoughts, the accumulation of reserves of deep and magnanimous ambitions. Live somewhat on the side of God's Lebanon, whatever else you do. Is this selfish that I should say thus prepare yourselves to be strong and worthy in the world? Nay, nay. Just as it is the highest hills that catch the sunshine first, and they are the pledges that by and by every valley shall be filled with sunshine, so is it true that there are men in a nation that are making these accumulations of sunny knowledge, they are the harbingers, the omens, that knowledge will be widely diffused. And you who have made these reserves, lived somewhat upon Lebanon and caught the diviner ideas, will be centres of influence for good, because, wherever you may be placed in the world, you will have reserves and accumulations which you can use in helping on and in forming and inspiring the minds and the lives of others. There is a reserve which you need more than all else — the reserve of the Divine help. You must live upon the Lebanon which means communion with God. Jesus Christ, your Master and mine, gave that counsel, that there should be a little Lebanon height of prayer in each man's life, when he could be away from the care and the fret and the fevered ambitious of life. ( W. Boyd Carpenter. ) And Solomon had... hewers in the mountains. 1 Kings 5:15 The pioneers of civilisation W. L. Watkinson. Alike in its building and furniture the temple of Solomon had an evangelical and a spiritual signification. Our Lord institutes analogies between Himself and the temple, and the apostles constantly refer to it as an image and a foreshadowing of the Church of Christ. There are many "hewers in the mountains" to-day — servants of Christ working in wild places, difficult places, distant places, so that the temple of humanity may be built up for the indwelling of God. I. THE IMMENSE IMPORTANCE OF THE INITIAL WORK OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. These "hewers in the mountains" did the initial work of the temple building. They came before all masons and carpenters; in fact, the building of the glorious shrine was out of the question without the toil of these humble workers. It was so with the old civilisations with Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, they all emerged out of, were vitalised by, a spiritual faith. And it is still more clear that the modern civilisations were inspired by a spiritual faith, the faith of Christ. Out of the Gospel of God s love in Jesus Christ preached in Italy, in Greece, in Spain, in the forests of Germany, in the forests of Britain, arose the rich civilisation in which we rejoice, and in which is the hope of mankind. And as our civilisation originated in the Christian faith so it is still sustained, invigorated, and developed by spiritual life. Edgar Quinet says: "Any political revolution to be permanent, must be preceded by a religious one, and here is the secret of the comparative failure of the French Revolution." And may we not add, that the success of the modern Reform movement in this country is largely owing to the fact that it was preceded by the Evangelical Revival? II. THE INITIAL WORK OF THE CHURCH IS ATTENDED BY MUCH THAT APPEARS VIOLENT AND OBJECTIONABLE. The "hewers in the mountains" had rough work to do — their instruments like the axe and the crowbar, were rough, their methods were rough, and their work was announced by the thunder of the riven rock, the crash of the falling tree. Their action meant noise, dislocation, disruption, destruction. And the superfine critic of the period would turn impatiently from this scene of violence to admire the cunning work in gold, the lily work of the pillars when the temple reached a more advanced stage. So it is still. In certain stages the work of God is almost necessarily attended by much that offends the philosophic mind, the critical taste. When Christ came, He who is the Adoniram, who is over the levy of all the "hewers in the mountains," what disturbances He made! He disturbed Church and State. When the apostles commenced their mission it was the same. They were aggressive, they disturbed the existing order, they troubled cities and empires, and soon awoke the protest, "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." Luther made much noise, which has exasperated the tranquil critics — he fiercely wielded axe and hammer, and tremendous cleavages and crashes followed his blows. It was the same with Wesley; his critics objected to an enthusiasm which often meant ecclesiastical, social, and political rendings. And the evangelical worker in heathen lands has been open to the same criticism. Again and again have the missionaries been accused of violence and imprudence in one form or another. Sometimes they are accused and attacked in the interests of antiquity. The missionary is attempting ruthlessly to destroy creeds and systems, which have existed for thousands of years, and critics with a eructation for antiquity are indignant. No sooner does God's forester lift his axe to smite some hoary error than they raise the cry, "O! woodman spare that tree." But, this is the normal course of the development of the purposes of God Bring together certain chemicals and an explosion is inevitable; bring the truths of God into contact with systems of superstition and idolatry, and terrible consequences ensue — not unlikely, many even perish. In the Book of the Revelation the development of the kingdom of God is dramatised, and it expresses the fact that that kingdom comes largely through antagonisms and martyrdoms. Trumpets peal, lightnings flash, thunders boom; trees are burnt up, rivers become worm-wood, seas turn into blood, and suns and moons are darkened; the redeeming purpose of God unfolds amid battles, earthquakes, plagues, and voices. The regeneration of the earth is not to be worked out in a serene atmosphere. The time comes when civilisations grow silently, as the temple was built without hammer or axe or any tool of iron being heard in the house; but there must be the preliminary stages, when the "hewers in the mountains" startle and trouble by their blows and cries. III. THE INITIAL WORK OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IMPLIES TREMENDOUS SACRIFICE. These "hewers in the mountains " made certain sacrifices and encountered great difficulties that Solomon might be put in possession of the stone and timber essential for his projected house. And so the temple of humanity built on the grandest pattern is possible because certain pioneers are willing deeply to deny themselves. IV. THE SPLENDID HOPEFULNESS OF THIS PIONEER SERVICE. Out of the wild mountain these devoted hewers brought the wonderful temple. Rough, violent, forbidding as their work might seem, it at last took shape as the palace of God. The Papuans, the Polynesians, the Malays, the Amazonian Indians, the aboriginals of Africa, and other uncivilised tribes have distinct and precious powers, although mainly undeveloped. Some excel in poetry, song and music, some in the artistic sense. Richard Semon says: "I dare to maintain that the love of artistic ornament is deeper and more general in the poor and naked savages of New Guinea than in ourselves." Now can we believe that all these endowments are in vain? That these peoples will be the curse of the future? If we believe in the rationality of the universe we cannot believe in anything of the kind; it is much more sane to believe that the fulness of the Gentiles will enrich and raise civilisation gloriously. "The light and power of the Gospel" will work the miracle and develop, uplift, and perfect all nations and tribes. Christ can see the glorious possibilities of men even when they are at their worst. Anybody knows a Rembrandt when he sees it in a sumptuous frame in the National Gallery — even if it isn't one! — but we need a fine eye to detect an immortal masterpiece on a blackened canvas, amid the dirt and lumber of a cellar. But this is the very genius of Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which was lost. When we were without strength, down in a gulf of dark despair, He recognised our essential glory and stooped from heaven to lift us to the throne. And Christ has opened the eyes of His people and caused His Church to recognise the intrinsic greatness of the savage and the slave, whatever the cynic may have to say. A sculptor can see in the rough marble quarries of Carrara a world of glorious imagery, an architect can see in the wild forest of Lebanon palaces and temples, and since Christ has opened our eyes we can see

Benson Commentary 1 Kings 5:1 And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was ever a lover of David. 1 Kings 5:1 . Hiram sent his servants unto Solomon — Namely, as soon as he heard of his succession in the throne, as the following words show, he sent to congratulate him, as the manner of princes is. For Hiram was ever a lover of David — And therefore was desirous to continue in friendship with his son. This Hiram was probably the son of him who sent David timber and artificers to build his palace. Josephus assures us, that in his time, the letters which passed between him and Solomon were preserved in the archives of Tyre. 1 Kings 5:2 And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, 1 Kings 5:3 Thou knowest how that David my father could not build an house unto the name of the LORD his God for the wars which were about him on every side, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet. 1 Kings 5:3-5 . A house unto the name of the Lord — For his worship and service. For the wars which were about him on every side — Which diverted his cares and thoughts to other things, and occasioned God’s denying him the honour of that work. Until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet — That is, made them subject to him, that he could trample upon them at his pleasure. Compare Psalm 8:6 ; 1 Corinthians 15:27 . I purpose to build a house unto the name of the Lord — That shall be called by his name, namely, the house of Jehovah; and be appropriated to his honour and glory. 1 Kings 5:4 But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent. 1 Kings 5:5 And, behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto my name. 1 Kings 5:6 Now therefore command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint: for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians. 1 Kings 5:6 . Now therefore command thou, that they — That is, thy servants, who are skilful in such work; hew me cedar-trees — Which, for their soundness, and strength, and fragrancy, and durable-ness, were most proper for his design. Of these David had procured some, but not a sufficient number. Out of Lebanon — Which was in Solomon’s jurisdiction; and therefore he doth not desire that Hiram would give him the cedars, because they were his own already, but only that his servants might hew them for him, which the ingenious Tyrians well understood: My servants shall be with thy servants — Either to be employed as they shall direct, or to receive the cedars from their hands, and transmit them to me. And unto thee will I give hire for thy servants — Pay them for their labour and art. Sidonians — Or Tyrians; for these places and people, being near each other, are promiscuously used one for another. This assistance, which these Gentiles gave to the building of Solomon’s temple, was a type of the calling of the Gentiles, and that they should be instrumental in building and constituting Christ’s spiritual temple. 1 Kings 5:7 And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the LORD this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people. 1 Kings 5:7-8 . He rejoiced greatly — Being a faithful friend to David and his house; and though it is not probable he was a sincere proselyte, yet he had received much information concerning the nature and excellence of the God of Israel, and had honourable thoughts of him. And Hiram sent to Solomon — A letter, 2 Chronicles 2:11 . Timber of fir — The word which we translate fir, others think signifies pine, or cypress; but their conjecture is the most reasonable, who think it was a kind of cedar, and therefore comprehended under that name, 1 Kings 5:6 , where Solomon desires of him only that his servants might hew him cedar-trees. 1 Kings 5:8 And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have considered the things which thou sentest to me for: and I will do all thy desire concerning timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir. 1 Kings 5:9 My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be discharged there, and thou shalt receive them : and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household. 1 Kings 5:9 . From Lebanon unto the sea — The Mediterranean sea, on which his city stood. I will convey them — in floats — Or rafts. It is thought the pieces of timber were tied together in the water, as now is usual, and so, by the help of boats or ships, conveyed to the appointed place, which was at no great distance. Unto the place thou shalt appoint me — Which was Joppa, a famous seaport in the country of Israel, 2 Chronicles 2:16 . Will cause them to be discharged there — Hebrew , dispersed, or dissolved; which implies that they were tied together. In giving food for my household — My family and court; which, most properly, is called his household. Though they had plenty of money, being great merchants, yet they wanted corn and other provisions: and in after times, it appears, they were supported by provisions from Judea, Acts 12:20 . 1 Kings 5:10 So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all his desire. 1 Kings 5:10-11 . So Hiram gave Solomon cedar-trees — That is, he agreed to give him all that he desired; but the trees were not yet cut down and prepared. Twenty thousand measures of wheat — Each measure spoken of here is supposed to contain six hundred and forty-eight pounds weight, so that the weight of the wheat yearly given to Hiram was two millions one hundred and sixty thousand pounds. Twenty measures of pure oil — In the parallel place, 2 Chronicles 2:10 . it is twenty thousand baths of oil, which has the sanction of many of the versions, and seems the most probable reading in this place; and so in 1 Kings 5:16 , instead of three hundred, it is six hundred in the Chronicles; a variation which it is not easy to reconcile without supposing an error, most probably in this place, as the Seventy give their authority to the reading in the Chronicles. But it is thought by some that the place in Chronicles speaks of what was given to the workmen, who had other things, there mentioned, besides, to support them in their labour; but that this place speaks of what was given for the use of Hiram’s family. Thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year — Either for sustenance to the workmen during the years wherein they were employed in cutting down or hewing of timber, or for the yearly support of the king’s house during the said time. Thus, by the wise disposal of Providence, one country has need of another, and is benefited by an other, that there may be a mutual correspondence and dependence, to the glory of God our common parent. 1 Kings 5:11 And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year. 1 Kings 5:12 And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together. 1 Kings 5:13 And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. 1 Kings 5:13 . Solomon raised a levy — Which were to be employed in the most honourable and easy parts of the work relating to the temple, in the manner expressed 1 Kings 5:14 ; and these were Israelites; but those one hundred and fifty thousand mentioned 1 Kings 5:15 were strangers. if it seem strange that so many thousands should be employed about so small a building as the temple was, it must be considered, 1st, That the temple, all its parts being considered, was far larger than men imagine: 2d, That it is probable they were employed by turns, as the thirty thousand were, ( 1 Kings 5:13 ,) else they had been oppressed with hard and uninterrupted labours: 3d, That the timber and stone hewed and carried by them were designed, not only for the temple, but also for Solomon’s own houses and buildings; because we read of no other levy of men, nor of any care and pains taken, after the building of the temple, for the procurement or preparation of materials for his own houses, or his other buildings; nay, that this very levy of men was made and employed for the building of the Lord’s house, and Solomon’s house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer, is expressed chap. 1 Kings 9:15 . 1 Kings 5:14 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy. 1 Kings 5:15 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; 1 Kings 5:15-16 . That bare burdens — Namely, porters, carters, seamen, and such like. Fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains — That is, hewers of stone, for timber was hewed by Hiram’s servants in Lebanon. Officers over the work three thousand three hundred — Whereof three thousand were set over the one hundred and fifty thousand mentioned 1 Kings 5:15 , each of these over fifty of them, and the odd three hundred were set over these three thousand; each of them to have the oversight of ten, to take an account of the work from them. But in 2 Chronicles 2:18 , these overseers are said to be three thousand six hundred. The three hundred added in 2 Chronicles 2. might be a reserve to supply the places of the other three thousand; yea, or of the three thousand six hundred, as any of them should be taken off from the work by death, or sickness, or weakness, or any necessary occasion; which was a prudent provision, and not unusual in like cases. And so there were three thousand six hundred commissioned for the work, but only three thousand three hundred employed at one time; and therefore both computations fairly stand together. 1 Kings 5:16 Beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work. 1 Kings 5:17 And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. 1 Kings 5:17 . Costly stones — Marble and porphyry, or other stones of great size and value. To lay the foundation of the house — Where they could not afterward be seen; and therefore that this was done, is mentioned only as a point of magnificence, except it was intended for a type or mystical signification of the preciousness of Christ, who is the foundation of the true temple, and the church of God. “It should seem,” says Henry, “that Solomon was himself present at the founding of the temple, and that the first stone, as has been usual in famous buildings, was laid with great solemnity. Solomon commanded, and they brought costly stones — For a foundation; though, being out of sight, worse might have served. Christ, who is laid for a foundation, is an elect and precious stone, (Isaiah 28.,) and the foundations of the church are said to be laid with sapphires, Isaiah 54:11 . and Revelation 21:19 . Sincerity obligeth us to lay our foundation firm, and to bestow most pains on that part of our religion which lies out of the sight, of men.” 1 Kings 5:18 And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them , and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house. 1 Kings 5:18 . Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s did hew them — It seemed Solomon’s servants learned of Hiram’s, or, at least, were directed by them to assist in the work. And the stone-squarers — Hebrew, the Giblites, the inhabitants of Gebal, a place near Zidon, mentioned Psalm 83:7 ; Ezekiel 27:9 , famous for artificers and architects, Joshua 13:5 . These are here distinguished from the rest of Hiram’s builders, as the most eminent of them. So they prepared timber and stones to build the house — Made all ready, not only to lay the foundation, but to raise the superstructure. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary 1 Kings 5:1 And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was ever a lover of David. ; 1 Kings 6:1-38 ; 1 Kings 7:1-51 THE TEMPLE 1 Kings 5:1-18 ; 1 Kings 6:1-38 ; 1 Kings 7:1-51 "And his next son, for wealth and wisdom famed, The clouded Ark of God, till then in tents Wandering, shall in a glorious temple enshrine." -Paradise Lost, 12:340. AFTER the destructive battle of Aphek, in which the Philistines had defeated Israel, slain the two sons of Eli, and taken captive the Ark of God, they had inflicted a terrible vengeance on the old sanctuary at Shiloh. They had burnt the young men in the fire, and slain the priests with the sword, and no widows were left to make lamentation. {Psa 78:58-64} It is true that, terrified by portents and diseases, the Philistines after a time restored the Ark, and the Tabernacle of the wilderness with its brazen altar still gave sacredness to the great high place at Gibeon, to which apparently it had been removed. Nevertheless, the old worship seems to have languished till it received a new and powerful impulse from the religious earnestness of David. He had the mind of a patriot-statesman as well as of a soldier, and he felt that a nation is nothing without its sacred memories. Those memories clustered round the now-discredited Ark. Its capture, and its parade as a trophy of victory in the shrine of Dagon, had robbed it of all its superstitious prestige as a fetish; but, degraded as it had been, it still continued to be the one inestimably precious historic relic which enshrined the memories of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and the dawn of its heroic age. As soon as David had given to his people the boon of a unique capital, nothing could be more natural than the wish to add sacredness to the glory of the capital by making it the center of the national worship. According to the Chronicles, David-feeling it a reproach that he himself should dwell in palaces celled with cedar and painted with vermilion while the Ark of God dwelt between curtains-had made unheard-of preparations to build a house for God. But it had been decreed unfit that the sanctuary should be built by a man whose hands were red with the blood of many wars, and he had received the promise that the great work should be accomplished by his son. Into that work Solomon threw himself with hearty zeal in the month Zif of the fourth year of his reign, when his kingdom was consolidated. It commanded all his sympathies as an artist, a lover of magnificence, and a ruler bent on the work of centralization. It was a task to which he was bound by the solemn exhortation of his father, and he felt, doubtless, its political as well as its religious importance. With his sincere desire to build to God’s glory was mingled a prophetic conviction that his task would be fraught with immense issues for the future of his people and of all the world. The presence of the Temple left its impress on the very name of Jerusalem. Although it has nothing to do with the Temple or with Solomon, it became known to the heathen world as Hierosolyma , which, as we see from Eupolemos (Euseb., Praep. Evang. , 9:34), the Gentile world supposed to mean "the Temple ( Hieron ) of Solomon." The materials already provided were of priceless value. David had consecrated to God the spoils which he had won from conquered kings. We must reject, as the exaggerations of national vanity, the monstrous numbers which now stand in the text of the chronicler; but a king whose court was simple and inexpensive was quite able to amass treasures of gold and silver, brass and iron, precious marbles and onyx stones. Solomon had only to add to these sacred stores. He inherited the friendship which David had enjoyed, with Hiram, King of Tyre, who, according to the strange phrase of the Vatican Septuagint, sent his servants "to anoint" Solomon. The friendliest overtures passed between the two kings in letters, to which Josephus appeals as still extant. A commercial treaty was made by which Solomon engaged to furnish the Tyrian king with annual revenues of wheat, barley, and oil; {Comp. Eze 27:17 Act 12:20} and Hiram put at Solomon’s disposal the skilled labor of an army of Sidonian wood-cutters and artisans. The huge trunks of cedar and cypress were sent rushing down the heights of Lebanon by schlittage, and laboriously dragged by road or river to the shore. There they were constructed into immense rafts, which were floated a hundred miles along the coast to Joppa, where they were again dragged with enormous toil for thirty-five miles up the steep and rocky roads to Jerusalem. For more than twenty years, while Solomon was building the Temple and his various royal constructions, Jerusalem became a hive of ceaseless and varied industry. Its ordinary inhabitants must have been swelled by an army of Canaanite serfs and Phoenician artisans to whom residences were assigned in Ophel. There lived the hewers and bevellers of stone; the cedar-cutters of Gebal or Biblos; the cunning workmen in gold or brass; the bronze-casters who made their moulds in the clay ground of the Jordan valley; the carvers and engravers; the dyers who stained wool with the purple of the murex, and the scarlet dye of the trumpet fish; the weavers and embroiderers of fine linen. Every class of laborer was put into requisition, from the descendants of the Gibeonite Nethinim , who were rough hewers of wood and drawers of water, to the trained artificers whose beautiful productions we’re the wonder of the world. The "father," or master-workman, of the whole community was a half-caste, who also bore the name of Hiram, and was the son of a woman of Naphtali by a Tyrian father. Some writers have tried to minimize Solomon’s work as a builder, and have spoken of the Temple as an exceedingly insignificant structure which would not stand a moment’s comparison with the smallest and humblest of our own cathedrals. Insignificant in size it certainly was, but we must not forget its costly splendor, the remote age in which the work was achieved, and the truly stupendous constructions which the design required. Mount Moriah was selected as a site hallowed by the tradition of Abraham’s sacrifice, and more recently by David’s vision of the Angel of the Pestilence with his drawn sword on the threshing-floor of the Jebusite Prince Araunah. But to utilize this doubly consecrated area involved almost superhuman difficulties, which would have been avoided if the loftier but less suitable height of the Mount of Olives could have been chosen. The rugged summit had to be enlarged to a space of five hundred yards square, and this level was supported by Cyclopean walls, which have long been the wonder of the world. The magnificent wall on the east side, known as "the Jews’ wailing-place," is doubtless the work of Solomon, and after outlasting "the drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs," it remains to this day in uninjured massiveness. One of the finely beveled stones is 38 1/2 feet long and 7 feet high, and weighs more than 100 tons. These vast stones were hewn from a quarry above the level of the wall, and lowered by rollers down an inclined plane. Part of the old wall rises 30 feet above the present level of the soil, but a far larger part of the height lies hidden 80 feet under the accumulated debris of the often captured city. At the southwest angle, by Robinson’s arch, three pavements were discovered, one beneath the other, showing the gradual filling up of the valley; and on the lowest of these were found the broken voussoirs of the arch. In Solomon’s day the whole of this mighty wall was visible. On one of the lowest stones have been discovered the Phoenician paint-marks which indicated where each of the huge masses, so carefully dressed, edge-drafted, and beveled, was to be placed in the structure. The caverns, quarries water storages, and subterranean conduits hewn out of the solid rock, over which Jerusalem is built, could only have been constructed at the cost of immeasurable toil. They would be wonderful even with our infinitely more rapid methods and more powerful agencies; but when we remember that they were made three thousand years ago we do not wonder that their massiveness has haunted the imagination of so many myriads of visitors from every nation. It was perhaps from his Egyptian father-in-law that Solomon, to his own cost, learnt the secret of forced labor which alone rendered such undertakings possible. In their Egyptian bondage the forefathers of Israel had been fatally familiar with the ugly word Mas , the labor wrung from them by hard task-masters. {Exo 1:2} In the reign of Solomon it once more became only too common on the lips of the burdened people. 1 Kings 4:6 ; 1 Kings 5:13-14 ; 1 Kings 5:17-18 ; 1 Kings 9:15 ; 1 Kings 21:12-18 . Four classes were subject to it. 1. The lightest labor was required from the native freeborn Israelites ( ezrach ). They were not regarded as bondsmen yet 30,000 of these were required in relays of 10,000 to work, one month in every three, in the forest of Lebanon. 2. There were strangers, or resident aliens ( Gerim ), such as the Phoenicians and Giblites, who were Hiram’s subjects and worked for pay. 3. There were three classes of slaves-those taken in war, or sold for debt, or home-born. 4. Lowest and most wretched of all, there were the vassal Canaanites ( Toshabim ), from whom were drawn those 70, 000 burden-bearers, and 80, 000 quarry-men, the Helots of Palestine, who were placed under the charge of 3600 Israelite ofricers. The blotches of smoke are still visible on the walls and roofs of the subterranean quarries where there poor serfs, in the dim torchlight and suffocating air "labored without reward, perished without pity, and suffered without redress." The sad narrative reveals to us, and modern research confirms, that the purple of Solomon had a very seamy side, and that an abyss of misery heaved and moaned under the glittering surface of his splendor. {1Ki 5:13; 1Ki 9:22 2Ch 8:9} (Omitted in the LXX) Jerusalem during the twenty years occupied by his building must have presented the disastrous spectacle of task-masters, armed with rods and scourges, enforcing the toil of gangs of slaves, as we see them represented in the tombs of Egypt and the palaces of Assyria. The sequel shows the jealousies and discontents even of the native Israelites, who felt themselves to be "scourged with whips and laden with heavy burdens." They were bondmen in all but name, for purposes which bore very little on their own welfare. But the curses of the wretched aborigines must have been deeper, if not so loud. They were torn from such homes as the despotism of conquest still left to them, and were forced to hopeless and unrewarded toil for the alien worship and hateful palaces of their masters. Five centuries later we find a pitiable trace of their existence in the 392 Hierodouloi , menials lower even than the enslaved Nethinim , who are called "sons of the slaves of Solomon"-the dwindling and miserable remnant of that vast levy of Palestinian serfs. Apart from the lavish costliness of its materials the actual Temple was architecturally a poor and commonplace structure. It was quite small-only 90 feet long, 35 feet broad, and 45 feet high. It was meant for the symbolic habitation of God, not for the worship of great congregations. It only represented the nascent art and limited resources of a tenth-rate kingdom, and was totally devoid alike of the pure and stately beauty of the Parthenon and the awe-inspiring grandeur of the great Egyptian temples with their avenues of obelisks and sphinxes and their colossal statues of deities and kings "Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes." When Justinian, boastfully exclaimed, as he looked at his church, "I have vanquished thee, O Solomon," and when the Khalif Omar, pointing to the Dome of the Rock, murmured, "Behold, a greater than Solomon is here," they forgot the vast differences between them and the Jewish king in the epoch at which they lived and the resources which they could command. The Temple was built in "majestic silence." "No workman’s axe no ponderous hammer rung. Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." This was due to religious reverence. It could be easily accomplished, because each stone and beam was carefully prepared to be fitted in its exact place before it was carried up the Temple hill. The elaborate particulars furnished us of the measurements of Solomon’s Temple are too late in age, too divergent in particulars, too loosely strung together, too much mingled with later reminiscences, and altogether too architecturally insufficient, to enable us to reconstruct the exact building, or even to form more than a vague conception of its external appearance. Both in Kings and Chronicles the notices, as Keil says, are "incomplete extracts made independently of one another." and vague in essential details. Critics and architects have attempted to reproduce the Temple on Greek, Egyptian, and Phoenician models, so entirely unlike each other as to show that we can arrive at no certainty. It is, however, most probable that, alike in ornamentation and conception, the building was predominantly Phoenician. Severe in outline, gorgeous in detail, it was more like the Temple of Venus-Astarte at Paphos than any other. Fortunately the details, apart from such dim symbolism as we may detect in them, have no religious importance, but only a historic and antiquarian interest. The Temple-called Baith or Hekal -was surrounded by the thickly clustered houses of the Levites, and by porticoes through which the precincts were entered by numerous gates of wood overlaid with brass. A grove of olives, palms, cedars, and cypresses, the home of many birds, probably adorned the outer court. This court was shut from the "higher court," {Jer 36:10} afterwards known as "the Court of the Priests," by a partition of three rows of hewn stones surmounted by a cornice of cedar beams. In the higher court, which was reached by a flight of steps, was the vast new altar of brass, 15 feet high and 30 feet long, of which the hollow was filled with earth and stones, and of which the blazing sacrifices were visible in the court below. Here also stood the huge molten sea, borne on the backs of twelve brazen oxen, of which three faced to each quarter of the heavens. It was in the form of a lotus blossom, and its rim was hung with three hundred wild gourds in bronze, cast in two rows. Its reservoir of eight hundred and eighty gallons of water was for the priestly ablutions necessary in the butcheries of sacrifice, and its usefulness was supplemented by ten brazen caldrons on wheels, five on each side, adorned like "the sea," with pensile garlands and cherubic emblems, Whether "the brazen serpent of the wilderness," to which the children of Israel burnt incense down to the days of Hezekiah, was in that court or in the Temple we do not know. On the western side of this court, facing the rising sun, stood the Temple itself, on a platform elevated some sixteen feet from the ground. Its side chambers were "lean-to" annexes (Hebrews, ribs ; Vulg., tabulata ) in three stories, all accessible by one central entrance on the outside. Their beams rested on rebatements in the thickness of the wall, and the highest was the broadest. Above these were windows "skewed and closed," as the margin of the A.V. says; or "broad within and narrow without"; or, as it should rather be rendered, "with closed crossbeams," that is, with immovable lattices, which could not be opened and shut, but which allowed the escape of the smoke of lamps and the fumes of incense. These chambers must also have had windows. They were used to store the garments of the priests and other necessary paraphernalia of the Temple service, but as to all details we are left completely in the dark. Of the external aspect of the building in Solomon’s day we know nothing. We cannot even tell whether it had one level roof, or whether the Holy of Holies was like a lower chancel at the end of it; nor whether the roof was flat or, as the Rabbis say, ridged; nor whether the outer surface of the three-storeyed chambers which surrounded it was of stone, or planked with cedar, or overlaid with plinths of gold and silver; nor whether, in any case, it was ornamented with carvings or left blank; nor whether the cornices only were decorated with open flowers like the Assyrian rosettes. Nor do we know with certainty whether it was supported within by pillars or not. In the state of the records as they have come down to us, all accurate or intelligible descriptions are slurred over by compilers who had no technical knowledge and whose main desire was to impress their countrymen with the truth that the holy building was-as indeed for its day it was-"exceeding magnifical of fame and of glory throughout all countries." In front of or just within the porch were two superb pillars, regarded as miracles of Tyrian art, made of fluted bronze, 27 feet high and 18 feet thick. Their capitals of 7 1/2 feet in height resembled an open lotus blossom, surrounded by double wreaths of two hundred pensile bronze pomegranates, supporting an abacus, carved with conventional lily work. Both pomegranates and lilies had a symbolic meaning. The pillars were, for unknown reasons, called Jachin and Boaz. Much about them is obscure. It is not even known whether they stood detached like obelisks, or formed Propylaea; or supported the architraves of the porch itself, or were a sort of gateway, surmounted by a melathron with two epithemas, like a Japanese or Indian toran. The porch ( Olam ), which was of the same height as the house ( i.e . 45 feet high), was hung with the gilded shields of Hadadezer’s soldiers which David had taken in battle, and perhaps also with consecrated armor, like the sword of Goliath, {2Sa 8:7, 1Ch 18:7} to show that "unto the Lord belongeth our shield," {Psa 89:18} and that "the shields of the earth belong unto God." {Psa 47:9} A door of cypress wood, of two leaves, made in four squares, 7 1/2 feet broad and high, turning on golden hinges overlaid with gold, and carved with palm branches and festoons of lilies and pomegranates, opened from the porch into the main apartment. This was the Mikdash , Holy Place, or Sanctuary, and sometimes specially called in Chaldee "the Palace" ( Hekal , or Birah ). {Ezr 5:14-15, etc.} Before it, as in the Tabernacle, hung an embroidered curtain ( Masak ). It was probably supported by four pillars on each side. In the interspaces were five tables on each side, overlaid with gold, and each encircled by a wreath of gold ( zer ). On these were placed the cakes of shewbread. At the end of the chamber, on each side the door of the Holiest, were five golden candlesticks with chains of wreathed gold hanging between them. In the center of the room stood the golden altar of incense, and somewhere (we must suppose) the golden candlestick of the Tabernacle, with its seven branches ornamented with lilies, pomegranates, and calices of almond flowers. Nothing which was in the darkness of the Holiest was visible except the projecting golden staves with which the Ark had been carried to its place. The Holy Place itself was lighted by narrow slits. The entrance to the Holiest, the Debir , or oracle, which corresponded to the Greek adytum , was through a two-leaved door of olive wood, 6 feet high and broad, overlaid with gold, and carved with palms, cherubim, and open flowers. The partition was of cedar wood. The floor of the whole house was of cedar overlaid with gold. The interior of this "Oracle," as it was called-for the title "Holy of Holies" is of later origin-was, at any rate in the later Temples, concealed by an embroidered veil of blue, purple, and crimson, looped up with golden chains. The Oracle, like the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, was a perfect cube, 30 feet broad and long and high, covered with gold, but shrouded in perpetual and unbroken darkness. No light was ever visible in it save such as was shed by the crimson gleam of the thurible of incense which the high priest carried into it once a year on the Great Day of Atonement. In the center of the floor must apparently have risen the mass of rock which is still visible in the Mosque of Omar, from which it is called Al Sakhra , "the Dome of the Rock." Tradition pointed to it as the spot on which Abraham had laid for sacrifice the body of his son Isaac, when the angel restrained the descending knife. It was also the site of Araunah’s threshing-floor, and had been. therefore hallowed by two angelic apparitions. On it was deposited with solemn ceremony the awful palladium of the Ark, which had been preserved through the wanderings and wars of the Exodus and the troublous days of the Judges. It contained the most sacred possession of the nation, the most priceless treasure which Israel guarded for the world. This treasure was the Two Tables of the Ten Commandments, graven (in the anthropomorphic language of the ancient record) by the actual finger of God; the tables which Moses had shattered on the rocks of Mount Sinai as he descended to the backsliding people. The Ark was covered with its old "Propitiatory," or "Mercy-seat," overshadowed by the wings of two small cherubim; but Solomon had prepared for its reception a new and far more magnificent covering, in the form of two colossal cherubim, 15 feet high, of which each expanded wing was 7 1/2 feet long. These wings touched the outer walls of the Oracle, and also touched each other over the center of the Ark. Such was the Temple. It was the "forum, fortress, university, and sanctuary" of the Jews, ‘and the transitory emblem of the Church of Christ’s kingdom. It was destined to occupy a large share in the memory, and even in the religious development, of the world, because it became the central point round which crystallized the entire history of the Chosen People. The kings of Judah are henceforth estimated with almost exclusive reference to the relation in which they stood to the centralized worship of Jehovah. The Spanish kings who built and decorated the Escurial caught the spirit of Jewish annals when, in the Court of the Kings, they reared the six colossal statues of David the originator, of Solomon the founder, of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, and Manasseh ‘the restorers or purifiers of the Temple worship. It required the toil of 300, 000 men for twenty years to build one of the pyramids. It took two hundred years to build and four hundred to embellish the great Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians. It took more than five centuries to give to Westminster Abbey its present form. Solomon’s Temple only took seven and a half years to build; but, as we shall see, its objects were wholly different from those of the great shrines which we have mentioned. The wealth lavished upon it was such that its dishes, bowls, cups, even its snuffers and snuffer trays, and its meanest utensils, were of pure gold. The massiveness of its substructions, the splendor of its materials, the artistic skill displayed by the Tyrian workmen in all its details and adornments, added to the awful sense of its indwelling Deity, gave it an imperishable fame. Needing but little repair, it stood for more than four centuries. Succeeded as it was by the Temples of Zerubbabel and of Herod, it carried down till seventy years after the Christian era the memory of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, of which it preserved the general outline, though it exactly doubled all the proportions and admitted many innovations. The dedication ceremony was carried out with the utmost pomp. It required nearly a year to complete the necessary preparations, and the ceremony with its feasts occupied fourteen days; which were partly coincident with the autumn Feast of Tabernacles. The dedication falls into three great acts. The first was the removal of the Ark to its new home; {1Ki 8:1-3} then followed the speech and the prayer of Solomon ( 1 Kings 8:12-61 ); and, finally, the great holocaust was offered ( 1 Kings 8:62-66 ). The old Tabernacle, or what remained of it, with its precious heirlooms, was carried by priests and Levites from the high place at Gibeon, which was henceforth abandoned. This procession was met by another, far more numerous and splendid, consisting of all the princes, nobles, and captains, which brought the Ark from the tent erected for it on Mount Zion by David forty years before. The Israelites had flocked to Jerusalem in countless multitudes, under their sheykhs and emirs from the border of Hamath on the Orontes, north of Mount Lebanon, to the Wady el-Areesh. The king, in his most regal state, accompanied the procession, and the Ark passed through myriads of worshippers crowded in the outer court, from the tent on Mount Zion into the darkness of the Oracle on Mount Moriah, where it continued, unseen perhaps by any human eye but that of the high priest once a year, until it was carried away by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon. To indicate that this was to be its rest for ever, the staves, contrary to the old law, were drawn out of the golden rings through which they ran, in order that no human hand might touch the sacred emblem itself when it was borne on the shoulders of the Levitic priests. "And there they are unto this day," writes the compiler from his ancient record, long after Temple and Ark had ceased to exist. The king is the one predominant figure, and the high priest is not once mentioned. Nathan is only mentioned by the heathen historian Eupolemos. Visible to the whole vast multitude, Solomon stood in the inner court on a high scaffolding of brass. Then came a burst of music and psalmody from the priests and musicians, robed in white robes, who densely thronged the steps of the great altar. They held in their hands their glittering harps and cymbals, and psalteries in their precious frames of red sandal wood, and twelve of their number rent the air with the blast of their silver trumpets as Solomon, in this supreme hour of his prosperity, shone forth before his people in all his manly beauty. At the sight of that stately figure in its gorgeous robes the song of praise was swelled by innumerable voices, and, to crown all, a blaze of sudden glory wrapped the Temple and the whole scene in heaven’s own splendor. {2Ch 5:13-14} First, the king, standing with his back to the people, broke out into a few words of prophetic song. Then, turning to the multitude, he blessed them-he, and not the high priest-and briefly told them the history and significance of this house of God, warning them faithfully that the Temple after all was but the emblem of God’s presence in the midst of them, and that the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything. After this he advanced to the altar, and kneeling on his knees {2Ch 6:13} #NAME?After the dedicatory prayer both the outer and the inner court of the Temple reeked and swam with the blood of countless victims-victims so numerous that the great brazen altar became wholly insufficient for them. At the close of the entire festival they departed to their homes with joy and gladness. But whatever the Temple might or might not be to the people, the king used it as his own chapel. Three times a year, we are told, he offered-and for all that appears, offered with his own hand without the intervention of any priest burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar. Not only this, but he actually "burnt incense therewith upon the altar which was before the Lord,"-the very thing which was regarded as so deadly a crime in the case of King Uzziah. Throughout the history of the monarchy, the priests, with scarcely any exception, seem to have been passive tools in the hands of the kings. Even under Rehoboam much more under Ahaz and Manasseh-the sacred precincts were defiled with nameless abominations, to which, so far as we know, the priests offered no resistance. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.