1And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the River to the land of the Philistines and as far as the border of Egypt. They offered tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. 2And Solomon’s fare for a single day was thirty kors of fine flour and sixty kors of plain flour, 3ten fatted oxen and twenty pasture-fed oxen and a hundred sheep, besides deer and gazelle and roebuck and fatted geese. 4For he held sway over all that was west of the River from Tiphsah as far as Gaza, over all the kings west of the River. And he had peace on all sides round about. 5And Judah and Israel dwelled secure, each man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. 6And Solomon had forty thousand horse stalls for his chariots and twelve thousand horsemen. 7And those prefects provisioned King Solomon and all who were adjoined to King Solomon’s table, each one for his month, they let nothing lack. 8And they would bring the barley and the straw for the horses and for the chargers to the place where each was, each man according to his regimen. 9And God gave very great wisdom and discernment to Solomon and breadth of understanding like the sand that is on the shore of the sea. 10And Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the Easterners and all the wisdom of Egypt. 11And he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Ezrahite and Heman and Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the nations round about. 12And he spoke three thousand proverbs, and his poems came to five thousand. 13And he spoke of the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the moss that springs from the wall, and he spoke of beasts and birds and creeping things and fish. 14And from all peoples they came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.
15And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon, for he had heard that they had anointed him king in his father’s stead, for Hiram was friendly toward David always. 16And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, 17“You yourself knew of David my father that he could not build a house for the LORD his God because of the fighting that was all round him, until the LORD should set them under his footsoles. 18And now, the LORD my God has granted me rest all around. There is no adversary nor evil chancing. 19And I am about to build a house for the name of the LORD my God as the LORD spoke to David my father, saying, ‘Your son whom I put in your stead on your throne, he shall build the house for My name.’ 20And now, charge that they cut down cedars from Lebanon, and my servants will be with your servants, and the wages of your servants I shall give you, whatever you say, for you yourself know that there is no man among us who knows how to cut down trees like the Sidonians.” 21And it happened when Hiram heard Solomon’s words that he greatly rejoiced, and he said, “Blessed is the LORD today, that He has given David a wise son over this large people.” 22And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, “I have heard what you sent to me. I will meet all you desire in cedarwood and in cypresswood. 23My servants will come down from Lebanon to the sea, and I will turn the wood into rafts in the sea, to the place that you will tell me, and I will break it up there and you will bear it off. And you on your part will meet my desire to provide the bread of my house.” 24And so Hiram gave to Solomon cedar trees and cypress trees, all he desired. 25And Solomon gave to Hiram twenty thousand kors of wheat as provision for his house and twenty thousand kors of fine-pressed oil. Thus would Solomon give to Hiram year after year. 26And the LORD had given wisdom to Solomon as He had spoken to him. And there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and the two sealed a pact. 27And King Solomon exacted forced labor from all Israel, and the forced labor came to thirty thousand men. 28And he sent them to Lebanon—ten thousand a month, by turns they were a month in Lebanon and two months at his house. And Adoniram was over the forced labor. 29And Solomon had seventy thousand porters and eighty thousand quarriers in the mountains, 30besides Solomon’s prefect officers who were over the labor, three thousand three hundred, who held sway over the people doing the labor. 31And the king gave the order, and they moved great stones, costly stones, for the foundation of the house, hewn stones. 32And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites carved and readied the timber and the stones to build the house.
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. ruled . . . offered. The Hebrew uses a participial form of the verb, suggesting sustained activity over an extended time-span.
the River. As throughout the Bible, this means the Euphrates. It is highly unlikely that all the kingdoms to the east as far as the Euphrates could have been subject to Solomon.
2. fare. The literal sense is “bread,” a synecdoche for all kinds of food, and the list that follows includes meat and fowl.
kors. The kor is a large measure, so 30 kors would have been hundreds of pounds.
3. geese. In modern Hebrew, barbur means “swan,” but swans were rare in ancient Israel, and the likely fowl is the goose.
10. greater than the wisdom of all the Easterners and all the wisdom of Egypt. Wisdom was a known international activity, and both Mesopotamia and Egypt were renowned for their wisdom schools, their achievements in astronomy, mathematics, and much else. Here the celebration of Solomon’s unmatched wisdom is properly referred to the broad Near Eastern context.
11. Ethan . . . and Heman and Calcol and Darda. The first two are temple poets to whom, respectively, Psalm 88 and Psalm 89 are attributed, and the last two are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2:6 as temple choristers, although in Chronicles the last name is spelled Dara. The link between wisdom and the fashioning of poetry or song is a commonly shared assumption in the ancient Near East.
12. proverbs. The proverb was thought of as a quintessential expression of wisdom, a notion evident in the Book of Proverbs, attributed by tradition to Solomon, in part because of this passage. The proverb was formulated in verse, and other kinds of poetry as well are supposed to have been composed by Solomon.
13. trees . . . beasts . . . birds . . . creeping things . . . fish. Solomon’s wisdom includes a mastery of the whole realm of nature. The words here gave rise to later legends that Solomon was able to speak the language of animals.
15. Hiram king of Tyre. Tyre is the principal city on the Phoenician coast.
Hiram was friendly toward David always. These words may reflect an actual historical alliance. It was David who subdued the Philistines, the great enemies of the Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast, and that victory might conceivably have enabled the commercial and colonial impetus enjoyed by Phoenicia in the tenth century B.C.E.
17. should set them under his footsoles. This posture of subjugation appears in quite a few ancient Near Eastern bas-reliefs celebrating the victory of a king.
20. my servants will be with your servants. This proposal of joint labor may have been motivated by a desire to expedite the costly work. Hiram doesn’t mention it in his response, perhaps because he is not enthusiastic about the idea, but verse 27 reports that ten thousand Israelite workers were sent each month to Lebanon.
no man among us . . . knows how to cut down trees like the Sidonians. Sidon is another Phoenician city, and “Sidonians” is often used as a general term for Phoenicians. It is in their territory that there are large stands of timber, which they used to build ships and as a valuable export, and so they were experienced lumberjacks.
21. when Hiram heard Solomon’s words. A possible though not necessary inference from this formulation is that Solomon’s message was oral, but the emissary or a courtier might have read out a written message to the king.
he greatly rejoiced. He has good reason to rejoice because he sees here the opportunity for a lucrative agreement. The words that immediately follow are his exclamation and not part of his message in response to Solomon.
23. My servants will come down from Lebanon to the sea. They will take charge of transporting the timber from the mountainsides to the seashore.
the wood. This word is added in the translation for clarity. The Hebrew says “them,” a plural accusative suffix referring to “the trees.”
turn the wood into rafts. Binding the cut logs together into improvised rafts is a widespread device for transporting timber by water.
meet my desire to provide the bread of my house. Solomon had offered to pay the wages of Hiram’s workers. Hiram now counters this proposal by stipulating a much higher price—the cost of provisions for the Phoenician court with all its entourage for the entire period in which the labor is done. In this whole exchange, there is an element of canny bargaining reminiscent of the negotiations over a gravesite between Abraham and Ephron the Hittite in Genesis 23.
25. twenty thousand kors of wheat . . . twenty thousand kors of fine-pressed oil. The price exacted, one notes, is very high. Solomon provides wheat and olive oil, which the Land of Israel had in abundance. The mountainous terrain of Lebanon did not favor the cultivation of these crops but was ideally suited for timber, which Israel lacked.
31. they moved great stones. The stones, of course, would have been a much bigger challenge to transport than the wood, which was floated most of the way, but there were quarries in the mountains of Judah not far from Jerusalem.
32. And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites. It emerges that there was a blended labor force of Phoenicians and Israelites both in Lebanon and in Jerusalem. The Gebalites are residents of the Phoenician town of Gebal. One may infer from the separate reference to them here that they constituted a kind of guild with special building skills, perhaps as stonemasons.