Anticipating God’s kingdom - work for his kingdom
In verses 7 and 8 we read how "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. So Hiram sent word to Solomon: I have received the message you sent me and will do all you want."
The arrangement was that Hiram would provide ‘the cedar and pine logs’. His men would ‘haul them down from Lebanon to the sea’, then ‘float them in rafts by sea to’ a place chosen by Solomon (Joppa), where they could be separated and distributed as desired. In return Solomon was to provide ‘food for’ Hiram’s ‘royal household (twenty thousand cors of wheat as food for his household, in addition to twenty thousand baths of pressed olive oil)’ annually.
What do we make of Hiram’s ‘Praise be to the LORD today, for he has given David a wise son to rule over this great nation’? It is even stronger in 2 Chronicles 2:11, 12 "Because the LORD loves his people, he has made you their king. Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth! He has given King David a wise son, endowed with intelligence and discernment, who will build a temple for the LORD and a palace for himself."
What did it signify? Was Hiram a converted man? We cannot answer that question. However, whether this was a merely formal statement or one that Hiram felt from the heart, we certainly have a wonderful picture that anticipates the Kingdom of God in the era to come, the era we are in today. The way that the Gentile King Hiram directly contributed to the Temple anticipates the bringing in of the Gentiles as part of God’s House in the New Testament era.
This is something that the Old Testament anticipates elsewhere. For example, in the Psalms
22:28 Dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.
24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
72:11 All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him.
Also 2:10-12 Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
When we read the Old Testament we may think of it as an exclusively Jewish book but a more discerning read reveals that it is full of hints about the way the gospel was going to come to the wider world – Abraham himself was a Gentile at first, of course. Remember too his memorable meeting with the Gentile Melchizedek. Think of Job and perhaps Jethro and certainly Rahab of Jericho and Ruth the Moabitess and Uriah the Hittite. Here we have Hiram and later the Queen of Sheba. Later there are Jonah’s Ninevite, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus and others.
What we are saying is that in the same way that the coming of those Gentile wise men to Jesus in Bethlehem anticipated the gathering in of the Gentiles so this event, some 950 years before that one, does the same thing. Jesus, the one greater Solomon who is building his own house and advancing his own kingdom, does so partly by using the resources of Gentiles who give praise to the Lord and especially through the ‘wise son’ whom he has appointed to rule over his people.
We must never think of the church as a cosy little group just for insiders. Our doors must always be open to outsiders of all sorts. Indeed we should be praying that more and more will be gathered in. Already, especially in the last hundred years or so, vast numbers have come to the Lord in Africa and in the Far East of Asia. Pray that we will see many more turning to the Lord in the days ahead. His kingdom has a glorious future. Do not doubt it.
Exhibiting God’s wisdom - seek his wisdom
The third thing to learn from the preparations for building the Temple as described here is the way it exhibits God’s wisdom in Solomon’s person. In verses 9-11 there are several references to giving (easily missed in the NIV) - Hiram says that Solomon is to provide (give) ‘food for’ his ‘royal household’. Hiram himself ‘kept Solomon supplied with all the cedar and pine logs he wanted (ie gave to him). Solomon gave Hiram ‘twenty thousand cors of wheat as food for his household, in addition to twenty thousand baths of pressed olive oil.’
Then in the first part of verse 12 we are reminded that the Lord had been doing his own giving or supplying or providing. ‘The LORD gave Solomon wisdom, just as he had promised him’. It was this wisdom that led not only to there being ‘peaceful relations between Hiram and Solomon, the two of them’ making ‘a treaty’ (or covenant) but also to the use of forced labour and other labour arrangements. In 13-18 we read that
King Solomon conscripted labourers from all Israel – thirty men. 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.
Some commentators get rather nervous about this – it does not sound very nice. However, as we have noted before, rather than looking for the seeds of decay here we are best to read the text as it stands and see that it was the wisdom that God gave him that led Solomon to act as he did. They were different times to our own and in those days this was the only way to get things done. There is no suggestion that these people were mistreated in any way. Indeed the arrangement was quite generous. The one difficult factor is that they had no choice in the matter. We do not read that any of them were unhappy about that.
In all sorts of areas – coal mining and deep sea fishing come most readily to mind alongside construction and steel manufacture – men, and sometimes women, have risked their lives and at times lost them, in order to take projects forward. No doubt at times the risks have been unacceptable. However, it is an ivory-towered piety that supposes that certain tasks can be completed without such means as forced labour or risk to life and limb. Since 1989 unions in America have sought to set aside April 28th as ‘Workers Memorial Day’, a fitting way of acknowledging the injuries and deaths sustained by workers in the course of their everyday activities. It may not be a comforting thought to think that the bridge I am driving over or the food on my plate has been provided at the risk of the lives and limbs of others. However, that is often the reality.
Solomon also had 70,000 (unskilled) carriers and 80,000 (skilled) stonecutters in the hills. These 150,000, we learn from 2 Chronicles, were drawn from the more than 153,000 ‘aliens who were in Israel’. We read here in 1 Kings 5:16 that there were also 3300 ‘foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen’. (In 2 Chron it says 3600. It sounds like each tribe provided 300 foremen – perhaps the 300 foremen from one tribe acted in a slightly different way to the others). It goes on
At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal (ie Byblos also up in Lebanon, north of Tyre) cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple.
From 2 Chronicles 2:13 we learn that Solomon requested one particular person to lead the work and was provided with a man called Huram-Abi, "a man of great skill, whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre, a man trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen, a man experienced in all kinds of engraving."
He could ‘execute any design given to him’. Sometimes God raises up such omni-competent polymaths like this one for the good of his people. One thinks, in a slightly different way, of someone like Calvin, a reformer, preacher, pastor, commentator and systematic theologian, or the 19th Century pastor, theologian, journalist and eventual Dutch prime-minister Abraham Kuyper. Such men are rare.
It was a massive project and it was only through the wisdom that God had given him that Solomon was able to complete it. One thing that is not immediately obvious here is that Solomon is dealing with a vassal king, one who owed him allegiance. (This comes out in 1 Kings 9:19). In his wisdom Solomon chooses to deal with Hiram as a sort of equal, although it is clear who is in charge.
We think again of Christ’s founding of his church and all the provision he has made by his life and death. Again this is due to the wisdom of God. How we need to know God’s wisdom every day of our lives. Let us look to the Lord always. Let us look to him for material provision, for skilful workers, for wise strategies. Understand what life in the kingdom is like. It involves skill and hard work but it must all be under God’s direction. We need both skilled and unskilled workers in the kingdom to take it forward by God’s grace. Pray the Lord of the harvest for such labourers. What a vision of activity is conjured up here. Pray for something similar today.
In verses 7 and 8 we read how "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. So Hiram sent word to Solomon: I have received the message you sent me and will do all you want."
The arrangement was that Hiram would provide ‘the cedar and pine logs’. His men would ‘haul them down from Lebanon to the sea’, then ‘float them in rafts by sea to’ a place chosen by Solomon (Joppa), where they could be separated and distributed as desired. In return Solomon was to provide ‘food for’ Hiram’s ‘royal household (twenty thousand cors of wheat as food for his household, in addition to twenty thousand baths of pressed olive oil)’ annually.
What do we make of Hiram’s ‘Praise be to the LORD today, for he has given David a wise son to rule over this great nation’? It is even stronger in 2 Chronicles 2:11, 12 "Because the LORD loves his people, he has made you their king. Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth! He has given King David a wise son, endowed with intelligence and discernment, who will build a temple for the LORD and a palace for himself."
What did it signify? Was Hiram a converted man? We cannot answer that question. However, whether this was a merely formal statement or one that Hiram felt from the heart, we certainly have a wonderful picture that anticipates the Kingdom of God in the era to come, the era we are in today. The way that the Gentile King Hiram directly contributed to the Temple anticipates the bringing in of the Gentiles as part of God’s House in the New Testament era.
This is something that the Old Testament anticipates elsewhere. For example, in the Psalms
22:28 Dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.
24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
72:11 All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him.
Also 2:10-12 Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
When we read the Old Testament we may think of it as an exclusively Jewish book but a more discerning read reveals that it is full of hints about the way the gospel was going to come to the wider world – Abraham himself was a Gentile at first, of course. Remember too his memorable meeting with the Gentile Melchizedek. Think of Job and perhaps Jethro and certainly Rahab of Jericho and Ruth the Moabitess and Uriah the Hittite. Here we have Hiram and later the Queen of Sheba. Later there are Jonah’s Ninevite, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus and others.
What we are saying is that in the same way that the coming of those Gentile wise men to Jesus in Bethlehem anticipated the gathering in of the Gentiles so this event, some 950 years before that one, does the same thing. Jesus, the one greater Solomon who is building his own house and advancing his own kingdom, does so partly by using the resources of Gentiles who give praise to the Lord and especially through the ‘wise son’ whom he has appointed to rule over his people.
We must never think of the church as a cosy little group just for insiders. Our doors must always be open to outsiders of all sorts. Indeed we should be praying that more and more will be gathered in. Already, especially in the last hundred years or so, vast numbers have come to the Lord in Africa and in the Far East of Asia. Pray that we will see many more turning to the Lord in the days ahead. His kingdom has a glorious future. Do not doubt it.
Exhibiting God’s wisdom - seek his wisdom
The third thing to learn from the preparations for building the Temple as described here is the way it exhibits God’s wisdom in Solomon’s person. In verses 9-11 there are several references to giving (easily missed in the NIV) - Hiram says that Solomon is to provide (give) ‘food for’ his ‘royal household’. Hiram himself ‘kept Solomon supplied with all the cedar and pine logs he wanted (ie gave to him). Solomon gave Hiram ‘twenty thousand cors of wheat as food for his household, in addition to twenty thousand baths of pressed olive oil.’
Then in the first part of verse 12 we are reminded that the Lord had been doing his own giving or supplying or providing. ‘The LORD gave Solomon wisdom, just as he had promised him’. It was this wisdom that led not only to there being ‘peaceful relations between Hiram and Solomon, the two of them’ making ‘a treaty’ (or covenant) but also to the use of forced labour and other labour arrangements. In 13-18 we read that
King Solomon conscripted labourers from all Israel – thirty men. 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.
Some commentators get rather nervous about this – it does not sound very nice. However, as we have noted before, rather than looking for the seeds of decay here we are best to read the text as it stands and see that it was the wisdom that God gave him that led Solomon to act as he did. They were different times to our own and in those days this was the only way to get things done. There is no suggestion that these people were mistreated in any way. Indeed the arrangement was quite generous. The one difficult factor is that they had no choice in the matter. We do not read that any of them were unhappy about that.
In all sorts of areas – coal mining and deep sea fishing come most readily to mind alongside construction and steel manufacture – men, and sometimes women, have risked their lives and at times lost them, in order to take projects forward. No doubt at times the risks have been unacceptable. However, it is an ivory-towered piety that supposes that certain tasks can be completed without such means as forced labour or risk to life and limb. Since 1989 unions in America have sought to set aside April 28th as ‘Workers Memorial Day’, a fitting way of acknowledging the injuries and deaths sustained by workers in the course of their everyday activities. It may not be a comforting thought to think that the bridge I am driving over or the food on my plate has been provided at the risk of the lives and limbs of others. However, that is often the reality.
Solomon also had 70,000 (unskilled) carriers and 80,000 (skilled) stonecutters in the hills. These 150,000, we learn from 2 Chronicles, were drawn from the more than 153,000 ‘aliens who were in Israel’. We read here in 1 Kings 5:16 that there were also 3300 ‘foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen’. (In 2 Chron it says 3600. It sounds like each tribe provided 300 foremen – perhaps the 300 foremen from one tribe acted in a slightly different way to the others). It goes on
At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal (ie Byblos also up in Lebanon, north of Tyre) cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple.
From 2 Chronicles 2:13 we learn that Solomon requested one particular person to lead the work and was provided with a man called Huram-Abi, "a man of great skill, whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre, a man trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen, a man experienced in all kinds of engraving."
He could ‘execute any design given to him’. Sometimes God raises up such omni-competent polymaths like this one for the good of his people. One thinks, in a slightly different way, of someone like Calvin, a reformer, preacher, pastor, commentator and systematic theologian, or the 19th Century pastor, theologian, journalist and eventual Dutch prime-minister Abraham Kuyper. Such men are rare.
It was a massive project and it was only through the wisdom that God had given him that Solomon was able to complete it. One thing that is not immediately obvious here is that Solomon is dealing with a vassal king, one who owed him allegiance. (This comes out in 1 Kings 9:19). In his wisdom Solomon chooses to deal with Hiram as a sort of equal, although it is clear who is in charge.
We think again of Christ’s founding of his church and all the provision he has made by his life and death. Again this is due to the wisdom of God. How we need to know God’s wisdom every day of our lives. Let us look to the Lord always. Let us look to him for material provision, for skilful workers, for wise strategies. Understand what life in the kingdom is like. It involves skill and hard work but it must all be under God’s direction. We need both skilled and unskilled workers in the kingdom to take it forward by God’s grace. Pray the Lord of the harvest for such labourers. What a vision of activity is conjured up here. Pray for something similar today.
