One very interesting thing that I learned in today's reading is that Solomon is not the one who came up with the plans for the temple. David prayed and asked God if he could build the temple. God told him that he couldn't because he is a warrior and has shed blood. However, God gave David the plans for the temple and he is the one who drew up the blueprints. He also used his resources to provide a lot of the gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, etc. for the Temple. I never caught that before. I thought Solomon took care of all that. Nice job, David.
Solomon had a pretty decent theology on God's transcendent and omnipresent nature. Twice he declares that no one can actually build a temple for the Lord to dwell in because the highest heavens cannot contain Him.
In II Chronicles 2:17-18, we read how Solomon recruited labor for building the temple. Take a look:
17 Solomon took a census of all the foreigners residing in Israel, after the census his father David had taken; and they were found to be 153,600. 18 He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stonecutters in the hills, with 3,600 supervisors over them to keep the people working.Am I reading this right? Did Solomon conscript the foreigners as slave labor to build the temple? It's not technically condoned but it's also not condemned. I wonder why or why not. What do you think?
Tomorrow's reading is II Chronicles 7:11 through II Chronicles 23:15.
Peace.
whoa. Really? No Jews built the temple, it was all buy foreign labor? Amazing. What do you mean by "it's not technically condoned"?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I thought that I read somewhere that the laborers were paid, but I could definitely be wrong.
oops: it was all *by* foreign labor
ReplyDeleteHey David,
ReplyDeleteLove your blog. I was puzzled by this foreign slave-labor suggestion, so I checked 1 Kings to see if there is a parallel account. Sure enough, there is, and it sheds some much-needed light on the situation...
1) 1 Kings 5:13 says that Solomon drafted 30,000 men from Israel to be builders, who would work for 1 month and then get two months off. Pretty sweet deal. It also shows that it wasn't JUST foreign labor.
2) 1 Kings 5:15-16 gives almost the exact same numbers as 2 Chronicles - 70,000 burden-bearers, 80,000 stone-cutters, and then 3,300 (not 3,600) overseers. What's interesting to me, though, is that 1 Kings describes the overseers as "chief officers." If these are slaves, they are Joseph-like slaves at the very least. But I don't think they're slaves, and here's why...
3) 1 Kings 5:18 says "Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the men of Gebal did the cutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house." Hiram is the king with whom Solomon does business for many of the materials for the temple (1 Kings 5:1-12; 2 Chronicles 2:3-16). 2 Chronicles 2:15-16 contains a message from King Hiram to Solomon, which states, "now therefore the wheat and barley, oil and wine, of which my lord has spoken, let him send to his servants. And we will cut whatever timber you need from Lebanon and bring it to you in rafts by the sea to Joppa..." Sounds like a deal for labor to me. I think it is safe to assume that these foreign builders came from the coastlands with the materials for the temple, they are working for Solomon at the command of their own king, and Solomon paid (bartered) for their labor.
4) Back to the 1 Kings 5:18 text, Gebal was a nautical kingdom located near Tyre, where Hiram was king. It is likely that Gebal was ruled by Hiram at that time, and so the workers from Gebal were sent by Hiram as well.
Hope this sheds some light on things - it sure did for me!
Thanks again for the blog, David!
Jason