(1) Hiram is first mentioned in 2Samuel 5:11 (and the parallel, 1Chronicles 14:1) as having sent workmen and materials to David for the building of his house. He is described as a “lover of David.” Ancient tradition makes him a tributary or dependent monarch; and his attitude, as described in Scripture, towards both David and Solomon agrees with this. Josephus (100 Apion, i. 17, § 18) cites from Dios, a Phœnician historian, and Menander of Ephesus, a description of Hiram’s parentage, of his prosperous reign and skill in building; and quotes, as from the Tyrian archives (Ant. viii. 11, §§ 6, 7), letters passing between him and Solomon. The embassy here noticed from Hiram is clearly one of congratulation, perhaps of renewal of fealty. (In 2Chronicles 2:14-15 occur the phrases, “my lord, my lord David thy father.”)

1 Kings

GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR A GREAT WORK

1 Kings 5:1 - 1 Kings 5:12.

The building of the Temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign {1 Kings 6:1}. The preparations for so great a work must have taken much time, so that the arrangement with Hiram recorded in this passage was probably made very early in the reign. That probability is strengthened if we suppose, as we must do, that the embassy from Hiram mentioned in 1 Kings 5:1 was sent to congratulate Solomon on his accession. If so, the latter’s proposal to get timber and stones from the Lebanon would be made at the very commencement of the reign. Three years would not be more than enough to get the material ready and transported. Great designs need long preparation. Raw haste wastes time; deliberation is as needful before beginning as rapid action is when we have begun.

I. 1 Kings 5:3 - 1 Kings 5:5 set forth very forcibly the motives which impelled the young king to the work, and may suggest to us the motives which should urge us to diligence in building a better temple than he reared. He begins by reference to his father’s foiled wish, and to the reason why David could not build the house. Not only was it inappropriate that a warlike king should build it, but it was impossible that, whilst his thoughts were occupied and his resources taxed by war, he should devote himself to such a work. In Assyria and Egypt the great warrior kings are the great temple-builders, but a divine decorum forbade it to be so in Israel.

Solomon next thankfully describes his own happier circumstances. Observe his designation of Jehovah in1 Kings 5:4 as ‘my God,’ and compare with 1 Kings 5:3, where He is called David’s God. The son had inherited the divine protection and the father’s sense of personal relation to Jehovah. That is a better legacy than a throne. Well had it been for Solomon if he had held by the faith of his first days of royalty! Such a sense of a personal bond of love protecting on the one hand, and love trusting and obeying on the other, is the spring of all true service of God, whether it is busied in temple-building or in anything else.

We note also the grateful recognition of benefits received, and the tracing of peace and outward prosperity to God’s care. There was not a cloud in the sky. The horizon was clear all round, and it was ‘the Lord my God,’ who had made this ease for Solomon. We are often more ready to recognise God’s hand in sorrows than in joys. When He smites, we try to say ‘It is the Lord!’ Do we try to say it when all things are smooth and bright?

The effect of blessings should be thankfulness, and the proof of thankfulness is service. So Solomon did not take prosperity as an inducement to selfish luxurious repose, but heard in it God’s call to a great task. If all the rich men and all the leisurely women who call themselves Christians would do likewise, there would be plenty of workers and of resources for Christ’s service, which now sorely lacks both. How many of such ‘lay up treasure for themselves, and are not rich toward God’! How many fritter away their leisure in vanities, having time for any amusement or folly, but none for Christian service!

The man whom Jesus called ‘Thou fool!’ not the wise king, is the pattern for a sad number of professing Christians. ‘Thou hast much goods laid up for many years.’ What then? ‘I purpose to build an house for the name of the Lord’? By no means. ‘I will build greater barns, and that will give me something to do, and then I will take mine ease.’

We note, too, that Solomon was impelled to his great work by the knowledge that God had appointed him to do it. The divine word concerning himself, spoken to his father, sounded in his ears, and gave him no rest till he had set about obeying it {1 Kings 5:5}. The motives of the great temple-builders of old, as they themselves expound them in hieroglyphics and cuneiform, were largely ostentation and the wish to outdo predecessors; but Solomon was moved by thankfulness and by obedience to his father’s will, and still more, to God’s destination of him. If we would look at our positions and blessings as he looked at his in the fair dawning of his reign, we should find abundant indications of God’s will regarding our work.

Solomon uses a remarkable expression as to the purpose of the Temple. It is to be ‘an house for the name of the Lord.’ That is not the same as ‘for the Lord.’ Pagan temples might be intended by their builders for the actual residence of the god, but Solomon knew that the heaven of heavens could not contain Him, much less this house which he was about to build. We are fairly entitled, then, to lay stress on that phrase, ‘the Name.’ It means the whole self-revelation of God, or, rather, the character of God as made known by that self-revelation.

The Temple was, then, to be the place in which the God who fills earth and heaven was to manifest Himself, and where His servants were to behold and reverence Him as manifested. The Shechinah was the symbol, and in one aspect was a part, of that self-revelation. However, in common speech the Temple was spoken of as the house of Jehovah. The same thought which is expressed in Solomon’s fuller phrase underlay the expression,-He dwelt ‘not in temples made with hands’ but His name was set there, and the structure was reared, not so much for Him as that worshippers might there meet Him.

II. The rest of the passage deals with Solomon’s request to Hiram, and the preparation of the material for the Temple. Solomon’s first care was to secure timber and stone. His own dominions can never have been well wooded, and there are many indications that the great central knot of mountainous land, which included the greater part of his kingdom, was comparatively treeless. He therefore proposed to Hiram to supply timber from the great woods on Lebanon, which have now nearly died out, and offered liberal payment.

The parallel account in 2 Chronicles makes Solomon offer specified quantities of provisions for Hiram’s workmen, and makes Hiram accept the terms. 1 Kings 5:11 of this chapter says that the provisions named there were for the Tyrian king’s ‘household.’ This may possibly mean the workmen, who would be regarded as Hiram’s slaves, but, more probably, ‘household’ means ‘court,’ and Solomon had not only to feed the army of workmen, but to supply as much again for the great establishment which Hiram kept up. The little slip of seacoast, with the mountain rising sharply behind, which made Hiram’s kingdom, could not grow enough for his people’s wants. His country was ‘nourished’ by Palestine, long centuries after this time {Acts 12:20}, and the same was the case in Solomon’s period. In 1 Kings 5:11, the quantity of oil is impossibly small as compared with that of wheat. 2 Chronicles reads ‘twenty thousand’ instead of ‘twenty,’ and the Septuagint inserts ‘thousand’ in 1 Kings 5:11, which is probably correct.

With all his Oriental politeness and probably real wish to oblige a powerful neighbour, Hiram was too true a Phoenician not to drive a good bargain. He was king of ‘a nation of shopkeepers,’ and was quite worthy of the position. ‘Nothing for nothing’ seems to have been his motto, even with friends. He would love Solomon, and send him flowery congratulations, and talk as if all he had was his ally’s, but when it came to settling terms he knew what his cedars were worth, and meant to have their value.

There are a good many people who get mixed up with religious work, and talk as if it were very near their hearts, who have as sharp an eye to their own advantage as he had. The man who serves God because he gets paid for it, does not serve Him. The Temple may be built of the timber and stones that he has supplied, but he sold them, and did not give them, therefore he has no part in the building.

How different the uncalculating lavishness of Solomon! He knows no better use for treasures than to expend them on God’s service, and ‘all for love, and nothing for reward.’ That Is the true temper for Christian work. He to whom Christ has given Himself should give himself to Christ; and he who has given himself should and will keep back nothing, nor seek for cheap ways of serving the Lord, He who gives all, be it two mites, or a fishing-boat and some torn nets, or great wealth like that which Solomon found in his father’s treasuries and devoted to building the Temple, gives much; and he who gives less than he can gives little.

Solomon’s work was, after all, outward work, and fitter for that early age than the imitation of it would be now. The days for building temples and cathedrals are past. The universal religion hallows not Gerizim nor Jerusalem, but every place where souls seek God The spiritual religion asks for no shrines reared by men’s hands; for Jesus Christ is the true Temple, where God’s name is set, and where men may behold the manifested Jehovah, and meet with Him. But we have work to do for Christ, and a temple to build in our own souls, and a stone or two to lay in the great Temple which is being built up through the ages. Well for us if we use our resources and our leisure, for such ends with the same promptitude, thankful surrender, and sense of fulfilling God’s purpose, as animated the young king of Israel!

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.

5:1-9 Here is Solomon's design to build a temple. There is no adversary, no Satan, so the word is; no instrument of Satan to oppose it, or to divert from it. Satan does all he can, to hinder temple work. When there is no evil abroad, then let us be ready and active in that which is good, and get forward. Let God's promises quicken our endeavours. And all outward skill and advantages should be made serviceable to the interests of Christ's kingdom. It Tyre supplies Israel with craftsmen, Israel will supply Tyre with corn, Eze 27:17. Thus, by the wise disposal of Providence, one country has need of another, and is benefitted by another, that there may be dependence on one another, to the glory of God.Hiram, king of Tyre - Menander of Ephesus, who wrote a history of Tyre in Greek, founded upon native Tyrian documents, about 300 B.C., mentioned this Hiram as the son of Abibaal king of Tyre, and said that he ascended the throne when he was nineteen; that he reigned thirty-four years, and, dying at the age of fifty-three, was succeeded by his son Baleazar. Menander spoke at some length of the dealings of Hiram with Solomon.

Sent his servants - This appears to have been an embassy of congratulation.

CHAPTER 5

1Ki 5:1-6. Hiram Sends to Congratulate Solomon.

1. Hiram … sent his servants unto Solomon—the grandson of David's contemporary [Kitto]; or the same Hiram [Winer and others]. The friendly relations which the king of Tyre had cultivated with David are here seen renewed with his son and successor, by a message of condolence as well as of congratulation on his accession to the throne of Israel. The alliance between the two nations had been mutually beneficial by the encouragement of useful traffic. Israel, being agricultural, furnished corn and oil, while the Tyrians, who were a commercial people, gave in exchange their Phœnician manufactures, as well as the produce of foreign lands. A special treaty was now entered into in furtherance of that undertaking which was the great work of Solomon's splendid and peaceful reign.Hiram sendeth to congratulate Solomon; who desireth of Hiram timber to build the temple, 1 Kings 5:1-6. Hiram blesseth God for Solomon; and, for food for his family, sendeth him trees, 1 Kings 5:7-12. The number of labourers and workmen employed about the temple, 1 Kings 5:13-18.

Hiram sent his servants unto Solomon, to wit, as soon as he heard of his succession in the throne, as the following words show, he sent to congratulate with him, as the manner of princes is.

And Hiram king of Tyre sent servants unto Solomon,.... His ambassadors, to condole him on the death of his father, and congratulate him on his accession to the throne; this king is called by the Phoenician historians (s) Hirom, and by Eupolemus (t) Suron, as he is Huram in 2 Chronicles 2:3; and by Theophilus of Antioch (u) Hierom the son of Abelmalus, in the twelfth year of whose reign the temple was built:

for he had heard that they had anointed him, king in the room of his father; that the Israelites had anointed him king:

for Hiram was ever a lover of David; a friend and ally of his; and we never read of the Tyrians being at war with him, or assisting any of his enemies.

(s) Apud Joseph. contr. Apion. l. 1. c. 17, 18. (t) Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 33, 34. (u) Ad Antolyc. l. 3. p. 131, 132.

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.