In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of Ægypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Zif,[2] did the king undertake the erection of the great temple of the Lord in Mount Moriah, and the building of his palace in Jerusalem. Fourscore thousand stonesquarers and threescore and ten thousand that bare burthens wrought without cease in the mountains, and in the outskirts of the city; while ten thousand hewers that cut timber, out of a number of eight and thirty thousand, were sent each month, by courses, to Lebanon, where they spent a month in labour so arduous that they rested for two months thereafter. Thousands of men tied the cut trees into flotes, and hundreds of seamen brought them by sea to Jaffa, where they were fashioned by Tyrians, skilled to work at turning and carpentry. Only at the rearing of the pyramids of Khephren, Khufu, and Mencheres, at Ghizeh, had such an infinite multitude of labourers been used.
Three thousand and six hundred officers oversaw the works; while Azariah, the son of Nathan, was over the officers,—a cruel man and an active, concerning whom had sprung up a rumour that he never slept, devoured by the fire of an internal, incurable disease. As for the plans of the palace and the temple; the drawings of the columns, the fore-court, and the brasen sea; the designs for the windows; the ornaments of the walls and the thrones,—they had all been created by the master builder Hiram-Abiah of Sidon, the son of a worker in brass of the tribe of Naphtali.
After seven years, in the month of Bul,[3] the temple of the Lord was completed; and after thirteen years, the palace of the king also. For cedar logs out of Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for almug, shittim, and tarshish woods, for great stones, costly stones, and hewed and polished stones; for purple, scarlet, and for byssin broidered in gold; for stuffs of blue wool; for ivory and red-dyed rams’ skins; for iron, onyx, and the vast quantity of marble; for precious stones; for the chains, the wreaths, the cords, the tongs, the nets, the lavers, and the flowers and the lamps and the candlesticks,—all, all of gold; for the hinges of gold for the doors, and the nails of gold, weighing sixty shekels each; for the basons and platters of beaten gold; for ornaments,—graven and in mosaic; for the images of lions, cherubim, oxen, palms and pineapples, both hewn in stone and molten,—for all these did Solomon give Hiram, King of Tyre, who bore the same name as the master builder, twenty cities and hamlets in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found the gift insignificant, with such splendour had been built the temple of the Lord, and the palace of Solomon, and the little palace at Millo for the king’s wife, the beautiful Queen Astis, daughter to Shishak, Pharaoh of Ægypt; while the redwood which later went for the balustrades and stairs of the galleries, for the musical instruments and for the bindings of the sacred books, had been brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, together with such a quantity of aromatic incense, sweet smelling oils, and precious perfumes, as had never been seen before in the land of Israel.
With each year did the riches of the king increase. Thrice a year did his ships return to harbour: the Tarshish, that sailed the Mediterranean, and the Hiram, that sailed the Black Sea. They brought out of Africa ivory and apes and peacocks and antelopes; richly adorned chariots out of Ægypt; live tigers and lions, as well as animal pelts and furs, out of Mesopotamia; snow-white steeds out of Cuth; gold dust out of Parvaam that came to six hundred and threescore talents in one year; redwood, ebony and sandalwood out of the land of Ophir; gay rugs of Asshur and Calah, of marvelous designs,—the friendly gifts of King Tiglath-Pileser; artistic mosaic out of Nineveh, Nimroud, and Sargon; wondrous figured stuffs out of Khatuar; goblets of beaten gold out of Tyre; stained glass out of Sidon; and out of Punt, which is near Bab-el-Medebu, those rare perfumes,—nard, aloes, calamus, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacte, galbanum, Smyrna myrrh, and frankincense,—for the possession of which the Ægyptian pharaohs had more than once embarked upon bloody wars.
As for silver, it was accounted of as common stone in the days of Solomon, and redwood was of no more value than the common sycamores that grow in the low plains in abundance.
Pools of stone, lined with porphyry, and marble cisterns and cool fountains did the king build, commanding the water to be conveyed from mountain springs that plunged down into the Kidron’s torrent; while around the palace he planted gardens and groves, and cultivated a vineyard in Baal-hamon.
And Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and for the horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand for his cavalry; barley also and straw for the horses were brought daily from the provinces. Thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of other meal; an hundred baths of different wines; ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and three hundred sheep, not counting harts and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl,—all this, passing through the hands of twelve officers, went daily for the table of Solomon, as well as for his court, his retinue, and his guard. Threescore warriors, out of a number of five hundred of the most stalwart and most valiant in all his army, held watch by turns in the inner chambers of the palace. Five hundred bucklers, covered with plates of gold, did the king command to be made for his bodyguards.
II.
Whatsoever the eyes of the king might desire, he kept not from them; and withheld not his heart from any joy. Seven hundred wives had the king, and three hundred concubines, without counting slaves and dancers. And all of them did Solomon charm with his love, for God had endowed him with such an inexhaustible strength of passion as was not given to ordinary men. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittites for their vivid but momentary beauty, that bursts into blossom just as early and enchantingly, and fades just as rapidly as the flower of the narcissus; the swarthy, tall, vehement Philistines, with wiry, curly locks, who wore golden, tinkling armlets upon their wrists, golden hoops upon their shoulders, and broad anklets, joined by a thin little chain, upon both ankles; gentle, diminutive, lithe Ammorites formed without a blemish, whose faithfulness and submissiveness in love had passed into a proverb; women out of Assyria, who put their eyes in painting to make them seem more elongated, and who ate out with acid blue stars upon their foreheads and cheeks; well-schooled, gay and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew well how to sing and dance, as well as to play upon harps, lutes and flutes, to the accompaniment of tabours; xanthochroöus women of Ægypt, indefatigable in love and insane in jealousy; voluputous Babylonians, whose entire body underneath their raiment was as smooth as marble, because they eradicated the hair upon it with a special paste; virgins of Baktria, who stained their nails and hair a fiery-red colour, and wore wide, loose trowsers; silent, bashful Moabites, whose magnificent breasts were cool on the sultriest nights of summer; care-free and profligate Ammonites, with fiery hair, and flesh of such whiteness that it glowed in the dark; frail, blue-eyed women with flaxen hair, and skin of a delicate fragrance, who were brought from the north, through Baalbec, and whose tongue was incomprehensible to all the dwellers in Palestine. The king loved many daughters of Judæa and Israel besides.