And Solomon told out threescore and ten thousand men to bear burdens, and fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them. **
So was he seven years in building it. ***
Four years collecting materials, and seven years building the temple—eleven years altogether. And "threescore and ten thousand men," added to "fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain," plus "three thousand and six hundred" overseers, make a hundred and fifty-three thousand men in the service of the temple. By adding to this number the thirty thousand traveling abroad for the same object, we get the grand total of one hundred and eighty-three thousand and six hundred laborers devoting eleven years to the erection of the temple.
When at last the monument which had taxed the whole nation and its God to the utmost was completed, people came from far and near to behold it and its royal architect:
And when the Queen of Sheba **** heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon with hard questions.
* I Kings v, 10-14.
** 1 Kings vi, 38.
*** II Chronicles ii, 2.
**** Country unknown.
... and Solomon told her all her questions: and there was nothing hid from Solomon which he told her not.
And when the Queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built.
And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cupbearers also, and their apparel; and his ascent by which he went up into the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.... And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones. *
There was no more spirit in her, I suppose, means she was dumb with astonishment. Indeed, the fame of the temple of Solomon threw a sort of magic spell upon all the rival nations of the world, hypnotizing them into submission to Israel: