Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon — the Phoenician king of the great sea-trading city on the coast north of Israel. For Hiram was ever a lover of David: he had sent David cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons to build his palace (2 Samuel 5:11). Lover may carry the sense of a treaty friend, an ally bound by agreement, as many note; the friendship was real and also political. Hiram's embassy is a greeting to the new king and an opening for trade. The narrator lets the foreign king take the first step, and the temple story begins with a Gentile's goodwill.

Readers should note how much hangs on friendship in this chapter. David's alliance passes to his son; Hiram's goodwill becomes cedar for the house of God; and the chapter ends with Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders side by side (v. 18). The study sees in it something of the promise that the nations would bring their gifts to Israel's God (Isaiah 60:10, 13). It also notes that Hiram's friendship will be tested later, when he is given twenty cities and calls them Cabul, a name often explained as good for nothing (1 Kings 9:11-13). Alliances, however warm, remain human things.

David my father could not build an house unto the name of the LORD his God for the wars which were about him on every side, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet. Solomon gives Hiram the practical reason: David's reign was spent in war. Chronicles adds the reason the LORD gave David: thou hast been a man of war, and hast shed blood (1 Chronicles 28:3; cf. 22:8). The two accounts fit together: the wars that filled David's life also made him unfit to build the house of peace. Under the soles of his feet is the picture of full victory, as in Psalm 110:1, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

An house unto the name of the LORD — not a house to contain God, as Solomon himself will say, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee (1 Kings 8:27), but a house for His name, the place where He would make Himself known and be called on (Deuteronomy 12:11). Readers should hear the phrase through all these chapters. The study notes that David's desire to build (2 Samuel 7:2) was good, and the LORD honoured it while refusing it (1 Kings 8:18-19): the father gathered, the son built. Some of God's purposes take more than one lifetime, and not every faithful servant sees the finished work.

But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent. Rest is the gift Deuteronomy 12:10-11 had linked to the chosen place: when the LORD giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, then the place of His name. Solomon reads his times as that moment. Adversary is the Hebrew satan, the same word used of David's opponents in 2 Samuel 19:22, and evil occurrent means misfortune or mishap. Solomon credits the peace to the LORD, not to his own policy; the study notes that the sentence is a confession of faith as well as a report.

The word adversary returns with force in chapter 11: the LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite (11:14), and Rezon, who was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon (11:25). Readers have noticed the tension. Some take 5:4 as true of the years of building, before trouble arose; others note that 11:25 says all the days, and suggest that Solomon speaks here of the main threats only. The study does not force a solution, and offers a lesson the narrator seems to intend: peace is a gift of the LORD, and the same LORD may withdraw it when the heart turns away (11:9-14).

I purpose to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto my name. Solomon quotes the promise of 2 Samuel 7:12-13, he shall build an house for my name, nearly word for word. Readers should see the long thread: David wished to build a house for the LORD; the LORD answered that He would build David a house — a dynasty — and that David's son would build the temple. Solomon now sees himself as that son, and begins the work as obedience to a word spoken before he was born.

The study notes that 2 Samuel 7 held more than this. It promised that the son's throne would stand for ever (7:13, 16), and that God would be his father (7:14). Solomon builds the house of stone and cedar; but the promise of a house for ever looked further. Christian readers have long noticed that Jesus was greeted as the Son of David and spoke of the temple of His body (John 2:19-21). The study gives that as the New Testament's own reading, and here simply notes that Solomon's first great act as king is to take God at His word.

Command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon — the great cedars of the Lebanon mountains, prized across the ancient world for their size, scent and lasting wood. My servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants... for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians. Solomon admits that Israel lacks the skill and asks for it humbly, offering to pay what Hiram sets. Sidonians is used broadly of the Phoenicians, Tyre's people among them. The wisest king of his age knows what his people cannot do.

Hiram's answer (vv. 7-9) is warm: Blessed be the LORD this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people (v. 7). A Gentile king blesses the God of Israel — whether as a believer or in the courtesy of diplomacy, the text does not say; the queen of Sheba will speak in the same way (1 Kings 10:9). He will send timber of cedar, and... timber of fir, bring it down from Lebanon unto the sea, and convey them by sea in floats — rafts — to the place Solomon names; in return Solomon will give food for my household (v. 9). Tyre had timber and a narrow coast; Israel had grain.

Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year. The measure is the Hebrew kor, a large dry measure; the study does not convert it. The parallel in 2 Chronicles 2:10 lists different goods — wheat, barley, wine and oil, twenty thousand measures or baths of each — and gives them to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber. Many suggest that Chronicles records provision for the workers and Kings the annual payment to Hiram's court; the study offers this as a reasonable explanation and notes that the two accounts differ.

And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together (v. 12). The narrator ties the treaty to the gift of 1 Kings 3:12: wisdom is seen not only in judging cases but in making peace and fair agreements. League is the Hebrew word for covenant. Readers should note that the Law forbade covenants with the peoples of Canaan (Exodus 23:32; Deuteronomy 7:2); Tyre lay outside the land, and no word of blame is spoken here. The verse shows wisdom as the means of peace between nations.

King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. Levy is the Hebrew mas, forced labour for the crown. The men went to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy (v. 14). So each man served four months a year, away from his fields and family, in a foreign land. The study notes that this was a common practice of ancient kings, and exactly what Samuel had warned of: he will take your sons... to reap his harvest (1 Samuel 8:11-12). The house of God was built partly by conscripted Israelites.

Readers have noticed a tension with 1 Kings 9:22: of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen, the forced labour of slavery being laid on the remaining Canaanite peoples (9:20-21). Some distinguish a temporary rotating levy of Israelites, as here, from permanent bond-service imposed on others; others see the two passages as not fully agreeing. The study names the tension honestly. Either way, the burden was felt: in 11:28 Jeroboam is set over all the charge of the house of Joseph, and in 12:4 the people say, Thy father made our yoke grievous. Adoniram will be stoned (12:18).

Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains — seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand quarrymen — beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred (v. 16). 2 Chronicles 2:17-18 gives the same seventy and eighty thousand, says they were drawn from the strangers that were in the land of Israel, and counts three thousand and six hundred overseers. Some note that with the officers of 1 Kings 9:23 and 2 Chronicles 8:10 the totals in the two books come out equal; the study notes the difference and the suggestion.

They brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house (v. 17) — large dressed blocks, cut to fit. Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers (v. 18) — the Hebrew may name men of Gebal, the Phoenician city later called Byblos (cf. Ezekiel 27:9), though the KJV reads it as a trade. Israelites, Phoenicians and foreign labourers prepared timber and stones to build the house. The study notes the weight of the work behind the beauty that chapter 6 will describe; readers should remember the hands that carried it.