ben-Daoud, as the Arabs call him, is the greatest and wisest of sages, ruling, not only in this earthly world, but in the world of spirits. His memory has never been lost for that wonderful wisdom and knowledge. His historian has heaped together all the wise men he ever heard of, to enhance the king's wisdom by comparison, little thinking that but for this they would never have been heard of. His wisdom expressed itself in three thousand proverbs, of which comparatively a few had the salt of inspiration, and are preserved to us in his books; and his songs were one thousand and five, one being the Song of Solomon, another the 127th Psalm:

Except the LORD build the house,
They labour in vain that build it :
Except the LORD keep the city,
The watchman waketh but in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late,

To eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD,

And the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man,

So are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them :

They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies

in the gate.

Here the king seems to be thinking of the great work before him, and of his need that the Lord should aid him; and there seems, too, to be a reference to his dream. "His beloved" is his own prophetic name, Jedidiah, and the verse might be translated, "He giveth His beloved blessings in their sleep."

Another point noted in Solomon's wisdom was his knowledge of all the natural creation-all animals, and all plants, from the cedar to the small creeping plant on the wall. Such knowledge, then, when it helps us to enter more into the wondrous providence, glory, and mercifulness of our God, is a good and blessed thing, helping to make us innocently happy, and to love and praise God for the works which He hath made.

It is a grand, bright picture that we have here of the young and peaceful king, ruling from his mountain nest at Jerusalem, from the Thapsacus, or Tiphsah, the ford on the Euphrates, even to the borders of Egypt-" from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river

Euphrates," as Abraham had been promised; or, as it stands in David's psalm of promise (the 72nd)—

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,

And from the river unto the ends of the earth.

They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him,
And his enemies shall lick the dust.

And this grand dominion was perfectly peaceful.

There never

was such peace again till the great hush came over the world, one thousand years later, for the coming of the greater than Solomon, the King of Peace. David's toils and wars had won glory and rest, and Solomon and his people had entered into their labours. The ruins strewn so thickly now over hill and dale, in Palestine, bear witness to the multitudes who thronged it then, richly enjoying all those blessings of the vine and fig-tree, the basket and the store that God had covenanted to give them. For a hundred years and more, under Samuel, Saul, and David, there had been no idolatry, and God was keeping His word, in giving peace, plenteousness, honour, and glory, under a king whose largeness of heart, his love, his depth, his openness to understand, were unexampled. Every one might live at ease, sheltered under the vine or fig-tree trained on trellis-work over his door, with no fear of the marauding desert tribe, to steal cattle or children. Solomon's great army saved all such danger. The army had been regulated by David, and the divisions served a month at a time. The king's household, too, was on a magnificent scale, and it is calculated, from the provisions here mentioned, that it could not have consisted of less than fourteen thousand persons: yet in these earlier, happier days, there was no oppression. Justice was done on all sides, and David's prayer was fulfilled :—

Give the king thy judgments, O Lord,

And thy righteousness unto the king's son:

Then shall he judge thy people with righteousness,
And the poor with judgment.

But that 72nd Psalm looked far beyond Solomon, and only in One could its promise be entirely fulfilled :

His name shall endure for ever;

His name shall continue as long as the sun :
And men shall be blessed in him;

All men shall call him blessed!

LESSON CXXXII.

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE TEMPLE.

B.C. 1014.-1 KINGS v. 1—18.

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.

And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying,

Thou knowest how that 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.

But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.*

And, behold, 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.

Now therefore command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint : for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.

And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the LORD this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people.

And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have considered, the things which thou sentest to me for and I will do all thy desire concerning timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir.+

My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be discharged there, and thou shalt receive them and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household.

So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all his desire.

And 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.

:

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.

*Thing to meet him.

+ Cypress.

VOL. II.

B B

And king Solomon raised a levy* out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.

And he sent them 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.

And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains;

Beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work.

And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.

And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.

COMMENT.- The nobleness of David had won him the admiration of Hiram, king of the merchant city of Tyre. The Phoenician cities between Lebanon and the sea had long been the marts of all the world, and their ships by sea, their camels by land, had penetrated into regions unknown to all around, and brought their most precious wares, while their own arts of manufacture were in advance of all others. Their religion was the most corrupt form of the Canaanite worship, with Baal, Moloch, and Astarte for its gods; but it seems not to have prevented Hiram, king of Tyre, the only one of the cities that was then a kingdom, from conceiving a great respect for David. He sent an embassy to congratulate Solomon on his accession, and Solomon took the opportunity of obtaining assistance in his preparations for his great work. His letter and Hiram's answer were to be seen after 1,000 years in the records of Tyre, as well as in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Hiram had built temples himself upon the three islets that were the foundations of the elder Tyre; and his subjects were more experienced in all the arts of building than the Israelites. Solomon, therefore, begged for assistance from them in the obtaining of wood from Mount Lebanon. It seems that a particular soil of débris, brought down a mountain by the action of an ancient glacier, is peculiarly favourable to the growth of those mountain trees, the cedar, pine, and fir, and that when undisturbed they will grow on to an enormous size and beauty. Such a forest was found in Central America a few years back under the same conditions as the wood

* Men called out.

of Lebanon, and containing trees of the most marvellous bulk. Probably the "cedars of Lebanon which the Lord had planted" had been growing for this very purpose ever since their mountain had been upheaved. These were the trees for which Solomon undertook to give in exchange supplies of wheat and oil from the fertile plains of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Issachar, for the supply of the Tyrian palace. For the cutting of these grand trees Solomon called out 30,000 men, who went 10,000 for a month at a time to Lebanon, to cut and lop the trees under the direction of Hiram's experienced woodsmen, and then to fasten the trunks together in rafts or floats, so that they might go by sea, along the coast to Joppa, where they were landed, to be brought up to Jerusalem.

Besides these wood-cutters, there were 80,000 stone-cutters in the quarries near Jerusalem, with 70,000 bondsmen of the Canaanites, to hew and shape the enormous blocks of stone and marble to be employed in building. Tyrian stonemasons seem to have superintended, and there were 3,300 foremen, to keep order and give directions-not taskmasters as in Egypt; for all, save the bondsmen, were labouring freely for their God and their king. Some of the blocks that still remain are seventeen and eighteen feet long, one twenty-four feet long and eight wide; some, now far below the surface, bear the Phoenician masons' marks in red paint: and when we recollect the hilliness of the country and the few mechanical inventions known even to the wisest of kings, the great numbers employed and the length of time they were occupied will not seem strange. In the meantime Solomon was at work at the foundations. What his work there was has only been at all understood quite of late, when it has been found that he must have begun by levelling the summit of Mount Moriah, where the old threshing-floor had been, and filling up the sides and slopes, so as to make a broad platform for his Temple to stand upon. But this was not done only by tumbling masses of rock together. No, the whole underground portion is carefully built and tunnelled with passages: some to secure a plentiful supply of water, so much needed by the Jewish ritual; others to conduct off that water, together with the blood of the sacrifices, down into the brook Kedron, to be carried away to the Dead Sea; others to serve as secret exits and hiding-places.