2 Chronicles 2: 1 – 18
Non-believers in church ministry
2 Then Solomon determined to build a temple for the name of the LORD, and a royal house for himself. 2 Solomon selected seventy thousand men to bear burdens, eighty thousand to quarry stone in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred to oversee them. 3 Then Solomon sent to Hiram king of Tyre, saying: As you have dealt with David my father, and sent him cedars to build himself a house to dwell in, so deal with me. 4 Behold, I am building a temple for the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to Him, to burn before Him sweet incense, for the continual showbread, for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, on the New Moons, and on the set feasts of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance forever to Israel. 5 And the temple which I build will be great, for our God is greater than all gods. 6 But who is able to build Him a temple, since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Who am I then, that I should build Him a temple, except to burn sacrifice before Him? 7 Therefore send me at once a man skillful to work in gold and silver, in bronze and iron, in purple and crimson and blue, who has skill to engrave with the skillful men who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom David my father provided. 8 Also send me cedar and cypress and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your servants have skill to cut timber in Lebanon; and indeed my servants will be with your servants, 9 to prepare timber for me in abundance, for the temple which I am about to build shall be great and wonderful. 10 And indeed I will give to your servants, the woodsmen who cut timber, twenty thousand kors of ground wheat, twenty thousand kors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil. 11 Then Hiram king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon: Because the LORD loves His people, He has made you king over them. 12 Hiram also said: Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, for He has given King David a wise son, endowed with prudence and understanding, who will build a temple for the LORD and a royal house for himself! 13 And now I have sent a skillful man, endowed with understanding, Huram my master craftsman 14 (the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre), skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, purple and blue, fine linen and crimson, and to make any engraving and to accomplish any plan which may be given to him, with your skillful men and with the skillful men of my lord David your father. 15 Now therefore, the wheat, the barley, the oil, and the wine which my lord has spoken of, let him send to his servants. 16 And we will cut wood from Lebanon, as much as you need; we will bring it to you in rafts by sea to Joppa, and you will carry it up to Jerusalem. 17 Then Solomon numbered all the aliens who were in the land of Israel, after the census in which David his father had numbered them; and there were found to be one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred. 18 And he made seventy thousand of them bearers of burdens, eighty thousand stonecutters in the mountain, and three thousand six hundred overseers to make the people work.
Should non-believers be hired to staff positions in a Christian church?
I often hear quotes relative to one which Martin Luther stated, “’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian.”
So, defenders of hiring people who are not believers in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ say, ‘even churches need to have talented men and woman care for the day to day internal operations even if they are not believers.’
This attitude and position are totally incorrect.
Luther didn’t say this one and wouldn’t have.
These statements by Martin Luther and their context within the various documents he wrote are more than enough to convince reasonable readers that Luther would never have uttered the falsely attributed quote and would never regard as a preferable desire or choice to be ruled by a Turk. It is not “Luther-esque” and in fact, it is diametrically opposed to the position on which we know from his writings Luther firmly stood.
A couple of scriptural verses from our Precious Holy Spirit teach us this,
2 Corinthians 6: 14, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
Amos 3: 3, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?”
These verses are not denying non-believers from attending our services. We want people to get saved and if non-believers are seeking our Great God who are we to deny them access to hear His Good News.
On the other hand, a church should not employ non-believers just as the two verses advise us.
I bring this point up because today we are going to see the danger of doing exactly what I just said our Lord wants us not to do and that is hire non-believers to do the work of the Lord. In all Israel Solomon never states that he could not find qualified Israelites help in the building of the Temple, he just goes on ahead and asks the pagan king of Tyre if he has anyone who could do the job. Can you see what is going on behind the scene already? I pick up that Solomon likes the pagan temples that have been built so he wants the Temple to be spectacular like them. Here we begin in the downward spiritual descent of the nation because of this decision.
2 Then Solomon determined to build a temple for the name of the LORD, and a royal house for himself.
This verse reminds us of Solomon’s intention, spurred on by his deceased father, to build a house for the Name of YHWH. The ‘NAME of YHWH’ was a way of describing God which linked Him with a place without limiting Him to it. He, as it were, left His Name (His essence and character) there. Solomon intended it as a place through which men could approach God. But the very permanence of the Temple would gradually make men of lesser spirituality see it as the residence of YHWH, not only immovable, but also inviolable.
He would also build ‘a house for his kingship’. His wealth had gone to his head. He already had a grand palace which David had built, but now he determined not only to build a magnificent Temple, but also an even more magnificent palace for himself. Instead of using his wealth for the good of his country (as he at least theoretically intended to use his wisdom) he would spend it on a magnificent Temple, built partly along pagan lines, and on a magnificent palace from which he would rule. The continual emphasis on seeing the two together is intended to bring out that with all his outward show of wanting to please God, he very much had in mind proclaiming his own glory as well. In his mind both went together. In the book of Kings this fact is brought out in that he spent twice as long on his own house as he did on God’s.
David, in his enthusiasm to build the Temple, had studied carefully the book of Exodus which had come in ‘writing from the hand of YHWH’ (1 Chronicles 28.19), and had been guided by the Spirit to understand the pattern on which the Temple should be based (1 Chronicles 28.11-21). The next step should have been to arouse the enthusiasm of the people of Israel and encourage them to build the Temple along those lines as an act of worship and praise to God (as Moses had the Tabernacle, as the returnees from Exile had with their new Temple, and as Nehemiah would with the walls of Jerusalem). But what God had not guided him to do was to use idolatrous enforced labor in its construction (1 Chronicles 22.2), or to call on foreign expertise for its detailed construction.
Solomon in his youthful enthusiasm went one step further. He called on the idolatrous ‘strangers’ to work on the building of the Temple, and called on idolatrous, foreign expertise to aid him in its construction. They were after all the experts in building Temples, for Tyre was famous for its Temples, and they had been building them for their idols for centuries. The Temple would therefore very much be a mixture of Tabernacle and Phoenician Temple.
After describing the strangers whom Solomon set aside to engage in forced labor in the building of the Temple, the chapter gives us a summary of Solomon’s letter to King Huram of Tyre. Tyre, as well as being a seafaring nation, was also famous for the cedar trees which it possessed (the cedars of Lebanon), and Solomon explained that he was building a House for God and desired that Huram would send him some cedar wood for the purpose.
Full numerical details of the conscripted Strangers are first given. It is made clear that they were Strangers again in verse 17, as distinctive from Israelites. As such they would be idolaters, and thus seen by the returnees from Exile as not suited to such a holy task.
2 Solomon selected seventy thousand men to bear burdens, eighty thousand to quarry stone in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred to oversee them
That these were foreigners is made clear in verse 22. These Strangers do not appear to have been given any choice in the matter. They were dragged away from their homes and fields, enslaved and employed in permanent forced labor, which was exacted on them using the lash (10.11). And it was something that continued long after the Temple had been built. There was nothing ‘holy’ about this. Indeed, it was contrary to the Law of Moses, and it could hardly have been described as showing them ‘love’, a requirement of Leviticus 19.34. Solomon had clearly forgotten that his people had once themselves been strangers and slaves in a foreign land (Exodus 22.21; 23.9; Leviticus 19.34). This was therefore a total and blatant breach of the covenant of YHWH.
Seventy ‘large labor groups’ (thousands) of these men were set aside to act as the equivalent of beasts of burden, whilst eighty ‘large labor groups’ were set aside to work in the mountains, hewing trees and fashioning large stones. They would live in appalling conditions and were overseen by three large groups of taskmasters, and six smaller groups. There was no peace and rest for them. This last number (600 or six smaller groups) is explicable in terms of the five hundred and fifty foremen described in 1 Kings 9.23 who were additional to the major body of taskmasters and were part Canaanite and part Israelite.
3 Then Solomon sent to Hiram king of Tyre, saying: As you have dealt with David my father, and sent him cedars to build himself a house to dwell in, so deal with me.
Solomon wrote to Huram, King of Tyre, and requested that in the same way as he had sent cedar wood to his father so that he could build himself a palace to dwell in, so he would send him cedar wood so that he could build a house for YHWH to dwell in.
4 Behold, I am building a temple for the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to Him, to burn before Him sweet incense, for the continual showbread, for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, on the New Moons, and on the set feasts of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance forever to Israel.
Solomon explained his purpose. He wanted to build a house for the Name of YHWH his God (note the sense of personal relationship), and to dedicate it to Him as a house of offerings and sacrifices. These offerings would include the offering of incense on the altar of incense in the Holy Place (Exodus 30.1-10); the continual presentation of the showbread which was replaced weekly and was set on a table in front of the Veil which separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (e.g. Exodus 25.23-30; Leviticus 24.5-9); the morning and evening offerings which were required to be offered daily (Numbers 28.4); the special Sabbath and New Moon offerings (Numbers 28.9-10); and the offerings at the set feasts of YHWH (Numbers 28.11-29.38). His aim, however, was to demonstrate that the fixed requirements of YHWH needed to be met as they were required in perpetuity.
5 And the temple which I build will be great, for our God Is greater than all gods.
Then he explained that because the God of Israel is great above all gods, the House that he had to build must also be great. He seemingly failed to recognize that to attempt to build a House great enough to represent God was folly. To compare God with a building would be to demean Him.
This was a sign that already the idea of the Temple had begun in his mind to replace what the Tabernacle represented, for however holy the Tabernacle might be, it could not be described as ‘great’. The Tabernacle suited God because He did not want His greatness linked to the greatness of some physical thing. That would be to limit Him. His greatness was something invisible and intangible. Solomon appeared to be overlooking the fact that God was so great that no House could be great enough to represent Him.
6 But who is able to build Him a temple, since heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Who am I then, that I should build Him a temple, except to burn sacrifice before Him?
However, he now puts that right. He points out that even heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain YHWH. Who then could possibly build Him a House which was great enough? (But on those grounds, he should not have proceeded with the Temple).
He then expresses his own presumption in even seeking to build a house for God, and stresses that he only does so in order that he might be able to offer incense before Him. Here the idea of the offering of incense takes up within it, and sums up, all the offerings that he has previously described. It indicates that Solomon was thus aware that God transcends man’s buildings. The Temple would not be His dwelling place but simply a place to offer offerings to Him. But that was not how most men would see it. That was one of its dangers.
7 Therefore send me at once a man skillful to work in gold and silver, in bronze and iron, in purple and crimson and blue, who has skill to engrave with the skillful men who are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom David my father provided.
Solomon now asks Huram to send him an expert Temple builder, presumably claiming he knew that Tyre was a place where a number of magnificent Temples had been built, something evidenced archaeologically. And he specified that the man must be an expert in working gold and silver and bronze and iron. This made clear his intention that the man would have overall charge of building the Temple and the Sanctuary, for gold was the essential metal in the Sanctuary. Similar gifts as he speaks of here were given by God through His Spirit to Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 35.31-35), but those were specifically seen to be of God. Nothing like that is suggested of this man. Thus, Solomon was looking to human abilities rather than to God-given gifts. And the aim was clearly that this man should act as mentor and guide to the skilled Israelite workmen who were set aside as his assistants, men who were at that moment present with Solomon in Judah and Jerusalem (thus within a limited area) awaiting guidance, men who had been provided for him by his father. It is quite clear from this that the man was to be given overall control under Solomon.
When the Tabernacle was made, it was made by men who were filled with the Spirit of God and given wisdom by God to perform the tasks required. This man was a pagan, lacking the Spirit of God, who had gained his understanding by natural means, although he may well have imputed them to his god. There could have been no greater contrast.
8 Also send me cedar and cypress and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your servants have skill to cut timber in Lebanon; and indeed my servants will be with your servants, 9 to prepare timber for me in abundance, for the temple which I am about to build shall be great and wonderful.
Solomon also asked for an abundance of timber out of Lebanon as he knew that the Tyrians knew how to cut timber which was plentiful there. His order included cedar trees, fir trees, and algum (or almug) trees. The cedar trees and fir trees grew prolifically on the mountains of Lebanon in the region of Tyre and Sidon. Algum trees may have been exotic trees which the Tyrians imported, partly for trading purposes. They are unidentified, although some see the reference as referring to sandalwood trees. They were used in the Temple for stairs and pillars and musical instruments (9.11; 1 Kings 10.12) and were obtained from Ophir (9.10; 1 Kings 10.11). The Tyrians would no doubt cut them to a suitable size.
And knowing how much timber he would require Solomon assured Huram that he would send him many of his own servants (eighty large labor units of men - verse 2) to assist Huram’s servants in the work. All this was necessary because Solomon planned a massive and wondrous Temple. We can see already how the planned Temple was turning him into a despot. Human considerations were being ignored. How different this was from the ideal king pictured in Deuteronomy 17.18-20 who would read God’s Law and be considerate to his brother men.
10 And indeed I will give to your servants, the woodsmen who cut timber, twenty thousand kors of ground wheat, twenty thousand kors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.
Solomon then named the initial price that he would pay for the timber and for the use of Huram’s skilled workmen. One thing that Tyre was short of was commodities which grew in Israel in abundance. Thus, Solomon promised payment in such commodities (money was unknown and payment in commodities was quite common). These included beaten wheat, barley, wine and olive oil in the amounts shown above. But as the contract proceeded further payments by instalments would be needed and these appear to have been twenty thousand measures of wheat, and twenty measures (two hundred baths) of high grade olive oil paid yearly, a price which was finally accepted (1 Kings 5.9). Harum would, of course, determine what use was made of the commodities. They were the price that he was being paid. Olive oil was one of Israel’s most prolific and valued exports.
Solomon here offered a down payment of twenty thousand measures of wheat, twenty thousand measured of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine and twenty thousand baths of oil. This would cover the initial cost, but as work progressed more would be required, so that 1 Kings 5 gives details of the yearly instalments that followed the down payment. These amounted to twenty thousand measures of wheat per year, and twenty measures (two hundred baths) of finest olive oil. In 1 Kings 5 it was Solomon who had asked Huram to name his price. Negotiations presumably then resulted in the above down payment plus yearly instalments. The instalments finally agreed and paid were twenty thousand baths of wheat, and twenty baths of pure oil every year, which were to be given year by year as the work proceeded.
Huram’s reply is a model of delicacy and flattery. He was by then an experienced communicator and negotiator. It may be suggesting that whilst they were in a treaty relationship, continued from David’s reign, Huram recognized Solomon’s superiority in strength and wanted to ensure that the treaty held firm.
11 Then Hiram king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon: Because the LORD loves His people, He has made you king over them.
So Huram, the king of Tyre, wrote a personal letter to Solomon to assure him that he was taking the matter into his own hands.
Having been approached concerning a Temple to be built for YHWH, Whom he knew to be Israel’s sole God, Huram, who would have been an idolater, and probably a worshipper of Baal, makes reference to Solomon’s God, YHWH. Solomon’s desire to build a magnificent Temple for Him, in the place of the Jerusalem Tent and the Tabernacle, would naturally appear to him as evidence of Solomon’s concern for his people. To him a Temple was what every worthwhile god should have, and in his friendship with David he may well often have wondered at the lack of such in Israel. In his view, Solomon, by his act, was raising YHWH to the level of other gods (one of the great dangers of a Temple. We would rightly say lowering YHWH to the level of other gods). Thus, he was enthusiastic about it and declared that this demonstrated how much YHWH must love His people to make such a king as Solomon king over them. He could only see Solomon’s act as having the consequence of YHWH showing His favor to Israel. This did not mean that he was a believer in YHWH, except as the God of Israel Who might show favor or disfavor, just as he saw his own gods as doing. He was not, however, thinking of replacing his own gods with YHWH.
12 Hiram also said: Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who made heaven and earth, for He has given King David a wise son, endowed with prudence and understanding, who will build a temple for the LORD and a royal house for himself!
Huram then goes on to bless ‘the God of Israel Who made Heaven and earth’. Blessing the god of the person you were talking to was seemingly a common courtesy of life in those days. As polytheists, those outside Israel accepted the genuineness of many gods including the gods of other nations.
Huram rejoices that the son of his friend David the king is wise and endued with discretion and understanding. To him this is revealed in the fact that Solomon is building a great Temple for his God and a great palace for himself (from both of which Huram would profit). He thought the idea was magnificent. It would bring Israel and its religion in line with the religions of other nations (one of the dangers of the Temple), and it would exalt Solomon. Alternately ‘a house for YHWH and a house for his kingdom’ could indicate that the Temple would benefit both God and the kingdom, chapter 7.11 and 8.1 suggest otherwise.
Please take another look at the words ‘discretion and understanding’. These are a repetition of what David prayed would be true for Solomon in 1 Chronicles 22.12 where they were specifically related to him observing and fulfilling the Law of God. The Chronicler may therefore have seen something ironic in the use of the same words as he sees Solomon going about the building of the Temple in a way contrary to the Law of God.
If only Solomon had listened to the Law of God he would have ensured that the Temple was built by willing volunteers who were true believers, not by men whom he had unjustly enslaved who were idolaters. And he would have used men full of the Spirit of God, not an idolatrous half and half pagan. In Exodus Bezalel and Oholiab were recommended by God for having understanding and discernment from Him. Here Solomon is recommended by a pagan king for having understanding and discernment in general, not necessarily a good parallel. When the ungodly praise us we need to beware. At this stage Solomon’s heart was, at least partly, in the right place, but he was going about it in the wrong way. The returnees from Exile who had themselves avoided this danger would have seen immediately that this was so.
13 And now I have sent a skillful man, endowed with understanding, Huram my master craftsman 14 (the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre), skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, purple and blue, fine linen and crimson, and to make any engraving and to accomplish any plan which may be given to him, with your skillful men and with the skillful men of my lord David your father.
King Huram was doing his best for Solomon and was indeed responding to Solomon’s request as best he could. He sent him Huram-abi, who was the son of a Tyrian father and a Danite mother and was highly skilled in all that Solomon required. He probably hoped that Solomon would be pleased that he had found someone capable who was at least half Israelite. But the Chronicler’s readers would not have seen it like that. To them the man he described would have been a mixed culture, the worst person possible.
Consider these facts.
. He was the product of a mixed marriage, something which was anathema to the community of the returnees from Exile and caused them many problems (Ezra 10; Nehemiah 13.23-30).
. He was almost certainly a worshipper of Baal, and at the best a man who worshiped all gods (again anathema to the returnees from Exile), for although his Israelite mother may have taught him the Law, his Tyrian father would have insisted in his taking part in the family religion (and there is no suggestion otherwise). And his expertise was pagan approved and not God approved. He was thus the product of pagan wisdom and would use Phoenician techniques. So while he was clearly deliberately paralleled with Oholiab (Exodus 35.34) both as to skill and as to ancestry (both shared descent from Dan) it was a parallel of contrast and not of approval, emphasizing that, in contrast with the Tabernacle (and the second Temple) Solomon’s Temple was tainted. It was produced by ‘unclean’ hands. Huram-abi was a parody of Oholiab, not a parallel, bringing out Solomon’s failure.
And it was this man under whose guidance and expertise the gold and silver used in building the Sanctuary and its furniture was to be fashioned. The Israelite returnees from Exile must have recoiled in horror.
The fact that Solomon accepted him and allowed him to do the work revealed Solomon’s lack of sensitivity to the holiness of the Sanctuary, even though he was so conscious of the holiness of the Ark of YHWH that he would not allow his idolatrous Egyptian wife to dwell near where it had rested (8.11). His enthusiasm for a marvelous Temple seemingly overrode his religious sensitivities.
First there was the use of strangers for forced labor contrary to the Law, then the use of those strangers in building the Temple, and now the use of an idolatrous multi-god worshiper to head up the whole. This demonstrates the downward path on which Solomon was treading because of his father’s determination to build a grand Temple at all costs. It may have been acceptable to most in his own day (although we are not told so). But it would not have been acceptable in any way to the returnees from Exile.
15 Now therefore, the wheat, the barley, the oil, and the wine which my lord has spoken of, let him send to his servants.
Unaware of the problem that he had posed to Solomon, king Huram accepted the terms of the contract, and asked that the down payment be forwarded to him. Let Solomon send the wheat, barley, wine and olive oil that ‘my lord’ had proposed. Whilst ‘my lord’ may indicate a subordinate status it was not necessarily so. He might have been speaking courteously as one ‘my lord’ to another.
16 And we will cut wood from Lebanon, as much as you need; we will bring it to you in rafts by sea to Joppa, and you will carry it up to Jerusalem.
In return for the payment the Tyrians would cut down the cedars required, and trim them as necessary, before forwarding them by sea to Joppa ‘in floats’, from where Solomon would convey them to Jerusalem using the road that passed by Gezer. One way of conveying such timber by sea would be to form it into huge rafts which could be towed along the coast. The massive task would have been the conveying of it to Jerusalem, which would, of course, have been by forced labor.
17 Then Solomon numbered all the aliens who were in the land of Israel, after the census in which David his father had numbered them; and there were found to be one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred.
The use by Solomon of these people for forced labor is highlighted to make it very clear that building Solomon’s Temple involved forced labor, and that that labor was of ‘sojourners in the land of Israel’, that is, non-Israelites, and therefore idolaters.
18 And he made seventy thousand of them bearers of burdens, eighty thousand stonecutters in the mountain, and three thousand six hundred overseers to make the people work.
The one hundred and fifty-three large units were divided up as seventy for bearing burdens, eighty for hewing in the mountains, and three made up of taskmasters. The fact that they are so closely involved with all that is required for the building of the Temple including the Sanctuary, and that the scripture mentions no Israelites as involved, confirms that they would not only do forced labor outside the Sanctuary, but would also be involved as laborer’s in the building of the Sanctuary.
We can contrast with this the fact that when Herod’s Temple was being built he trained priests as builders so that they could have the responsibility of building the Sanctuary. It is remarkable that a Solomon who was concerned lest the noise of building disturb the Sanctuary when it was being built (1 Kings 6.7) should be impervious to it being built by idolaters. It is amazing how we make up our own rules in thinking what might please our Holy God.
