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God had David's son,
Solomon, build a temple for His Name in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.
This temple was subsequently destroyed, due to Israel's persistent
rebellion, at the time of the Babylonian captivity. One thing that is
certain about this structure is that it was magnificent in splendor
and beauty. Though the second temple, after the additions paid for by
Herod (the Great), may have been larger, it is unlikely to have
rivaled that of Solomon. (Timeline of these events).
1 Chronicles 22:1-5 Then
David said, "The house of the Lord God is to be here, and also
the altar of burnt offering for Israel." 2 So David gave orders
to assemble the aliens living in Israel, and from among them he
appointed stonecutters to prepare dressed stone for building the
house of God. 3 He provided a large amount of iron to make nails for
the doors of the gateways and for the fittings, and more bronze than
could be weighed. 4 He also provided more cedar logs than could be
counted, for the Sidonians and Tyrians had brought large numbers of
them to David. 5 David said, "My son Solomon is young and
inexperienced, and the house to be built for the Lord should be of
great magnificence and fame and splendor in the sight of all the
nations. Therefore I will make preparations for it." So David
made extensive preparations before his death. (NIV)
1 Chronicles 22:14-16
"I [David] have taken great pains to provide for the temple of
the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of
silver, quantities of bronze and iron too great to be weighed, and
wood and stone. And you may add to them. 15 You have many workmen:
stonecutters, masons and carpenters, as well as men skilled in every
kind of work 16 in gold and silver, bronze and iron-craftsmen beyond
number. Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you." (NIV)
Other than the
descriptions in the Bible, we have no additional histories describing
the temple built by Solomon.1 The
majority of what little remains at the temple mount site pertain to
the second temple destroyed in A.D. 70. But there may be more traces
of the original than what seemingly meets the eye. One thing any
modern visitor to the Middle East should be familiar with is the
ongoing use of stones in secondary usage. Many buildings and
structures have been built and rebuilt utilizing stones (building
blocks, pillar pieces, monuments, etc) that have been re-cut and used
again. Most often this results in the original stone being reduced in
size for the subsequent structure.
This
building at Banias shows how stone is recut and used over again.
More
recent periods almost always end up with smaller stones.
Four
distinct eras and stones sizes are in view here
Notice
the western wall at the temple mount. Herodian blocks are at the
street level
and
go up to a series of recut blocks from the Crusader/Muslim era.
Consider how many years
of work went into building the first temple, not only in Solomon's
reign but also in the final years of David's as preparation of
materials was already under way. Stonecutters were not surprisingly
one of the specific duties underway at the very beginning. Even with
what had already begun and the plans provided by David, Solomon
appears to have increased the level number of people working on the
temple, and perhaps the magnitude of some aspects.
1 Kings 5:15-18 Solomon
had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the
hills, 16 as well as thirty-three hundred foremen who supervised the
project and directed the workmen. 17 At the king's command they
removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a
foundation of dressed stone for the temple. 18 The craftsmen of
Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal cut and prepared the timber
and stone for the building of the temple. (NIV)
1 Kings 6:1-7 In the four
hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of
Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the
month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the
Lord. 2 The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty
cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high. 3 The portico at the front
of the main hall of the temple extended the width of the temple, that
is twenty cubits, and projected ten cubits from the front of the
temple. 4 He made narrow clerestory windows in the temple. 5 Against
the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary he built a structure
around the building, in which there were side rooms. 6 The lowest
floor was five cubits wide, the middle floor six cubits and the third
floor seven. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple
so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls. 7 In
building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and
no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site
while it was being built. (NIV)
Two of the things
especially emphasized, in these passages from 1 Kings, included that
the material quarried by Solomon's command featured "large
blocks of quality stone" for the foundation and that no stone
dressing was done on the temple mount site. 2
This is an incredible statement and feat. By most opinions of today,
moving large stones from another mountain would have required
dragging them, resulting in necessary damages requiring onsite fixes.
But, the Bible is clear; Solomon had put in place a means by which
this movement could be done without damage. It should not be a
surprise that this ancient king had the knowledge, or wisdom, to
direct this. He specifically had appealed to God for wisdom and God
granted it in abundance. In fact, the Bible tells us that until Jesus
he was the wisest man who ever lived.
1 Kings 3:7-12 "Now,
O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father
David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out
my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a
great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant
a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between
right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of
yours?" 10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.
11 So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not
for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of
your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will
do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart,
so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there
ever be. (NIV)
1 Kings 4:29-34 God gave
Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding
as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon's wisdom was
greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than
all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any other man,
including Ethan the Ezrahite - wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda,
the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding
nations. 32 He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a
thousand and five. 33 He described plant life, from the cedar of
Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about
animals and birds, reptiles and fish. 34 Men of all nations came to
listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who
had heard of his wisdom. (NIV)
1 Kings 5:7 When Hiram
heard Solomon's message, he was greatly pleased and said, "Praise
be to the Lord today, for he has given David a wise son to rule over
this great nation." (NIV)
Matthew 12:42 The Queen
of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and
condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to
Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. (NIV)
[See Luke 11:31 also]
Solomon's extraordinary
and legendary wisdom was employed in governing the people and in
matters such as building the temple. The scope of how many people
were involved in stonecutting alone is incredible.
2 Chronicles 2:1-2
Solomon gave orders to build a temple for the Name of the Lord and a
royal palace for himself. 2 He conscripted seventy thousand men as
carriers and eighty thousand as stonecutters in the hills and
thirty-six hundred as foremen over them. (NIV)
2 Chronicles 2:17-3:4
Solomon took a census of all the aliens who were in Israel, after the
census his father David had taken; and they were found to be 153,600.
18 He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be
stonecutters in the hills, with 3,600 foremen over them to keep the
people working. 3:1 Then Solomon began to build the temple of the
Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his
father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite,
the place provided by David. 2 He began building on the second day of
the second month in the fourth year of his reign. 3 The foundation
Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and
twenty cubits wide (using the cubit of the old standard). 4 The
portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits long across the
width of the building and twenty cubits high. (NIV)
2 Chronicles 8:16 All
Solomon's work was carried out, from the day the foundation of the
temple of the Lord was laid until its completion. So the temple of
the Lord was finished. (NIV)
Below
ground level at the temple mount on the western wall (the arch was
built against it)
Note
the large foundation block at the bottom (more on this below)
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Many of these passages go
out of their way to emphasize the laying of the foundation. Not only
is a good foundation necessary for a large stone structure, but
logically it would have employed the largest stones - a memorable
thing for all those present to see. To this day, on the western wall
of the temple mount, one huge foundation stone perhaps bares
testimony to the original. The stone is estimated to weigh about 500
tons, with no piece of machinery on earth today capable of moving it.
While some attribute this stone to Herod's later rebuilding project,
it is out of character with the blocks he utilized elsewhere. The
blocks of Herod's time, though large, would have been much more
manageable to move into (and around) the temple mount area. By his
time the environment surrounding the temple was much more populated,
than in Solomon's day when there was only a city south of the mount.
It appears that the aforementioned gigantic block, close to the
location of the Holy of Holies, was left intact by the subsequent
rebuilding following the exile and by Herod's reconstruction project.
It certainly is much larger than the block size Josephus records as
being used by Herod. 3 Many other
large blocks were likely re-cut and placed in secondary use,
including those in the original foundation.
When the temple was
rebuilt and in Herod's later improvements, Solomon's instruction that
no stone carving take place on site had fallen out of view. The
builders of Ezra's time would have needed to reuse materials, or else
haul them away, as much of it remained in place following its earlier destruction.4
With the scarcity of resources at that time, hauling the old stones
away would have been seen as a waste. (Note that Ezra 3:1-9 refers to
bring in new timbers, not stones, and yet stonemasons were working there.)
The result of re-cutting
and reusing earlier stones was clearly evident to those who witnessed
the second while still having memory of the first - it paled in
comparison to the original.
Ezra 3:10-12 When the
builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests
in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of
Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as
prescribed by David king of Israel. 11 With praise and thanksgiving
they sang to the Lord: "He is good; his love to Israel endures
forever." And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the
Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12
But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had
seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of
this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. (NIV)
As amazing as these
structures were, the final word (for believers) goes to Stephen's
history and witness as recorded in the book of Acts.
Acts 7:45b-50 It remained
in the land until the time of David, 46 who enjoyed God's favor and
asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47
But it was Solomon who built the house for him. 48 "However, the
Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says:
49 "'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What
kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my
resting place be? 50 Has not my hand made all these things?' (NIV)
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End
Notes
1. While there are
ancient historians that refer to Solomon's temple, I could not find
eyewitness accounts apart from Scriptures. First century historian,
Josephus, who was quite accurate regarding his contemporary accounts,
was also dependant on outside materials and calculations to furnish
the history of the Jews in Old Testament and inter-testament times.
An example of how this can fail can be seen in regards to his dating
of the building of Solomon's temple. Josephus, in referring to the
final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., also refers
back to the prior temple:
"However, one cannot
but wonder at the accuracy of this period thereto relating; for the
same month and day were now observed, as I said before, wherein the
holy house was burnt formerly by the Babylonians. Now the number of
years that passed from its first foundation, which was laid by king
Solomon, till this its destruction, which happened in the second year
of the reign of Vespasian, are collected to be one thousand one
hundred and thirty, besides seven months and fifteen days; and from
the second building of it, which was done by Haggai, in the second
year of Cyrus the king, till its destruction under Vespasian, there
were six hundred and thirty-nine years and forty-five days."
(Flavius Josephus: Wars of the Jews 6.4.8)
By Josephus' reckoning,
the temple was begun by Solomon around 1059 B.C., a calculation that
is off by many decades.
2. Why Solomon did
not want any stone dressing done on site is not completely clear from
Scriptures, though it certainly would have shown the temple to be
something extraordinary. One thought is that Solomon was trying to
adhere to the same standard as the altar on Mount Ebal, built
immediately after Israel entered the Promised Land, or at least to
some degree.
Deuteronomy 27:4-6 And
when you have crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal,
as I command you today, and coat them with plaster. 5 Build there an
altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron
tool upon them. 6 Build the altar of the Lord your God with
fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. (NIV)
3. Josephus
recorded the recent history of Herod's reconstruction at the temple.
He specifically noted the average size of Herod's stones and that
they were capable of being moved by "wagons".
1. AND now Herod , in the
eighteenth year of his reign, and after the acts already mentioned,
undertook a very great work, that is, to build of himself the temple
of God, and make it larger in compass, and to raise it to a most
magnificent altitude, as esteeming it to be the most glorious of all
his actions, as it really was, to bring it to perfection; and that
this would be sufficient for an everlasting memorial of him; but as
he knew the multitude were not ready nor willing to assist him in so
vast a design, he thought to prepare them first by making a speech to
them, and then set about the work itself; so he called them together,
and spake thus to them: "I think I need not speak to you, my
countrymen, about such other works as I have done since I came to the
kingdom, although I may say they have been performed in such a manner
as to bring more security to you than glory to myself; for I have
neither been negligent in the most difficult times about what tended
to ease your necessities, nor have the buildings. I have made been so
proper to preserve me as yourselves from injuries; and I imagine
that, with God's assistance, I have advanced the nation of the Jews
to a degree of happiness which they never had before; and for the
particular edifices belonging to your own country, and your own
cities, as also to those cities that we have lately acquired, which
we have erected and greatly adorned, and thereby augmented the
dignity of your nation, it seems to me a needless task to enumerate
them to you, since you well know them yourselves; but as to that
undertaking which I have a mind to set about at present, and which
will be a work of the greatest piety and excellence that can possibly
be undertaken by us, I will now declare it to you. Our fathers,
indeed, when they were returned from Babylon, built this temple to
God Almighty, yet does it want sixty cubits of its largeness in
altitude; for so much did that first temple which Solomon built
exceed this temple; nor let any one condemn our fathers for their
negligence or want of piety herein, for it was not their fault that
the temple was no higher; for they were Cyrus, and Darius the son of
Hystaspes, who determined the measures for its rebuilding; and it
hath been by reason of the subjection of those fathers of ours to
them and to their posterity, and after them to the Macedonians, that
they had not the opportunity to follow the original model of this
pious edifice, nor could raise it to its ancient altitude; but since
I am now, by God's will, your governor, and I have had peace a long
time, and have gained great riches and large revenues, and, what is
the principal filing of all, I am at amity with and well regarded by
the Romans, who, if I may so say, are the rulers of the whole world,
I will do my endeavor to correct that imperfection, which hath arisen
from the necessity of our affairs, and the slavery we have been under
formerly, and to make a thankful return, after the most pious manner,
to God, for what blessings I have received from him, by giving me
this kingdom, and that by rendering his temple as complete as I am able."
2. And this was the
speech which Herod made to them; but still this speech aftrighted
many of the people, as being unexpected by them; and because it
seemed incredible, it did not encourage them, but put a damp upon
them, for they were afraid that he would pull down the whole edifice,
and not be able to bring his intentions to perfection for its
rebuilding; and this danger appeared to them to be very great, and
the vastness of the undertaking to be such as could hardly be
accomplished. But while they were in this disposition, the king
encouraged them, and told them he would not pull down their temple
till all things were gotten ready for building it up entirely again.
And as he promised them this beforehand, so he did not break his word
with them, but got ready a thousand wagons, that were to bring stones
for the building, and chose out ten thousand of the most skillful
workmen, and bought a thousand sacerdotal garments for as many of the
priests, and had some of them taught the arts of stone-cutters, and
others of carpenters, and then began to build; but this not till
every thing was well prepared for the work.
3. So Herod took away the
old foundations, and laid others, and erected the temple upon them,
being in length a hundred cubits, and in height twenty additional
cubits, which [twenty], upon the sinking of their foundations fell
down; and this part it was that we resolved to raise again in the
days of Nero. Now the temple was built of stones that were white and
strong, and each of their length was twenty-five cubits, their height
was eight, and their breadth about twelve; and the whole structure,
as also the structure of the royal cloister, was on each side much
lower, but the middle was much higher, till they were visible to
those that dwelt in the country for a great many furlongs, but
chiefly to such as lived over against them, and those that approached
to them. (Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews 15.11.1-15.11.3)
4. When the temple
was destroyed, the Babylonians were not interested in hauling away
the debris; they merely wanted it destroyed so that it could no
longer be used. In fact, they would have wanted the debris left as a
monument to what would happen to all who would resist them. It is
likely that, other than the top blocks of the foundation, which would
have been damaged and cracked by fire, the lower blocks would have
been left in place and merely buried by the rubble above. Some of the
people who lived in the land may have carted off some of the rubble
for secondary use, something quite common in ancient times, but it is
more likely that the Jews who remained would have revered the spot to
such a degree that they would have chosen to leave it be.
2 Kings 25:8-10 On the
seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial
guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 9 He
set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the
houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. 10 The
whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard,
broke down the walls around Jerusalem. (NIV) |
