Hiram of Tyre had heard the news before Solomon sent a single word. The king of Tyre, who had loved David, sent his own servants to Jerusalem to greet the new king. That greeting arrived before any request for timber, before any mention of the temple. The chapter opens with Hiram making the first move, not Solomon.
Solomon's reply to Hiram is not a negotiation. It is a testimony. He tells Hiram plainly that David could not build a house for the name of the Lord because the wars around him were not finished. The Lord had put those enemies under David's feet, but the hands that fought were not the hands that would build. Solomon says that now the Lord has given him rest on every side. There is no adversary, no evil occurrence. The rest is the condition for the building.
The king of Israel does not ask for a favor. He proposes a trade. He asks Hiram to command his men to cut cedar trees out of Lebanon. Solomon's servants will work alongside Hiram's servants. He will pay whatever wage Hiram sets. He admits a plain fact: Israel has no one who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians. The admission is not shame. It is the foundation of the deal.
Hiram hears the message and rejoices. He blesses the Lord, who has given David a wise son over this great people. Hiram's response is not the grudging compliance of a vassal. It is the glad agreement of a trading partner who sees an honest proposal. He agrees to do all of Solomon's desire concerning timber of cedar and timber of fir.
The logistics are laid out plainly. Hiram's servants will bring the timber down from Lebanon to the sea. They will make rafts of the logs and float them by sea to the place Solomon appoints. There they will break up the rafts, and Solomon will receive the timber. In return, Solomon will supply food for Hiram's household. The terms are concrete. Wheat and pure oil, measured and delivered year by year. No vague promises, no spiritualized language. A contract.
So Hiram gave Solomon timber of cedar and timber of fir according to all his desire. The sentence is simple but it covers an enormous operation. Solomon gave twenty thousand measures of wheat and twenty measures of pure oil each year. The chapter does not say how many years this continued, but the arrangement was ongoing, not a single payment.
The chapter then makes a theological observation that is easy to miss. The Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he had promised him. And there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and they made a league together. The wisdom is not abstract. It shows itself in the ability to negotiate a treaty with a foreign king, to organize labor, to secure materials. The peace between the two kings is presented as a direct result of the wisdom the Lord gave.
Solomon then raised a levy out of all Israel. Thirty thousand men, sent to Lebanon in rotations. Ten thousand a month, two months at home. Adoniram was over the men subject to taskwork. The numbers are precise. Seventy thousand who bore burdens, eighty thousand who were hewers in the mountains, and three thousand three hundred chief officers who ruled over the work. The chapter does not soften the scale. This was a forced labor levy, organized by course, managed by a named overseer.
The king commanded, and they hewed out great stones, costly stones, to lay the foundation of the house with wrought stone. Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the Gebalites did fashion them. The three groups worked together. The timber and the stones were prepared to build the house. The chapter ends not with a ceremony or a prayer, but with the unglamorous work of cutting, hauling, and shaping. The foundation of the house was not laid in a moment of inspiration. It was laid by the hands of a hundred and fifty-three thousand three hundred men, working under contract, by levy, in shifts, on a mountain that belonged to a foreign king.