5:10 So Hiram supplied the cedars and evergreens Solomon needed, 6 5:11 and Solomon supplied Hiram annually with 20,000 cors 7 of wheat as provision for his royal court, 8 as well as 20,000 baths 9 of pure 10 olive oil. 11 5:12 So the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he had promised him. And Hiram and Solomon were at peace and made a treaty. 12
5:13 King Solomon conscripted 13 work crews 14 from throughout Israel, 30,000 men in all. 5:14 He sent them to Lebanon in shifts of 10,000 men per month. They worked in Lebanon for one month, and then spent two months at home. Adoniram was supervisor of 15 the work crews. 5:15 Solomon also had 70,000 common laborers 16 and 80,000 stonecutters 17 in the hills, 5:16 besides 3,300 18 officials who supervised the workers. 19 5:17 By royal order 20 they supplied large valuable stones in order to build the temple’s foundation with chiseled stone. 5:18 Solomon’s and Hiram’s construction workers, 21 along with men from Byblos, 22 did the chiseling and prepared the wood and stones for the building of the temple. 23
1 tn Heb “heard.”
2 tn Heb “I will satisfy all your desire with respect to cedar wood and with respect to the wood of evergreens.”
3 tn Heb “I will place them [on? as?] rafts in the sea to the place where you designate to me.” This may mean he would send them by raft, or that he would tie them in raft-like bundles, and have ships tow them down to an Israelite port.
4 tn Heb “smash them,” i.e., untie the bundles.
5 tn Heb “as for you, you will satisfy my desire by giving food for my house.”
6 tn Heb “and Hiram gave to Solomon cedar wood and the wood of evergreens, all his desire.”
7 sn As a unit of dry measure a cor was roughly equivalent to six bushels.
8 tn Heb “his house.”
9 tc The Hebrew text has “twenty cors,” but the ancient Greek version and the parallel text in 2 Chr 2:10 read “twenty thousand baths.”
sn A bath was a liquid measure equivalent to almost six gallons.
10 tn Or “pressed.”
11 tn Heb “and Solomon supplied Hiram with twenty thousand cors of wheat…pure olive oil. So Solomon would give to Hiram year by year.”
12 tn Heb “a covenant,” referring to a formal peace treaty or alliance.
13 tn Heb “raised up.”
14 sn Work crews. This Hebrew word (מַס, mas) refers to a group of laborers conscripted for royal or public service.
15 tn Heb “was over.”
16 tn Heb “carriers of loads.”
17 tn Heb “cutters” (probably of stones).
18 tc Some Greek
19 tn Heb “besides thirty-three hundred from the officials of Solomon’s governors who were over the work, the ones ruling over the people, the ones doing the work.”
20 tn Heb “and the king commanded.”
21 tn Heb “builders.”
22 tn Heb “the Gebalites.” The reading is problematic and some emend to a verb form meaning, “set the borders.”
23 tc The LXX includes the words “for three years.”