1 Kings 5:9
5:9 My servants will bring the timber down from Lebanon to the sea. I will send it by sea in raft-like bundles to the place you designate. 1 There I will separate the logs 2 and you can carry them away. In exchange you will supply the food I need for my royal court.” 3
1 Kings 5:17-18
5:17 By royal order 4 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, 5 along with men from Byblos, 6 did the chiseling and prepared the wood and stones for the building of the temple. 7
1 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.
2 tn Heb “smash them,” i.e., untie the bundles.
3 tn Heb “as for you, you will satisfy my desire by giving food for my house.”
4 tn Heb “and the king commanded.”
5 tn Heb “builders.”
6 tn Heb “the Gebalites.” The reading is problematic and some emend to a verb form meaning, “set the borders.”
7 tc The LXX includes the words “for three years.”