terranean,--all uttered his name in wonder, for
there was none among the kings like unto him in all his days.

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were
come out of AEgypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in
the month of Zif,[2] did the king undertake the erection of the great
temple of the Lord in Mount Moriah, and the building of his palace in
Jerusalem. Fourscore thousand stonesquarers and threescore and ten
thousand that bare burthens wrought without cease in the mountains, and
in the outskirts of the city; while ten thousand hewers that cut timber,
out of a number of eight and thirty thousand, were sent each month, by
courses, to Lebanon, where they spent a month in labour so arduous that
they rested for two months thereafter. Thousands of men tied the cut
trees into flotes, and hundreds of seamen brought them by sea to Jaffa,
where they were fashioned by Tyrians, skilled to work at turning and
carpentry. Only at the rearing of the pyramids of Khephren, Khufu, and
Mencheres, at Ghizeh, had such an infinite multitude of labourers been
used.

Three thousand and six hundred officers oversaw the works; while
Azariah, the son of Nathan, was over the officers,--a cruel man and an
active, concerning whom had sprung up a rumour that he never slept,
devoured by the fire of an internal, incurable disease. As for the
plans of the palace and the temple; the drawings of the columns, the
fore-court, and the brasen sea; the designs for the windows; the
ornaments of the walls and the thrones,--they had all been created by
the master builder Hiram-Abiah of Sidon, the son of a worker in brass
of the tribe of Naphtali.

After seven years, in the month of Bul,[3] the temple of the Lord was
completed; and after thirteen years, the palace of the king also. For
cedar logs out of Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for almug,
shittim, and tarshish woods, for great stones, costly stones, and hewed
and polished stones; for purple, scarlet, and for byssin broidered in
gold; for stuffs of blue wool; for ivory and red-dyed rams' skins; for
iron, onyx, and the vast quantity of marble; for precious stones; for
the chains, the wreaths, the cords, the tongs, the nets, the lavers,
and the flowers and the lamps and the candlesticks,--all, all of gold;
for the hinges of gold for the doors, and the nails of gold, weighing
sixty shekels each; for the basons and platters of beaten gold; for
ornamen