1 Kings 7 Palace Project
The Temple of the Lord is built and dedicated. It’s time to turn to the palace project. Solomon wants a grand home next door to the Temple.
It took seven years to complete the building of the Temple and another 11 months before everything was ready for the dedication. Solomon waited that whole time to begin his own home. He put God first.
The time has come that he can turn his attentions to construction of his own dwelling place. Yes, David’s house still stands, but it does not have enough room for all the people in Solomon’s household. He also wants to be very close to the presence of the Lord. We don’t get a lot of details about his house, but one of the auxiliary buildings is bigger than the inside of the Temple building. I’m curious why it was made so tall. Vaulted ceilings is one thing but this is BEYOND that! THIRTY cubits! Forty-five feet tall! I wonder if it had multiple levels on it or shelves with walkways and stairs leading to different levels. One commentary I read said it used as the armory. Maybe store rooms on various levels? Sounds like a LOT of wasted space to me otherwise. Maybe they had very tall things to store in it. Let’s peek in on Solomon’s building project and what the Lord has to say to him regarding it all.
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The dedication of the Temple is over and the people have returned to their homes. Solomon is very pleased with how everything went. He gave the workers a few extra days rest before digging into phase two of the building project.
Solomon faithfully put the Lord first and finished his house before starting on his own. The time has come and his home begs to be built.
Solomon brings the plans he has been working of for quite some time to the foreman. The two of them go over the details.
“I want a window here, overlooking the countryside.” Solomon points to his drawings.
The foreman nods. “I can do that” he confirms.
“And here I want a room specially built for the throne. A place to render judgment from. I want it completely separate from my dwelling place.”
“Where do you want it placed?”
“This building right here is what I envisioned for the project.”
The foreman looks over Solomon’s drawings. They make a few modifications here and there. When both are satisfied, they go about their separate ways. Solomon is on his way back to David’s throne room to attend to his duties of the day. The foreman to get his crew ready and working on Solomon’s new home.
“I need stone for the floors and cedar for the timbers” he informs his crew. The word is passed and the work in the quarries and in Tyre. King Hiram gets his men chopping trees again.
It takes thirteen years before Solomon’s house is finished. Pharaoh’s daughter kept changing her mind on parts of her house. But the size and complexity of the entire compound is what took so long.
Solomon stands looking over his new home. He has room for all his concubines, his wives, and an area for new maidens. He has the most modern kitchen anywhere imaginable. And the aroma of the house is heavenly! Every inch is filled with cedar. The finest wood in the world.
The head builder takes Solomon on a tour of the rest of the complex. They start with the building nicknamed the Forest of Lebanon. It is called this because of the 45 pillars that stand in rows supporting the structure. Solomon runs his hand over one of the central beams while looking up and seeing the symmetry of the windows and doorways. Three tiers tall and exacting in every standard. “It is perfect” thinks Solomon. “This will be the armory of Israel.”
Next they move the structure named the House of Pillars. It doesn’t have the central pillars that make the other building look like a forest, but it has seven elaborate pillars on the porch. “This is where I will do my planning and writing” thinks Solomon. “This is a house of ‘wisdom’.”
The next building is the one that Solomon will occupy the most. It is the Hall of the Throne. This is where the people will stand before Solomon and receive his judgment and seek his wisdom. It is opulent and breathtaking. The throne itself is carved of ivory which is overlaid with gold. And there are statues of lions on either side of it. Solomon did not originally have this magnificent of a throne in mind, but the daughter of Pharaoh convinced him that his throne should equal his importance in the world. ALL the nations bowed to him, so his throne should be grander than that of any other king. Solomon eventually bowed to her wisdom.
Pharaoh’s daughter, Solomon’s first wife, takes him on a tour of her home next. Hers is filled with beautiful carvings and indoor gardens. Her chambers are three times the size of what she has been living in under the roof of David’s house. Persian rugs and tapestries with gold threads weaved through them adorn her dwelling place. Solomon is pleased to watch her as she points out her favorite places and pieces to him.
It has been a full day, with touring the grounds and moving in. Solomon is ready for sleep. Solomon sinks into his mattress and revels in its comfort as he drifts off to sleep.
The Lord enters his dream and speaks with him. It is a confirmation that the Lord has truly accepted the gift of a Home for Himself from Solomon’s hand.
“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’
“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them’” (2 Chronicles 7:12-22).
Solomon wakes after his dream and knows that it is truly the Lord who spoke these words to him. “The Lord has accepted the gift from my hands. And He has warned me to follow Him ALL my life. This I will do Lord.”
Solomon rises and writes in his journal for a while before returning to sleep. His journal is where he writes the wisdom the Lord gives him in the night and the praises that come from his heart to the Lord. These bits he records are not written in the House of Pillars, but they contain as much wisdom as anything penned there. The Lord has truly blessed Solomon with a wise mind.
(to be continued)
Even all of Solomon’s wisdom didn’t keep him from eventually straying away from the Lord. And his ‘wandering’ created the judgment that split the nation of Israel in two. I wonder is he was also struggling with pride during this time. In my story, I made the opulent throne be Pharaoh’s daughter’s idea. But was it Solomon’s design? And if so, why so grand? At least he didn’t coat his house inside with gold. His house was grand, but he made sure that the Lord’s was even grander. I wonder how future kings felt about living in this lavish home. As sons of the king, they probably grew up in it, so thought nothing of it.
Solomon’s building exploits didn’t end here. He expanded the city walls of Jerusalem, built up and fortified many cities, and even built waterways to water his gardens. Imagine if his children carried on his wisdom. Did he apply his wisdom where it would do the most good, with his children? He was a king, but he was also a father. He talked about discipline and children. Did he ‘practice what he preached’ or were these proverbs the lessons of his childhood?
Father God, I would love to have the wisdom of Solomon, at times. But would I manage it any better than he did? Having Your stories highlights both good and bad, but my life is full of just as many highs and lows. Help me Father God to learn from my own mistakes and NOT repeat them.
I wonder what lessons my story would tell. I’m certain there are parts that others would say, “She should have know better!” I’m SO grateful Lord Jesus that Your grace and mercy carried me through those times and still does today. And I’m more than certain that I DON’T want a house like Solomon’s!
