1 Kings 5:15

Of the foreigners that were in Israel he set seventy thousand to be bearers of burdens, eighty thousand to be stonecutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred officers and overseers (2 Chron. 2:2, 17, 18). Under Solomon we see this remarkable combination of JEW and GENTILE in the work. In the same way it is CHRIST JESUS, risen and glorified, whom Solomon pictured, who builds the Temple of God. He has reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God in one body by the Cross, and He employs those who are His own, called out from both, in His service.

In 1 Kings 5:13, we read of a levy of 30,000 men. We must count these as extra workmen, for they were sent to Lebanon.

The size and the elaborate details of these buildings required such numbers. Building methods today would not need so many men. But the labor at that time was all hand labor, which is much slower and harder work than present-day construction. 70,000 of these Gentiles were to carry burdens. That included carrying lumber from Joppa to Jerusalem, and carrying stone from the quarries to the site of the temple and Solomon's house. 80,000 worked as stonecutters in the mountains. Of course, these worked in shifts. The remaining 3,600 supervised the work.

A friend who lives near Jerusalem told me there are immense caves under the city. The quantity of broken stones, and especially some great stones that were half cut but never finished, makes it clear that these great stones came out of pits. The pits were prepared like this: the top was levelled and marked out, then the sides were cut by channels, then the underside cut. But just think of the huge labour needed to raise these great stones out of the pit into daylight, to move them, and to put them in place.

Those who quarried stone had hard underground work, slowly shaping stones that were later built into the temple with no tools needed, and no noise (ch. 6:7). As a picture, this is the work of bringing souls out of the darkness of their sins. It means dealing with them to shape their character, so that they fit in perfectly with the rest of believers as a holy temple in the Lord. This is God's workmanship, but He uses believers to carry out His work.

The men who worked in the quarry shaped the stones for Solomon's temple, where there was no sound of hammer or of axe (1 Kings 6:7). They did not place the stones in position — that was the business of the builders. Both were necessary, but the quarrymen prepared the stones, and the builders carried on the building... There will be no sound of hammer or of axe in heaven; all the shaping and fitting will have been done. But we can use the same figure for a present, though lesser, application to the work of the evangelist, and of the pastor and teacher.

There is a special use for the man of the one talent. If he uses his talent rightly, he is the backbone of all effort. The men with one talent number in the tens of thousands. Solomon would never have built the temple at Jerusalem if he had not had 70,000 men who carried burdens and 80,000 stonecutters in the mountains. The men with five talents can be counted on the fingers of one hand.