1 And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent men to David with cedar-trees, and stoneworkers and woodworkers for the building of his house.
And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent men to David, with cedar-trees and woodworkers and stoneworkers: and they made David a house. And David saw that the Lord had made his position safe as king over Israel, and that he had made his kingdom great because of his people Israel. And David took more women and wives in Jerusalem, after he had come from Hebron: and he had more sons and daughters. These are the names of those whose birth took place in Jerusalem: Shammua and Shobab and Nathan and Solomon And Ibhar and Elishua and Nepheg and Japhia And Elishama and Eliada and Eliphelet.
And Solomon sent to Huram, king of Tyre, saying, As you did for my father David, sending him cedar-trees for the building of his house,
The king said to Nathan the prophet, See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God is housed inside the curtains of a tent.
Now Hiram, king of Tyre, hearing that Solomon had been made king in place of his father, sent his servants to him; for Hiram had ever been a friend to David.
So now, will you have cedar-trees from Lebanon cut down for me, and my servants will be with your servants; and I will give you payment for your servants at whatever rate you say; for it is common knowledge that we have no such wood-cutters among us as the men of Zidon.
Then Hiram sent to Solomon, saying; The words you sent have been given to me: I will do all your desire in the question of cedar-wood and cypress-wood. My men will take them down from Lebanon to the sea, where I will have them corded together to go by sea to whatever place you say, and I will have them cut up there so that you may take them away; as for payment, it will be enough if you give me food for my people. So Hiram gave Solomon all the cedar-wood and cypress-wood he had need of; And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of grain, as food for his people, and twenty measures of clear oil; this he did every year. Now the Lord had given Solomon wisdom, as he had said to him; and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon, and they made an agreement together.
Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did the work of cutting them, and put edges on them, and got the wood and the stone ready for the building of the house.
Solomon was thirteen years building a house for himself till it was complete. And he made the house of the Woods of Lebanon, which was a hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high, resting on four lines of cedar-wood pillars with cedar-wood supports on the pillars. And it was covered with cedar over the forty-five supports which were on the pillars, fifteen in a line. There were three lines of window-frames, window facing window in every line. And all the doors and windows had square frames, with the windows facing one another in three lines. And he made a covered room of pillars, fifty cubits long and thirty cubits wide, and ... with steps before it. Then he made a covered room for his high seat when he gave decisions; this was the covered room of judging; it was covered with cedar-wood from floor to roof. And the house for his living-place, the other open square in the covered room, was made in the same way. And then he made a house like it for Pharaoh's daughter, whom Solomon had taken as his wife. All these buildings were made, inside and out, from base to crowning stone, and outside to the great walled square, of highly priced stone, cut to different sizes with cutting-instruments. And the base was of great masses of highly priced stone, some ten cubits and some eight cubits square. Overhead were highly priced stones cut to measure, and cedar-wood. The great outer square all round was walled with three lines of squared stones and a line of cedar-wood boards, round about the open square inside the house of the Lord and the covered room of the king's house.
Now when David was living in his house, he said to Nathan the prophet, See, I am living in a house of cedar-wood, but the ark of the Lord's agreement is under the curtains of a tent.
And David gave orders to get together all the men from strange lands who were in the land of Israel; and he put stone-cutters to work, cutting stones for building the house of God.
And send me cedar-trees, cypress-trees and sandal-wood from Lebanon, for, to my knowledge, your servants are expert wood-cutters in Lebanon; and my servants will be with yours, To get trees for me in great numbers, for the house which I am building is to be great and a wonder. And I will give as food to your servants, the wood-cutters, twenty thousand measures of grain, and twenty thousand measures of barley and twenty thousand measures of wine and twenty thousand measures of oil. Then Huram, king of Tyre, sent Solomon an answer in writing, saying, Because of his love for his people the Lord has made you king over them. And Huram said, Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, maker of heaven and earth, who has given to David the king a wise son, full of wisdom and good sense, to be the builder of a house for the Lord and a house for himself as king.
A curse is on him who is building his house by wrongdoing, and his rooms by doing what is not right; who makes use of his neighbour without payment, and gives him nothing for his work; Who says, I will make a wide house for myself, and rooms of great size, and has windows cut out, and has it roofed with cedar and painted with bright red. Are you to be a king because you make more use of cedar than your father? did not your father take food and drink and do right, judging in righteousness, and then it was well for him?
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Commentary on 1 Chronicles 14 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
David's palace-building, wives and children , 1 Chronicles 14:1-7; cf. 2 Samuel 5:11-16. Two victories over the Philistines , 1 Chronicles 14:8-17; cf. 2 Samuel 5:17-25. - The position in which the narrative of these events stands, between the removal of the ark from Kirjath-jearim and its being brought to Jerusalem, is not to be supposed to indicate that they happened in the interval of three months, curing which the ark was left in the house of Obed-edom. The explanation of it rather is, that the author of our Chronicle, for the reasons given in page 170, desired to represent David's design to bring the ark into the capital city of his kingdom as his first undertaking after he had won Jerusalem, and was consequently compelled to bring in the events of our chapter at a later period, and for that purpose this interval of three months seemed to offer him the fittest opportunity. The whole contents of our chapter have already been commented upon in 2 Samuel 5:1, so that we need not here do more than refer to a few subordinate points.
Instead of נשּׂא כּי , that He (Jahve) had lifted up ( נשּׂא , perf. Pi.), as in 2 Samuel 5:12, in the Chronicle we read למעלה נשּׂאת כּי , that his kingdom had been lifted up on high. The unusual form נשּׂאת may be, according to the context, the third pers. fem. perf. Niph., nisaa't having first been changed into נשּׂאת , and thus contracted into נשּׂאת ; cf. Ew. §194, b. In 2 Samuel 19:43 the same form is the infin. abs. Niph. למעלה is here, as frequently in the Chronicles, used to intensify the expression: cf. 1 Chronicles 22:5; 1 Chronicles 23:17; 1 Chronicles 29:3, 1 Chronicles 29:25; 2 Chronicles 1:1; 2 Chronicles 17:12. With regard to the sons of David, see on 1 Chronicles 3:5-8.
In the account of the victories over the Philistines, the statement (2 Samuel 5:17) that David went down to the mountain-hold, which has no important connection with the main fact, and would have been for the readers of the Chronicle somewhat obscure, is exchanged in 1 Chronicles 14:8 for the more general expression לפניהם ויּצא , “he went forth against them.” In 1 Chronicles 14:14, the divine answer to David's question, whether he should march against the Philistines, runs thus: מעליהם הסב אחריהם תּעלה לא , Thou shalt not go up after them; turn away from them, and come upon them over against the baca-bushes; - while in 2 Samuel 5:23, on the contrary, we read: אל־אחריהם הסב תעלה הסב אל־א לע , Thou shalt not go up (i.e., advance against the enemy to attack them in front); turn thee behind them (i.e., to their rear), and come upon them over against the baca-bushes. Bertheau endeavours to get rid of the discrepancy, by supposing that into both texts corruptions have crept through transcribers' errors. He conjectures that the text of Samuel was originally אחריהם תּעלה לא , while in the Chronicle a transposition of the words עליהם and אחריהם was occasioned by a copyist's error, which in turn resulted in the alteration of עליהם into מעליהם . This supposition, however, stands or falls with the presumption that by תּעלה לא (Sam.) an attack is forbidden; but for that presumption no tenable grounds exist: it would rather involve a contradiction between the first part of the divine answer and the second. The last clause, “Come upon them from over against the baca-bushes,” shows that the attack was not forbidden; all that was forbidden was the making of the attack by advancing straight forward: instead of that, they were to try to fall upon them in the rear, by making a circuit. The chronicler consequently gives us an explanation of the ambiguous words of 2 Samuel, which might easily be misunderstood. As David's question was doubtless expressed as it is in 1 Chronicles 14:10, הפל על האעלה , the answer תּעלה לא might be understood to mean, “Go not up against them, attack them not, but go away behind them;” but with that the following וגו להם וּבאת , “Come upon them from the baca-bushes,” did not seem to harmonize. The chronicler consequently explains the first clauses of the answer thus: “Go not up straight behind them,” i.e., advance not against them so as to attack them openly, “but turn thyself away from them,” i.e., strike off in such a direction as to turn their flank, and come upon them from the front of the baca-bushes. In this way the apparently contradictory texts are reconciled without the alteration of a word. In 1 Chronicles 14:17, which is wanting in Samuel, the author concludes the account of these victories by the remark that they tended greatly to exalt the name of David among the nations. For similar reflections, cf. 2 Chronicles 17:10; 2 Chronicles 20:29; 2 Chronicles 14:13; and for שׁם ויּצא , 2 Chronicles 26:15.