Discovery Box1 Kings 5:9-14
Context5:9 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
5:10 So Hiram supplied the cedars and evergreens Solomon needed, 4 5:11 and Solomon supplied Hiram annually with 20,000 cors 5 of wheat as provision for his royal court, 6 as well as 20,000 baths 7 of pure 8 olive oil. 9 5:12 So the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he had promised him. And Hiram and Solomon were at peace and made a treaty. 10
5:13 King Solomon conscripted 11 work crews 12 from throughout Israel, 30,000 men in all. 5:14 He sent them to Lebanon in shifts of 10,000 men per month. They worked in Lebanon for one month, and then spent two months at home. Adoniram was supervisor of 13 the work crews.
[5:9] 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.
[5:9] 2 tn Heb “smash them,” i.e., untie the bundles.
[5:9] 3 tn Heb “as for you, you will satisfy my desire by giving food for my house.”
[5:10] 4 tn Heb “and Hiram gave to Solomon cedar wood and the wood of evergreens, all his desire.”
[5:11] 5 sn As a unit of dry measure a cor was roughly equivalent to six bushels.
[5:11] 7 tc The Hebrew text has “twenty cors,” but the ancient Greek version and the parallel text in 2 Chr 2:10 read “twenty thousand baths.”
[5:11] 9 tn Heb “and Solomon supplied Hiram with twenty thousand cors of wheat…pure olive oil. So Solomon would give to Hiram year by year.”
[5:12] 10 tn Heb “a covenant,” referring to a formal peace treaty or alliance.
[5:13] 12 sn Work crews. This Hebrew word (מַס, mas) refers to a group of laborers conscripted for royal or public service.
