March 15, 2020: Day 43 – I Kings 7

This chapter overlaps both the building of the temple and the building of the palace of Solomon.  It strikes me as curious that the palace was more than twice as big as the temple and the chapter which is somewhat devoted to the building of the palace, chapter 7 which we are looking at now, is inordinately long, as compared to the last chapter which describes the building of the temple.

So if someone were to project one could say with some impunity that for Solomon the building of his palace might have been considered a more important project than the building of the temple. The building of the house of the king might have been seen by some, at least the optics of it, as being more important than the building of the house of God.  Now, it seems like the house of God was built first, so that’s a good sign, it was also built in less time.  But the palace, well, that took nearly twice as long and was nearly twice as big.  No excuses are made by Solomon for this and all of the chapter lays out pretty much matter of factly what was built and how it was built.  A lot of detail is included to describe the building of both.  But one just seems to tower over the other in relationship to the time and the detail given.