The GFN Treasure Chest Archives www.masonic-network.com "Where Master Masons Communicate"

KING SOLOMON'S TEMPLE
submitted by Bro Percy Aga

(Concluded from last month).

NOW let us consider briefly the other buildings surrounding the Temple which have been alluded to in an earlier part of this article.

The Throne Hall (called also the Hall of Justice) was a much larger building than the Temple proper and was panelled from floor to rafters in cedar. It was distinguished by a great caned cedar throne inlaid with carved ivory and covered with gold except where the ivory showed. It was supported by lions (probably of bronze) and stood on the top of a flight of six marble steps, on each rise of which, on each side, stood a bronze lion. The chairs on either side of the throne and the foot-stool were also of finely carved cedar inlaid with ivory. This ivory came from the caravans of Dedan or by the navy from Tarshish, with the apes and peacocks.

South of this building, and probably its vestibule, was the Hall of the Pillars, measuring 86 by 52 feet, which had a pillared porch at the entrance surmounting a flight of steps.

South of these two buildings stood the House of the Forest of Lebanon, so named because of its complicated construction out of that northern timber so strange to the people of Judah. This building was much the largest of the group within the Great Court (of which, as has been said, the Temple was but one,) and which also included the King's Palace, the House of the Daughter of Pharoah and some minor structures. It measured 172 feet long, 86 feet wide and 52 feet high and was in two stories. In the lower story were forty-five pillars in three rows which supported the upper floor King Solomon deposited in this House the three hundred shields of beaten gold, among the forest of pillars in the lower story. This story also contained golden vessels of every description, and the shiploads of curiosities brought by King Solomon's navy every three years from Tarshish. A more fitting name for this building would be the Royal Museum. The upper story was designed for popular gatherings and Josephus says: "Solomon prepared this House to receive a multitude for judgments and for the decisions of public business and to provide room for an assembly of men convened for cases of justice."

All these buildings, rising' in successive terraces from the Forest House to the Temple, were among the most magnificent structures of the ancient world, and must have presented a very imposing spectacle. They were of costly stone (as the ancient writers say in accordance with the usual dimensions of ashlar) which was sawn with saws and used inside and outside from foundation to coping, from the Court of the House of Jahweh even to the Great Court. The latter encompassed the whole group and was itself surrounded by the Great Wall of three courses of sawn stone and one of cedar beams. This Great Wall enclosed a space of over half a mile in circumference.

For the erection of these buildings, including, of course, the Temple, King David had collected, as has been already stated, the immense sum of between two and three billions of dollars, and 217,281 men were employed in the preparation of materials and in the erection. The timber used in the buildings comprised cedar, fir, cypress, olive. algum and shittim wood. This timber was taken, as has been said, from the forests of Lebanon and was conveyed through Phoenician ports. The cedar was somewhat like our coast cedar but redder and of greater specific gravity. Just a word as to the famed cedars of Lebanon. The largest now standing is 63 feet in girth and 70 feet high and is said to have attained the age of 2000 years. The wood is of a reddish color, of bitter taste and aromatic odor, is offensive to insects and very durable. The timber is now confined to one valley of the Lebanon range, that of the Kedisha river which enters the sea at Tripoli. The grove at the upper end is 15 miles from the sea and 6,500 feet above sea level. The fir resembled our western pine; the cypress was very like that on this coast; the algum, otherwise red sandal wood, was very heavy, hard, fine grained and a beautiful garnet color. The shittim wood is the wild acacia of Palestine; the trees are sometimes 3 and 4 feet in diameter, the wood is close-grained, hard and a fine orange brown color, admirably adapted for cabinet work.

The metals were prepared in the foundries in the Jordan valley near Succoth. The mines, except the gold, were in Lebanon, and the ancient furnaces are still to be seen, also the piers and wharves on the banks of the Red Sea whence the material was shipped. The gold came from the mines of Ophir and Parvaim believed to be in Southern Arabia. We are told in Holy Writ that the former mine sent King Solomon, first, 420 talents and, then, 450 talents of gold, a mere trifle of some twenty-six million dollars. Some biblical scholars claimed that modern Southern Rhodesia was the famed land of Ophir, but this has been quite disproved and Ophir remains the butt of archeological dispute. It has been located by various commentators in Arabia, Spain, Peru, India and Southern Africa. Nearly everyone has read, or, at least, has heard of Rider Haggard's book, "King Solomon's Mines," written in the early eighties. The locality covered was in the vicinity of the Zimbabwe ruins, and it is a remarkable fact that Rider Haggard wrote fairly accurate descriptions of the country long before he had ever heard of its actual existence, a striking example of imagination preceding reality. It is of interest to note that in this year of grace another expedition is being organized to search for those mines.

The marble, chiefly white, and the sawn and hewn stone came from the quarries at Tyre (the word means "rock"), a Phoenician city on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, or rather an island very close in. Nothing remains of the strength and splendor of this island fortress. Along the rocky shore may be seen in the water great blocks of the ancient breakwater and tumbled pillars of rose colored granite. The island now has 50 to 60 poor families and is merely a rock whereon fishers dry their nets.

We are told in Chronicles that Solomon gave the workers at the Temple twenty thousand baths of wine, using one hundred and fifty thousand gallons, imperial measure. We also learn from Holy Writ that there was not the sound of axe, hammer or any tool of iron heard in the Temple when it was being built. Josephus informs us that during the whole term, more than seven years, occupied in erecting the Temple "it did not rain in the daytime, that the workmen might not be obstructed in their labour."

Just a word as to King Solomon. That enlightened monarch reigned for 40 years and with his death expired forever the glory and the power of the Hebrew Empire. Never before his reign and never after did the kingdom of Israel take its place among the great monarchies of the East. During his reign for the first time in the history of the Jews they entered on a career as a commercial people and prospered exceedingly. The Solomonic age was the period of the greatest material progress in the history of Israel. But we cannot enter into the details of his remarkable reign and personality here.

This article on the Temple, its construction, and its importance with regard to Masonry, would be incomplete without a short description of its fate or destruction, and for this purpose we must delve a little into ancient history. The great Temple of Solomon existed for upwards of four centuries before it was finally and entirely destroyed, but it retained its original splendor for only the comparatively brief period of thirty-three years. In the year of the world 3033, Shishak, King of Egypt, having made war upon Rehoboam, King of Judah, took Jerusalem and carried away the choicest treasures. From that time to the period of its final destruction, the history of the temple is but a history of alternate spoliations and repairs, of profanation by idolatory and subsequent restoration to the purity of worship. One hundred and thirteen years after the conquest of Shishak, Joash (or Jehoash), King of Judah, collected silver for the repairs of the Temple and partially restored it to its former condition in the year of the world 3148. In the year 3268 Ahaz, King of Judah, robbed the Temple of its riches and gave them to Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria, who had joined him in a war against the kings of Israel and Damascus. Ahaz also profaned the Temple by the worship of idols.

In 3272, Hezekiah, the son and successor of Ahaz, repaired the portions of the Temple which his father had destroyed, and restored the pure worship. But fifteen years afterwards he was compelled to give the treasures of the Temple as a ransom to Sennacherib, King of Assyria, who had invaded the land of Judah. But Hezekiah is supposed, after his enemy had retired, to have restored the Temple. Manasseh, the son and successor of Hezekiah, fell away to the worship of Sabianism and desecrated the Temple in 3306 by setting up altars to the host of heaven. Manasseh was then conquered by the King of Babylon, who, in the year 3328, carried him across the Euphrates. But subsequently repenting of his sins he was released from captivity and having returned to Jerusalem he destroyed the idols and restored the altar of burnt-offerings. In 3380, Josiah, the son and successor of Amon, who was then King of Judah, devoted his efforts to the repairs of the Temple, portions of which had been demolished or neglected by his predecessors and replaced the Ark in the sanctuary. In the year 3398, in the reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Chaldea, carried some of the sacred vessels to Babylon. Seven years afterwards, and still in the reign of Jehoiakim, in his second siege of Jerusalem, he took away more of the sacred vessels, and also took Jehoiakim captive to Babylon, placing Zedekiah, his uncle, then 21 years old, on the throne of Judah and, as tribute, exacted a solemn oath of fidelity and obedience. This oath Zedekiah violated at the first favorable opportunity; as we read in Chronicles "he rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him swear by God".

In the year 3416, the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, the offended monarch, Nebuchadnezzar, invaded the land of Judah with an immense army, and after a siege of about a year, during which the inhabitants suffered many hardships, took the city by assault and entirely destroyed the Temple, and most of the city, and carried large numbers of the inhabitants captive to Babylon. Zedekiah by the advice of the council of Princes and nobles attempted to escape across the Jordan but was overtaken in the plains of Jericho and carried before Nebuchadnezzar. His sons and nobles were slain before him and, his eyes having been put out, he was bound in chains and carried captive to Babylon, where later he died. Zedekiah was the twentieth and last king of Judah and his melancholy end is described in the second book of Kings and the prophecies of Jeremiah. It might be mentioned that during the siege and final assault King Nebuchadnezzar himself remained at Riblah, a town on the northern border of Palestine, and the Babylonian forces were under command of his favorite general Nebuzaraden. In Jeremiah we read that when the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem" they burned the House of the Lord (i.e. Solomon's Temple) and all the houses of Jerusalem and all the houses of the great men".

Thus perished the Temple of Solomon, or the first Temple of Jerusalem. It was not until 52 years afterwards, the year of the world 3468 and 536 B. C. that the Jews were permitted to return to Jerusalem and there to re-build the Temple of the Lord Or the second Temple, the Temple of Zerrubabel. It is of interest to note that in the last Temple erected at Jerusalem, that of Herod, built in B. C. 20 or 19, the sanctuary stood on identically the same spot as Solomon's, one thousand years before. Herod's Temple was destroyed by the Romans under Titus on Friday, August 9th, A.D. 70. At this day a Mahommedan Mosque, the Mosque of Omar, stands on its site.

The End.

- The Square, Vancouver, March 19222