Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Monday, November 19, 2012 Read – 1 Kings 5 & 6 The next several chapters center on the building of the Temple by Solomon. We can pass through them quite quickly with only a few comments. It is important for us to remember that God did not seem so keen on David’s idea to build God a “house”. Yet, God does endorse David’s idea and the Temple is embraced by God as a good thing. We have already talked about the problems inherent in the Temple. The Temple will get in the way and the Temple will be destroyed. But, for the time being, it is good for us to see the Temple in its more positive light. These chapters view the Temple as a good thing – and it was. Two small issues of note in these two chapters are these. The close relationship with Hiram, the king of Tyre, stands out as an important feature in the story. The interrelationship between Israel and her gentile neighbors may be more complex than we sometimes are led to believe. Alliances are not out of the question. In fact, we skipped over the notice in chapter 3 that Solomon had made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, marrying his daughter to seal the deal. Are these alliances good or bad? Maybe the answer is that their outcome is mixed. It is not good that Solomon made the marriage alliance with Egypt – that will come back to haunt him. But the alliance with Tyre has mostly good results. Maybe the point in all of this is that there is a “religious” story in the Bible that is wrapped up in what is essentially a “secular” story. The second thing of note in this story is the small comment that Solomon “conscripted forced labor out of all Israel.” Had God not warned that kings would do this? As the story moves forward a case will be attempted to say that these conscripted ones were not really Israelites in the pure sense of the word but were really Canaanites who had been absorbed into Israel. But at this point the story seems to indicate that some forced labor on the part of the king was made.