Losing Focus

In Dr. Younger's History of Israel course today, he shared this pastoral note.

Solomon undertakes the building of YHWH's temple. This is a big deal. David wanted to, but YHWH prohibited him.

In addition to building a temple, Solomon built a palace for himself. This makes sense as his father established Jerusalem as the capital only several years below.

In 1 Kings 6-8 we have the narrative of Solomon's building projects.

Here are the details as recorded in the text.

Measurement	YHWH’s Temple	Solomon’s Palace
length	60	100
width	20	50
height	30	30
time	7 years	13 years

Obviously, the palace is much larger than the temple. But what's not quite so obvious is the time difference. The palace took 6 years longer to "build" than the temple. But the size difference between temple and palace doesn't warrant nearly doubling the amount of time. So what took so long? Interior decorating.

Both of these not-so-subtly indict Solomon as a man who is more concerned with his own name than YHWH's.



On top of these indicting numbers, we also have the structure of the text itself. It also reflects Solomon's shortcomings.

1 Kings 6 and 8 tell the story of the building of the temple. Chapter 7 tells the story of the palace. So, here we have a temple building narrative that gets interrupted by the narrative of building the palace.

Or, to quote Dr. Younger, "In the middle of the building of the temple, we have a narrative of Solomon losing his focus."

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And, in keeping with a Solomonic theme: There's nothing new under the sun.

We, too, build for ourselves,
   bigger
      newest
         nicer

when we should be building for the Kingdom.