Solomon asks Huram for help
3 Solomon wrote this letter to King Huram of Tyre:
‘You helped my father King David when you sent him wood from cedar trees to build his palace. Please help me now. 4 I am ready to build a temple to give honour to the Lord my God. It will be a holy place that belongs to him. We Israelites will burn sweet incense for him there. We will put special bread there every day. We will burn sacrifices to the Lord our God every morning and every evening. We will also do that on Sabbath days, on New Moon festival days and on other special days that God has chosen. He has told us to do this for all time.
5 The house that I will build for our God will be a great temple, because he is greater than all gods. 6 I know that nobody can really build a house for our God. The whole sky, or even heaven itself, is not big enough to contain him. So I certainly cannot build a place for him to live in, but it will be a place where we can offer sacrifices to him.
7 Please send me a man who has special skills to work with gold, silver, bronze and iron, as well as with valuable red, purple and blue materials. He must also know how to cut pictures on metal. He will help my own workers here in Judah and in Jerusalem. They are workers with special skills that my father David chose to do this work.
2:7Judah was the most important Israelite tribe.
8 Please send me wood from cedar trees, cypress trees and other strong trees from Lebanon. I know that your men have good skills to cut down trees in Lebanon. My own men will help your men with the work. 9 I will need you to send me a lot of wood because I am ready to build a large and beautiful temple. 10 I will pay your men who cut down the trees. To pay them, I will send 2,000 tons of wheat, 2,000 tons of barley, 450,000 litres of wine and 450,000 litres of olive oil.’
