2 Chronicles 2

This edition follows the Hebrew versification; the traditional number is given in brackets.

1[2:2]Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to carry loads and eighty thousand to quarry in the hills, with three thousand six hundred overseers over them. 2[2:3]Then Solomon sent this message to Huram king of Tyre: “As you dealt with my father David, sending him cedars so that he could build himself a house to live in — 3[2:4]I am now building a house for the name of Yahweh my God, to be consecrated to him, for burning fragrant incense before him, for the rows of bread set out continually, and for the burnt offerings of morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, at the new moons and at the appointed feasts of Yahweh our God. This is laid on Israel for all time. 4[2:5]The house I am building is to be great, for our God is greater than all gods. 5[2:6]Yet who has the strength to build him a house, when the heavens and the highest heavens cannot hold him? And who am I to build him a house, except as a place to burn offerings before him? 6[2:7]So send me a man skilled in working gold, silver, bronze and iron, and purple, crimson and violet yarn, and trained in every kind of engraving, to work beside the craftsmen I have here with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom my father David provided. 7[2:8]Send me also cedar, cypress and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your servants are expert at felling the trees of Lebanon; and my own servants will be there with your servants 8[2:9]to prepare timber for me in quantity, since the house I am building is to be great and astonishing. 9[2:10]And to the woodcutters who fell the trees I will give, for your servants, twenty thousand cors of crushed wheat, twenty thousand cors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine and twenty thousand baths of oil.” 10[2:11]Huram king of Tyre replied in a letter that he sent to Solomon: “Because Yahweh loves his people, he has set you over them as king.” 11[2:12]And Huram went on: “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who made the heavens and the earth, who has given King David a wise son, gifted with prudence and understanding, to build a house for Yahweh and a house for his own kingship. 12[2:13]And now I am sending a skilled man, gifted with understanding: Huram-abi, 13[2:14]son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, his father a Tyrian. He knows how to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, in purple, violet, fine linen and crimson, how to carry out any engraving and to devise any design entrusted to him, alongside your own craftsmen and those of my lord David your father. 14[2:15]So now let my lord send his servants the wheat and the barley, the oil and the wine, of which he spoke. 15[2:16]For our part, we will cut timber from Lebanon, as much as you need, and float it to you as rafts by sea to Joppa; and you will haul it up to Jerusalem.” 16[2:17]Solomon then took a census of all the resident foreigners in the land of Israel, following the census his father David had taken of them; they were found to be a hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred. 17[2:18]Of these he made seventy thousand load-carriers, eighty thousand quarrymen in the hills, and three thousand six hundred overseers to keep the people at work.