2:1-18 Solomon's message to Huram respecting the temple, His treaty with Huram. - Solomon informs Huram of the particular services to be performed in the temple. The mysteries of the true religion, unlike those of the Gentile superstitions, sought not concealment. Solomon endeavoured to possess Huram with great and high thoughts of the God of Israel. We should not be afraid or ashamed to embrace every opportunity to speak of God, and to impress others with a deep sense of the importance of his favour and service. Now that the people of Israel kept close to the law and worship of God, the neighbouring nations were willing to be taught by them in the true religion, as the Israelites had been willing in the days of their apostacy, to be infected with the idolatries and superstitions of their neighbours. A wise and pious king is an evidence of the Lord's special love for his people. How great then was God's love to his believing people, in giving his only-begotten Son to be their Prince and their Saviour.

Verse 7. - Send me... a man cunning to work, etc. The parenthesis is now ended. By comparison of ver. 3, it appears that Solomon makes of Hiram's services to David his father a very plea why his own requests addressed now to Hiram should be granted. If we may be guided by the form of the expressions used in 1 Chronicles 14:1 and 2 Samuel 5:11, 12, Hiram had in the first instance volunteered help to David, and had not waited to be applied to by David. This would show us more clearly the force of Solomon's plea. Further, if we note the language of 1 Kings 5:1, we may be disposed to think that it fills a gap in our present connection, and indicates that, though Solomon appears here to have had to take the initiative, an easy opportunity was opened, in the courteous embassy sent him in the persons of Hiram's "servants." That the king of this most privileged, separate, and exclusive people of Israel (and he the one who conducted that people to the very zenith of their fame) should have to apply and be permitted to apply to foreign and, so to say, heathen help, in so intrinsic a matter as the finding of the "cunning" and the "skill" of head and hand for the most sacred and distinctive chef d'oeuvre of the said exclusive nation, is a grand instance of nature breaking all trammels, even when most divinely purposed, and a grand token of the dawning comity of nations, of free-trade under the unlikeliest auspices, and of the brotherhood of humanity, never more broadly illustrated than when on an international scale. The competence of the Phoenicians and the people of Sidon and those over whom Hiram immediately reigned in the working of the metals, and furthermore in a very wide range of other subjects, is well sustained by the allusions of very various authorities (already instanced under 1 Chronicles 14:1, and passim; Homer, 'Iliad,' 6:289-294; 23. 743; 'Odys.,' 4:614; 15:415-426; Herod., 3:19; 7:23, 44, 96; Strabo, 16:2. § 23). The man who was sent is described in vers. 13, 14, infra, as also 1 Kings 7:13, 14. Purple, ... crimson, ... blue. It is not absolutely necessary to suppose that the same Hiram, so skilled in working of gold, silver, brass, and iron, was the authority sent for these matters of various coloured dyes for the cloths that would later on be required for curtains and other similar purposes in the temple. So far, indeed, as the literal construction of the words go, this would seem to be what is meant, and no doubt may have been the case, though unlikely. The purple (אַדְגְּוָן). A Chaldee form of this word (אַרְגְּוָנָא) occurs three times in Daniel 5:7, 16, 29, and appears in each of those cases in our Authorized Version as "scarlet." Neither of these words is the word used in the numerous passages of Exodus, Numbers, Judges, Esther, Proverbs, Canticles, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, nor, indeed, in ver. 13, infra and 2 Chronicles 3:14. In all these places, numbering nearly forty, the word is אַרְגָבָן. The purple was probably obtained from some shell-fish on the coast of the Mediterranean. The crimson (כַרְמִיל). Gesenius says that this was a colour obtained from multitudinous insects that tenanted one kind of the flex (Coccus ilicis), and that the word is from the Persian language. The Persian kerm, Sanscrit krimi, Armenian karmir, German carmesin, and our own "crimson," keep the same framework of letters or sound to a remarkable degree. This word is found only here, ver. 13, infra, and 2 Chronicles 3:14. The crimson of Isaiah 1:18 and Jeremiah 4:30, and the scarlet of some forty places in the Pentateuch and other books, come as the rendering of the word שָׁנִי. The blue (תְּכֵלֶת). This is the same word as is used in some fifty other passages in Exodus, Numbers, and in later books. This colour was obtained from a shell-fish (Helix ianthina) found in the Mediterranean, the shell of which was blue. Can skill to grave. The word "to grave" is the piel conjugation of the very familiar Hebrew verb פָּתַח, "to open." Out of twenty-nine times that the verb occurs in some part of the piel conjugation, it is translated "grave" nine times, "loosed" eleven times, "put off" twice, "ungirded" once, "opened" four times, "appear" once, and "go free" once. Perhaps the "opening" the ground with the plough (Isaiah 28:24) leads most easily on to the idea of "engraving." Cunning men whom... David... did provide, As we read in 1 Chronicles 22:15; 1 Chronicles 28:21.

Send now therefore a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron,.... There being many things relating to the temple about to be built, and vessels to be put into it, which were to be made of those metals:

and in purple, and crimson, and blue; used in making the vails for it, hung up in different places:

and that can skill to grave; in wood or stone:

with the cunning men that are with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom my father David did provide; see 1 Chronicles 22:15.

7. Send me now therefore a man cunning to work—Masons and carpenters were not asked for. Those whom David had obtained (1Ch 14:1) were probably still remaining in Jerusalem, and had instructed others. But he required a master of works; a person capable, like Bezaleel (Ex 35:31), of superintending and directing every department; for, as the division of labor was at that time little known or observed, an overseer had to be possessed of very versatile talents and experience. The things specified, in which he was to be skilled, relate not to the building, but the furniture of the temple. Iron, which could not be obtained in the wilderness when the tabernacle was built, was now, through intercourse with the coast, plentiful and much used. The cloths intended for curtains were, from the crimson or scarlet-red and hyacinth colors named, evidently those stuffs, for the manufacture and dyeing of which the Tyrians were so famous. "The graving," probably, included embroidery of figures like cherubim in needlework, as well as wood carving of pomegranates and other ornaments.

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