40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 5:1-6:1 (Episode 297)

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Solomon prepares to build the temple. The king of Tyre was a friend of David and wants to be a friend to Solomon. A deal is struck involving cedar trees, food and olive oil as a massive workforce is assembled. And the exodus is nearing its conclusion. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing which is a lot of things and so you're going to want to avail yourself of all the resources if you've never just checked them all out the articles the videos the academies all the stuff that the 1517 does go over to the store look at all the books that we've published uh you know chad's not the only one at 1517 that has written books i mean obviously i know every listener has all of chad's

books. That's a given, I'm sure, at this point. But there's other books out there by other people that you should check out as well. Chad, we are in 1 Kings 5. We're going to get into some temple details. And we were just chatting before we started recording here that anytime a tabernacle or a temple or anything is built, these are the moments where the scriptures decide they're going to give you a lot of details. Sometimes there's things that you wish, and we've run into a lot these things like i wish i had more details about this you know the specific event so i could understand it better but the bible just sort of gives you just a little bit and moves on not so with the building of tabernacles and temples yeah they're gonna be like let's give

you several chapters yes worth of dimensions and materials and all the particular details of this uh this architecture yeah we saw that big time back in exodus yeah i mean yeah you get to uh get to mount sinai and the narrative kind of stops because moses is given chapter after chapter of all these details on how to build the tabernacle what's supposed to be inside it how big it is etc and then you know if you kind of work your way through that yeah the episode of the golden calf and then it turns around and says no now all those details that moses was given we're going going to repeat them so you make sure and realize they were done so that's the second half of the book of exodus is kind of famous or infamous for for that now in first kings it's not going to be

quite uh that lengthy chapter five is going to introduce us to some details about preparations for the building of the tabernacle and then chapter six and seven will tell us more about those details and not just the temple but also solomon's palace and some other buildings as well so it's gonna be all about the temple for the next couple episodes but first of all chapter five we're going to be introduced to a guy that we've heard about before but he's going to be a pretty big player in solomon's reign and his name is hiram and he is a gentile that's one of the things we have to keep in mind about hiram is that he is not an israelite he is a gentile he's the king of tyre tyre and sidon are often associated in the biblical narrative so this is the king of

Tyre, right there on the Mediterranean coast. And we're told that he sent servants to Solomon when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father. We have this detail added. This is the reason he did it. He said, for Hiram always loved David. Kind of a fascinating detail there. If you go back to 2 Samuel chapter 5, we read that Hiram, same guy, king of Tyre sent messengers to David and cedar trees and carpenters and masons, and they built David a house. So this is the first time that Hiram has been involved in the architecture of the city of Jerusalem and some of the buildings there. He sent his guys to help David build his palace. And as we'll see in 1 Kings 5, he's going to be involved in helping Solomon build not only the temple, but I guess

a bigger house than his father David had. So Hiram, we're told, loved David. Probably not in the way that we hear that. So if I hear that so-and-so loves so-and-so, whether it's a guy loving another guy, or a guy loving a woman, or a woman loving a woman. Now, to our ears, we always attach kind of a typically attach or romantic sentiment to that, or at least a deeply emotional sentiment to that it doesn't it does mean that sometimes in the bible but not always sometimes when we're told that so-and-so loved so-and-so what the hebrew ahav which is the verb that's used there what the hebrew is indicating is that there was a what we might think of as a deep loyalty between these two where love was seen primarily as not

an emotion but an action so when we're told that Hiram loved David that he had he had loyalty to him he did things for David obviously he helped build David's house so that's probably what is indicated here it's a a fraternal loyalty between two kings exemplified in well in this case by Hiram making sure that David had a house built that was the kind of house that he wanted yeah So, I mean, one of the examples, probably the biggest example that we have in the Old Testament of two guys loving each other is David and Jonathan, right? So you have David loved Jonathan. That's probably different than this, where David and Jonathan love each other like brothers love each other. This seems like it's more of a, they have a mutual admiration and respect for each other.

uh they've they have an alliance uh they have a they have committed to each other they're not like david and jonathan where they're like doing everything together you know that kind of thing but you know it's it's the sort of thing where you're not your kingdom's over there my kingdom's over there and i like what you're doing and you like what i'm doing and we've agreed to have peace and work together and all this kind of stuff and you're like yeah i really i really like that king This is working out great That sort of thing Admiration, respect, loyalty, commitment to one another

Yeah, and it's going to be a mutually beneficial relationship As we'll see I think when we get to the details It seems as if Hiram almost benefited more From their relationship From the materials that Solomon is going to provide to him But of course Solomon benefited greatly From Hiram as well

But anyway This connection between The Sidonians or the Turinians whatever you want to refer to him as. And the Israelites goes back a generation to David. Now it's going to be continued in the reign of his son Solomon. So Solomon sends word to Hiram, and here's what he said. You know that my father David could not build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet but now the lord my god has given rest me rest on every side there is

neither adversary nor misfortune so i intend to build a house for the name of the lord my god as the lord said to my father your son whom i set on your throne in your place shall build a house for my name now therefore command that cedars of lebanon be cut for me and my servants will join your servants, and I'll pay for your servants such wages as you set. And you know there is no one among us who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians, those lumberjacks from side. There's some pretty interesting stuff in this little letter, political letter, that Solomon sends to Hiram. I guess the first thing that strikes me is I don't really know where Solomon gets this reason for david not building a house for the lord his god because that is not the reason

that we read about in other parts of the scripture solomon says uh that he couldn't do it because he couldn't that david couldn't build a house for god because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him yeah so he's always at war he's fighting a lot and he just couldn't have time yeah he wanted to do it but uh you know when people are beating down the gates you know it's hard to it's hard to get stuff built yeah that's not what it is david david most certainly was like i am going to build this house and god was like no you're not wanted to build a house yeah i mean the closest we we get to this reason that solomon states is in first chronicles 28 where we read that this is david speaking god said to me you may not build a house for my name for you are a man of

war and have shed blood okay yeah well that's not the same as he's too busy fighting battles yeah yeah i mean the uh the idea that we were given is that david is a has shed too much blood to build the house right right and yeah he's a man of war uh so that's that'd be that which is obviously true however and i you know i could be wrong about this but i don't think that god didn't want david to build his home because david fought in some wars i think it had more to do with he murdered uriah and he's that and he's got he's that kind of man of blood yeah yeah i i would agree with you and in the bigger picture the reason that david doesn't build a house but the son of david builds a house i mean when you when you look at it in the big picture it's

pretty obvious why god was yes i mean for whatever the particular historical reasons during the life of david and solomon that god said no well those reasons really are the minor reasons the major reason is the the big narrative of scripture it's going to be the son of david who builds the kingdom the house or god through him is going to build the kingdom the house and so that ultimately is the reason that david himself was not allowed to build a house but god built a house for him, because this was all leading to the ministry of Christ, the true son of David. But back to Solomon's reason, yeah, I suppose he's just being, you know, he's being a politician. He's saying, he's not going to say the real reason. He's just going to use this as a kind

of excuse, I suppose, for why it didn't happen. So that's the first thing that strikes me here. Another is this image that, I suppose we've touched on it before, but it's worth pointing out. this language and imagery of until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet I think that's interesting simply because it comes up several times in the biblical story the one that

I think of is one of the ones I think of is Psalm 8 Psalm 8 is the one how majestic is your name in all the earth and talks about who am I when I consider the heavens the work of your hands the moon and the stars that you have made what is man that you are mindful of him

but then he goes on to say that god puts everything the the birds of the of the heavens the fish of the sea all the animals under his feet now psalm 8's talking about adam to be sure but hebrews chapter 2 quotes psalm 8 in application to the last adam to christ so the picture here is of god creating adam and then also sending the last adam to be the king the one who reigns, and everything, this is the exact language used, everything is under his feet. So the image of a king is the one who has under his feet that over which he reigns. But sometimes it's used in sort of a negative way with the idea of the enemies literally being under your feet. And this is actually depicted in a lot of ancient Near Eastern iconography where you'll have a king,

victorious king and he's literally stepping on the neck of the people that he has just conquered so this was a pretty widespread motif and i wonder if this isn't all not all but connected to also way back in genesis 3 15 so you've got the servant you've got the seed who is going to crush the head of the serpent right he's going to be victorious over his foe and where of course is the serpent going to be the head of the serpent is going to be under the feet of the one who who conquers him so in that way it all traces back to genesis 3 15 and the vic the vic the victory of the seed as he puts under his feet that arch enemy death satan sin everything like that in order that he might reign as as king of kings so that imagery of under the soles of his

feat is has widespread implications when you look at it and kind of the big story of scripture and then a couple more things uh solomon says there is neither adversary nor misfortune that's the universe for literally we would say that there is neither a satan or satan nor is there a stroke of evil in the old testament most of the time when you have the noun or verb satan used it doesn't mean what we in the new testament think of it there's a couple places in the old testament where satan is a is a proper title right the satan but most of the time it's used just to refer to someone who's an adversary someone who's accusing you someone who stands against you so and this could even be used a couple times in a positive way where god is a satan he stands

against those who are doing evil so it does kind of have this generic meaning of or adversary or someone who's opposed to you. Now, this isn't completely true, what Solomon says here, because later on in 1 Kings, we're going to hear about a guy named Rezon, R-E-Z-O-N, who is explicitly called a Satan to Solomon. And we're told he, that is Rezon, was a Satan, was an adversary of Israel all the days of Solomon. So it wasn't as if Solomon had all of his adversaries under control,

didn't face anything. Nor was it like he had any misfortune or any strokes of evil. He's being a little bit idealistic, we might say. Everything is just so wonderful in my reign. It's just so beautiful, Hiram. You just wouldn't believe it. You're starting to get the impression that Solomon's a little bit

like that. A little bit flowery, a little idealistic. Yeah, I mean, you know, if he talks about everything he's said so far, whether it's he talks about how things were when his dad was king, like it sounds perfect, and how things are going right now, it's perfect. Everything, like so, when he's speaking, when he means to say good things to somebody,

he says real good things. It's like over the top. yeah he's just everything is incredible like and this is the way that solomon sort of is that he's like an like an all-in kind of dude you know like where if uh he seems like he could get real high real easy like if everything's like he's excitable right i mean if things are going well like let's just build everything and everything's prospering like he's into it man and if he's gonna you know worship a false god then he's gonna go for it and if he's gonna have wives the whole temple for the false god i just worship him right yeah he's not solomon's not like a halfway kind of guy i mean

he's a he seems like and we kind of talked about this he seems like a passionate person uh so you know what i'm gonna write a poem a love poem and it's gonna be in the bible i'm gonna write i'm gonna write this uh romantic poem it's gonna be so good it's gonna be end up being uh metaphorical for Yahweh's love for his people. Yeah, we saw this early on with Solomon loving God and loving high places. And he's just a lover of everything.

Man of extremes. Yeah, he's a man of extremes. So if he decides to do some sinning, well, he's just going to do that sinning. But if he's going to build God a temple, dang it, he's going to build a temple. yeah so that that's definitely the impression we get of his of his personality uh i guess the only other thing i'd point out in this little uh letter that he sends to hiram is that uh these cedars of

lebanon that really becomes a very common image you have throughout the the scriptures and i and i just learned today maybe other maybe our listeners already knew this but uh if you if you check out i i ask myself hey i wonder if like cedars are still important in lebanon today well evidently they are uh evidently the uh the export of of uh cedar wood is still a pretty big thing for lebanon and get this their flag in the very middle of it has a huge green cedar tree wow okay yeah i guess i did not all all these millennia afterward uh cedars are still connected to Lebanon. And these guys have mastered the art of milling

these particular trees. Oh yeah, they know what they're doing. They are the ancient lumberjacks. They know exactly what they're doing. Solomon says, nobody. Nobody can cut down cedars and turn them into usable lumber like you guys. So he

puts a plan out there. Let's see how Hiram reacts to it. So, verse 7. As soon as Hiram heard the words of Solomon, he rejoiced greatly. And I have a feeling he's rejoicing for more than one reason. He's also about to get very rich off of this little transaction here. So he's rejoicing greatly for more than one reason. But the first words out of his mouth are quite shocking, actually,

when you think of who he is. I pointed out earlier that he is a Gentile. He's not an Israelite. But what does he say? He says, blessed be Yahweh this day. Blessed be the Lord this day. So although he's from a non-Israelite city, a non-Israelite king, He blesses the God of Israel by name.

It doesn't say blessed to be God, Elohim, blessed to be Yahweh this day. And he's not the only one in Scripture who is connected with Tyre and Sidon, who happens to bless or believe in whatever language you want to use there in the God of Israel. I've always thought it's interesting that in the Gospels, it's the woman from this same region, the woman from Tyre and Sidon that whole uh Syrophoenician woman as she's usually called in was that Matthew 15 who uh who comes to Jesus and begs him to heal her daughter that's the one that Jesus rebuffs at first is you know makes reference to it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs and she catches him in his own words as Luther likes to say yeah well this is

this is the reason that jesus says tyre and sidon will stand in judgment of the pharisees of the day you know the people of israel of the day when he was walking around teaching and they were rejecting him and he said yeah on the at the judgment tyre and sidon will be on my side yeah and it goes all the way back to uh uh to solomon king david and solomon's day so here's how i mean he's blessing yahweh uh and he says he's given to david a wise son to be over this great people it seems that maybe this king is you know it makes sense that he would be happy that uh david's son if a king dies and his son has taken over and you and the the former king you know you had some agreements and you were working together and you got along and that was

great it's probably a relief to know that his son wants to continue that relationship and isn't some psycho because you never know i mean you never know you could have some sight especially the way that monarchies work like these spoiled sons of kings sometimes get in they decide like time to expand the kingdom boys and like who knows what kind of psychopath you're gonna be dealing with so he probably is rejoicing greatly like oh good like this so we're gonna this relationship's gonna continue and we're we're gonna be able to work together and stuff you're not gonna come over and be like hey uh how about you come serve me or some crazy thing like that which is not you know wouldn't be like completely remote possibility no that could easily happen it could easily happen

yeah it did happen a lot so yeah he's happy that uh solomon ended up being a pretty good pretty good guy pretty wise guy so hyrum sends back to solomon says i've heard the message that you have said to me and we're all good i'm ready to do what you desire in the matter of cedar and cypress timber so he proposes this is verse 9 he proposes that his servants are gonna cut the timber and they're gonna haul it down to the sea from lebanon and then they're gonna make it into rafts float this timber down yeah it's gonna float it down you know of course this is not unusual at all this is still the way that uh timber is moved from one location to another it's gonna make it in rafts tied together just float it basically and it's going to go down by sea

to the place you direct chronicles tells us this place is joppa so it just happens to be that same port city where our friend jonah that gracious and merciful prophet yes where uh where jonah goes to so joppa was a port city so they were just going to float it southward along the mediterranean until they got to joppa take it out and uh ben however they i'm assuming they used uh some kind of wagons transported from that port city up into Jerusalem. So they'll break it up there and then you can receive it. Now here's where things take a little bit of a turn. Hiram says,

and you shall meet my wishes by providing food for my household. Now that wasn't part of the deal that Solomon proposed. Solomon's like, I'll pay you guys, whatever you, whatever you, whatever wages you propose. When Hiram writes back, he's like, Hey, I've got a better idea. how about instead of that you meet my wishes by providing food for my household so a little bit of bargaining going on here i mean it's it's very political bargaining he doesn't come right out and say bad idea here's what i really want you to do yeah he doesn't mean also maneuvering this isn't like hey when we get there could you have lunch ready these guys would be hungry you know it's

not like what you know you're you're asking your friend to come over and help you move and to be like don't worry i'm gonna order pizza it's not like that uh we're about to find out that he means like why don't you give me a lot of food yeah yeah this is food for my household what does this consist of well we'll see in verse 11 hiram supplied solomon with all the timber of cedar and cypress he desired while solomon gave to hiram and this is the part i referred to earlier where it seems like i haven't got a pretty good deal here so 20 000 cores that's c-o-r-s That's an ancient measurement 20,000 cores of wheat as food for his house

And 20,000 cores of beaten oil A core Okay, so a core Is like 6 bushels Okay, yeah So 20,000 6 bushels So that would be like

I've got it right here You got the math? What is this? This is like a lot of bushels This is 120,000 bushels and the oil. 1,162,357 gallons of oil. That's a lot of wheat.

That's a lot. And a lot of oil. Now, as is fairly common with biblical numbers, sometimes you don't know whether this is hyperbolic or literal. This seems hyperbolic to me. Now, I'm very ready to be corrected there, but it seems a little bit over the top. A million gallons of oil? That's a lot of oil.

A lot of oil. Yeah. I mean, granted, Israel was rich in wheat and oil. I mean, they had the kind of ground that was perfect for that. Yeah, but they're poor in factories. Okay. They're poor in factories. The oil industry was a big deal.

Of course, we're talking here not oil the way you think of it, but olive oil. But yeah, it's a lot. That's a bunch. That's a lot of oil before the industrial revolution, my friend. Like, that's a lot of oil to get the way that they had to get oil. That's a lot of oil to get. Yeah. This ain't like today, like how we get oil.

This is a little bit more of an arduous process. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't run down to HEB or whatever your local grocery store is and pick up what they wanted. Well, they didn't have machines like getting this, you know, extracting this oil, you know, from whatever this oil was, olive oil, whatever it is. It's hard to get olive oil back. I mean, like they had a lot of it, but you got to like. You got to work for it.

You got to squeeze it out of the olives, man. And they didn't have, like you had to do it. Right, yeah. This was backbreaking work. So whatever you do with those numbers, that was a lot. And it wasn't just a one-time deal. solomon gave this to hiram year by year so it's a bunch yeah yeah verse 12 the lord gave solomon wisdom as he promised him and there was peace between hiram and solomon and the two of them

made a treaty literally in hebrew they uh cut a covenant which is what you did back then you so they had some sort of sort of some sort of ceremony whereby they swore a treaty to each Then verse 13, through the rest of the chapter, verse 18 tells us about some of the numbers of the guys who were involved in this work. King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel in the draft number 30,000 men. A little draft going on here.

A little draft going on here. Yeah, it's hard to know exactly what to make of this. This isn't the only time this forced labor language is going to come up. the hebrew moss which is the word translated here as forced labor it can it can be it's sort of a umbrella term for i was trying to think this morning of a good english word i guess we might call it service because in english service can be fine i mean you can have a military service you can have a service at uh at a restaurant but you can also have service can also have depending on the context kind of a negative like almost a servitude uh connotation to it and the hebrew

is like that as well because moss is used in reference to what the israelites were subjected to in is in egypt so they were forced into servitude and certainly that was not an option for them they didn't have like they didn't like freely choose to do this they were made to do it it was servitude slavery but moss is sometimes also used in a just kind of a general as a general word for for service so it's not completely obvious here as to how free uh of a decision this was on the part of the citizens of solomon but i get that i get certainly get the impression that this was you know this was a expected we might say well expected service on their part it's probably like back you know when we had drafts like my dad got drafted uh to the vietnam

war and uh he did not uh have a choice whether or not he was going to do that and then people now say thank you for your service which is a nice thing to do and that's all great uh but it wasn't like uh he had a choice yeah he wanted to do that that's the way that drafts work right that's how drafts work and it seems like this might be similar you know people might be like hey that was a there's a really great thing you did when you guys were all working on the temple and i'm sure that they're like well you know didn't have much of a choice i got drafted but thanks Thank you, yeah. As a free citizen, this is part of what must be done.

Yeah, it doesn't read as though Solomon just gathered up all the slaves or something. It seems like these are the people of Israel. Yeah, these are the people of Israel. We'll hear later on about the residue of Canaanites still in the land that were actually forced into servitude by Solomon. But these seem to be just regular Israelites. uh he sent him to lebanon 10 000 a month in shifts so one third of the the guys would go there each month they'd be in lebanon a month and then they'd come home and they'd be home for two months so

you know we can't interview them to find out if they really enjoyed this and thought this was a pretty good deal hey i just work a month i'm off for two months are you getting paid i don't know like yeah is this you get you get something yeah but uh i don't know i'm not sure uh how that worked. Adoniram was the guy that was in charge of this. Verse 15 tells us that Solomon also had 70,000 burden bearers. I guess those are probably the grunt workers, I suppose. That's certainly what it sounds like, burden bearers. All right, you guys, carry the timber, load the wagons, whatever needs to be done. Sounds like some human mules is what that sounds like. Pretty much. Yeah, yeah. You're doing the hardest labor. 80,000 stone cutters in the hill country. There's a lot

of people involved with this. And this was besides the 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charged the people who carried on the work. So you've got, of course, everything set up here with overseers and regular workers, and you have some skilled workers, and you have some just kind of day laborers just doing the hardest work. At the king's command, they quarried out great costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. We'll hear more about that in just a minute. Chapter ends up by saying Sodom's builders and Hiram's builders and the men of gabal i'll talk more about that in a minute the men of gabal did the cutting and prepared the timber and stone to build the house so we know who hyren's builders are those are the

guys of of sidon uh were tire and of course we know who solomon's builders are well who are the men of gabal these seem to be part of maybe uh what we might think of as a guild we know that So Gabal is about 20, 25 miles north of the modern city of Beirut. And it's known today as Byblos. And it was actually known in the ancient times as Byblos too. So Gabal and Byblos are the same thing. Interestingly for language geeks, so Byblos is the word from which we get our word Bible.

And Byblos or Boublos in Greek means papyrus. So what would happen is Egyptian papyrus would be sent to Gabal or Bublos and then exported from there to the to the Greek colonies. And because of that, where some people think that Gabal came to be known as Bublos because Bublos means parchment or, you know, the writing material. So it's connected anyway with the shipment of papyrus back in the day. But here it's called here it's called Gabal. and they were we know we know from a couple of the parts parts of scripture that they were just known for being stonemasons so presumably they were enlisted because a lot of stone was needed to build the temple and that's the end of the chapter that's uh what we know so far

about the preparations we're going to find out more as we as we work our way through the uh remainder of chapter six about how the the temple was built but the the chapter the next chapter of chapter six starts out with a uh i think a an astonishing and very very important uh verse that uh we need to stop and talk about for a minute it's a uh it's a it's a time indication so it says in the 480th year after the people of israel came out of the land of egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel in the month of Ziv which is the second month he began to build the house of the Lord and then it goes on to tell us more about the house now this first of all ought to shock us is kind of a strange thing to say because there's nothing

like this in the rest of the biblical narrative where something is dated from the exodus itself So in the 480th year after the people came out of the land of Egypt. So what's going on here? Well, I guess one of the things to point out, and I'm not going to spend any amount of time on this, but this is, for those of you who are interested in biblical chronology, this is kind of the go-to verse for dating the Exodus. uh there's a couple of different there's there's two popular dates in a scholarship for for the exodus the the traditional date is 1446 bc and the the way that is obtained is by taking this year

this fourth year solomon's reign which is 966 bc so yeah you add you add 480 to 966 and you come up with 1466. So that is the traditional date of the Exodus, which does work, but there's also some challenges to that, not just from outside the Bible, but even kind of figuring some of the dates within the biblical narrative to where that works. But traditionally, 1446 is the date of Exodus. The other date that is actually subscribed to by most scholarship is in the 13th century BC. So wherever you stand on that, you can check out any commentary on Exodus, and there'll probably be a multi-page discussion of those arguments, pro and con, for those dates. That's not really what I want to focus on. I think this is significant because it's an indication, I would argue, that

it's really at this point where, theologically anyway, the Exodus comes to its conclusion. I think that's the reason this particular time indicator is placed in there. And here's the reason I think that. So if you go back to the book of Exodus right after they crossed the Red Sea, so this is Exodus 15, you have the Song of the Sea. And the Song of the Sea or the Song of Moses goes through a poetic description of what happened when God conquered the Egyptians at the Red Sea. but when you get to verse 17 of exodus 15 verse 17 of the song of the sea here's what we read

you will talking to god you will bring them in talking about his people you will bring israel in and plant them on your own mountain the place oh lord which you have made for your abode the sanctuary oh lord which your hands have established so when the israelites cross the Red Sea and they sing this song at the sea, they really tell in a prophetic sort of way the coming history of Israel. They start there at the Red Sea, but the song ends with the house of God being built on God's own mountain, which of course is exactly now what is happening when Solomon builds the temple. So in a way, everything that was talked about in Exodus 15 climaxing in the building of the temple, the sanctuary on God's holy mountain, is now happening. And that's why I think that we

have this time indicator here in 1 Kings 6.1, saying basically, hey, the Exodus, it started in Egypt and then went to the Red Sea and was sung about in this song, and with the temple being built, now that is finally happening. So we have kind of reached the true end of the Exodus when Sodom and begins to build the temple. It is an interesting thing that you get this sort of date thing. That's not a common thing. It's also nice for people who think we're moving really slow, just

for them to realize that, you know, since the Exodus, we've covered 480 years. So, I mean, you're not going that slow. And I was thinking this morning, this does fit actually very well with as kind of a prototype of the ministry of

Christ. Because his ministry begins, well, first of all, when he's like kid, very young. Where does he go? He goes to Egypt. He has to be whisked away, of course, when Herod tries to kill him. And then his ministry begins at the Jordan River and then into the wilderness to be tempted, which is exactly, of course, taking us back to the whole Exodus story, where they crossed the Jordan, they were in the wilderness. So the life of Jesus begins in Egypt, and then his ministry also begins with these very strong Exodus motifs. and then where does it end well it ends in his resurrection but what is his resurrection in john

his resurrection is the real rebuilding of the temple so his is his resurrection is the temple building so in that way this 480 years between the exodus and the temple establishes itself as kind of the prototype for the ministry of jesus who begins in an exodus and then ends with a the temple the temple being built so uh for all those reasons i think this is a pretty cool verse because of the the theological overtones that it has it's it's kind of a it's it's helpful sometimes kind of have the that that big picture in your mind as to why these things happen the way they do and to keep in mind the the connections between the major events in salvation history and how these are going to be used as the structure around which the ministry of Christ is going to

be built. Yeah, and it is just like us to not focus on any of those things and instead try to match some dates up. Yeah, that's very true. We're not going to see Christ there. We're just going to try to count backwards. Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's so easy to kind of get in the weeds, get really into some of the details, and then when you get into those details, it's easy to miss out on, really, the whole message. Yeah. Well, that's why we do the podcast.

That's why we do the podcast. We try not to do that. All right, well, we're going to leave it right there. Next week, we're going to get into the nitty-gritty details of exactly the size of this particular house for the Lord, and

we'll get into all that, but we have to do that next week. I'll see you then. See you then. We'll see you next time.