upply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn; receiving in return
their timber, which was floated down to Joppa, and a large body of
artificers. The timber was cut by his own subjects, of whom he raised a
body of thirty thousand; ten thousand employed at a time, and relieving
each other every month; so that to one month of labor they had two of
rest. He raised two other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of
burdens, the other of eighty thousand hewers of stone, who were employed
in the quarries among the mountains. All these labors were thrown, not
on the Israelites, but on the strangers who, chiefly of Canaanitish
descent, had been permitted to inhabit the country.

These preparations, in addition to those of King David, being completed,
the work began. The eminence of Moriah, the Mount of Vision, _i.e._, the
height seen afar from the adjacent country, which tradition pointed out
as the spot where Abraham had offered his son (where recently the plague
had been stayed, by the altar built in the threshing-floor of Ornan or
Araunah, the Jebusite), rose on the east side of the city. Its rugged
top was levelled with immense labor; its sides, which to the east and
south were precipitous, were faced with a wall of stone, built up
perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, so as to appear to those
who looked down of most terrific height; a work of prodigious skill and
labor, as the immense stones were strongly mortised together and wedged
into the rock. Around the whole area or esplanade, an irregular
quadrangle, was a solid wall of considerable height and strength: within
this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were either from the
first, or subsequently, admitted. A second wall encompassed another
quadrangle, called the court of the Israelites. Along this wall, on the
inside, ran a portico or cloister, over which were chambers for
different sacred purposes. Within this again another, probably a lower,
wall separated the court of the priests from that of the Israelites. To
each court the ascent was by steps, so that the platform of the inner
court was on a higher level than that of the outer.

The Temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth than the
architectural skill and science of the people. It was a wonder of the
world from the splendor of its materials, more than the grace, boldness,
or majesty of its height and dimensions. It had neither the colossal
magnitude of the Egyptian, the simple dignity