¹¹ Then Huram^[a] king of Tyre answered in a letter, and he sent word to Solomon: “Because Yahweh loves his people, he has made you king over them.” ¹² Then Huram^[b] said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who has made the heavens and the earth, who has given to King David a wise son knowing discretion and understanding, who will build for Yahweh a house and a royal palace for himself. ¹³ So now I have sent a skilled man, knowledgeable and with understanding: my master^[c] Huram, ¹⁴ a son of a woman from the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, knowledgeable for working with gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and with purple, blue, and crimson fabric, and with fine linen, for engraving any engraving and devising any plan that is given to him, with your skilled men and the skilled men of my lord David your father. ¹⁵ Now as for the wheat, barley, oil, and wine that my lord mentioned, let him send that to his servants. ¹⁶ And we ourselves will cut trees from Lebanon according to all your need, and we will bring them to you on rafts over the sea to Joppa, so that you may bring them up to Jerusalem.”

¹⁷ Then Solomon counted all the resident alien men who were in the land of Israel after the census that David his father had taken of them. And there were found one hundred and fifty-three thousand. ¹⁸ And he appointed from them seventy thousand to bear burdens,^[d] eighty thousand to quarry^[e] in the hill country, and three thousand six hundred overseers to make the people work.