²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹ Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

¹⁷ At the king’s command, they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones.^{(A) 18} So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites did the stonecutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.

⁷ The house was built with stone finished at the quarry so that neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron was heard in the temple while it was being built.^(A)