Scripture Daily

Context No. 1902 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 5:13-18: in context

13King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. 14He sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: for a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home; and Adoniram was over the men subject to forced labor. 15Solomon had seventy thousand who bore burdens, and eighty thousand who were stone cutters in the mountains, 16besides Solomon’s chief officers who were over the work: three thousand three hundred who ruled over the people who labored in the work. 17The king commanded, and they cut out large stones, costly stones, to lay the foundation of the house with worked stone. 18Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites cut them, and prepared the timber and the stones to build the house.

To build the temple, Solomon raised a vast labor force: thirty thousand men sent in shifts to Lebanon, seventy thousand who carried burdens, eighty thousand who quarried stone in the mountains, with thousands of overseers directing the work. They cut out great, costly stones for the foundation, and the builders shaped the timber and the stone. The temple that would stand as the glory of Israel rose on the toil of these tens of thousands of laborers, most of them unnamed and unremembered.

Behind the glory of Solomon's temple lay the hidden labor of a great host of ordinary workers. The temple is remembered, and Solomon is remembered; but the tens of thousands who quarried the stone in the mountains, hauled the burdens, shaped the timber, are unnamed, unremembered, their toil hidden beneath the finished splendor. And yet without their labor, the temple would never have risen. The visible glory rested on invisible work; the celebrated house was built by the uncelebrated many. There is a dignity here worth recovering, the dignity of hidden, unglamorous labor. So much of the good in the world, and so much of God's work, rests on the labor of people whose names no one records, who do the unseen, unspectacular toil that undergirds what others will admire. The stonecutters in the mountains, sweating over their quarries, were as essential to the temple as its architect, though only the temple, and not they, would be remembered. And this holds a word for those of us whose work is hidden and unremembered, the quiet, faithful labor that no one notices or credits. Your work matters, though it is unseen; the great things rest on the hidden faithfulness of the many. And it holds a word about how we regard such labor and such people: not to despise the hidden work or the unremembered workers, but to honor them, knowing that the visible glory rests on their invisible toil. And there is a deeper comfort still. Though the world does not record the names of the stonecutters, God does. Whatever you do, Scripture says, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men; your labor is not in vain in the Lord. The hidden labor that men forget is seen and remembered by God, who does not overlook the faithful toil of the unremembered. The temple rose on the work of tens of thousands whose names are lost to us; but their labor was not lost to God, and neither is ours.

Is my work hidden and unremembered, the quiet faithful labor no one notices or credits, and am I tempted to think it does not matter, or can I take dignity from how the glory of the temple rested on the toil of tens of thousands of unnamed laborers, and trust that my hidden work, forgotten by the world, is seen and remembered by God, for whom my labor is not in vain?

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