CEDRUS LIBANI 
16 
boards of Cedar, both the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceiling: and he covered them on the 
inside with wood, and covered the floor of the house with planks of Fir. And he built twenty cubits on 
the sides of the house, both the floor and the walls with boards of Cedar: he even built them for it within, 
even for the oracle, even for the most holy place. And the house, that is, the temple before it, was forty 
cubits long. And the Cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers : all was Cedar ; 
there was no stone seen. And the oracle he prepared in the house within, to set there the ark of the 
covenant of the Lord. And the oracle in the fore-part was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in 
breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof: and he overlaid it with pure gold; and so covered the 
altar which was of Cedar.And he built the inner court with three rows of hewed stone, and a row 
of Cedar beams.” 
The house of the Lord was finished in seven years, but Solomon built a great deal more than it of 
Cedar. He built a house for himself, (i Kings vii. i) “But Solomon was building his own house 
thirteen years.” Next (ver. 2), “ He built also the house of the forest of Lebanon ; the length thereof was 
an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits upon four rows 
of Cedar pillars with Cedar beams upon the pillars. And it was covered with Cedar above upon the 
beams, that lay on forty-five pillars, fifteen in a row.” It was of this palace that Josephus says that nothing 
surprised Nicaulis, Queen of Egypt and ^Ethiopia (the same that is called in Scripture the Queen of 
Sheba), when she came to Jerusalem to see Solomon, as the beauty and splendour of one of the halls of 
this palace, which was enriched by 200 massive golden bucklers, each of the weight of 600 shekels. 
All this building work extended over a period of upwards of twenty years (1 Kings ix. 10). We have 
seen that the house of the Lord took seven years, and Solomon’s own house, which was not begun until 
the other was finished, took thirteen years. 
But although these edifices were the most magnificent, and those in which doubtless the greatest 
consumption of Cedar took place, this was still a very small part of the building done by Solomon. In 
addition to the works above mentioned, Solomon built a wall round Jerusalem, and the city of Millo and 
H azor, and Megiddo, and Gezer, and Beth-horon the Nether, and Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, 
and “ all the cities of store that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots, and cities for his horsemen, and 
that which Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion” 
(1 Kings ix. 19). He also built a navy in Eziongeber, on the shore of the Red Sea (1 Kings ix. 26). 
There must also have been much more building in Jerusalem; for we are told in 1 Kings x. 27 (and 
in almost the same words in 2 Chron. i. 15, and ix. 27), that “ the King made silver to be in Jerusalem as 
stones, and Cedars made he to be as the Sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance.” The true 
reading of this passage, we think, is, that by his importations of Cedar he made it so common as to be as 
plentiful as the Sycamore tree (the ordinary wood of the country). It is not, however, so taken by Josephus. 
In repeating the account of Solomon’s buildings, which is obviously a copy or paraphrase of the Bible 
account, he says, “ And so multiplied Cedar trees in the plains of Judea, which did not grow there before, 
that they were like the multitude of common Sycamore trees.” (Whiston’s “ Works of Josephus,” p. 336.) 
An interpretation which Loiseleur again carries still further from the simple account given in the Bible: 
“ Josephus says that Solomon, being desirous that his kingdom should be abundantly supplied with wood, 
caused so many Cedars to be planted in the plains of Judea, where there had been none before, that they 
became as common as Mulberries.” (“ Histoire du Cedre,” Ann. Agr. Franc., 1837, p. 365.) It appears 
plain to us that this is not what is meant in the Bible, and not less so that, if Solomon had tried the 
experiment of growing the Cedars in the plains of Judea, it would have been a failure. Cedars will not 
grow there. 
Notwithstanding the vast consumption of Cedars during Hiram’s reign, it would appear that plenty 
still remained, for the next allusion to them in the Bible after Solomon’s time, is in the threat by 
Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, in the days of Hezekiah (2 Kings xix. 23, and in almost the same 
words 
