Solomon Completes His Palace

In 1 Kings 7 we find a brief description of Solomon's building activities in connection with his own palace. The word "house" as here used no doubt means not a single structure but the complex of buildings connected with the palace. There were many of these, the exact nature or purpose of which is largely a matter of conjecture.

Undoubtedly they included most of the structures usually connected with a royal palace, such as halls of state, judgment halls, the royal residence, residence for the queen, armory, etc. These must have constituted a large group of buildings enclosed in a great court. All structures of the time of Solomon were built on the two hills between the Kidron and Tyropoeon valleys—Mt. Moriah and Mt. Zion—in fact, there were no buildings west of the Tyropoeon Valley until the later kings.

The Bible says he took 13 years to complete his work. The 13 years are to be counted from the end of the 7 years when the Temple was completed, in Solomon's 11th year of reign (ch. 6:38). His whole period of building thus occupied 20 years (1 Kings 9:10 2 Chron. 8:1), from the 4th year of his reign to the 24th. The building of the Temple took only seven years because it was a single structure, and a long period of preparation had preceded the actual building (1 Chron. 22:2—4). However, the palace complex consisted of a large range of buildings for which previous preparation could not have been made to any extent.