First Kings Fun Facts

Several months ago I led a Wednesday night Bible class in which we studied the books of First and Second Kings. As any Bible student knows, there are certain things in the Bible that are difficult for us to understand based on differences in cultures, years and words.

I discovered as I prepared for the class that I couldn't really understand the wealth of Solomon and the size of the temple he constructed. I get that fact that he was the richest man in the world but I didn't realize or know just how rich. Afterall, I don't measure things in cubits and talents. I doubt you do either. I decided to convert the temple measurements and the gold and riches of Solomon into figures we use and understand.

As recently as last week I had a person tell me they were glad I did that. They thought it made the class interesting and allowed them to really get a grasp on these things as well. That got me thinking that maybe I should put some of those figures here. I hope you find them interesting.

I Kings 6:2 tells us the temple built by Solomon was 60 cubits by 20 cubits by 30 cubits. A cubit was approximately 18 inches in length. That equals 90 feet by 30 feet. It was 45 feet tall. Based on the length and width, it was 2700 square feet in size.

I Kings 7:1 tells us it took Solomons 13 years to build his own house. There was a good reason for that based on the next verse. Again converting cubits to inches and feet, his house stood 150 long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet tall. That's a total of 11250 square feet. I looked at the Knoxville Association of Realtors MLS today. Of the homes currently for sale in that range of size, the average asking price is $2,465,000. Remember, the real estate market is depressed!

The Hall of Pillars he built in chapter 7 and verse 6 was 3375 SF. Keep in mind the average American home is about 1500 SF in size.

We are all familiar with the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon in chapter 10. Verse 10 says that she gave him 120 talents of gold. A talent of gold weighed about 120 pounds. (Remember that when you read Christ's parables of the widow who lost her talent and parable on forgiveness in Matthew 18:23-35.) That's 14,400 pounds of gold.

Gold has been trading at over $900/oz. recently. With 16 ounces in a pound, Solomon received 230,400 ounces of gold. In today's money the queen gave him $207,360,000 in gold. That's two hundred seven million three hundred sixty thousand dollars! It's no wonder that verses 21 and 27 of that chapter tells us that silver was worth nothing in his days.

But wait, there's more. Verse 14 says he received 666 talents of gold each year. Based on the same figures we used above, he received 79,920 pounds of gold which would be 1,278,720 ounces. At $900/ounce, Solomon was given $1,150,848,000 in gold using today's dollars. Yes, that's 1.1 billion!

Now I can undertand that wealth. There are several other places in that book as well as in the rest of the Bible where you can use simple conversions to make it more understandable. I think doing that makes us really appreciate even more what the writers are telling us.