Bible Synapse
Did Solomon give Hiram wheat and oil, or wheat, barley, wine and oil?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Solomon gave Hiram “twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year”.
And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.
Solomon offers “to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber”, wheat, barley, wine and oil, twenty thousand measures or baths of each.
And, behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.
The objection
1 Kings 5:11 says that Solomon paid Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat and twenty measures of oil. 2 Chronicles 2:10 says he gave twenty thousand measures of wheat and of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine and of oil. The two accounts of the same bargain do not match.
The answer
They describe two different payments, made to two different parties. In 1 Kings 5 Hiram asks Solomon to meet his desire “in giving food for my household” (1 Kings 5:9), that is, provisions for the royal court of Tyre. Verse 11 records what Solomon paid for that: wheat “for food to his household” and pure oil, “year by year”. This was the price of the timber, paid to the king himself.
2 Chronicles 2:10 is something else: Solomon’s offer of rations for “thy servants, the hewers that cut timber”, the gangs of woodcutters at work in Lebanon. Kings mentions this second payment too, without giving its details, when Solomon says “unto thee will I give hire for thy servants” (1 Kings 5:6). Chronicles gives those details and leaves out the yearly payment to the court. Each book records one side of the arrangement, and the two together give the whole. Keil and Delitzsch call the two accounts so clear that those who merge them into one payment stand quite alone.
The amounts of oil fit this too. The court received twenty kors of ‘pure’ (literally ‘beaten’) oil, the finest grade, for the king’s table. A kor held ten baths (Ezekiel 45:14), so that is about two hundred baths. The workmen received twenty thousand baths of ordinary oil. That both payments include twenty thousand measures of wheat is a coincidence of round figures, not a sign that they were the same payment.
Still open
The Greek Septuagint, followed by some modern versions such as the BSB, reads ‘twenty thousand baths’ of oil in 1 Kings 5:11 (5:25 in the Greek), against the Hebrew ‘twenty kors’. Which reading is original is debated; on either reading the payment to the court is distinct from the workmen’s rations.
From the classic commentators
This is omitted in our account, in which the wages promised in 1 Kings 5:6 to the Sidonian fellers of wood are not more minutely defined. On the other hand, the payment for the wood delivered by Solomon to Hiram, which is not mentioned in the Chronicles, is stated here in 1 Kings 5:11.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Kings 5:8–11 (1857–78)