³¹ By order of the king, fine, large blocks of stone were quarried to give the house a foundation of hewn stone. ³² Solomon’s and Hiram’s builders, along with others from Gebal,^[a] shaped them, and prepared the wood and stones for building the house.

²⁰ All the people who were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were not Israelites— ²¹ those of their descendants who were left in the land and whom the Israelites had not been able to destroy under the ban—these Solomon conscripted as forced laborers, as they are to this day.

^16 (A)Thereupon Solomon took a census of all the alien men resident in the land of Israel (following the census David his father had taken of them); they were found to number one hundred fifty-three thousand six hundred. ¹⁷ Of these he made seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand cutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred overseers to keep the people working.^(B)