Dear WBro Damien,
I do not know why I am being pestered about the mines that provided the funds to build King Solomon’s Temple.

With the benefit of hindsight, and I have a lot of that, our wise King must have had a fairly short term perspective building an infrastructure project like the Temple. It seems to have no long term benefit for our people and it did not survive the shortest ravagers of time. I kept my secrets, but for what?

Too many of the useful members of our society relied upon the wealth from the mines. The goat herdsmen, the camel drivers, orchardists, and weavers became beggars at the Temple doors rather than doing something useful for the Kingdom. The unemployment problem seemed solved but it was just as a mirage in the desert. Rather than focusing on the things that were necessary for them to survive many engaged in intrigues and plotted
against the realm. It was short lived.

And as our Lord God was reported to have said to Solomon: “The cup shall not runneth over for as long as the winds shall blow in the desert. The cup of plenty shall always refresh the worthy but the lazy and the greedy shall find its bottom very soon. And that is the way with the gift of the earthly treasures that I have given you in the Kingdom of Edom. Taketh them with care for when they are Devotion Newsletter 6 Edition No 43, February-March 2010 gone the riches cannot be replaced. Enjoy the pleasures but remember that generations should be
able to follow you for that is my will.

And Solomon incurred a debt to Hiram King of Tyre for the men and material to build the Temple, monies that should have gone to the people and genuine nation building.

But the High Priests were joyous as the devotions at the Temple increased and so did their power over the people, and the beggars and the houses of ill fame had to pay their token to keepers of the State to survive so their lives were controlled as they surrendered their independence. Skills were lost. The people could not look after themselves as they did in the past.

Then the cup drieth up as quickly as the tide recedes form the foreshore, the mine no longer
produced, and the landscape was scarred like a wounded soldier, with no breath to praise the
Lord.

So my brother there is a lesson in all this or those who want to see. Contemplate what happened to the Kingdom after Solomon.

I hope that this will provide an explanation to those that have contacted me.


Your fraternal Brother
Hiram Abiff