God spoke to Moses saying: “Speak to the Israelites and have them bring Me an offering. Take My offering from everyone whose heart impels him to give . . . They shall make me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.”
Ex. 25: 1-2, 8
Building of the temple was completion of the Exodus project.
In the 480th year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign . . . he began to build the Temple of the Lord.
I Kings 6:1
King Solomon conscripted labourers from all Israel – thirty thousand men. He sent them off to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month, so that they spent one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labour. Solomon had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hills, as well as thirty-three hundred foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen.
I Kings 5:27-30
The Tanach tells us that it was this burden that made the people restive after Solomon’s death:
So they (the people) sent for Jeroboam, and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labour and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.”
I Kings 12:3-4
But there was great DANGER in building the Temple
“I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with the tent as My dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel: Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?”
2 Samuel 7:6-7
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