“A Mixed Blessing”
Looking back at it from here, I’m not sure that Solomon’s temple was an unqualified good for his people. It was a great and magnificent building project, one in which many of Solomon’s people participated. Such building projects often bring a people together with a common purpose, sort of like fighting, supporting, and ultimately winning the Second World War brought the people of many nations together. That isn’t a bad thing, of course. But in the case of the temple, not everybody who worked on it did so voluntarily.