FREEMASONRY Etc. (MIRAMON NUEVO's blog)
A Masonic website of the Freemasons, by a Freemason, for the Freemasons whithersoever dispersed. "Sit Lux et Lux Fuit."Archive for April 14, 2008
Wages of the Workmen at the Temple
NEITHER THE SCRIPTURES, nor Jospehus, give us any definite statement of the amount of wages paid, nor the manner in which they were paid, to the workmen who were engaged in the erection of King Solomon’s Temple.
The cost of its construction, however, must have been immense, since it has been estimated that the edifice alone consumed more gold and silver than at present exists upon the whole earth; so that Jospehus very justly says that “Solomon made all these things for the honor of God, with great variety and magnificence, sparing no cost, but using all possible liberality in adorning the Temple,”
We learn, as one instance of this liberality, from the 2 Chronicle, that Solomon paid annually to the Tyrian Masons, the servants of Hiram, “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 “bath” was a measure equal to seven and a half gallons wine measure, and the “cor” or “chomer” , which we translate by the indefinite word “measure” , contained ten baths; so that the corn, wine and oil furnished by King Solomon, as wages to the servants of Hiram of Tyre, amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand bushels of the first, and one hundred and fifty thousand gallons each of the second and third.
The sacred records do not inform us what further wages they received, but we elsewhere learned that King Solomon gave them as free gift a sum equal to more than thirty-two millions of dollars.
The whole amount of wages paid to the craft is stated to have been about six hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars; but we have no means of knowing how that amount was distributed; though it is natural to suppose that those of the most skill and experience received the highest wages.
The Harodim, or chiefs of the workmen, must have been better paid than the Ish Sabal, or mere laborers.
FREEMASONRY Etc. (MIRAMON NUEVO's blog) 