Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we drop in on Solomon as he's preparing to build the temple. He wants the

best of the best material so he does some negotiating with the King next door

in Tyra which is in, just north of Israel.

Previously, King Hiram of Tyra had a great relationship with Solomon's dad, David.

And even though Hiram is a Gentile, today he even recognizes and blesses God and his work on

Israel's behalf, so he and Solomon are off to a great start.

Hiram has access to incredible cedar trees in his country. They can grow to be 100 feet tall. That's a 10-story

building. And not only that, but their lumberjacks use some special logging techniques that have a full five-star

rating on Yelp.

As Solomon and Hiram are negotiating,

Solomon tries to send some of his guys to quote unquote help out

with cutting the cedar trees,

but he's probably doing that as a means of finding out their logging techniques.

Hiram seems to pick up on this and maybe assumes that Solomon is being sneaky so he plays

it cool.

He says, oh that's so nice of you to offer.

What a great idea, but how's about we just bring it to you and save you the trip?

Then you can just give us some food in exchange for it.

It's like when you're selling something on Craigslist and you have to say,

Yeah, thanks for offering to come all the way to my apartment, but we can just meet at the

midway point instead, like maybe the police department.

...