an artificer in stone. The Tyrians seem to have been specially skilled in architecture (1Ki 5:17-18; 2Sa 5:11). This art the Hebrews no doubt learned in Egypt (Ex 1:11,14), where ruins of temples and palaces fill the traveller with wonder at the present day.
So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor And they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Raamses.
and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on them.
Then the king commanded, and they quarried great stones, costly stones, to lay the foundation of the house with cut stones. So Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the Gebalites cut them, and prepared the timbers and the stones to build the house.
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