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Bible Dictionaries
Hiram
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or (Huram in Chronicles usually, except 1 Chronicles 14:1, in the ketibh , the original Hebrew text).
1. King of Tyre. Sent carpenters, masons, and cedars to David to build his palace (2 Samuel 5:11). Eupolemon (see Polyhistor, Fragm. Hist. Greek, 3 fr. 18), apparently on the authority of Dius and Menunder of Ephesus in file time of Alexander the Great, states, "David reduced the Syrians near the Euphrates, and Commagene, the Assy. finns, and Phoenicians in Gilead, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Ituraeans, and Nabathaeans; and made an expedition against Suron (Huram?) king of Tyre and Phoenicia, and compelled them all to pay tribute to the Jews." This confirms 2 Samuel 8; 9, and adds particulars drawn probably from Phoenician or other non-Israelite sources. Hiram was "ever a lover of David" (1 Kings 5:1; 1 Kings 5:10-12). So he made a "league" with his son Solomon (beriyt , "a covenant," recognizing Jehovah, and guaranteeing to Jewish sojourners at Tyre religious liberty).
The mention that "there was peace between Hiram and Solomon" may hint at there having been once war between Hiram and David, before Hiram became "a lover of David." Hiram gave Solomon for the temple cedars and firs, and gold, six score talents, according to all his desire, and Solomon in return gave Hiram 20,000 measures of wheat and 26 measures of pure oil yearly; the mercantile coast cities being dependent on the grain and olive abounding region of Palestine (Acts 12:20 end). Solomon also gave Hiram 20 cities in Galilee, which did not satisfy him, and which therefore he called Cabul. (See CABUL.) (1 Kings 9:11-14; 1 Kings 9:27-32).
Tyre is threatened with punishment for delivering the Jewish captives to Edom, and not remembering "the brotherly covenant," namely, between Hiram and David and Solomon. Hiram sent also in the navy expert shipmen to Ophir from Ezion-Geber, with Solomon's servants; and a navy. (See OPHIR.) With Solomon's navy of Tharshish (1 Kings 10:22) to share in the Mediterranean trade. Dius assigns to Hiram a 34 years' reign, and names Abibal as his father, Baleazar as his son and successor. Josephus (Ant. 8:2, section 8) States that the correspondence between Hiram and Solomon was kept in his day among the Tyrian archives.
2. King Hiram sent to Solomon an overseer of workmen skilled in working gold, silver, brass, iron, stone, wood, purple, linen, etc. Bezaleel, similarly (Exodus 31:25), but by supernatural endowment, combined weaving with metallurgy. He cast the two great brass pillars of the temple, and made the lavers, shovels and basins (1 Kings 7:13-14-40). He is called "my father," i.e. a title of honour, counselor, master workman (Genesis 45:8). "Son of a widow of Naphtali," but in 2 Chronicles 2:13-14, of one "of the daughters of Dan," i.e. she was by birth a Danite, and married into Naphtali. When her husband died she married again, as widow of a Naphtalite, a Tyrian to whom she bore Hiram Blunt (Undesigned Coincidences) makes her of the colony Dan or Laish in Naphtali, bordering on Sidoninn or Tyrian territory.
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Hiram'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/h/hiram.html. 1949.
