Besides the chief of Solomon's officers who were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, who ruled over the people that labored in the work.
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Ephrem The Syrian
AD 373
These thousands of men employed in the cutting and transportation of the wooden beams and the stones signify the thousands of thousands of assistant spirits sent for our salvation. In the first place, [we see that] God ordered his angels to cut from the rock of the world and to polish and direct accurately the souls of the saints.… Second, in this same symbol, we can observe the toils of the saints for the conversion and salvation of souls, either when they endeavor to drive human beings away from the love of the world or when, after they have accomplished that, they begin to polish the stones cut from the rock until they provide them with luster by a thorough polishing and make them worthy of the heavenly building. Then they are taken and employed by the supreme builder.… Finally we can interpret the workers of Solomon to be the angels sent to accomplish their ministry, as well as the prophets and the apostles chosen from the old people to build the church.… The builders sent by the k...
Three hundred. In 2 Paralipomenon (ii. 2., and 18,) we read six hundred; (Haydock) as there are 300 superior officers included. (Calmet) (Menochius) (Sa)
But these 3600 are all overseers. (Haydock)
Listen to even greater mysteries. At the time when Solomon built the temple, it was our peacemaker who says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,” “for he himself is our peace,” “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding,” who himself built the temple for God. Observe what Scripture says about the building of the temple by Solomon: “And there were seventy thousand quarrymen and eighty thousand carriers.” Mark the number. The masons who were cutting stones, who were preparing, as it were, the foundations of the buildings, who were taking up stones from the ground to build the temple of God, are reckoned in the number seven, in the prophets, in the patriarchs, for while they seemingly were driving the human race from off the earth, they were making preparations for the temple of the Lord. The latter, the eighty thousand, symbolize the apostolic preaching and the Gospels; these are they who with the Lord Savior and Solomon were carrying the heavy burden of the nations....
