Now therefore command you that they cut me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with your servants: and unto you will I give wages for your servants according to all that you shall appoint: for you know that there is not among us any that has skill to cut timber like unto the Sidonians.
All Commentaries on 1 Kings 5:6 Go To 1 Kings 5
Bede
AD 735
For the servants of Hiram who cut down cedars from Lebanon for Solomon are the teachers chosen from among the Gentiles whose task is to fell those who enjoy the goods and glory of this world by correcting their pride and arrogance and convert their ambition into obedience to their Redeemer. Now with these servants were also the servants of Solomon, and together they set about the work referred to because the first teachers from among the Gentiles needed the apostles, who had received training by being instructed in the word of faith, lest, were they to begin to teach without masters, they might turn out to be teachers of error. For the reason why Solomon wanted the servants of Hiram to hew timber from Lebanon for him was that they were more experienced than his own servants in felling, but the reason why he also wanted his own servants to be there with them was that they might show the lumbermen what length the planks ought to be. What this symbolizes is plain, namely, that the apostles had a surer knowledge of how to preach to others the word of the gospel that they were privileged to hear from the Lord, but the Gentiles, converted from error and brought into conformity with the truth of the gospel, had a better knowledge of the actual errors of the Gentiles, and the surer their knowledge the more skillfully they learned to counteract and refute them. Paul indeed had a better knowledge of the mystery of the gospel, which he had learned through revelation, but Dionysus was better able to refute the false teachings of Athens, whose syllogisms as well as errors and all of whose arguments he knew since a boy. With this explanation the statement that follows is fully in keeping: “For you know that there is not a man among my people who has the skill to hew wood like the Sidonians.” For when the Lord was bodily present teaching, there was not one among the Jewish people who knew so well how to refute the errors of the Gentiles as the actual Gentile converts to the faith and those of the Gentiles who had become Christians. For the Sidonians and Tyrians are rightly taken as a type of the Gentiles because they were Gentile peoples.
