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.
All Commentaries on 1 Kings 5:16 Go To 1 Kings 5
Jerome
AD 420
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. This surely is the height of mystery, but hear of even deeper mysteries! “And the overseers over the works and the temple were three thousand.” They cannot be greater, not even the overseers in charge of the work, except that they proclaim the Trinity.
