It took King Solomon seven years to build the Temple in Jerusalem and thirteen to construct his palace. He had help, as artist Patrociño Barela reminds us in this 18-inch juniper wood sculpture of two laborers from the time of Solomon. According to 1 Kings 5:13–17, “King Solomon conscripted forced labor out of all Israel; the levy numbered 30,000 men … Solomon also had seventy thousand laborers and eighty thousand stone cutters in the hill country … At the king’s command, they quarried out great costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones.” […]
